A Practical Guide to Evil

I woke up an hour before nightfall.

It was one of the more useful oddities caused by my association with the Sisters, that I could in some eldritch way feel the approach of dawn and dusk. I still had the taste of a passable Harrow red in my mouth from the talks I’d had with Abigail, the same sort of patient decision dissection I’d learned from Black and the War College. She seems willing to learn, at least, I thought as I groaned and forced myself to keep my eyes open. Exhaustion was lingering alongside the wine, and the handful of hours of sleep I’d squeezed in were nowhere enough to get me back on my feet. I drew on the Night a lick, not to wield it but to let the sensation of holding it pass through my frame. Like sticking your hand in a bucket of cool water, it woke me right up. I could probably rustle up some minor miracles now, I decided. It no longer felt like I’d melt myself from the inside if I did. That was instinct talking, but like it or not I’d had more experience drawing on eldritch powers than most people ever cared to go through. My instinct were rather well-informed, when it came to things like this. Getting my bad leg over the edge of the legion cot I’d claimed, I allowed myself the luxury of grimacing at the sensation. No one to put up a front for, right now.

I’d kept a shirt on in deference to the weather, but my fingers found themselves sliding under to find an old friend. The scar the Penitent’s Blade had left still naked across my torso, nowadays more pale than pink but never to disappear. A testament to the costs of what had seemed like a victory, that night in Summerholm. The Lone Swordsman spared and branded with purpose, loosed like an arrow to start the rebellion that would see me rise up the ranks. A necessary evil, I’d told myself. What was one more wound on Callow, when it was already bleeding from imperial rule? When that wound would lead to a mending. I could only be grimly amused at how disgusted I’d felt by Black ordering three death row prisoners slain so blood magic could be worked to save my life. In a sense, I’d done the same thing on a much grander scale before he ever gave the order. I withdrew my fingers and tugged down my shirt. It was done, and there was no unmaking it. I was strangely glad for Sve Noc’s returning of the scar when they struck me back down to mortal coil. What was I, really, without the reminders on my skin of what my choices had wrought?

I got up with a hiss of pain and hobbled to a chair to have something to lean against when putting my trousers back on. It made me miss Indrani, in a strange way, and Hakram as well. It was different with my lover when she helped me with my clothes, sensual in a way that would be blasphemous to associate with Adjutant, but I wasn’t sure I could honestly say there wasn’t more intimacy in having Adjutant help me with my armour than in the woman I shared a bed with buttoning up my trousers. The business of dressing myself was finished with only minimal pain, and I grabbed the Mantle of Woe on the way out. It settled on my shoulders comfortably, the worn dark cloth warm against my back even as the outside boasted a riotous mix of colours all speaking of a foe beaten. There was a metaphor in there, I idly thought. Black’s sombre gift whole but only out of sight, the visible sown over by all the fields I’d bared my blade on. Amusing as the thought was, I set it aside. Staff in hand, cloak streaming behind me, I got back to work.

The abandoned mansion I’d claimed as my resting place was swarming with drow and legionaries eyeing each other with wariness. I caught sight of a black eye on a young Callowan boy and a carefully cradled wrist for a Miklaya Sigil warrior, which prompted a sigh. The drow had never been taught to play nice with others, and my own people could be… touchy. At least whoever’d drawn up the roster had been farsighted enough not to assign greenskins. Goblins would carry the grudge until it could be answered for more safely, but it someone socked an orc in the face there was going to be blood on the floor before all was said and done. There was a tribune in command and I wasted no time in getting news from her. The city was still quiet and the Dominion hadn’t tried an offensive since their last beating. An envoy from the Levantine camp had been sent, but they were being made to wait. General Abigail was ‘planning the coming march’, which no doubt meant she was sleeping like a log. Special Tribune Robber had come for me, but declined to wake me up when he learned I was out of it. The last I took most notice of, and asked the tribune to send someone to fetch him.

“Will you be here, ma’am?” the Soninke officer politely asked. “Or should I message for him to be sent elsewhere?’

“The Dominion captains are being held separately from their warriors, right?” I frowned.

“As per Leg – as per the Army of Callow’s protocol, Your Majesty,” she hastily adjusted.

The tribune looked afraid she’d offended by her lapse. Early thirties, at a glance, so odds weren’t bad she’d been one of Istrid’s or Orim’s before Second Liesse. Fresh to my service, after decades in the Legions.

“Calm down, Tribune,” I reassured. “I know well how much we’ve borrowed from the Legions. The Army of Callow as it now stands could not exist without them and all they taught us.”

