A Practical Guide to Evil

So instead I wrenched my eyes away from the distant beauty of the valleys and put my attention where it belonged. Which happened to be a tall silver mirror bordered by runes, whose surface shimmered for an instant before revealing a still eerily beautiful woman. Alaya of Satus’ beauty had not been entirely an artifice or the result of her Name. Even stripped of both and touched with the marks of aging for the first time since I’d known her – small wrinkles at the corner of her eyes, her skin being less than perfect – she remained perhaps the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It did nothing for me. What I felt for her was hatred’s tired cousin, and it swallowed too much ground for anything else to ever be able to grow there.

“Report,” I flatly ordered.

Standing at my side, High Lady Abreha shuffled slightly on her feet. As always, she was straddling the line between being glad that I was able to order the once-empress and discomfort at the leader of Praes being ordered by anyone at all. Abreha was not such a complicated woman, once you learned to ignore the labyrinthine thirst for schemes and utterly amoral ambition.

“Your Excellency,” Chancellor Alaya of – well, that was still being debated – greeted me, bowing her head. “The third wave will be setting out earlier than we had planned. Marshal Nim’s efforts to reassemble the Legions have proved successful beyond our most optimistic estimates.”

I kept my breath steady. Every week, every cursed fucking week, we found another way that my father had played us. The Battle of Kala had ruined the Legions of Terror, broken their spirit, but it’d also kept the soldiers out of the significantly more brutal throwdown in Ater. There had been masses of disaffected soldiers for the Black Knight to recruit under her new banner. That wasn’t even entirely a metaphor, since the old banner of the Dread Empire had been the Tower in black on crimson.

“They’ll need to set out directly for Keter,” I said. “I’ve been in contact with the First Prince and the situation on the ground over here is… not promising.”

Something of an understatement, that. The Dead King had stopped pulling his punches, unveiling his full arsenal of horrors. The fronts that’d held him back for almost three years had been torn through like wet parchment in a matter of hours and Procer had effectively collapsed as a nation within two days. The only thing slowing down Keter’s armies was the sheer amount of land being set aflame, it was a full retreat everywhere. Only in Salia was there a semblance of safety and considering how Cordelia was managing that I had somewhat mixed feelings about it.

“How bad?” Chancellor Alaya quietly asked.

“Militarily, Procer is done,” I frankly replied. “The generals did the smart thing and pulled back their armies to Salia to preserve forces for the assault on Keter, but that was at the cost of effectively surrendering the country. There’s not a force left north of Iserre that will be more than an afternoon’s work for the dead.”

She nodded, once and sharply.

“I will accelerate the preparations as best I can,” Chancellor Alaya promised. “I have news from the Free Cities that I suspect have outpaced the reports from the Jacks.”

“I’m listening.”

“Empress Basilia took the armies of the League into the Twilight Ways a month past,” she said. “For war against Keter, she claims. They’ve been seen in Salamans since, but I could not obtain more. The Eyes have increasingly large gaps.”

“Let’s hope she lives up to her letters, then,” I grunted.

Basilia had been sending us – myself and the First Prince – those regularly until she marched out, to me as her former patron and to Cordelia has a fellow ruler. Most of it was just assurances of friendship and peace, but she’d also been promising to bring the armies of the League into the war. Didn’t sound promising for her to have emerged in Salamans, considering half the southern princes were considering petition for entry into the League, but I’d reserve judgement for now.

“Indeed,” Chancellor Alaya mildly replied. “May I ask as to the progress of the second wave?”

I’d been part of the first wave out of Praes. Gone from Ater before they even burned my father. Pressed for time, I’d claimed, and Procer was falling apart. Fleeing, my mind had called it, and it was the truer of the two. I’d taken with me the armies I’d brought and the vanguard of the Praesi reinforcements, a few thousand former household troops with cabals of diabolists and the first few… assets we’d raised after the dust settled in Ater. All of them led by High Lady Abreha. The second wave had set out two week later, the rest of the household troops – all currently auxiliaries in the Legions of Terror – and a ninety-two thousand orc warriors. The full muster of the Clans, led by their Warlord.

