A Practical Guide to Evil

The thing was, some of the older soldiers who’d fought under the Fairfaxes actually had complicated feelings about Jeremiah Holt. The man was nearly seventy now and he’d been called a traitor for forty years but in his youth a lot of people had seen him as somewhat of a romantic figure. He’d been a rebel against the crown, sure, but before the Conquest the situation in Callow had been a lot more complicated that my people cared to remember. For all that Callowans like to pretend that the years before the Praesi rolled in had been a flawless golden age where our wise and benevolent Fairfaxes rulers had been beloved overlords, that was ignoring the realities of it. They’d been a popular dynasty, the Fairfaxes, but they’d also been two reigns removed from a brutal internal civil war and that sort of thing left marks.

The War of Cousins had shaken up the balance of power in Old Callow, with two branches of House Fairfax twining the line with respectively the Caens of Liesse and the Sarsfields of Summerholm before taking swings at each other for control of the throne. There was a lot of to say about that civil war, but ironically what mattered most was the people not mentioned in the writings about it: the northern baronies of Hedge and Harrow. They’d stayed aloof throughout the entire war, same as they’d been during the Conquest, because by the time that branch of House Fairfax my father destroyed came to the throne the north had effectively become a realm within a realm. With the power increasingly gathering in Laure, Summerholm and Liesse northerners had started resenting the authority of a distant crown that little aside from collecting taxes.

Enter Good King Robert, last true Fairfax king of Callow, and Sir Jeremiah Holt of the Order of the Antlers. The estrangement between the north and throne had sunk deep enough that Holt, a bold young knight of northern extraction, had rebelled against King Robert to seek the independence of the northern baronies and parts of the territory now under Southpool. He’d been fighting for the restoration of the ‘Kingdom of Dunloch’, the ancient northern realm that the Albans had conquered before turning to the last holdout of the Kingdom of Liesse in the south. The historical grounds for that rebellion were pretty thin, considering that before the Albans annexed the north it’d been more of an alliance under a prominent warchief than a proper kingdom and said warchief had surrendered in exchange for being named Duchess of Dunloch. Resentment of Laure had been strong enough up north, though, that Holt found more than a few knights and soldiers flocking to his banner when he raised it.

Their rebellion had been rather tame, very knightly. It’d been more a play of fox-and-hound with the Fairfaxes than the kind of violent resistance that’d followed the Conquest. Unfortunately, after a few humiliations too many King Robert had gotten serious about putting them down and bodies had started piling up. Holt lost most of his rebel troops and had to go increasingly bandit to stay in the fight, which tarred his reputation. Enter the Conquest and bandits popping up everywhere as troops marched east, leaving everyone’s holdings unprotected. A much grimmer Jeremiah Holt saw his opportunity. He’d been halfway to gathering a sizeable army of malcontents and robbers when Amadeus of the Green Stretch had reached out with an offer to him.

Self-rule for the northern baronies so long as Holt entered imperial service, as well as a formal military office for him and his men. Jeremiah Holt took the offer, famously, and slew a few hundred soldiers under the Count of Ankou before capturing the man himself and keeping the city out of the war by threatening to hang him his noble prisoner should anyone pass the city gates.

He’d never quite been forgiven for that by the older generation. Having one of their romantic heroes shake hands with the Black Knight and rise to the rank of general in the Legions of Terror in the aftermath had been one of the many hits the pride of Callow had taken after the Conquest. It’d been striking enough that I’d been surprised to learn after joining the Legions that there were songs about Holt – two of them, a sad one called ‘O Knight of Dunloch’ and a merry one called ‘The Ride at Luthien’s Crossing’ – because I’d never heard either of them sung. I tended to believe that if he’d ever been allowed to serve as a garrison in Callow his star would have risen, especially if he checked the abuse of an imperial governor, but then that was likely why my father had assigned the Thirteenth duties on the other side of the empire.

Today’s Thirteenth Legion wasn’t the same that’d formed during the Conquest, of course. Most those soldiers were either dead or retired, with the holdouts being high-ranking officers whose position wouldn’t require much fighting. But unlike other legions, the Thirteenth had become something a family trade while out east. Children and grandchildren of the original soldiers and officers made up most of the ranks, and while many of my people wouldn’t consider them countrymen the soldiers themselves believed differently. Praesi tended to call them Duni, but for all that the soldiers of the Thirteenth were now often mixed blood – not only Taghreb and Soninke but also from Ashur and the Free Cities – they largely considered themselves Callowans. An estranged tribe gone into exile, perhaps, but still Callowans.