That took the edge off the fear, and she nodded in nervous agreement. I hummed, considering my options.

“I’ll be headed to speak with our Levantine prisoners,” I said. “I’ll need a guide. Have it passed to Robber he should join me there.”

It was done with brisk efficiency, and I was provided an escort of legionaries to head out. The drow would have done the same, but a few words in Crepuscular had them headed back to General Rumena instead. I wasn’t having the wander around a crowded city full of humans if I could help it. As it turned out the captains of Levant were being held in Sarcella’s own gaol, a nice little touch of irony. The tribune in charge of the legionaries keeping an eye on our guests was well-informed of them, and told me what I’d wanted to know: we had, in fact, captured the captain commanding their holding action in Belles Portes earlier. She’d taken a sword the shoulder while fighting, but accepted healing by the priests of the House Insurgent and was now merely tired. It would do: after all, so was I. A cell better fit for holding thieves than what had to be one of the highest officers in the enemy vanguard awaited me, cramped and bare save for a rough bench and a chamber pot. Some kind soul have found her a blanket, which seemed for the best considering that she was apparently quite old. Built like an orc and obviously in fighting fit, true, but there was only white left to her hair. One of the legionaries at my side unlocked the cell while the other brought out a folding chair for me to sit on. I sure as Hells wasn’t standing any more today unless I had to. The Levantine rose to her feet before the door was even open, and I greeted her with a sharp nod.

“Captain Elvera, I believe,” I spoke in Chantant.

Her face tightened. I thanked the orc who’d brought in my chair and eased myself into it before dismissing my pair of escorts. The door remained open, and the Levantine’s blue eyes studied the sight before warily returning to me.

“Yes,” she replied. “You are the Black Queen.”

He accent was thick enough the words were near unintelligible, and she spoke very slowly. My officers had already established she spoke no Lower Miezan, though, so it was about as clearly as this conversation could be held.

“I am,” I agreed. “I am here to discuss the logistics of your surrender.”

Her brow creased, and I repeated more slowly after changing ‘logistics’ for ‘details’. She nodded.

“Your general promised no killing of prisoners,” Captain Elvera said. “Or torture.”

“I will hold to that,” I said.

The issue here was that, according to Abigail, we had the better part of three thousand Dominion warriors on our hands. Stripping them of armaments and dispersing them in Sarcella meant they were unlikely to be an immediate problem, but that changed nothing about the long-term noose around our neck they’d be. The Third Army was decently supplied still, but dragging that many prisoners around would eat into the reserves at a harsh rate. And while the southern expedition still had piles of dwarf-provided rations as well as what had been brought from the Everdark, the Herald of the Deeps had made it clear the Kingdom Under would only supply the drow exodus headed towards the Dead King. Any force sent south was on its own. Add on top of it all that the drow had no facilities to hold prisoners, that the Third Army had been bloodied raw by fighting and that we need to move quickly before this turned sour on us? We couldn’t keep the Levantines, it was as simple as that. Even if my general hadn’t offered them their lives with the terms I would not have countenanced a massacre of prisoners of war, but neither could I just let them loose with a slap on the wrist.

“I cannot simply release you to fight me in a few weeks,” I bluntly said.

“Captains will have ransom,” Captain Elvera said. “If I am sent out to camp, I will gather coin to buy freedom of as many soldiers as I can. Then return as prisoner. I will give oath.”

Even if coin was enough to move me, I could not trust you to deliver it. Your own priesthood had me declared Arch-heretic of the East, I thought. You have a holy justification to consider all oaths made to me as null and void.

I had not been well-inclined towards the Lantern because of that, even before some of their own had killed Nauk. I breathed out slowly. I would not stoke the embers of anger I felt at that. He’d been a general, and this was war. I had struck similar enough blows in the past, and would perhaps do it again. But this is the wrong war, not the one we should be fighting, and for that stupidity you killed my friend. What was left of him, anyway. I forcefully pushed the thought aside. I would not add waste to waste, simply to even scales that could not be evened by blood.

“Coin is not what I want,” I said. “You have offered me an oath, Captain Elvera. There are some of your people who would say those mean nothing, when offered to me.”

The old woman’s face darkened.

“I am not Blood,” she stiffly said. “But not a dog. Even oath to devil should be kept. I have honour, even if Hells do not.”

