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\chapter{Divine}\label{chapter-16-divine}}



\epigraph{``Biting the hand that feeds you is another way to feed.''}{Dread Emperor Vindictive II}



There were seventeen different repositories of books in the Arsenal.

It was a frankly absurd amount and that number didn't even account the
private collections some scholars, priests, mages and sundry Named had
brought with them. The amount of knowledge held within these walls could
be staggering to think about. There were a few places on Calernia where
there might be greater collections, like the Tower in Ater or the House
of Ink and Parchment in Delos, but those were fewer than five and even
those would not draw from so many places and scholarly traditions as the
Arsenal had. Several of the libraries were restricted to individuals
assigned to official Grand Alliance projects and some held knowledge
dangerous enough only a handful of people would ever be allowed to enter
them, but we were not headed into the depths of this maze of a hidden
fortress: the miscellaneous stacks were, in fact, a repository even
guards had access to.

``People around here call them the Stacks of This and That,'' Archer
told me.

She'd fallen into to my right and Adjutant to my left as the three of us
abandoned the eating hall and headed towards where the Doddering Sage
was most likely to be at this hour.

``So it's the dumping grounds for everything that doesn't fit into
another repository,'' I said.

And wasn't either potentially useful or dangerous, I didn't add. Those
books our people were most careful about leaving lying around.

``Might have started out this way, but it's a different beast now,''
Archer said. ``It's one of the largest rooms in the Arsenal and it's
filled with little alcoves. Now there's half a hundred little secret
nooks where people can sit with a cup of something, hide for a secret
talk or a fuck or even just a quiet nap.''

``Wouldn't the custodians put an end to that?'' I said, eyebrow cocked.

While I found it oddly charming that even in a place as alien as the
Arsenal people were finding ways to claw back a piece of normality from
the world, at the end of the day the stacks had an actual purpose.

``I expect there aren't enough of them to make a proper attempt,''
Adjutant said. ``There's been two written requests to increase the
people assigned to these stacks, since they frequently get their people
temporarily poached for other work.''

I'd probably seen one of those requests and simply put it out of my mind
within moments of reading it, I silently admitted to myself. Throwing
more coin and people at something like the miscellaneous stacks wouldn't
have even warranted a second look when there were only so many of either
those to go around and so many more important matters requiring them.

``It doesn't seem to be causing trouble,'' I finally said.

I was willing to let sleeping dogs lie, if the only consequence of
letting this go on was the existence a few discreet places for people to
wind down. Gods knew even Hasenbach's financial wizardry had its limits,
and I wasn't going to be sending more coin this way if I could avoid it.
The Arsenal cost near as much as one of the war fronts to maintain,
which was a damned burden on the treasury even if it was a necessary
one. The three of us kept a brisk pace as we passed through the central
nest of winding hallways that was the Knot, the occasional pack of
scholars in coloured robes falling silent as we passed by. A few
recognized Indrani and greeted her, either through actual greetings or
hastily taking a turn leading away from her, but to my amusement Hakram
drew the eye more than I. I wasn't wearing the Mantle of Woe and my face
was not well-known here, while he was a towering orc in
attention-catching blackened plate.

We headed down through a set of broad stairs towards the part of the
Arsenal known as the Stump. Named for its stout build, low ceilings and
the fact that it was where the leftovers of more important places ended
up, it reminded me of the old Proceran keeps sometimes found up north.
Except the stone here was new and utterly bare, like it'd been conjured
up out of thin air, and there was a\ldots{} scent in the air. Almost
like metal, but not quite. It was everywhere in the Arsenal, I thought,
but stronger here than anywhere else. It smelled of work done through
sorcery, and the taste of it had seeped into every breath I took. We
took a right on a crossroads where the other path would have, as the
carving on the wall indicated, led us to the Repository.

``You've met the Doddering Sage before,'' I said, breaking the silence.

I glanced at Archer and found the trace of a frown on her brow.

``Met is a strong word,'' Indrani shrugged. ``It wasn't one of his good
days.''

``He grows\ldots{} confused, as I understand it,'' I said.

``He's an interesting fellow,'' she replied, ``but his conversation
loops back around after a bit. He does not realize. Sharp, though, when
he's there. Or so Zeze says, anyway. He must have been quite something
in his prime.''

