webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-069.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-49-association}{%
\section{Chapter 49: Association}\label{chapter-49-association}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``There are two ways to interpret a prophecy: the way that spells
your doom and the wrong one.''}

-- Dread Empress Dismal
\end{quote}

I knelt, pushing down a twinge of pain, and squinted closely at the
copper wire.

Obviously my quarters had been trapped, but \emph{how}? The wire was of
the finer kind Pickler had come up with during my time in the Everdark,
but even though pushing fully open the door would definitely pull on it
-- and so on a contraption tied to munitions, hopefully but not
necessarily College-grade instead of military -- the angle was all wrong
for a sharper or a brightstick. Sure, a full brightstick would shatter
my eardrum from this close but I wouldn't be blinded. And I'd lose what,
at most a shredded ankle to a sharper? This was amateur hour. Where was
the triple-wire spring with the overhead sharper? No, I was being
screwed with. This was bait.

The foundations of my house in Neustal, which I didn't actually use all
that often compared to my tent, were stone raised above ground-level as
was standard in areas where the Dead King might attempt assassination.
It meant I had a single `step' to take going into the house, in reality
just a small extension of the foundation beyond the walls. And when I
leaned closer and smelled that step, I found a familiar scent: stone
dust and sapper's plaster. That little fucker had put in a
weight-sensitive demolition charge after hollowing out the step, hadn't
he? The copper wire had just been to draw my attention away. Narrowing
my eyes, I used my staff to hoist myself back up on my feet.

I wasn't going to let this ambush pass without a bit of a rap on the
knuckles, of course. It was good for my sappers to occasionally be
reminded I was just as shameless as them and twice as mean.

``Special Tribune Robber,'' I called out. ``Report.''

There was a beat of silence.

``It was all Borer's idea,'' a voice cheerfully called out from inside.
``I tried to stop him, Your Maleficence, but with his brute strength he
overwhelm-``

``I asked for a report,'' I mildly said. ``Come out and deliver it.''

I pulled on Night the slightest bit, just in case. Special Tribune
Robber, who'd held his rank for several years now, had visibly aged
since I last saw him. That was often the way with goblins, whose
lifespan was much shorter than most other races'. How old was he now?
Near twenty, I imagined. Over the hill by the standards of his race, who
quickly began going decrepit past thirty when they lived that long. He
was distantly of a Matron line, I knew, so I held out hope that his face
grown even gaunter and the pulls of skin around his yellow eyes were not
warning signs.

Deftly the sapper came to stand on the stone, and offered me an
offensively terrible salute paired with a smug grin of white needles. I
could not help but notice the distinct lack of him exploding. Vexing.

``Reporting at your leisure, Your Wickednousness,'' Robber cheerfully
said.

I cocked my head to the side.

``Fine-tuned it to trigger only above your weight?'' I said.

``No idea what you're talking about, ma'am,'' he assured me. ``Although,
while we're at it, I'd like to report Captain Borer for wanton mutiny,
assault of a superior officer-``

``How long did it even take you to hollow that thing out?'' I asked,
reluctantly impressed.

``Pickler made this stone-eating acid while we were up north,'' Robber
said. ``Works like a charm. Based on some Lycaonese alchemy they use to
keep their ramparts clean.''

There was a beat of silence.

``Is what I would say were I Captain Borer, who is \emph{obviously}
responsible for-``

``How strong are the munitions?'' I mildly asked.

``Like the gentle caress of a breeze,'' he lied.

A slender tentacle of Night pierced through the fresh plaster,
triggering the munitions within, and the little bastard fell into the
step with little burn but large billows of a pungent black smoke. I took
a sniff and almost gagged. Leftover smoker ingredients mixed with
something rank, I'd guess. Robber had always been a deft hand with
munitions, especially recipes that weren't on the record. Even as the
goblin tumbled forward at my feet, coughing, I leaned against my staff
and cocked an eyebrow.

``So what have we learned today?'' I asked.