I studied her closely as she spoke. The indignation was genuine enough, I decided. And those of the Dominion did have a reputation for being straightforward, as concerned with honour and reputation as the Arlesite princes they so often squabbled with. But the reputation ascribed to a people living so far away from mine meant very little, in the end. It was like calling all orcs bloodthirsty savages, or all Callowans obsessed with grudges. Having a warrior’s build and displaying valour on the field did not necessarily mean she was not deceitful.

“And you have the authority to speak for all the prisoners currently in my hands?” I pressed.

She nodded after taking some time to parse out my words. I’d spoken a little too fast.

“Then we can bargain for release,” I said. “I want an oath from you.”

Her wizened face hardened.

“I will not fight against Levant,” Captain Elvera said. “Better death.”

I shook my head, almost amused. I supposed I did have a reputation for making old enemies fight my fresher ones.

“None of the prisoners are to make war against me or my allies for three months,” I said. “I want your oath on this.”

The old woman looked wary.

“That is all?” she asked. “No ransom?”

From you, yes, I thought. But I’ve every intent of selling your freedom twice. I have an envoy from the camp waiting, and concessions you cannot give me. I refrained from smiling, well aware that a villain offering lenient terms with one of those would in all likelihood be taken as a trap.

“That is all,” I said.

I’d considered keeping their arms and armour, but what point was there? It would slow us down on the march, and in six months it would be a lot more useful in their hands than filling my army’s supply carts. Captain Elvera watched me in silence for a long time.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“You are under the command of the Lord of Malaga,” I said.

She made a disgruntled noise.

“I serve Tartessos,” the old woman said. “Lady Aquiline fights with him.”

Akua had been right in her assessment, I mused. The Dominion’s armies were not without internal squabbles. That’s what happens when nobles command instead of officers with a clear chain of command.

“Then take this message back to her, and to him,” I said, and my eyes hardened. “There is only one war that matters, and it is being fought up north. Not here. I come with an offer of peace for the Grand Alliance.”

I paused, waiting to make sure she’d understood me well. She nodded, eyes hooded.

“If you refuse that peace, I will have to fight you,” I said. “And I will not have the luxury to be nice about it, because we are running out of time.”

I coldly smiled.

“So take my peace,” I said. “Or we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

Silence filled the cell.

“Threat,” Captain Elvera said.

“Promise,” I corrected.

Leaning on my staff, I rose to my feet.

“You have my terms,” I said. “I will leave you to consider them. Tell the guards when you make your decision.”

The old woman hesitated.

“Agreed,” she said. “I will give oath, and message.”

I left Sarcella’s gaol not long after, with the first of the two oaths I wanted, and Captain Elvera’s cell was locked anew.

Robber was waiting for me outside, lounging atop a wrecked street stall and looking oddly vulnerable without his armour. The shadows were lengthening outside, like they were slowly devouring the world, and in the back of my mind I knew we were not long before twilight began in earnest. I limped through the snow, my earlier escort of legionaries resuming their duties before I gestured for them to stay back for this. The goblin nimbly leapt down and I caught sight of a few glints of steel scattered over his body. Hidden knives, I thought, or other murderous accoutrements. He didn’t salute, and his yellow eyes were without the usual malicious glee.

“And?” I asked.

“He wasn’t burned,” Robber replied. “His corpse… It’s bad, Catherine. They melted his plate with Light. It’s cooled down since, but you’d need to butcher the flesh to get him out. If we’re giving him a Legion funeral, we’ll need more than just the usual pyre.”

My fingers clenched around my staff. Molten steel, Gods. What an agonizing death that must have been. Summer’s flames had changed him, and Warlock’s sorcery failed to bring back the orc I’d known, but he’d still felt pain. And there’d been enough of the Nauk who’d been my friend left that I felt a clench of rage. The Lanterns had done this. Killing, killing I could stomach. Had to. It was war, and if I ordered deaths I must be able to withstand them as well. But this was… He’d deserved better than that. I closed my eyes, and thought of the night after Three Hills. Green flames taking Nilin, who had been a traitor but beloved by many of us even after that. And now his closest friend was following him. I’d never told Nauk, that his second and good-as-brother had been passing information to Akua. I’d made the decision he was better off not knowing. How presumptuous that felt, now that he was dead.

“The part of the city that’s on fire, it’s almost out?” I said, eyes still closed.

“Near enough,” Robber said. “Took all of the quarter they call Lanteria and some of the outskirts, but the firebreaks contained it and it’s dying out.”

I let out a misty breath and opened my eyes. The shadows had grown longer still.

“Speak with General Abigail,” I said. “We’ll be holding a Legion funeral for all our losses in Sarcella tonight. Work out watch rosters so that as many people as possible can attend. I’ll speak to the drow myself.”