Or he was a skilled liar and thought it in his interest for others to
believe him as past said prime, I thought. Though Indrani could be
frightfully perceptive at times, she was not flawless in her judgements.
None of us were.

``Anything I should worry of?'' I asked.

She considered that for a moment.

``I can't place his accent,'' Indrani said. ``More like he doesn't have
one, and he speaks at least four languages.''

Maybe not Proceran, then. Most Named tended to be polyglots, but in that
regard both heroes and villains from the Principate tended to be
lacking. It wasn't a reflection of any inherent inferiority but rather
of the fact that most of them tended to be regional and might genuinely
never meet someone who didn't speak their native tongue throughout their
entire life. Then again the old man \emph{was} a sage, even if a
doddering one, and that implied a certain knack for the scholarly.
Something to keep in mind, anyway. A walk down a stunted little corridor
brought us to broad open doors, and a carving in the wall spelling out
Miscellaneous Works Repository in three languages: Chantant, Lower
Miezan and Ceseo. There was a bureau buried under an avalanche of books
just pas the doors, and a harried-looking young man behind it who was
frowning at an open volume by magelight. Someone had written
\emph{department of this and that} in chalk on the side, as well as the
even cheekier \emph{ring if you need a custodian, we would like one as
well} I noted with a suppressed smile. We entered and as Archer took the
initiative to go speak to the young man I took a moment to study our
surroundings.

After the description of this being dumping grounds for every other
library, I'd expected some sort of rampant chaos with but it wasn't
anything like that. The magelight globes hanging from the low ceiling
shone instead down on cramped but neat paths of shelves filled to the
brim with books of all shapes and sizes, Chalk slates haphazardly
distributing revealing some arcane library reference symbols and broad
themes to swaths of the collection to which I saw no rhyme not reason:
\emph{history of fish, probably untrue} sat side by side with
\emph{Arlesite romance} and both were across an entire stack filled with
\emph{travel journal, but metaphorical}. There was not a single lit
flame within here, but magelights in glass globes had been tied to tongs
of leather in a way that made it so they could both be worn and used as
a handheld lantern. The impressive part, though, was the size of this
place.

It was larger than the throne room in Laure, at the very least, and
every spare inch seemed to be used by either stacks or wagon-sized
wicker baskets filled with books not yet classed\emph{. I could hide an
entire company of legionaries in here}, I thought, \emph{and not a soul
would notice until the goblins got bored.} While I'd been lost in my
contemplations, Archer had apparently gotten what she needed from the
young man at the bureau -- who was now, I noticed, staring at me with
fear and awe while trying very hard to pretend he'd gone back to reading
his book. I winked at him, then turned to Indrani.

``So?'' I asked.

``He's in there,'' Archer said. ``Though Gods only know where. Last
sighting was apparently near the `fluorescent, neither flora nor fauna'
stacks.''

``Stacks,'' I repeated. ``As in, we have \emph{multiple} of those?''

``It's important to look on the bright side of life, Catherine,''
Indrani grinned at me, then winked. ``You know, `cause fluorescent
means-''

``You are the worst person I know,'' I informed her in disgust.

Ugh, puns. At least when the sappers made one of those, something
usually exploded not long after. That was as close as redeeming such
atrocity against the laws of Gods and men could be had. It was a true
shame the Sisters weren't willing to allow that in the holy book, but
I'd just have to keep suggesting it. Maybe some sort of appendix, I
mused.

``But I don't expect we'll have too hard a time finding him,'' I
continued, ``will we, Adjutant?''

``That's about as clever as her pun,'' Hakram told me. ``You just didn't
wink afterwards, so it was less glaringly terrible.''

We both ignored Indrani's outraged noises.

``Everybody's a fucking critic these days,'' I muttered. ``\emph{Fine}.
My lord Adjutant, kindly use your aspect to \emph{search} for the
Doddering Sage until we have \emph{obtained his presence}.''

``Well, since you asked so nicely,'' Adjutant gravelled, sounding
amused.