“High Lady Abreha has been handling communications with them,” I said, flicking a glance at her.

Abreha cleared her throat, an amusing affectation considering she no longer needed to breathe. Of all the undead creations I had made of Night, she was by far the most lifelike. Sometimes I even forgot she was dead.

“Their pace has been steady and the resupply in Laure did not slow them down,” High Lady Abreha said. “Duchess Kegan had the cattle ready to join the horde. High Lord Sargon swears that the Old Mothers will last until the offensive against Keter.”

“Good news,” Chancellor Alaya said. “If the armies around Salia are properly arrayed for war, it might be possible to begin the march north within days of the second wave arriving.”

“I’ll not count the cat skinned until I wear the skin,” I snorted. “Proceran armies are terrible at handling supplies and Hasenbach can only fit so many miracles up her sleeves. I’m still awe at the quantity of grain and feed she’s put together.”

She must have emptied half the granaries in the Principate for it, which would have been impressive even if half the realm hadn’t already seceded in all but name – and sometimes not even that.

“One hopes that the threat of annihilation will inspire unexpected competence,” Chancellor Alaya said, a hint of asperity to her tone.

I doubted it. Fear sometimes made people sharper, pushed them beyond their limits, but most of the time it just made them sloppy and stupid. Juniper and I were already counting on two weeks stuck near Salia after the second wave joined us.

“We’ll see,” I replied, then my gaze hardened. “So what’s this I hear about changes to the electorate?’

The Chancellor of Nobody Could Agree On What Yet dipped her head.

“The Green Stretch has been pushing for a vote of its own instead of being considered a joint territory with Ater, but there have been disagreements,” she replied. “The argument was made that procedurally speaking an even number of votes might lead to deadlock, which led others to argue the Clans should be granted a second vote.”

Which the High Seats would find unacceptable. Leaving what was effectively two votes in goblin hands – one for the Eyries and one for Foramen – was acceptable because Foramen still had a population that was human in majority and there was no guarantee Wither’s dynasty would keep its seat, but if the Clans got a second vote the greenskins would become a power bloc as powerful as the Soninke. Throw in another vote for the Green Stretch into this and the High Seats in human hands would make up only five of the eleven votes choosing the Chancellor of Praes.

“I won’t ride your back about this,” I said, “but I shouldn’t need to tell you that if this comes to blows my patience is more than spent.”

“I will not,” the once-empress calmly told me. “Negotiations are ongoing, but there is progress. Alternatives for tiebreaking are being considered.”

I sighed and let it go. I had neither the time not the inclination to look over her shoulder while preparing for a campaign halfway across the continent. I’d have to trust thatshe knew what she was doing.

“It might be of interest to you that majority vote has narrowed down the name of our nation to either the ‘Confederation of Praes’ or the ‘Republic of Praes’,” Chancellor Alaya continued, changing the subject.

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Republic?” I skeptically asked.

“There have been other republics than Bellerophon,” the Chancellor replied. “Though I lean towards Confederation myself, should the Grey Eyries be convinced to relinquish that name themselves in favour of another.”

I supposed it would be a tad awkward for the Confederation of the Grey Eyries to be a member-state of the Confederation of Praes.

“So long as it is not the League of Praes,” High Lady Abreha fervently said. “Dakarai must have been drunk when he suggested it.”

I thought, somewhat unkindly, that it was a bit much for the High Seats to look down at the League’s squabbling when the Dread Empire had managed at least as many civil wars while claiming to be a single state instead of a loose coalition.

“A conversation for another day,” I curtly said. “I believe we’re finished here, Chancellor, unless you have anything else to bring up.”

Alaya of Satus inclined her head respectfully.