Yellow eyes considered me, though the question went unasked.

“What else can we still give him?” I whispered. “Or any of them. It’s a fool war, but they died fighting it. They’ll have a pyre and the only kind of farewell we learned.”

He inclined his head in approval, then hesitated.

“He went out hard, you know,” Robber said. “Fangs red.”

I breathed out shakily.

“He was Rat Company,” I replied. “How else could he have gone?”

We parted ways, knowing we’d next meet to burn a friend. My legionaries followed me into the city in silence. In the end, all my grief could be was screaming in the dark: a harsh cry, followed by silence ringing of absence.

I had tricks to ply, and duty did not make exceptions for funerals.

We’d won the day, or close enough, and that meant I could dictate terms.

To an extent, anyway. Asking for more than I was costing them might see the Levantines write-off their own with cold eyes. They wouldn’t know how badly I didn’t want to be keeping prisoners, so it would at least look like I was the one with the good cards in hand. Much as I’d prefer not to be fighting the Levantines at all, I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking they in any way shared that sentiment. The enemy commander would be out to screw me as badly as he could, while clawing his way back into possession of the troops I’d captured. I could play that game, truly, and win it a lot easier than he could. A word on my part would have the Tomb-Maker leading a party of Mighty to assault the Dominion camp after night fell, and unless the Pilgrim was hiding in a tent in there that would lead to a bloody massacre. But I would not compound waste with yet more of it, not even if my enemy was itching for that very tussle. No, neither corpses nor coin could be my aim here. There was going to be a battle in Iserre, soon enough, and I needed to get all my munitions in place before someone dropped a torch: this would be a part of it, nothing more and nothing less.

The Levantine envoy was a middle-aged man with a fine mustache and stripes of blue and green crisscrossing his face, speaking Lower Miezan with an elegant polish. He got to use it just long enough for me to send him back to camp with an offer for the enemy commander to meet on the bridges in front of Sarcella. He left under protest, which I ignored with the ease of someone who’d been pushing paperwork on Hakram for years, and I gauged how long was reasonable to wait before getting atop Zombie and making for the bridges. The boy would come, if it was still the one I’d seen during the day that was in charge. No one with eyes that raw would pass on an opportunity to confront someone who’d bled them. My escort was tripled in size when I informed the Third Army of what I intended, but I paid it little attention. Belles Portes quarter was entirely ours, now, and it led directly to the bridges going over the river. I’d not specified which one, so on a whim I picked the leftmost one – and ordered my legionaries to remain behind. I wondered what it said about my reputation that none of the officers looked pleased, but none actually argued.

My dead horse’s hooves cut against the icy stone, sharp sounds like flint being struck. The day’s warmth was fleeing the coming of night, and the wind was picking up. Far in the distance the sun was drowning in a sea of purple and red, tinting the snowy fields with enough blood and ichor for a thousand wars. My mount eased advancing, halfway through the bridge, and my staff struck stone with a dull sound. I could hear crows, in the distance, though there was nothing godly about those. Just beasts, drawn by the day’s corpses. I stuffed my pipe carefully, and passed a palm over the wakeleaf with just a hint of Night. Inhale and exhale, and then I watched smoke rise up into the sky as I waited for the boy who wanted my head to come treat with me.

It was not long. Riders came, five hundred armed to the teeth and a few among them who reeked of something anathema to the Night. Lanterns, I assumed. Those I allowed my gaze to linger on, taking in the faces painted in black and white and wondering which one had killed Nauk. If it had been only one, or a working of several. Argument erupted, but in the end youth and pride won out. Razin Tanja, of the Grim Binder’s Blood. That was the name our prisoners had given. Soldiers were soldiers, in the end: offer warm food and booze, and there was always one in a company willing to sell out their own mother. The boy rode up, on his beautiful white horse wearing his beautiful red and grey plate. The patterns of paint on his face had changed from earlier, now mere stripes of iron and blood on the cheeks. It revealed handsome enough features, sharp-boned but bearing the kind of edge you wanted to run a hand against. What little I could see of his hair was a dark brown, but most was hidden by a tall helmet bearing red feathers. The sword at his hip, I could not help but note, had a very pretty wrought steel pattern to it. Swirls and vines, in a vaguely arcane pattern. No leather bands over it, though. It would get slippery if he got blood all over it, become an unwieldy ornament – and wasn’t that nobility put in a sentence? He reined in his horse at the foot of the bridge, just close enough we could talk without shouting. There was a banner in the colours of his paint, held by a clever wooden contraption on his back, that jutted up above even his plumage.