I found I was swallowing a grin. Gods, how was it that I'd missed those
assholes so much? Without any more need for verbally jostling, Adjutant
called on one of three crystallized manifestations of his Name.
\textbf{Find} was Adjutant's most subtle aspect, and in truth one of the
most nuanced I'd ever heard of: much like with Hakram himself, the
apparent simplicity hid remarkable depth. While it could be used to
significantly accelerate searched for anything material, whether living
or not, it had more abstract uses as well. They tied into the way the
aspect itself functioned, in my opinion. For example, after we hit the
first crossroads Hakram closed his eyes and called on his aspect again
before taking a swift left. This was not the act of finding information
from a book where we knew it was or picking out a woman from a crowd: he
was, in effect, going on nothing. And still he'd get us to the Doddering
Sage, I had no worry whatsoever about that.

Masego had theorized -- and Akua seemed to think it a reasonable
inference -- that what Adjutant was doing was a phenomenon known among
diabolists as \emph{tapering}. It was apparently common among the most
intelligent of devils, when they grew ancient enough. It was an
inherently inhuman degree of perception born from the fact that such
devils could notice and remember ever detail in a way that humans could
not and call on a sheer amount of experience physically unattainable by
mortals. It allowed those creatures to adapt to wildly different
surroundings, people and situations with seeming flawlessness by taking
in everything around them and then refining the possibilities to what
was the most likely truth. Tapering the noise until all that was left
was the true tune. It was why an incubus could take over a Praesi
seraglio just as easily as it could break apart a Stygian line-match.

The devil had a degree of perception that could not be matched by
humans, and it was helped along by decades if not centuries of learning
about the ins and outs of human nature. It was the opinion of those two
that Hakram's aspect essentially allowed him to tap into a similar state
for a small amount of time.

Vivienne, on the other hand, had noted she'd seen similar behaviour from
the Bumbling Conjurer: providence's golden son, whose every debacle
turned out to be a masterstroke until he ran into a villain so far
beyond him providence was buried along with him. I was actually inclined
to side with her on this. To my eye, \textbf{Find} looked a lot like
discount providence put together for one of Below's: luck put together
from the possible, but only ever a story's sort of luck. It could get us
closer to what we needed, or what was already within our grasp, but it
was not a panacea for all our ills and relying on it for answers was
putting our lives into the hands of fickle, fickle luck. Regardless of
who had the truth of it, though, in practice Adjutant guided us through
twists and turns until we were deep within the maze.

Twice we passed hidden nooks, one occupied by a snoring priest on an
armchair and the other by an impressive collection of bottles from I
confiscated what looked liked genuine Harrow brandy in the name of the
throne of Callow, until Hakram's steps slowed. I cocked my head to the
side, taking a whiff of the air. Was that what I thought it was? Huh. I
took the lead in turning the corner, stumbling onto my first sight of
the Doddering Sage. The old man looked haggard, I thought, taking in the
rumpled grey robes and ratty cloth shies, but somehow there was a sense
of power to it. A mane of shoulder-length grey hair mixed with would
have been a long and luxurious beard, were it not unkempt. The Doddering
Sage licked wet red lips and narrowed his amber brown eyes as he caught
sight of me in turn, leaning back into a ratty brown armchair. In his
hands was the source of the smell I'd caught: a polished little wooden
pipe filled with freshly-lit wakeleaf.

``It's not for you, Constance,'' the Doddering Sage told me. ``You're
much too young, and this is a fool's vice besides.''

``\emph{Shit},'' Archer muttered. ``Not a good day.''

I stepped forward, ignoring the comment, and came to lean against the
stacks at his side.

``Tell me about it,'' I sighed, reached for the pipe I carried in my
tunic. ``I get headaches if I don't smoke at least once, nowadays.''

The Doddering Sage watched me produce a small packet of my own wakeleaf
-- Hanno's gift, still with me -- and stuff my own pipe before passing a
palm over it to light it with a touch of black flame.

``Dragonbone,'' the old man said, eyes narrowing further. ``Expensive.
Rare. \emph{Dangerous}. You are not Constance.''

I breathed in, swallowing the smoke and spat it back out.

``I'm not,'' I said. ``I'm the Black Queen, and you have answers for
me.''

``Do I?'' the Doddering Sage said. ``How good of me.''

He brusquely snorted, then pulled at his own pipe. I could only watch in
envy as he blew a smoke ring, then further showed off by blowing a
smaller ring into it.

``Damn, but that \emph{is} impressive,'' I admitted.