``You are an implacable foe to all goblinkind,'' he croaked out. ``And
take pleasure in persecuting your poor, innocent, \emph{loyal}
servants.''

A grin tugged at my lips.

``I did saddle Borer with you,'' I conceded, ``so I suppose an argument
can be made for the second.''

``You could offer me healing, at least,'' Robber complained, then faked
a few fresh coughs. ``Aren't you some sort of fancy priestess these
days, Boss? First Into The Pie or something like that.''

I knew he was full of shit, because the Sisters were actually wildly
popular with the sappers and even goblins in general. It was almost
like, culturally speaking, they were very comfortable with the idea of
unknowable female eldritch entities of murder and theft standing above
them\emph{. Go figure}. I wouldn't call them converts to the Tenets,
which were much too drow in nature to ever really find takers beyond the
Firstborn, but these days sappers liked to mark their equipment with the
Crows and the occasional rabbit or bird was bled in their name before
being tossed in a cookpot. Andronike was rather charmed by the practice
and had sounded me out on the subject of bestowing Night -- I wasn't
opposed, so long as she knew what she was in for. Komena was lukewarm at
the notion of branching out too much from the drow, though, so it'd gone
nowhere.

``You're right,'' I mused. ``Silly of me to forget.''

Quicker than he was able to dodge, I rapped the top of his hairless head
with the side of my staff. He yelped and paddled back.

``How is that healing?'' he accused.

``Well,'' I shrugged, ``you're not thinking about the cough anymore, are
you?''

A heartbeat later he was cackling, and I shared in the laughter. He
darted in to clasp my arm in a legionary's salute, close but
light-touched, before backing away.

``It's good to see you, Boss,'' Robber said.

``You too,'' I smilingly replied. ``You malevolent little shit. Was this
just a heads up you got in, or did you have a reason to seek me out?''

``Pickler wants to see you,'' he said. ``Sent me to get your
attention.''

I snorted.

``Haven't been able to get more than three words out of that one in the
weeks she's been here, but \emph{now} she feels chatty?'' I said. ``Let
me guess: she's finally finished her latest tinkering trip and she wants
to show off.''

``You're the one who named her Sapper-General,'' Robber shrugged. ``Then
you compounded that by throwing a mountain of coin and artisans at her.
She'd been on a two-year tinkering binge, Boss. I had to assign someone
to making sure she ate.''

I winced, though I was not entirely surprised. In theory Pickler was the
head of all the sappers in the Army of Callow, which had been made into
a separate military order not unlike the Order of Broken Bells -- I just
didn't have enough sappers to use them the way the Legions did -- but
she was utterly uninvolved with field command. Even company assignments
were largely handled by her second, Commander Waffler, with her only
occasionally meddling in matters. Her efforts had been on making war
engines for this new war we were fighting, and Twilight's Pass has been
her both her testing and proving grounds.

``No one told me was quite that bad,'' I admitted, faintly apologetic.

Robber had always been sweet on his old commanding officer, in a goblin
way. It was unlikely to ever go anywhere, but that didn't mean he
couldn't hold a torch. We got moving as we talked, him leading the way
as I limped to the side.

``She's pleased as a raider on a moonless night,'' Robber dismissed.
``I'm not irked about that part, just that she's learned some bad
habits. Nobody seems to care since she's spitting out wonders keeping to
those hours, but it's not good for her health.''

He looked at me from the corner of his large yellow eyes.

``She's been wildly happy since you freed her from field command and let
her loose, Boss,'' the Special Tribune said. ``And she's grateful, don't
let anyone tell you otherwise. Buy you know she's always been like
this.''

I softly smiled. Look at him, all these years and he was still quietly
cleaning up behind Pickler the same way he had back when we'd just been
a bunch of kids fighting in College war games. Some things never
changed, huh?

``We're all creatures of habit, in our own ways,'' I drily said. ``I
know better than to take offence, Robber. Not seeing you two for a few
years won't change that.''