“You begged audience of me, Black Queen,” Razin Tanja announced. “Speak your piece.”

I pulled at my pipe and said nothing, only breathing out. The smoke went up and I admired the play of light and shadows on it.

“Is this a riddle?” the boy said through gritted teeth. “Are you making a game of me?’

The anger was out, pouring out of every pore. It could be useful, anger. It’d gotten me through some very bad scraps, and should mine ever go out I figured there wouldn’t be much left of me. But there was a trick to it: you had to learn when to keep it sheathed. It was like a sword, if you just swung it around night and day it would grow dull. You would grow dull, and someone who’d learned the trick would cut out your throat. Tanja was letting his anger dull him, right now. I’d let him keep swinging as long as he wanted, because behind that anger there was fear and shame. The longer he swung and hit nothing, the more harshly those would bite.

“Have you become a mute, villain?” the noble sneered. “Or is it fear of my father’s army that stills your tongue?”

Another stream of smoke, and then finally I replied.

“It stings, doesn’t it?” I mildly said. “Knowing that after all this, all you have to threaten me with is your father’s shadow.”

His fingers tightened into fists, his face flushed.

“A single battle does not win a war,” Razin Tanja said. “Tricks will not save you twice.”

I hummed, considering him.

“I’m not going to threaten you,” I decided. “There’s no point, is there? When you have enough hate, it becomes a kind of courage. Madness, too, but that line’s always been thinner than people like to admit.”

“I will not be condescended to by a heretic,” the boy snarled. “If you have called this meeting only to mock me-”

“You mock yourself,” I gently said, “by pretending today did not happen. It did. Learn from it, or die in a ditch somewhere blaming everything but yourself. But that’s not my burden to bear, Tanja, and I’ve no inclination to try. You’re here because I hold your people, and you want them back.”

“There are treaties pertaining to the treatment of war prisoners,” he said. “To break them would-”

“See the Grand Alliance declare war on me?” I drily said. “Perhaps lead your priesthood to declare me something of a heretic, even.”

There was a moment of embarrassed silence.

“That’s the problem with turning the screws early,” I said. “It doesn’t leave much room for escalation.”

“I will offer the appropriate ransom for the captains,” Razin Tanja said.

He was reaching, and knew it. The tinge of desperation in his voice was making that much clear. Ah, I thought. We both know you fucked up today, but it looks like you might actually be held accountable for it. I wondered if it’d be his father, or the other noble Captain Elvera answered to. Are you worrying you’ll be the sacrificial lamb to make peace between Malaga and Tartessos after your mess cost everyone steeply? Victory had a thousand fathers and mothers, but defeat did tend to be attributed to a single pair of hands. I wondered if he might actually be killed over this. Levant kept to Good, it was said, but it was rough country. I might have more leverage than anticipated, then.

“I’ve no interest in coin,” I said. “What I want from you is an oath.”

“An oath?” he said. “I will not serve Below, villain, in this life or any other.”

“I’ve not asked you to,” I said. “You hold command of the vanguard, Razin Tanja. It will stay camped outside Sarcella for three days and three nights – on this I require your oath.”

“And you would return the captains, for this?” the boy pressed.

The wakeleaf filled my throat and lungs, burning pleasantly. It left me tingling when it passed my lips.

“I’ll return every Levantine soldier captured today, including officers,” I replied.

“Agreed,” he immediately said.

He had absolutely no intention of keeping his word, did he? I sighed. After dealing with Praesi and fae, the Levantine was almost painfully transparent.

“I’ll want the oath made to the Heavens and on the honour of your Blood,” I coldly said. “Made in front of every remaining captain in your army.”

“You dare question my honour?” he replied, puffing up.

“You test my patience,” I calmly said, as if we were discussing the weather. “Do not mistake my restraint for vulnerability. If there is no fair bargain to be made, I will put your fucking head on a pike and use it as a warning for your replacement.”

Hate and fear, I mused, watching the war in his eyes. The sun was more dead than dying, by now, and I think that was what settled it – the shadows winning out, the same kind that I’d wielded to drown his soldiers even under afternoon sun.

“You will pay for this, Black Queen,” Razin Tanja said. “All of it. The Heavens will see to it that your horrors are given answer.”

I grinned around my pipe, face wreathed in smoke.

“They’ll take their swing,” I said. “Watch. See where it gets them.”

Night fell before I got my oath, but I did get it.