``I have a few years of practice on you, Foundling Queen,'' the old man
smiled, face wreathed in the lasts wisps of his smoke. ``You come to me
for my eyes, I take it.''

``Do I?'' I asked.

When completely out of my depth, I was in no way above smiling
meaningfully and saying something mildly cryptic. A truly ridiculous
amount of people were almost \emph{eager} to fall for that.

``That boy of yours, the one with the deadly earnestness, he'll be a
terror one day,'' the Sage said, ``but he's a few years short still.
That's why an old sack of bones like me are brought in even when there
are all these swaggering youths. I can look, yes I can. But you'll not
hurt Constance, will you? Promise me.''

His lip trembled in sudden emotion, and something in me clenched. He
looked fragile, in that moment, though the truth of his fragility was
hidden from him. Pity welled up, but I pushed it down. \emph{You could
be playing me}, I thought. \emph{And so I'll offer kindness where I can,
but never without keeping a knife in hand.}

``I won't,'' I said. ``I promise.''

``Good,'' he muttered. ``Good. You do remind me of him, you know.
Robert. He was kind, but he was not \emph{soft}.''

I said nothing, for there was nothing to say.

``\textbf{Perceive},'' the Doddering Sage said, and Creation shivered.

I watched him, and saw his eyes had turned pure white -- he looked
blind, but only a fool would have made that mistake. I felt something
skittering across my soul, like a spider against glass, and the old man
exhaled.

``Twinned,'' he said. ``Incipient. You make your own Role, and the Name
walks hand in hand with another. I cannot see them, there is\ldots{}
refusal.''

I shivered, fingers clenching around my pipe, and did not believe this
for a moment to be the mad ramblings of an old man. Not when my very
soul was shivering along with the rest of me, lost and reaching. The
Doddering Sage turned towards me abruptly, so quick I thought his head
might snap.

``More?'' he said, sounding surprised. ``You\ldots{} \emph{how}? It
isn't yours, where did you take it?''

``What?'' I said, leaning forward. ``What did I take?''

``A rival?'' he muttered. ``A thief? A \emph{successor}? You keep
stories within you that neither your ear nor eye ever knew. Shapes and
beats and the sound of the knife kissing flesh.''

My pipe tumbled across the floor, though I did not remember dropping it
-- or catching the Sage's robes, fists tightening around them as I
pulled him closer.

``Focus,'' I ordered, voice ringing with power. ``The stories, where do
they come from?''

My hand was shaking, and the answer was on the tip of my tongue. I knew
this, I'd had it since/

/and my eyes were blinking. I pushed down the surge of rage that seize
hold of me at the way I just couldn't seem to remember what I wanted. I
would be mistress of my own mind, even if I had to rip out the parts
that misbehaved.

``Sage,'' I said, ``\emph{tell me}.''

``Reflection,'' he whispered, sounding awed. ``No, an echo. You stole
from her echo, and now it's in your head. How did you not break?''

I released his robes, stumbling back. Oh. \emph{Oh}. And at last I
remembered, what it was that Masego and I had done in the depths of
Arcadia, when we'd harvested the echoes left behind by things that would
become gods. He'd learned dark secrets from that, deep magics. And I
had/ \emph{no you fucking don't, it's my mind and I there is only one
ruler here.} I wrenched the world back from the blankness, wrestled it
back into submission. I was kneeling, gasping, and Adjutant's worried
hand was on my shoulder. But it didn't matter, even as I convulsed and
threw up at the feet of the Doddering Sage.

``Cat,'' Hakram quietly asked, ``can you hear me?''

``Yes,'' I laughed. ``Yes, I can hear you. And I remember now, what it
is I got from the Intercessor.''

The shape of a thousand stories, the tune of the song if not the words.
An instinct, one that'd sharpened something already existing into a
blade capable of upending old monsters and empires. I wiped my mouth and
an apology to the Sage was halfway to my lips when I realized his eyes
were closed and he was, seemingly, sleeping. Unearthing what had been
waiting in the back of my head had knocked him out, looked like. I rose
to my feet, slowly, and allowed Hakram to tuck my cleaned pipe back into
my tunic as I leaned against his arm.

``Catherine,'' Indrani quietly said, ``what the Hells was that?''

``I forced myself to remember something my mind didn't know how to cope
with,'' I said. ``But it was worth it. I know what's in the back of my
head, and now that I know it can't be used against me.''