“I will be arriving with the third wave,” she said. “Arrangements were made.”

My eyes narrowed, but I did not contradict her. I was not sure whether I was angry she was insisting on risking the life my father had died to preserve or pleased that for once the former empress would be getting a closer look at what a real war looked like. It was a different beast, when you weren’t looking at it from atop your tower.

“Then we will meet beneath the walls of Keter,” I said. “I’ll be expecting your report next week at the same hour.”

I met her eyes.

“Chancellor.”

“Your Excellency,” she replied, dipping down in deference.

The formal address that had been adopted for the Name of Warden of the East in Praes was the last thing she spoke before the silver mirror dimmed. I rolled my shoulder, cracking it. My limbs always felt sore these days. From too much twisting around as I slept, I figured. I’d not been sleeping well since… I’d not been sleeping well, was all.

I could not, would not look back. The moment I did the pit awaited.

“Our confederation is beginning well enough,” High Lady Abreha mused. “To think I’d see the day the Dread Empire was replaced.”

I eyed her skeptically, hiding my amusement at the way she’d avoided the more common turn of phrase of ‘living to see the day’.

“It will change,” I said. “It’ll have to. Power’s being pulled in too many directions.”

I was personally of the opinion that the High Seats would start by acting as I was sure my father had thought they would, by clashing against each other and bribing the greenskin and Ater votes with positive reforms, but it wouldn’t last forever. At some point they’d either close ranks and try to keep the office within their families – which I couldn’t see working long, given how often their dynastic interests were at odds – or they’d turn to other means to take power. That’d lead to war, one I wasn’t sure the High Seats would be able to win, and in the vacuum after that defeat my bet was that the Legions of Terror would step in. Nim was zealously apolitical, but how many of her successors would be?

Maybe if she stuck around long enough preserving the sanctity of the elections would become part of the story of the Black Knight, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Besides, the Intercessor had put an end to that sort of thing. Forever or for now I could not know, and so I’d set Hierophant to the task of finding out.

“There will be adjustments,” Abreha dismissed, “but the skeleton will hold. It answers a need.”

“And what would that be?” I asked.

I wasn’t even being snippy. Abreha Mirembe was a reprehensible excuse for a human being, but she’d stood near the apex of Praesi politics for decades. Her understanding of the Wasteland was equalled by few and surpassed by fewer. I belonged to neither category.

“Seizing the Tower by force was costly, Your Excellency,” the undead aristocrat said. “In soldiers, in coin, in contracts called upon. And it was ever a risky enterprise, even when one’s family stood strongly behind them. Holding the Tower was even more difficult: most tyrants were part of the Dark Council or at least the imperial court before they climbed the Tower. Ater has been the grave of many a High Lord.”

“So you’ll stick with the votes because they’re cheaper than war,” I skeptically said.

“Because eight years is not so long a time to wait,” High Lady Abreha smiled, baring yellow teeth. “Why raise an illegal army and risk battles and ruination when the coming election is a better way to usurp rule from your rival? No longer are we ruled until death, Your Excellency, and we live longer than lesser breeds. We have years enough that we can afford patience.”

I paused, forced myself to consider that. I’d noticed, when facing Sargon Sahelian in Wolof, that the great families of Praes tended to think over long spans. That when a High Lord could not climb the Tower, they turned instead to strengthening their dynasty. This system, with the votes, it played on that an instinct. Why should you rush into a hasty war when waiting a mere twenty years might see you elected Chancellor? Better to bide your time, forge your alliances and save up for the right bribes. You’d get your eight years, and without having risked your family. It was a system that would weed out the reckless, I realized.

Ensure the same kind of people who’d once claimed the Tower through orgies of bloodletting would never end up anywhere near the rule of Praes.

“The Carrion Lord was a vicious little shit,” Abreha said. “But brilliant too, in his own twisted way. He understood the old families better than we ever knew.”