And on that hinged Vivienne’s plan, because there was nothing more exiles wanted than to come home.

It hadn’t been easy to get into the camp. We’d approached under the cover of Night as well as night, but regular patrols and a solid ward layout had still slowed us down to a crawl. It’d been a game of patience, which had irked me considering the looming battle and how impatient to get this done it was making me. We’d eventually slipped in, though, if much later than I would have preferred: past Early Bell. Most the camp was still asleep but one of Vivienne’s spies had made contact with the legion’s junior legate, Alice Burnley, and it paid off exactly the way it was supposed to. Within half an hour of our arrival, the Thirteenth’s senior officers were shaken awake and summoned to an impromptu war council in the usual tent.

Where Vivienne and I waited seated in a dark corner, cloaked, as officers filed in one after another and the sturdy, grim-faced Legate Burnley fielded questions about the summons by deferring until the general was there. Jeremiah Holt was the last to come and I took a moment to study him from under my hood. Still built like a bull even at his late age, he was blue-eyed with a crooked nose and white hair that’d fallen atop his head. He moved gingerly but with assurance, for all that he seemed rather tired from being woken up at this hour.

“What’s this about, Alice?” General Holt asked. “Your messengers were tight-lipped about everything but the urgent need.”

His eyes moved to us, our shrouded silhouettes in the corner.

“Eyes of the Empire?” he asked.

I smiled in the dark and struck a match, revealing up my one-eyed face just long enough to light up my pipe. I pulled at the wakeleaf, breathing in deep and blowing it out in a long stream, as the half of the room that’d caught sight of the telltale details froze. Jeremiah Holt was one of them, but his surprise did not last long. He straightened, hand casually coming to rest on the dagger at his side.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” the general of the Thirteenth evenly said.

“General Jeremiah,” I nonchalantly replied.

Half a dozen swords were out in the heartbeat that followed but their leader snorted at them.

“Put that away, you fools,” he said. “If they’d come for blood it would already be on the floor. If Alice let them in it’ll be for talks.”

His eyes went to Vivienne’s silhouette.

“Would that be the Webweaver or Princess Vivienne with you?” he asked.

Vivienne rose to her feet, pulling back her hood.

“You are quick to adjust,” my successor praised.

“I’d been wondering if one of you would come,” General Jeremiah said. “Nim believed not, but she’s always been better at reading the east than the west.”

“They’re here to make an offer, Jeremiah,” Legate Alice said. “I got oaths through the Jacks that blood won’t be spilled even if we refuse it.”

Blue eyes went to me, following the plume of smoke leaving my lips.

“And will those oaths hold, Black Queen?” he boldly asked.

“I keep to my word,” I simply said. “Good or ill. Have any of you heard otherwise?”

None refused me that. For all that I’d turned my back on the Empire, I was known to keep my promises. It was a reputation that’d cost me much to maintain but moment like this were why it had been a worthwhile investment. There were a dozen people in here, most above fifty but a few closer to thirty, and the tension went out of them all when I backed up Legate Alice’s words. The white-haired general snorted again, going to pour himself a cup of spiced wine before dropping into the seat at the head of the table.

“Let’s hear it, then,” General Jeremiah said, tone deceptively light. “What is it that you’re offering for us to tun on the Tower?”

There were murmurs, in the wake of his words, but no one bared the swords already returned to their sheaths. I laughed.

“Are you saying you no longer consider yourselves loyal subjects of the crown of Callow?” I mused. “A most surprising turn.”

There were a few chuckles but many more wolfish smiles. They had no love for my crown, these men and women. The few that’d once lived under the rule of Laure had been outlaws to it. But neither were they the Tower’s folk, because they’d never been allowed to be. The reason one legion had been left to garrison a wealthy city like Thalassina for so long without fear of corruption was that the Thirteenth was as estranged from Praes as it was from Callow. Even after a generation of living east of the Wasaliti they were still strangers in these lands, distant from its factional struggles. I glanced at Vivienne and she inclined her head. She was to take the lead: it was her plan and so hers to execute.

“You know who I am,” Vivienne Dartwick said. “I am now a princess, heiress to the throne in Laure, but I was once the Thief and a rebel of the Lone Swordsman’s band.”

“A hero who fought to restore the same throne many of us fought against,” General Jeremiah bluntly said.