The Augur had told us that the Bard saw in stories, saw all the stories,
and that when dealing with Named she was nigh untouchable. But she could
be beaten, because the more we knew of her the less power she held over
us. And one of these days I would find a set of shackles even her smug
immortal ass couldn't slither her way out of. The first step to that was
realizing I'd stolen part of her and made it my own: that was on less
surprise for her to pull on me when the time came. With surprising
gentleness, Indrani reached out and took my face in hand. She withdrew
after touching under my nose, fingers coming away flecked with blood.

``Don't think too hard, Cat,'' she said, sounding worried. ``You're not
made of Winter anymore: some things you won't get back up from.''

``The more I bleed now,'' I replied, ``the less I'll bleed when the
knives really come out.''

Still, I winced as I wiped away the blood beneath my nostrils. I had the
most horrible headache. A glance at the Doddering Sage told me he was
still out, so there'd be no more to learn here.

``Find out who the Constance he was talking about is,'' I quietly told
Hakram. ``If she's still alive, see to it she doesn't want for anything.
If she's not, see to her descendants.''

I owed the man, for this, and I'd pay my debt in full. He'd have a warm
place to stay in after the war, be it in Callow or at Cardinal. That
much I could repay, for what I'd learned today and what it had cost him
to tell me.

``I'll see to it,'' Adjutant promised.

``I hate to be that girl,'' Archer said, ``but we're in the shit now,
aren't we? You said we were here for a revelation, but there wasn't
anything about this that helps us figure out what's going on here.''

I pushed off of Hakram and took my staff from the stacks where I'd left
it propped up against, rolling my shoulder to loosen it. She wasn't
wrong about that, though she wasn't exactly right either. I found the
bottle of Harrow brandy I'd liberated from oppression earlier pressed
into my hand, uncorked, and Indrani gave me a steady look.

``Your breath still smells like, you know,'' she told me, not unkindly.

Ah. That. Fair enough. I took a long swallow from the bottle, then
another until the taste of vomit was quite gone and a pleasant warmth
was beginning to settle into by belly.

``Good stuff,'' I muttered, passing it back. ``Right, so us being the
shit. True enough, `Drani, but the actually told us exactly what we
needed to know before we dipped into my little\ldots{} gift.''

``He told us things about your Name,'' Archer skeptically said. ``Which
I've been curious about, true, but it doesn't get us out of this mess.''

``Sure it does,'' I said, ``if you consider that, should we have
followed the story as it was offered to us, we'd be learning this
\emph{quite} late. This is our revelation, Archer. We can go back from
it.''

Hakram cleared his throat.

``You're doing that thing again,'' he told me, ``where you talk to
yourself in your head and then expect us to keep up.''

``You usually do, though,'' I muttered. ``Fine, hear me out then. The
three of us are bold investigators for truth and justice-''

``Hungering Gods,'' Hakram swore under his breath.

``\emph{Yes},'' Indrani jeered, ``and let them kneel before us, begging
abjectly for mercy we will always deny!''

``I'm not going to touch that,'' I decided, ``so, by going down that
road we bite into a story. One that got set out for us to bite because
we're a bad fit for it, so we'll fail.''

``And we are a bad fit for it, because?'' Hakram asked.

``Indrani,'' I said, ``how many people have you killed this year?''

The ochre-skinned Named hummed.

``Define people,'' she finally asked.

``Because that,'' I told him.

``So we are avoiding this story,'' Adjutant said.

``No,'' I said, ``if I had something else to slap down instead I might,
mind you, but I've got nothing. But that doesn't mean we can't cheat.
The thing is, Hakram, that is a functional story. If we were a band of
heroes, we could ride it to the finish.''

``Now you're just making it too easy,'' Indrani reproached.

``For the trap to work,'' Adjutant slowly said, ``the story has to
be\ldots{} functional for lack of a better term. It is simply us who
would not function with it.''

``Yeah,'' I said, ``which is why we went directly for the Doddering
Sage. He was my guess for the guy who, when it looks like we're about to
lose for good, reveals a truth to us and allows us to turn it all
around.''

``As heroes are wont to,'' the orc nodded.

``Hate to break it to you, Cat, but he didn't say shit about
conspiracies,'' Archer pointed out.