I sighed. I was still unconvinced that this would not eventually turn into military rule by the Legions, but then I wasn’t sure that wouldn’t also be part of plan. The thought might well have appealed to him.

“We’ll see,” I finally said.

“They will be interesting times,” the undead noble. “Should we make it through the end of the world, anyhow.”

“How very hopeful, High Lady Abreha,” I drily said.

“That is-”

She was interrupted by a sound I was unfortunately familiar with: a detonation. It was easy enough to tell where it was coming from. We were standing on the outskirts of a nameless village, atop a flat slope that’d been judged a good place for receiving the Chancellor’s report, and from up here I could see a plume of smoke coming up from a large barn. Broad and dry and in good state, it was where Masego had set up for the half-day we would be spending in Creation before rejoining my army in the Twilight Ways. He’d had tests to run, he said. My heart clenched. Gods, let him not have gotten hurt. Already I had… my fingers clenched around a knife I was not holding.

Do not look back, I ordered myself. Else the pit awaits.

Masego would be fine. He wasn’t a fool, he’d have taken precautions before attempting anything risky. I still parted wats with High Lady Abreha after only cursory courtesies and hurried limped my way down, my personal guard falling in around me. The village was little more than a hole in the ground with dusty streets between the two abandoned shops and handful of houses that made it up, so there was nowhere to get lost. I found Apprentice outside the barn and on her knees when I got there, coughing profusely. A glance through the open door revealed the shape of a tall man in dark robes moving around, which released a knot in my stomach.

I stopped to speak with Sapan, whose coughing had turned into wheezes.

“You all right, kid?” I asked.

“Fine, Your Majesty,” she rasped out. “I just swallowed a mouthful of Light.”

I blinked, then cocked to the side.

“And it didn’t burn you?” I carefully asked.

“Scalded,” Sapan admitted. “It will teach me to always double-layer my shields.”

“Always a good idea,” I sagely agreed.

I patted her shoulder comfortingly, satisfied she was in no danger, and entered the barn. Immediately my steps stuttered, and not because of the limp. I’d not been able to see it from up the hill, but something a blown a ring hole right through the barn’s ceiling. By the looks of the burns around the ring, had to be Light or something like it.

“Tell me,” I said, “that it wasn’t the artefact that made this mess.”

Hierophant was leaning over a scorched stone table that’d survived the explosion and on which rested a leather-bound book. Half the barn was filled with various instruments and the enchanted trinkets he’d used to measure emanations back in the Arsenal, and a few of the former had been brought to the stone table. He was handling it with a pair of pincers, carefully turning the pages as he inspected them.

“I could,” Hierophant noted. “But you always get inexplicably irritated when you ask me to lie to you and I do.”

I sighed.

“Yes,” he happily said. “Just like that.”

“Tell me it’s not broken at least,” I said.

I limped deeper into the barn, making my way to his side.

“I do not believe that a single means at my disposal would be able to so much as notch the binding of the Book,” Hierophant said, sounding fascinated.

I narrowed my eyes at his back. I’d felt the capitalization in that.

“We’re not calling it that,” I said.

“It’s an appropriate and endearing name,” Zeze insisted. “I have this on good authority.”

“You mean Indrani,” I said, unimpressed.

“I have this on authority,” Zeze conceded.

My lips twitched, but slagging on Archer wouldn’t be enough to win me over.

“It’d be blasphemy,” I reminded him. “And we’re already treading pretty narrowly there considering we’ve stolen all the Good stories of Calernia and made a book of them.”

“I did that,” Masego objected. “Which means I get to name it. It’s the Book of Some Things.”

Because calling the godsdamned thing a joke about the Book of All Things was going to go great with the Procerans. I could already feel the migraine in my future reaching backwards to me now, having grown so catastrophically large it had shattered the very laws of time.

“We can discuss it later,” I lied.

He turned to glare at me, which – wait what?