“There are no Fairfaxes left, Holt,” Vivienne replied just as bluntly. “The Kingdom of Callow that will stand when this war ends will not be the same as it was in old days. Your war ended when Amadeus the Black opened the throat of the last of that line in a cradle. You have won it.”

A dark-haired man in his early fifties who by his uniform should be the senior legate of the legion, Eldon Hawley, broke in.

“Why’s it you doing the talking?” Legate Hawley challenged. “Princess you are, but it’s the queen who rules. What are your words worth, Dartwick?”

Some approving mutters followed, as well as glances at me. In the dark they could see little more than the red burn of my lit pipe and the smoke wreathing me, but it was enough. Vivienne stood in the light, upright and bearing a silver circlet, but the hard truth was that it wasn’t her reputation that had these people willing to hear us out. There was nothing I could do about that, though, without making it worse. It was a hurdle she had to overcome herself.

“I’m the one talking because I’ll be the one dealing with you in twenty years, legate,” Vivienne replied, unflinching. “You’re trying to make it a slight, but it is the very opposite.”

She did not elaborate. The general let out an approving grunt, eyes considering.

“It’s not a bribe and a pat on the back you’re offering us, then,” he said. “You’re in it for the long haul, and the long haul for Callow is you on the throne.”

Understanding spread through those that hadn’t followed along, interest coming with it. This lot had been offered many a bribe, in Thalassina. The Kebdana and their great vassals had been some of the wealthiest people in Praes. They’d not taken them then and they would not now. Gold wasn’t what any of these people were after.

“You have grievances with the throne in Laure and I’ll not speak to the justice or injustice of them,” Vivienne said. “It was before my time. But I tell you now that throne is dead and buried. What’s left behind is Callow, and it is that same land that beckons you home.”

“We’ve been out east for long, princess,” a fair-haired woman said. “Some of us were born here. We have families, husbands and wives and children.”

The blonde was Kachera Tribune for the Thirteenth, Sally Thoms, whose name might be right out of a Laure street but was deeply tanned from a Taghreb father who’d raised her in Thalassina. The city might be dead, but the ties were not. There were many in the Thirteenth so bound to Praes.

“And they will be welcome in Callow as well,” Vivienne said.

It wasn’t quite the right angle, I thought, and she saw it too from the hardening of a few faces.

“We’ve made homes here, princess,” the Staff Tribune said. “You’re asking us to abandon them and pretending it’s a favour.”

“Have you really?” I mildly asked.

Eyes went back to me. The Staff Tribune straightened, his close-cut grey hair lending him a certain presence under torchlight.

“We might not be Praesi-” he began.

“Duni,” I softly interrupted. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it?”

He looked angry at being interrupted, but none denied what I said. They’d all heard the word before.

“That’s all you’ll ever be, out here,” I said. “Useful servants. Serve for a dozen generations and it will mean nothing. You all know that already, you’ve seen it with mfuasa and they think more of those than you. Bad blood cannot be made into good blood, that’s the way of the Wasteland. You have reached the summit of what you can aspire to in Praes. So the question left to ask is simple enough.”

I shrugged.

“Are you satisfied?”

The silence was telling. Rebels and bandits were ever hungry men. I let the silence stand, passing the torch back to Vivienne.

“You sacrifice in going home, like all exiles,” the princess of Callow said, tone honest. “I will not pretend otherwise. So let me speak to what you will gain instead.”

That had a few leaning forward, those who’d struck closer to the bandit strains of the Thirteenth than the rebel ones. The ones with mercenary leanings.

“Amnesty for any crimes once committed in Callow-” Vivienne began, and already a few scoffed.

We’d known they would, but this step was necessary for the rest. General Jeremiah was studying her with a frown, as if wondering why she had so blundered.

“I take no alms from the throne in Laure,” the Supply Tribune bit out. “It was no crime to buck the tyranny of Fairfax laws then and it needs no fucking forgiveness now.”

“It does,” Vivienne replied evenly, “as by ancient custom it is forbidden for an outlaw to hold or be granted a noble title.”

That little sentence went off like a sharper in the tent. Even General Jeremiah, who’d not been known as Sir Jeremiah since the Order of the Antlers had stripped him of his rank, looked surprise. Legate Alice, who’d left our side to go stand with her fellow officers, was the one to voice her skepticism.

“Even out here we’ve heard that you two have been stamping out the old nobles,” she said. “And now you’re offering to make us of the same breed you want to smother? That seems like an ill fate awaiting us.”