``Yes,'' I agreed. ``He talked, instead, about my Name. Which means
someone's trying to fuck with my Name, or maybe the one `twinned' to
it.''

A poetic way to talk about a nemesis, but it fit. For every villain with
Destroy, there was a hero with Protect. That was the way the Game of the
Gods was played, and I'd be no exception. I cleared my throat.

``Without sounding arrogant-''

``That'd be a first,'' Indrani mused.

I flipped her off.

``- at least part of this is meant as a swing at me as well as a broader
attack on the Truce and Terms,'' I said. ``And that rather narrows down
who it is we might be fighting against.''

``If you cannot name the swordsman, name the sword,'' Archer snorted.
``Fair. Only so many people who'd come swinging at you this way. So
we're in a scrap with the Wandering Bard, are we?''

``She's come out of the woodworks at last,'' I grunted in agreement.
``And she took her sweet time before she did, `Drani, so this isn't
going to be some sloppy half-baked attempt. She's come for blood, and at
the moment she's \emph{winning}.''

``The Truce and the Terms are holding,'' Adjutant said. ``And you have
learned valuable information.''

Yeah, I had. Which I would have taken for a victory, if I'd not just
learned that part of the instincts that'd driven me to this decision had
been ripped out of the old monster I was now facing. Which meant I was
about to get taken for a ride, because she'd known about that and until
now I hadn't.

``The Sage is unconscious,'' Archer suddenly said.

``But obviously alive, and not a hero besides,'' Hakram said. ``If
stirring conflict is the purpose, that is a weak hand.''

``Shut up,'' I said, ``both of you. Use your Name.''

I called on Night instead, sharpening my senses to the very limit of
what I could bear, and that was when I heard it: hissing sounds. Like a
gas being released. At least ten, probably more.

``There is something in the air,'' Adjutant growled.

``And I don't hear anyone out there moving,'' Archer said.

Was everyone else out there dead? It might simply be a curse or a deep
sleep instead, I mused, though death would likely be easier to arrange.
I could not afford to take a moment and ponder how many innocents had
likely just been snuffed out as part of a scheme, not when there were
more lives on the line, so I tucked that away cleanly.

``The Concocter would be capable of making a brew that can do this,'' I
said.

``I've known her to work with gases, sometimes,'' Indrani hesitantly
agreed. ``But she wouldn't, Cat.''

``It doesn't need to be her plan,'' I murmured, ``just her work. It
being used will be quite enough, when heroes stumble into this.''

Because that'd be the logical move, wouldn't it? If someone was trying
to start a fight between Named in the Arsenal, what better way to have a
pack of heroes stumble unto me and two of the Woe surrounded by corpses
and an unconscious Named. Hells, it was going to be the Mirror Knight
and his band wasn't it? That was the reason that little fucker was here
at all: so that the Intercessor would have someone capable of rallying
the heroic side of the Arsenal but having no interest in talking this
out with me instead of drawing a sword. Any moment now he and the worst
possible combination of Named the Bard could muster were going to come
in, and I needed to think how I could wiggle out of this mess. The
moment the Mirror Knight and the Black Queen came face to face, I
decided, this was no longer recoverable. It'd become a conflict between
the two of us, and people would have to take sides: even if I won and
showed restraint, there was a decent chance the Truce and Terms would
collapse in the aftermath of this debacle.

I needed someone to distract the Named coming, and then I needed to
start tugging at the other threads of this story until it all came
tumbling down and the Intercessor had nothing left to work with.

``People just came in,'' Archer murmured, then paused as she pricked her
ear. ``Five, two in armour.''

``Hakram,'' I said, ``I need you to do something for me.''

The orc looked at me, then sharply nodded.

``It was my plot,'' he agreed. ``Will you have already arrested me, or
are we fighting?''

I clenched my fist, then slugged him in the side of the face.

``The day I throw any of you under the wheels like that is the day I
slit my own throat,'' I hissed. ``\emph{You}, Adjutant, are
investigating this on the behalf of the Black Queen. You're going to
them for help, because you caught sight of two people running. Do what
you can from the inside.''

He took a step back, staggered more by the words than the hit.

``Archer and I are going to make a run for it,'' I said. ``Make it look
good.''

If the Intercessor wanted to make me the villain of this fucking story,
then she ought to have been more careful what she wished for.