“Masego,” I said with forced calm, “what the Hells happened to your eye?”

Not only was his usual black eye cloth gone, one of the glass eyes he’d earned when transitioning into Hierophant was gone. I would ask where, but the bloody blackened mess that’d been made out of his empty eye socket answered the question well enough. The other eye had survived, but the glimmers of Summer sunlight in the glass had noticeably dimmed.

“Ah,” Hierophant said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. “That.”

I took his chin in hand and moved him around to get a better look at the wound. Shallow stuff. I frowned.

“Did you enchant the inside of your eye socket?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he replied, sounding offended. “Enchantments laid into flesh are notoriously imprecise and prone to mutation.”

His chin was released. I waited, staring at him expectantly.

“I inserted chips of bone into the flesh, which I then enchanted,” Masego proudly told me. “In anticipation of an eventuality just like this one.”

Yeah, there it was. He looked at me, eyebrow cocked.

“You may praise my foresight now,” he encouraged.

“New rule,” I said. “Before you stick stuff in yourself and enchant it, ask someone about it.”

“I asked Akua when designing the enchantments last year,” he informed me. “She was quite helpful. Is she our friend again now, while I remember to ask? I was never quite clear on whether we are meant to despise her or not.”

“I’m changing the rule to asking me,” I noted. “If I’m not there you should ask-”

I swallowed the answer. He was not here, he’d left me. Do not look back, I ordered myself. Else the pit awaits.

“-Vivienne,” I finished. “And for Akua, use your judgement. You don’t have to hate her if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t,” Masego informed me. “Useful to know, thank you.”

“Speaking of useful,” I said, forcing this back to the here and now. “Am I to assume you got something useful out of the hole in the ceiling?”

“That is how I lost the eye,” Hierophant admitted. “It appears the Gods Above were disinclined to allow me to peer too closely at their work. They seemed quite cross.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“Well, at least you didn’t get smote,” I forced out. “What did you learn?”

“Several things,” he noted. “The first is that the Intercessor still lives.”

I cursed in Kharsum. I’d figured she did, even after losing the stories, but it was not pleasant to have my suspicions confirmed.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The readings I have of the artefact leaving dormancy allowed me to establish that they shouldn’t have interfered with the secondary enchantment we laid on the Spike,” Masego said.

I frowned at him. The silver harpoon he’d used in Ater, the Spike, had been meant to do exactly tow things. Extract an aspect from the Bard using the same principles that Zeze had used to cut out my corrupted aspect in Marchford all those years ago, and then ensure that even if the Bard died she would not escape. Our solution to her disappearing at every time she bought it had been, well, necromancy. If she died with the Spike in her, she was supposed to be raised from the dead immediately. Only the enchantment had failed, because when she’d bit off her tongue she’d disappeared.

“The enchantment failed, though,” I reminded him.

“Not because of interference from the process of extraction, as I had originally believed,” Hierophant said. “Which has fascinating implications, Catherine, because it means the necromancy was beaten out by a stronger will.”

“So she refused real hard to become undead?” I asked.

“I mean will in the magical sense,” Masego clarified.

Ah, so the same exercise of willpower that allowed a mage to use magic. The Trismegistan theory of magic preached that usurpation was the essence of sorcery, that a mage was stealing dominion over the laws of Creation whenever they used magic. Which meant he was implying a stronger mage than him had fought the enchantment.

“She can’t do magic,” I frowned. “I’m nearly certain about that.”

“There are always at least two will when magic is used, Catherine,” Hierophant reminded me.

I blinked.

“You mean Creation?” I hissed.

“I believe it is a creational law that the Intercessor cannot die,” Masego agreed. “Only conflict with a fundamental law would be able to kill her, should this theory be correct.”

Which meant sorcery wouldn’t do it, and neither should Names. Not Light or Night either. Fundamental laws were supposedly laws that applied to even the Gods, things like ‘something cannot come from nothing’ and the like, but those were more like limits. Not the kind of law you could exploit.