Hells, I didn't have enough friends left alive to start getting petty
with them over little things like, say, Pickler's inability to pretend
she cared a whit about niceties when instead she could be attending
\emph{glorious machinery}. Reassured, Robber caught me up on gossip from
Twilight's Pass as we walked with great relish. No doubt he was making
up half the tales. I choked, though, when he mentioned the supposedly
fierce debate among the northern armies about whether Prince Frederic
and Prince Otto were close friends or secret lovers.

``You met the man in the Arsenal, didn't you?'' Robber asked. ``Did you
get a read on whether he'd enjoy that sort of lance-handling?''

The goblin obscenely wiggled his hairless brows, startling a laugh out
of me. I could have told him that Frederic was actually a more than
decent jouster, but that was best kept quiet even among my closest.

``Alas, I only ever got to see him use a sword,'' I sighed. ``A tragedy,
Robber. You know what these pretty boys do to me.''

He wrinkled his nose in disgust, not even entirely feigned.

``Humans,'' he sighed. ``It's all fluids with you lot -- and not even
the fun ones, like blood or goblinfire.''

I made a somewhat unkind comment about the sexual attraction the average
sapper might feel towards a crate of munitions, which devolved the
conversation into bickering all the rest of the way to where Pickler was
holed up. A shooting range, I discovered, or at least the battered
remnants of one. Targets had been blown through in ways experience
allowed me to match with ballistas, but it'd been more than just stone
that'd done this. The grounds and wooden targets were scorched, like
they'd been set aflame. I frowned as I limped to the edge of the firing
range, interested enough I didn't stop to chat with the sapper crews
fielding the three ballistas on the range.

I knelt slowly, leaning on my staff, a trailed my fingers against the
charred wooden remains of a target. Bringing them close to my face, I
took a whiff and immediately let out a noise of surprise.

``\emph{Aha},'' Sapper-General Pickler of the High Ridge Tribe enthused,
popping out without warning. ``You get it, then. I knew you would.''

She forgot to tack on even a ma'am at the end, but I was excited enough
it barely registered.

``That wasn't done by sorcery,'' I said. ``There's no ozone smell, like
there would be with an enchanted stone blowing up.''

Having appeared out of hole in the ground -- not metaphorically, it'd
been an actual hole and she'd been in it -- Pickler offered me an
excited grin that was like a clacking mouthful of white needles. Like
Robber she'd aged, yet while like him her face had grown gaunter her
frame had actually thickened. She was only a little taller than the last
time we'd seen each other, but her shoulders and hips had grown broader.
Her amber eyes looked even larger, now that the skin was pulled taut
around them, and they shone with manic zeal.

``It's Light,'' she said, confirming my guess.

I let out a low whistle.

``We've been trying to get that to work for years,'' I said, honestly
impressed. ``Multiples stones were fired here, Pickler. You really
managed to get several shots out without scrapping the engine?''

Stones with a Light infusion weren't new, everyone under the sun had
used those at some point. They'd been a known part of Calernian arsenals
since the First Crusade, when trying to take heavily warded Praesi
cities with inferior mages had forced the crusading armies to find an
alternative to simply dying by the dozens of thousands storming the
walls. The problem with those munitions was that they tended to wreck
whatever siege engine they were thrown out of, as Light was highly
unstable when shoved into things. There was a reason the foremost
artisan in Light of our generation was the Blessed Artificer, who'd
gotten a fucking \emph{Name} out of her skill at it.

Usually larger stones were more stable, so trebuchets and catapults
could be relied on to toss a dozen stones before being seriously
damaged. It made their use viable. The smaller the engines got, though,
the more the Light in the projectiles screwed with them. Scorpions and
ballistas were sometimes made unusable by as much as a \emph{single}
shot, the javelins and stones having bent the wood they were on. The
Lycaonese, who loved ballistas as much as the Legions of Terror -- even
though they used dwarven models, the poor fuckers -- had long been
bitter about this, as they could not afford to buy replacements and
lacked the mages to turn to a magical solution instead.

