A Practical Guide to Evil

It’d been a while since someone had decked me in the face and I’d actually felt it. Indrani wasn’t an amateur, so instead of landing a glancing blow her knuckles buried themselves into my jaw and I was jarred off my feet. The throb of pain began before I would have hit the ground, if I had – instead my arm snapped out and my staff smacked into my open palm. Years of training in the yard made that enough I was able to turn the tumble into a step back. An agonizing one, as my bad leg was less than pleased by the sudden movement and I’d not numbed it with Night before moving. Straightening my back, I turned back to my friend and casually raised an eyebrow.

“That stung a bit,” I admitted. “Are we actually going to talk now, or do I need to tie you up first?”

Indrani’s eyes hardened. Not at the threat, though – we used those on each other at least once a day with utter nonchalance. Something about my tone had raised her hackles even further up. Silvery mail glittering in the fire’s light, she clenched her fingers into fists before forcing herself to breathe out.

“You don’t even realize it, do you?” Archer said. “A year ago, you would have caught that. Snapped my arm twice on the way there if you felt like it.”

“We’re not a year ago,” I said.

I did not bother to inject regret I did not feel into those words. The Night was not panacea to all my ills, but to rid myself of Winter’s costs I would have settled for much, much less at my fingertips.

“I know that,” Indrani said. “So why the fuck are you acting like you are?”

Fear. Under the anger, the indignation, it was fear lay at the heart of that reaction. I didn’t tell her to calm down, I knew better than that. We had too much in common, and nothing had ever excited my anger quite like being told I had no right to it. This was a wound to lance, not hole to patch over. So I’d give her what she needed to get the venom out.

“I took necessary risks,” I calmly said. “Not without reason, or out of pride. If I’d waited longer the Third Army might have been lost.”

“Then you should have lost it,” Archer hissed. “How many of these gambles do you really think you can win, Catherine? Nine out of ten, ninety-nine out of a hundred? At the rate you’re taking them we’ll find out soon enough.”

“I won’t leave any of mine to die if I can do something about it,” I said. “You’ve known that since the day we met, ‘Drani. Marchford wasn’t a battle I was forced to fight. It was one that needed to be fought.”

Archer’s hand lashed out and the jug of wine flew, shattering against the wall with a wet sound. The last mouthfuls of wine there’d been left spilled down in red rivulets.

“Was walking up to a Named whose aspect scared even Sve Noc needed as well?” Indrani harshly asked. “Or putting yourself at the Tyrant’s mercy, not even an hour after? You’re still going around like if you lose a limb it’ll grow back, but it won’t. You can’t jump down every pit you find and tell yourself you’re strong enough to crawl out after, Catherine. You’re not strong enough anymore.”

We were having, I thought, a very different conversation from the one she thought we were. If Vivienne was a creature of the unspoken, the unsaid, then Indrani was one of shrouding aggression. You could get a much better read on her fears through what she reproached others than what few crumbs she willingly offered up about herself. I no longer had Winter, and so these days I was a great deal more fragile. That was half of the circle, here, and only that. The other half was Indrani’s shivering near-death in a mausoleum of ice that she could have done absolutely nothing to get out of, if she hadn’t been helped. Help, that thing her savage beast of a mother had taught her was always weakness. Thread that with the knowledge that there was nothing she could have done to avoid that position except not being there, not fighting, and you got a rope tight enough for Archer to hang herself with. She could rage and accuse all she wanted: all I saw and hear was my friend choking slowly, now that she’d been stripped of the flawed foundations she’d once stood on.

“It was never a game, love,” I gently said. “I’m sorry you had to learn it that way.”

She laughed, brittle and sharp.

“No, don’t you think that’ll work,” Indrani said, stepping up to the table. “You don’t get to play the sage’s role when you just marched a pile of wet kindling through a burning district. You don’t get to tell me it’s not a game when you still act like it is. Who the fuck do you think you are, Catherine?”

“Tell me,” I said.