“Fuck,” I said. “That complicates things.”

I’d thought of stripping stories from her as the first step to getting her head on a plate, but that no longer looked feasible. I was going to need a new way to deal with the Wandering Bard.

“Containment might be a more realistic solution,” Zeze suggested.

“We’re already planning that with the Dead King,” I said. “I’m not comfortable with the number of ancient evils we’re going to be shoving into lamps. At the very least, at this rate we’ll run out of lamps.”

“I imagine given long enough I will be able to find a way to kill her,” Hierophant mused. “It is only a matter of being thorough.”

The mildness of that tone contrasted with the words sent a shiver up my spine. It was always good to remember how very terrifying Masego could be, given reason.

“Regardless,” he continued, “before the Gods Above took offence to my polite and legitimate inquiries-”

On the other side of the table, hastily swept into a mess of hay, I noticed what looked like a set of long silver needles burned and melted by Light.

“- I did succeed at part of what I was attempting,” Masego continued. “Namely, discerning the nature of what we stole.”

“Her aspect,” I said.

“Yes,” he patiently replied, “but what does that mean, practically speaking?”

“Stewardship over stories,” I suggested. “The ability to seen and influence them.”

“Yet you’ve claimed she killed the stories for Evil in Ater,” Masego noted. “That goes beyond mere stewardship.”

“We don’t know her limits,” I reminded him.

“Indeed,” he agreed. “Which made ascertaining the nature of what we stole all the more important. How powerful is she, to be able to kill half of it?”

I hummed. That would be useful. Strength in a certain way didn’t necessarily translate in others, but it’d help scope her out.

“So?” I pressed.

He wrested sorcery from a small gem sown into his belt and began to draw in the air, golden lines like his runes, but I caught his arm.

“I don’t need the equations,” I said. “They’re beyond me. What did you conclude?”

“That even assuming the Intercessor ended stories for Below only in Calernia, which has been your insistence,” he said, pausing to allow me to interject.

I simply nodded in confirmation. I’d not been able to feel stories further than Calernia, and I did not believe the Intercessor had either. Our aspects had been similar enough she’d felt threatened, that I’d been close to stealing hers. The scope had to have been similar for that to be possible.

“Even then,” Masego continued, “the amount of power involved can mean only two things.”

He paused again, which was purely for dramatic purposes and I probably had Indrani to blame for.

“The first that this there is no reason to be concerned,” Hierophant pleasantly said, “because she is one of the Gods and can destroy this continent with a wink of her eye.”

“Grim,” I appreciated. “What’s in box number two?”

“She did not destroy anything at all,” Masego said. “She has only halted the stories.”

I let out a low whistle. If that were true, then we still had a shot at killing the Dead King. If that were true.

“And what do you base that on?” I asked.

“We have only seen one instance of the Intercessor manipulating power on a large scale,” he said. “The incident with the original Grey Pilgrim in Levant that was investigated by your minions.”

My eyes narrowed.

“The White Knight smote him, but the Bard stepped in and tinkered with the angel’s power so it wouldn’t kill him,” I said. “She changed some properties, yeah, but mostly she lessened the power.”

“Exactly,” he replied with a grin. “That is a precedent. I believe that the stories are not dead so much as lessened to zero.”

I grimaced.

“That’s useful information, I won’t pretend otherwise,” I said. “But it’s not a solution, Zeze. We can’t kill her, so her death isn’t a way to end her interference.”

Masego laughed.

“That’s the beauty of it, Catherine,” he told me. “This is not an act of the Gods that happened, or an irreversible destruction. It is an act of will. And what does Trismegistus sorcery teach us about these?”

My fingers clenched.

“Will can beat will,” I quietly said. “What one does, another can undo.”

He nodded.

“Should we find the right lever,” Hierophant smiled, “we can get those stories back.”