``We have to put a copper casing on the stones,'' Pickler hedged, ``but
once that safety is observed, yes. It had been an unequivocal success,
Catherine. And the amount of Light that emanates is battle-appropriate,
it has a decent shot of destroying even a construct.''

``Gods Below, Pickler,'' I laughed out. ``That\ldots{}''

Changed things, to put it lightly. Most constructs were too damned quick
to be threatened by something like this, and those that weren't were
much too \emph{big}, but the amount of Light she was talking about would
utterly wreck most undead infantry. It might even finally give us a way
to deal with the Grey Legion that wasn't `soldiers praying Akua, the
Witch or me got there in time'. Even Hanno had found those fuckers a
hard nut to crack.

``I thought it might please,'' my Sapper-General said, smiling a smile
as girlish as goblin teeth allowed.

It would have made a cat flinch, I suspected. And wisely so, given that
goblins liked them in a stew.

``It has,'' I said, almost touching her shoulder before I refrained.

It, uh, was usually taken as an advance by goblins. Robber had been
trained out of that by his years rubbing elbows with other races, but
Pickler wasn't as social.

``Have supper with me tonight,'' I said. ``You can tell me more about it
there. But until then?''

She watched me, amber eyes alight with expectation.

``Take what you need, Sapper-General,'' I grinned, wolfish. ``On my
authority, requisition any bloody thing you need to make sure we have as
many of those modified ballistas and\ldots{} copperstones as we can when
we march.''

She didn't protest the name, improvised as it was, so it might just
stick. The two of us grinned at each other again, and it felt like the
day had gotten just a little bit lighter.

---

I swung by my tent, afterwards, to follow through on what I'd just
promised. I doubted Pickler was going to be shy with requisitions if she
was rushing things before our departure, so I'd better ensure she
actually had the recognized authority to make those. Thankfully Adjutant
was waiting there, seated in his wheelchair and dictating notes to three
attendants in the green-and-grey livery that signified they were
directly in his service. Two humans and one goblin, I noted, by the
looks of it a young Soninke woman and an older Callowan man.

All three bore a discreet painted iron pin in the form of a curled
skeletal hand pointing its index, the enchantment laid on it serving
only to prove it was authentic. On the rolls these constantly-swelling
ranks were called the adjunct secretariat, and their stated purpose was
to serve as a mix of my personal bureaucracy and messengers. And while
they did serve those purposes, and well, that was only the official part
of their duties. In practice people had taken to calling the `phalanges'
after the pins, and they served as Hakram's eyes and hands.

Some of them had been invested with authority on my behalf, able to make
inspections of Callowan and Grand Alliance property and soldiers to
unearth treason and corruption, but there was also an entire armed wing
that'd expanded out of the first tenth of legionaries I'd long ago put
under Adjutant to ferret out Heiress' rats in the Fifteenth.

Grandmaster Talbot had approached me and expressed, in confidence, a
degree of unease over `the Adjutant's private army of soldiers, sneaks
and scribes'. If he'd know that Hakram had heavily recruited from the
parts of the Assassin's Guild that'd not been a good fit for the Jacks,
I suspected he would have been outright worried. I'd appeased the
commander of my knights by assuring him there were non-negotiable limits
to the amount of coin dedicated to the adjunct secretariat, which would
restrict its size permanently after a little more growth.

I got the sense Talbot had wanted some Callowan oversight over the
phalanges, either through Vivienne or my Queen's Council -- though the
latter would have probably meant Vivienne also, given that my Council
was currently in Laure and answering to Duchess Kegan -- but that wasn't
going to be happening. When I abdicated I'd be taking the phalanges with
me to Cardinal, so I wasn't interested in giving Callow too deep a peek
at their inner workings. If I wanted them to survive as a Cardinal
institution, I couldn't let them slide into being just a chapter of the
Jacks by another name.