There was barely a flicker of her Name’s power before she put her bare fist through the table. Wood splintered and flew, the entire thing collapsed under the sheer weight of the blow.

“That’s your skull, if you run into the Saint on your next lark,” she conversationally said. “So don’t pretend this is a favour you’re doing me, that you’re letting me rage on your shoulder until my blood’s cooled. Because this is real, Catherine, so you’ll give me a godsdamned answer.”

She brushed a few splinters off her hand before pointing an accusing finger down at the wreck. None of the prickly pieces, I idly noticed, had broken her skin.

“Who do you think you are?” Indrani repeated, in that same deceptively calm tone. “Some favoured child of Below, somehow exempted from dying when you get in over your head? Because Triumphant thought she was that, had an actual Name still and terrible armies besides, and she still fucking died.”

She shrugged.

“Is it the Black Knight’s legacy you think make you invincible?” she asked. “Where is he now, Catherine? And let’s not pretend you didn’t pick and choose what you learned at his knee. If the authentic article got had, what makes you think the bastard get will make it through unscathed?”

I matched her gaze without flinching as she advanced, carelessly kicking aside the broken table between us.

“Or is it just that you alone of all the world were born under a victorious star,” Indrani said, distance closing between us. “Fate’s got plans for you, eh? Catherine Foundling can bleed, can scar and lose limbs, but she can never fucking die.”

She leaned in, ochre-brown face mere inches from mine. I could almost feel her breath against my lips.

“Where was that victorious star down in the Everdark, then?” she asked. “When Sve Noc had your neck in their grip and a little twist was all it would have taken to bring an end to the road? All but for the mercy of goddesses, and you had no right to expect mercy of those two.”

Indrani bared her teeth.

“Answer me,” she demanded in a snarl.

I caught her wrist when she raised her arm to push me back. The staff I left there, and it stood still as if perfectly balanced.

“I don’t have any of those things,” I told her quietly. “You know that too. One day I’ll be a little too slow, or not clever enough, or it’ll just be a… bad day. And I’ll die. Just like that. It’s always been the end of this story. And there’s no guarantee I’ll complete my work before that day catches up to me.”

Archer ripped her wrist free from my fingers, cradling it with her other hand like my touch had been enough to burn her skin. She took a step back, though I doubted she even realized it.

“You can’t expect us to care when you treat your life like Creation’s kitchen rag,” Indrani said. “I might as well get attached to a mayfly.”

“If I was always careful,” I said. “If I was all prudence and planning, hiding behind my people and leaving every battle to be fought pass me by – if I did all those things, Indrani, would we even be having this conversation?”

I saw the moment where the part I’d not been cruel enough to speak sunk in. If I was all that, would you even care about me in the first place? She flinched, and it brought me no joy, but to bind a wound it must first be cleaned. And this particular one had been left to fester for much too long already. That, more than all the rest, shamed me. Because I’d known it would hurt more for the waiting, and I’d chosen other needs over it anyway. A queen would not have felt guilt, I thought, for choosing queenship’s duties over family. But it wasn’t the queen that reached out to Indrani just to have the hand batted away.

“That’s not fair,” Archer said.

“That doesn’t make it any less true,” I gently said. “You don’t get to define the people you care about.”

I thought of green eyes, and of the starving realm around me. No, it was never quite so easy as that, was it? That lesson had been long and harsh in the learning, but I had learned it nonetheless. This time when I reached out she allowed me to take her elbow, and it was like that simple touch had cut the strings out of her. Her legs folded and with a grimace of pain I slowed our fall until we were both slouching on the ground, sitting like children surrounded by the remains of their tantrum. And we were, I thought. Children still, in some many ways. We’d been taught at the knee of Calamities, and those teachings had made us sharper than our years should allow – but for all that, no older than our years. Perhaps even younger than those, truth be told, for the stuff of the women we’d become had been thinned in places so it could be used to strengthen others. With my arms wrapped tight around her, I could not shy away from the truth that for all we had done we were still so very small.