I bit my tongue, for though I wanted to reply it was not me who should speak. It was Vivienne that needed to draw the distinction between what had been the policies of my reign and what would be the policies of hers.

“Nobles got in our way, after we broke with the Tower,” Vivienne said. “They were treated accordingly. Yet I’ll not pursue that enmity into my reign. The territories that were cut out as imperial governorships under Amadeus the Black will remain administrative provinces with appointed governors, but under that authority I will raise nobles again.”

I didn’t like it, I honestly didn’t, but it wasn’t the same for her as it was for me. Vivienne was a Dartwick, minor nobility but still very much a noblewoman by birth, and she wouldn’t come to the throne with the kind of baggage I brought. Orphan, apprentice to the Carrion Lord, villain. Nobles would actually be willing to work under her in a way they simply hadn’t been for me. She wasn’t going to undo the brutal work of centralization that my father and then myself had done, she knew better than that. That was the whole point of keeping governors: there would never again be dukes in Callow, that kind of power would only ever be held by the grace of the throne. Yet she was very much in favour of cultivating the presence of lesser nobles once more.

She had valid reasons to, I’d been forced to admit. Lesser nobility was how Callow had been able to maintain so many knights without bankrupting itself, pushing off the costs of that to noble families instead of making the state coffers bear it, and it was also a solution to our still chronic lack of qualified officials. Vivienne intended to turn my father’s orphanages into schools under the aegis of the crown, but that would take years and it’d never work outside the largest cities in Callow. Until then, she’d be relying on spare sons and daughters of the nobility to serve – and even after, she’d keep using them as a balance to keep the power of her own Laure bureaucracy in line. She had learned from Malicia’s reforms in Ater in a way I’d never thought to.

“Noble titles,” General Jeremiah calmly said, but I saw the huger in his eyes. “Would you care to elaborate, Princess Vivienne?”

“For you, the barony of Longcourt,” the dark-haired princess replied. “Which you might not be familiar with-”

“A week’s travel north of Liesse,” Jeremiah Holt calmly interrupted. “Known for its apple orchards, as I recall. The last baroness of Longcourt was a girl of fourteen that died at the Siege of Summerholm.”

“She was,” Vivienne said, hiding her surprise with some skill.

“The land was placed under the imperial governor in Liesse, but there are cadet branches to the family,” the general said. “That title would come with enemies.”

Vivienne smiled and so did I, pulling at my pipe. And there was where her cleverness had shined through. Because the dozen in this tent had already been high-ranking strangers in a foreign land before, made to step on toes just by being who they were. Half the reason they were even hearing us out was that they were sick of being in that role. They weren’t eager to start being the same thing only after uprooting themselves across two rivers to a land most of them hadn’t seen in decades if ever at all. Any of them picking up titles would make enemies of the relatives of the people who’d once held to those titles. This had been meant to be great hurdle, but Vivienne had instead managed to turn it into an asset.

“It does not,” Vivienne said, “but it does come with a wedding. I believe your eldest grandson is yet unmarried?”

The old man blinked.

“He is,” the general warily admitted.

“So is Holly Leyland, the eldest daughter of the man with the best claim to the title,” Vivienne said. “Both have already agreed to unite the lines, should you and your grandson agree.”

General Jeremiah seemed genuinely taken aback. My successor’s gaze swept across the rest of the officers.

“I offer twenty lordships to be divvied up among you as you wish, but in truth that is the lesser part of my offer,” she said.

She reached into her cloak, taking out a folded parchment and setting it down on their table.

“This is a list of sons and daughters from noble families in good standing that have agreed to marriage with officers of the Thirteenth or their descendance,” the princess of Callow said. “Age and rank in succession are included.”

The tent was as silent as a grave.

“This is not a trap,” Vivienne Dartwick gently said. “When I speak of bringing you home, I mean every word. I am not the Tower, to strand you among enemies and then use the fear to weaken all beneath me. Come back to Callow, and you will truly be back. All the land offered is in what was once the Duchy of Liesse and now lies empty, but this will not be solely a noble’s game. Freeholds will be provided to retiring soldiers and formal knighthood to any cavalrymen who are willing to join the knightly order I will found – the Order of the Stolen Crown.”

Kachera Tribune Thoms licked her lips then broke the silence.

“And what do you want in exchange?” she asked.

“Fight with us here,” Vivienne said. “On this field. When we march east to bury death for good, fight with us still. And when the war ends, come home. Be part of the peace we’ll all have fought for.”