The three phalanges saluted as I limped in, but I gestured for them to
keep jotting down Hakram's orders as I made my way to my liquor cabinet
and poured myself a celebratory finger of aragh. The copperstone
munitions were worth a drink for more than me, I decided, so after a
moment I poured a finger for Adjutant as well.

``- and have another look into Captain Garrick,'' Adjutant said.
``That's twice now he's splashed coin around, we still don't know if
it's inheritance or he's been taking bribes.''

The goblin licked her lips, as the others nodded.

``And my own find?'' she asked.

``The Jacks have been in touch, she's already one of their informants in
the ranks and she warned them of the contact,'' Hakram said, sounding
chagrined. ``Start over with another company.''

I sipped at my aragh, watching as he finished the last round of
instructions and dismissed them. They saluted, first to me and then to
him, and within moments we were left alone. I pressed the small cup into
his only hand, the skeletal one Masego's father had crafted from him
what felt like a lifetime ago. The orc -- still so tall, even
wheelchair-bound -- let out an approving rumble. We clinked our glasses
and drank.

``Pickler's work proved worth all the mess?'' he asked afterwards.

``And more,'' I replied. ``She managed to get Light-infused projectiles
working for ballistas, though she has to tinker up both. Dips the stones
in copper, which means they'll be hard to make out on the campaign
trail.''

Hakram's eyes widened, his fangs clicking together thoughtfully.

``That is fine news indeed,'' he said. ``We only have enough goblin
munitions stockpiled for one last campaign, even used sparingly, so a
substitute is long overdue.''

More like two pitched battles than a whole campaign, in my opinion, and
I wanted to keep a decent quantity at hand for when we moved on the
capital so really more for one battle. Our initial hopes that the
Confederation of the Grey Eyries would be able to push out the Matron
who'd betrayed them, currently styled High Lady Wither of Foramen, out
of said city had turned out to be\ldots{} overly optimistic. Wither had
little Legion support, but the Confederation's armies weren't the kind
that could take a Praesi city except by surprise.

Which High Lady Wither wasn't going to fall for, since she'd taken the
city this way from both her predecessors the Banu and then the
Confederation itself.

The Grey Eyries were hardly at risk of falling, since the traitor tribes
couldn't really afford to chance anything aside from a defence of their
seized territories, but without control of Foramen the Confederation
could no longer sell us goblin munitions. Some mountain routes had been
opened but the quantities that could be taken through them were paltry
and the Eyries themselves were full of creatures that preyed on goblins.
We still got the occasional wagons from Callow, as much from old Legion
caches as what the goblins got to us, but it wasn't enough.

I'd forbidden use of munitions, lest attrition at the defensive line
empty our stock long before a decisive battle could be fought.

``Agreed,'' I said. ``I ordered her to stock up as much as she can of
both ballistas and copperstones, so she'll need my seal and a Grand
Alliance warrant.''

He nodded.

``It would be polite to inform the other commanders in advance, since
she might requisition from them,'' Hakram reminded me. ``No need for
much, just a courtesy letter.''

``I suppose,'' I muttered.

Might as well smooth the feathers before they ever got ruffled if it
could be done. Bone fingers came to rest on the side of the wheelchair,
clutching around the grip, and Adjutant wheeled himself to the side.
Tried to, anyway -- the left wheel got caught on a rock that'd bene
pushed into the ground, and while the chair was too well-built to flip
it did get stuck. Hakram grunted with effort as he tried to force it,
but all it did was get the rock stuck between the wheel and the
protective sheathing as earth sprayed. I stood paralyzed, wanting to
help but certain he'd take it as an insult. He finally let go with a
half-swallowed roar, the dead hand slamming down onto the arm of the
wheelchair.

Hakram looked to the side, as if unwilling to face me.

``I can send back for secretaries,'' I delicately said.

Some part of me dimly suspected that my helping him instead would go
over very poorly. It\ldots{} wasn't how we did things. Never had been.

``No,'' Adjutant roughly said. ``The seal and warrants are under lock,
and there's none close that have the clearance to touch them.''