“We can’t keep doing this, Cat,” Indrani tiredly said, resting her chin against my shoulder. “If we’re all born with a single yarn of luck to spin, we used up ours too young. On too many stupid fucking fights that we learned too late we shouldn’t have fought. We’re bare, now. And the worst monsters still lie ahead.”

“It’s all right to be afraid,” I whispered into her ear.

She tried to pull away, but I kept my grip tight and she understood the unspoken – if she used the strength of her Name, I would use that of the Night. Neither of us, I thought, were quite ready to allow those powers foothold in this moment.

“I used to think my first fight with William was when I really got it,” I said. “I know better now. I woke up bleeding out, gutted like a fish, but I became the Squire. It was all still in the game, even that. He had his angel’s feather, and providence. But I had instincts, and something better than golden luck.”

Indrani breathed out shallowly.

“So when was it?” she whispered.

“The day I woke up, Black hung about fifty people,” I whispered back. “Made sure I saw. A lot of what happened that afternoon took me years to really deal with. But I still think of them sometimes, even after all the darker days there’s been since. Because I looked them in the eyes, and what looked back was the truth that it was larger than me. That I was just a small part of it, even with all that was already meant for me.”

I smiled bleakly, remembering the utter silence in the Court of Swords and twice the sound of necks snapping. Two rows and two drops, dead briskly to the gallows.

“It was never a game to them,” I said. “They just died, because… they were caught, I suppose, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the reasons behind that were years older, and those reasons caused by some even more ancient – links in a chain no one can see more than a few pieces of. So they died not knowing, because of something larger than them.”

Indrani chuckled darkly.

“That’s your lesson?” she said. “That one day we’ll die too, blind and lost and not really understanding why?”

“Everybody else does,” I murmured. “Why should we be different? We have powers and clever tricks, but how different does that really make us?”

I let out a breathy laugh.

“That’s the thing. The first time a story happens, it’s not a story at all. If it comes again we tell ourselves it’s become something else, but it hasn’t. Not really. People bleed just as red the twelfth time as the first. The tears and the deaths don’t become any less real, ‘Drani. The courage doesn’t matter less because some corpse in a grave made the same stand a hundred years before and won.”

She leaned back, still in my embrace, and looked at my face questioningly.

“We’re Named,” Archer said. “That makes it different.”

But it doesn’t, I thought. We’ve seen it, you and I. That when all there is holding up the choice is a story and the prediction of victory, the story fails. Because if all you do is pretend, go through the motions, then you’ve already lost what could have made it a victory in the first place.

“A choice is a choice,” I replied, shaking my head. “Black cloak, white cloak – that’s the game, thinking the cloak says it all. That the choices are already made for you.”

“It’s a pretty thought,” Indrani said. “But it won’t keep any of us alive.”

“Nothing will,” I smiled. “But that’s the point, isn’t it? What do we do with that?”

I met her eyes, once more.

“Be afraid,” I said. “I am, Indrani. All the time. Be afraid, then make your choices.”

Her fingers balled up against my side, clutching at the cloth.

“And that’s who you are, the choices you make,” I murmured. “Not your Name. Not your mother. Not where you were born or what they made you do.”

“It might not be enough,” she softly said. “Just making the choice.”

I nodded, because I wouldn’t lie to her.

“It might not be,” I agreed, just as softly. “And for all that, there’s only one thing that matters.”

I threaded my fingers into hers, warmth against warmth. Oh, there were few prices I would not have been willing to pay to get that back – and Winter’s fade was not one of them.

“Who do you want to be?” I asked.

She did not answer, for a very long time, and when she unthreaded our fingers it felt like failure. There were some things that couldn’t be fixed with words, I thought, no matter how earnest. But then she leaned forward and rested her chin against my shoulder again.

“I don’t know,” Indrani said.

Her hands returned to my sides, fingers digging in too tight. It would have been petty to wince. What I’d done to her tonight had been brutal enough in some ways that even noticing this felt miserly of me.