She’d hit all the right notes, I thought as I watched them teeter at the brink, and still had things been even just a little different this would not have enough. But the droplet that’d tip the cup was that Thalassina was gone. It was where the Thirteenth had been for the longest, and when that city had died to the Warlock’s wrath many of the ties that bound the legion to the Wasteland had died with it. The same kin that they might have been afraid Malicia would kill as retribution to changing sides were already dead and buried. They had a lot less to lose now than they would have had five years ago and Vivienne had offered them more than they had ever hoped they might receive.

“We’ll need to talk it over,” Legate Hawley roughly said. “Bring more officers into it-”

I blew out a long stream of smoke.

“No,” I said. “Tonight. You have until the hour’s done to make your decision.”

Some looked angry, but General Jeremiah was not one of them. If anything he looked approving. Smart man.

“Any longer than that and the Eyes will be onto us,” he said. “You want us to march right now, don’t you? Smash through the palisades while we have the element of surprise and link up with the Army of Callow.”

I nodded. The moment the Thirteenth went over to our side or refused to, the Battle of Kala had effectively begun. When they moved all sides would begin to muster for combat, because to do anything else would be ceding the initiative to the opposition – and none of the four armies on the field were willing to do that, when all knew annihilation was just one mistake away.

“Come dawn there will be a battle,” I said. “Now’s the time to decide on which side of it you’ll stand. You’ve heard what Princess Vivienne Dartwick offers you. You know what the Tower will give you and the worth of Malicia’s promises. Choose.”

It was not a simple choice and they did not simply make it. They gathered among each other, talking in low voices as they argued faults and merits. Vivienne retreated, coming to stand by my side, but neither of us spoke as we watched it unfold. It wasn’t the kind of plan I would have made, and my fingers itched to see it play out. It’d give power and wealth to people that I honestly considered to be pretty shitty and untrustworthy, but beyond that there was too much… give to this. Making nobles diluted the authority of the crown. Making several nobles, all with close ties to each other and in the same region, was making a potentially dangerous power bloc. I would have preferred cornering them, burning their ties to Malicia and taking them in on my own terms.

A third Gallowborne, to match the one I’d lost and the one I’d spent.

Vivienne wasn’t me. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the same dangers I did, just that we didn’t have the same… instincts about how to deal with them. She wasn’t afraid of a Baron Jeremiah Holt because even if he grew powerful she was confident she would make him into an ally. Bring him into the fold, use that power to her advantage without needing to have something to hold over his head. And in someone who hadn’t been with me for so long I would have been tempted to call it naivete, but Vivienne wasn’t naïve. It was the same part of her that’d made her refrain from killing when she’d been the Thief, that’d seen her join the Woe when the odds were Callow would burn if she didn’t. She was willing to embrace foes in ways that I just wasn’t.

There was little of our old madness in Vivienne Dartwick, of the slights and long prices, and I could not help but feel that our people would be better off for it.

The officers of the Thirteenth chose, and they chose hope. They chose home and peace after the war. I saw it spread from one to another, the decision, until even the holdouts bents their heads and the same man who my people had once written songs about turned his blue eyes back to us.

“It has been,” Jeremiah Holt softly said, “so very long since I saw home.”

He breathed out shakily.

“An oath broken and an oath taken is a cheap price for that,” he said.

“Then kneel,” I said.

They did, but I did not rise. My hand touched Vivienne’s side and she met my eye, looking almost startled. I almost snorted. As if I would reap the harvest she had sown. No, those oaths were hers. She had won them, she would keep them. And the officers of the Thirteenth, on their knees, spoke their oaths to the princess of Callow. And with every oath the world shivered, until the same rebel who’d once fought a throne now swore to another. Jeremiah Holt spoke his oath, and when he swore to the princess of Callow the whole of Creation bore witness. Vivienne shivered too, the weight of the pivot pressing down on all our shoulders. Ah, I thought. Indrani had tried to tell me, hadn’t she? I’d gone too deep, too… narrow trying to figure out who Vivienne was. I should have known that the simplicity had been at the hear of her the whole time.

Vivienne Dartwick had entered the tent as a princess, and now stood a Princess. It was a simple as that.

I almost laughed, seeing the hope and awe in those eyes, because didn’t the Gods just love their little jests? Vivienne had once been a fine enough thief she’d earned a Name out of taking from Praes, and yet the greatest of her thefts only came now that she had left behind. As a girl, all she’d ever taken form the Dread Empire was coin and good. Now, though?

The Princess of Callow had stolen back an entire legion.