``An exception can be made once,'' I tried. ``While we are here.''

His fingers clenched until even the enchanted wood under them creaked.

``I \emph{wrote} those safety rules, Catherine,'' Hakram bit out. ``I
won't break them because of a fucking rock.''

Quietly I drew on Night, wondering if I could slip a tendril near the
chair and-

``Stop that,'' Adjutant sharply said.

Lips thinning, I released the power. I did neither of us the disservice
or pretending I didn't know what he was talking about.

``It will be easier when the prosthetics come from the Arsenal,'' he
tiredly said. ``I'll be out of the chair, able to walk again. It will
take longer to be able to fight but-``

``Hakram,'' I said.

``There are shields built for men with only one hand, Catherine,'' he
told me. ``I have looked into the matter. It will take training, but it
can be done.''

My heart clenched, but I couldn't just let him keep on telling himself
that lie.

``Hakram,'' I quietly repeated, ``you know it can't be like that. It's
done, the old fights. Maybe in a few years you'll be able to handle
soldiers, but not Named. Not for a long time, if ever again.''

He'd have to make a fighting style nearly from scratch, learn to
compensate for several glaring weaknesses while having few strengths to
call on. It wasn't impossible, and men that had half his courage and
discipline went back to fighting after losing a hand, but he'd lost a
great deal more than that. Prosthetics relying on magic would make him
brutally vulnerable to heroes that could wield Light, which was most of
them, and a skilled mage without even a Name would be able to meddle
with the enchantments on them.

``I will not be put out to pasture, Catherine,'' Hakram rasped out. ``I
won't allow it.''

``I haven't stopped relying on you,'' I insisted. ``You lost some
aptitude in swinging around a stick with steel stuck onto it, that's
all. If anything I'm running you too hard, considering you're recovering
from severe wounds.''

He studied me for a moment, dark eyes calm and all too knowing.

``You are closing the door,'' Adjutant said. ``To my ever standing by
your side in battle again.''

I opened my mouth to argue, hadn't I \emph{just} said that -- but he
raised his hand, and so I swallowed my tongue.

``Maybe not with words,'' Hakram said. ``Or with deeds. But in the back
of your head, you have.''

My lips thinned. I'd never liked being told what it was that I was
supposedly thinking, even coming from my closest friend in the world.

``You know my aspects,'' the orc tiredly said. ``One felt mockery, when
it sunk in what I had lost, but then I thought it might instead turn
into a key.''

Rampage, Find, \emph{Stand}. The last must have felt like a bitter joke
after losing his leg. With the way the Severance's cut had carved into
his hipbone, he couldn't even try to get around on crutches -- even with
painkillers the pain was simply horrendous. Only surgical spells that
deadened pain worked, and those could damage nerves if they were kept on
for too long.

``But it hasn't,'' I said.

``It is fading,'' Hakram replied, then corrected himself. ``No, perhaps
not quite that drastic. Losing luster? Losing potency, certainly. As if
there was no longer a call for me to use it, or a place where I would.''

My stomach dropped. He was implying that I no longer thought of him as
someone who'd fight by my side -- and Gods, I had carefully kept the
words out of my mouth but they were not untrue -- so his Name, ever so
bound to my service, was no longer trying to help him in that purpose.
Even when he wanted it to. I drew back as if struck. It was only a
theory, this, but Adjutant had good instincts. And it had that damning
ring of truth to it.

``I haven't,'' I blurted. ``I mean, I can't\ldots{}''

I did not quite know what I was trying to say, and an odd shame was
eating at me from the inside for it.

``I am not accusing you of malice,'' Adjutant spoke into my flustered
silence. ``Or trying to shame you. But you were not going to admit it
unless told. And now that you know, perhaps if you shape your
thoughts\ldots{}''

I hesitantly nodded.

``I don't know if it would work,'' he admitted. ``If it \emph{can}. But
what else is there but to try?''