“I don’t know,” she repeated after yet more silence. “But not this.”

“Then we’ll find out,” I said. “Together, all of us.”

She nodded against me. A pause, as I felt her consider whether to keep speaking or not.

“I think I might hate you a little,” Indrani finally said.

My throat tightened but I would not argue or beg. It was fair, and her right. I nodded back against the crook of her neck, staying there and breathing in the scent of leather and steel and warm skin.

“I never learned how to do this gently,” I admitted, the apology hanging between us. “Some nights I’m not sure I learned to do it at all.”

“That I could forgive,” she said, then hesitated.

She sighed.

“Will,” she corrected, firmly. “Will forgive.”

“Then?”

“You took a part of me,” she softly said. “By being who you are, you took it in hand. Claimed it. And I won’t get it back even if I try.”

I felt her tighten against me, like a bowstring gone taut.

“It’s a little like being a prisoner, isn’t it?” she said. “Loving someone.”

Indrani laughed, and at my silence the tension in her shoulders loosened.

“Every time we speak raw, I understand the Lady a little better,” she said. “Why she left. I wonder if that was what she figured out: that if she lingered, she’d end up never leaving at all.”

She wasn’t speaking of being in love with me. That would have been… it wasn’t who we were, to each other. Skin didn’t change that, I knew it for certain since the months we’d taken to that kind of intimacy. Wasn’t sure she could be like that, even with how she looked at Masego – though much of what lay there was still veiled to me, it was true. Sometimes I wasn’t sure I had it in me either, to be like that. I thought of Kilian and what had been shared there. What hadn’t, too. Even now the compromises that would have kept us tied were nothing less than abhorrent to me. Not a brew I would ever be willing to drink. How strange it was that you could care so much for someone and yet find them to be such a stranger in the end. No, it wasn’t that kind of love. But for the two of us, I wondered if what she was speaking of wasn’t more precious. She’d called the Woe wild animals, once, that I’d let into my home. She’d done it while castigating me for being unable to see past my part of our story – but she’d done the same, in her own way. Assuming that there’d been anything to me but plans before I met them. Like I’d not been just as much of a stray, starved for everything they had to give. Being in love, it was a fickle thing. Fragile. And skin only ever meant what you let it. I’d never felt either of those things in a way I wasn’t willing to lose. I closed my eyes, letting Indrani’s warmth seep into me.

This, I was not willing to lose. Not with her, not with any of the others.

“Sometimes I think you’re trying to die,” she said, the words shaking me out of my thoughts. “Second Liesse… well, you’re not running from it anymore. But I figure you might be running towards it instead, and that’s not much better.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

“You won’t,” Indrani said, and it wasn’t a question. “You don’t have that right, if you do this to us.”

“‘Drani, I’m not trying to get myself killed,” I said. “I –”

“Your leg,” she said. “The limp. You telling me Sve Noc couldn’t have fixed that?”

I bit back on my first answer. Flippancy was less than this, than either of us, deserved. There were ways, not so different from the ones Black had once offered me. But none of them led to places I wanted to go.

“That’s different,” I said.

“It’s a weakness,” Indrani said. “And I don’t mean because it slows you down. You think you need the pangs to keep you grounded, I’m guessing.”

My fingers clenched.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “That sounds about right. There’s nothing noble about that, Cat. It’s just pain, it has no value.”

“I can still fight,” I said. “And it forces me to think, Indrani. Before I act, how I’ll act. To no longer jump in every pit, trusting I’m strong enough I’ll be able to crawl out afterwards.”

The echo of her own words had her smiling, I could feel it from the way she shifted against my shoulder.

“If you trusted yourself, you wouldn’t need it,” she said.

“Maybe I don’t,” I murmured.

“Is that really,” Indrani said, “who you want to be?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. She didn’t ask for one, either. We stayed there in silence, and for once let the world go on spinning without us.

It wouldn’t last, but what did?