\emph{Making peace with having lost something}, I wanted to reply, but
how could I? It was serving me he'd lost it, while I was getting clever
playing shatranj with the Intercessor. Now I was looking at the
consequences of my decision every day, and it was not a pretty thing to
behold.

``You need a helper while we're out there,'' I forced out. ``Someone
who'll take care of little things for you and keep an eye out for
enemies. Neshamah will come after you, he knows how important you are to
the war.''

And to me, which would have been enough for the Hidden Horror to aim for
his head without all the other good reasons for it.

``I have my secretaries,'' Hakram replied. ``Some of them have better
grips on swords than quills.''

``You need more than that,'' I said. ``I've talked with the Silver
Huntress and then with the girl herself: the Apprentice could be
suborned to you for the offensive, to learn from you and lend a hand.''

It'd been surreal looking at some slip of a girl from Ashur bearing
Masego's Name, much less one who considered herself a heroine, but I'd
managed. The Apprentice badly wanted a term of service in the Arsenal,
and I'd offered it a bribe after this campaign if she accepted. She'd
still get lessons from the Sage, it was the reason she was out here on
the front in the first place, but the hours would have been cut while we
were on war footing anyway so serving as Hakram's assistant would not be
to her detriment.

It also put a skilled practitioner by his side during most of the day.
The Apprentice had previously been studying with an eye to become the
Silver Mage, one of the Ashuran wizardly mantles, but she'd abandoned
the healing arts after most her teachers got killed during the sack of
Smyrna. She'd picked up a lot of quick and cheap war magic since signing
onto the Truce, and while her spellcasting was still pretty simple it
was also swift and highly destructive. Nothing short of a Revenant ought
to trouble her if she saw it coming.

``And what did it cost you to convince the girl?'' the orc drily asked.

I shrugged. We both knew I wasn't above sweetening the pot for someone
when it served my purposes. I could read him well enough to know that
the offer wasn't making him happy, but he didn't refuse outright.

``I'll think about it,'' Hakram finally said. ``That's all I can give
you.''

I bit my lip, tempted to push since I sensed he was leaning more towards
accepting than refusing. If I gave him too much time to ponder, though,
he might just talk himself out of it. I breathed out. Trust, I told
myself. We weren't going to get through this intact without trust.

``Have an answer for me before we set out,'' I nodded. ``I'll want to
speak with the White Knight before making the final arrangements.''

``I will,'' Adjutant gravelled, then hesitated.

He sagged into the seat, as if tension had drifted out of him.

``I'll take care of the warrant and seal,'' he said. ``I only need one
hand to fake your signature.''

``I leave it in your hands, then,'' I said, then paused. ``And Hakram?''

He turned darks eyes onto me.

``I love you,'' I said. ``You know that, right?''

The orc breathed out.

``I know,'' he said.

I'd not asked for forgiveness and he'd not given it. It wasn't in me to
ask, and he'd be insulted if I did. But it was something, to say the
words. A paltry offering, I couldn't help but think as I left my tent,
but what else did I have to give?

---

When the moon rose, it found me once more standing at the edge of the
roof.

Summer heat had lingered even after dark, the breeze bringing the
distant scent of the swamplands in the distance. Green and mud and life,
all intertwined with something like sweet rot. I stood at the edge,
letting the wind curl around me, and closed my eyes. I flinched in pain
a moment later. Like nails driven into my temples. It wasn't an attack,
I realized, but a Night-working. One I'd laid myself as a precaution two
years back. I pulled back the string of it again, but left the working
in place.

``The trick's not quite as good,'' I said, ``once you know what to look
for.''

Her steps were quiet, but not so quiet I did not hear her deftly make
her way down the tiles to stand at my side. First time I'd ever caught
her out, wasn't it? My contingency must have triggered when I'd closed
my eyes, prompted by a power I'd not noticed and had felt entirely like
my own whim. What a dangerous aspect hers was.

``The same can be said of all tricks,'' the Scribe replied.

This, I suspected, was going to be an interesting talk.