A Practical Guide to Evil

I was not to be allowed to nurse my wine for long, though. I got a visit from Secretary Nestor Ikaroi, though it was not official and it was dealt with briskly. He’d come in person because my rank demanded it, not the message itself. It was certainly short enough that the walk to the Lineal from the city must have felt like a waste.

“Empress Basilia will be arriving in the capital within three days,” Secretary Nestor said. “And with her the rest of the League council.”

I made some expected noises about how I was looking forward to it and it would a pleasure to sit in the company of such an august council once more, but even as my lips moved my mind was racing. One was an oddity, two could be coincidence, but if I found a third… This was starting to look like a confluence, power calling to power, and there was only one thread of story in Salia that would demand so great a gathering to be resolved. Cordelia and Hanno had made their choices, begun their paths, and now water was flowing down the riverbed. Fuck, I’d thought I had more time. I sent away the Delosi with courtesy, polished off the rest of my glass and immediately went fishing.

If we were on the last stretch, as I was beginning to suspect, I needed to know how much time I had. Vivienne had hinted to me that she’d be trying her hand at the Salian archives tonight so she might find out what Cordelia was up to, but Hanno was proving unfortunately difficult to find for such a public figure. But first, I thought, I needed to find my third. My proof that events were in motion. And though it was tempting to think that the last part would be another surprise arrival, I dismissed the thought. Everyone that needed to be there for the resolution was already set to be, which meant I needed instead to be looking for a nudge.

One of Above’s since my half of the Gods had fallen silent. Thankfully, I had seen to that contingency already and all I needed to suffer was to limp my way up the damnable set of stairs up the eastern wing of the palace where my scrying mages had set up. I dropped down into a sinfully comfortable plush seat after having given my order, massaging my bad leg. The entire length felt like a single throbbing bruise. My mages were good at their business, and so it was only moments before the Observatory connected us to the silver mirror on the other side and Masego’s face was in front of me.

“Hierophant,” I said.

“Catherine,” Zeze enthused. “Very fine timing on your part.”

My eye narrowed.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve just had a breakthrough and Roland had a significant role in it.”

He looked surprised.

“That is broadly true,” Masego conceded. “He had a stroke of inspiration this morning and we just had our first results.”

My fingers clenched. Three for three, damn me. There was a reason I’d wanted the Rogue Sorcerer with Hierophant as he looked into returning Below’s stories, and it wasn’t just because Roland was one of the most learned people on Calernia when it came to magic. He was also a hero, and while my Gods had been silenced the opposition’s could still give a nudge here and there.

“Tell me,” I ordered.

“We believe the Intercessor is exerting the full strength of her aspect at all times to keep the stories muted,” Masego said. “Theoretically, with sufficient power directed in the exact right manner we could break the effort – and perhaps shattered the aspect itself in the process.”

“And we’ve got a source for that power?” I asked.

“Possibly one,” Hierophant said. “I need more time to prove it conclusively.”

And there it was.

“How long?” I asked.

“Five days.”

So that was my timeline. Five days, more or less, the Gods expected that there would be a Warden of the West seated opposite of me before we entered the last stretch of this war.

“Do what you can,” I said, and the ritual began to fade.

Five days, I thought, massaging my leg. I was not ready, but then neither were either of the claimants. And that was the part that was bothering me the more I thought about it. Hasenbach had the skills and the will to make a great Warden in some regards, but in others – direct strength, namelore – she was sorely lacking. It was the same for Hanno, whose weaknesses as a candidate were less direct but arguably even more dangerous. Neither of them seemed like a perfect fit for the Name, and though part of that might be blamed on the Role itself not having been settled yet it felt like too weak an explanation.

I’d been going back and forth between them looking for who should be backed, the rest of the Grand Alliance peering over my shoulder and wondering the same, but I couldn’t shake the impression that somehow both the choices were losing ones. That this should have been cleaner, that the angles of it were… slightly askew. My fingers clenched, then slowly unclenched. It would not do to start seeing a devil in every shadow, I reminded myself. And yet. I closed my eye, calmed my breath. My Name shook itself away, a great maw looking over my shoulder. I looked for the stars inside and found nothing, only darkness, but that was all right. The sight of them had been my Name recognizing a skill I already had and crowning it, not a gift Below had given me.

I could do it by hand, if need be, as I always had before. I would find out where the objects in motion were headed and what it meant, then lay the single finger on the scales that I was allowed. And since Vivienne was already looking into Cordelia Hasenbach, my task was clear: I was going to unearth the plans of the Sword of Judgement.

I went about it the polite way first, sending a rider to his war camp to ask where he might be and how soon we might speak.

The answer I got was a polite workaround giving me an actual answer, which told me that they didn’t actually know where he was right now. That was fine, as I’d not actually expected them to lead me to him: what I’d wanted to find out was whether or not they knew where he was. It did not seem the be the case, and that meant he was nowhere official. He’d gone to ground to get something done, which smacked to me of Hanno preparing his move to become Warden of the West. I’d not spent the hour waiting on the messenger idly, using it instead to cross off another possibility: more than half of the possible wielders for the Severance were in the city, so he couldn’t be holding a council of heroes over who’d get to wave it around.

I’d narrowed down the possibilities, but Hanno was still in the wind and I had no real idea of where he might be. Thankfully, in the process of finding the potential wielders of the Severance I’d also gotten my hands on an avenue to solve that lack.

“That’s a new kind,” I noted. “And I can almost smell the power coming off it.”

Adanna of Smyrna, the Blessed Artificer, looked at me smugly through her spectacles. It was a little unsettling to see those highborn golden eyes in the face if someone who wouldn’t spare a thimble of spit if every Soninke were on fire.

“The Hierophant is not the only who learns through facing opponents,” Adanna said, straightening proudly. “I have reached a deeper realm of understanding regarding the Light.”

I had no trouble believing that, looking at her newest receptacle for Above’s power: it looked like a wooden pillar about half a foot wide and seven tall, heavily sculpted and crisscrossed by rods of copper. It stung my eye to linger too long on the sculptures, which I took to mean they were sacred in some way. The Blessed Artificer’s entire workshop in the city reeked of the same uncomfortable power, but I kept it away from my face.

“I’m impressed,” I honestly said. “Has the White Knight seen it yet? He has final say over your artefacts before they become war assets.”

“Not yet,” the Blessed Artificer peevishly said. “He’s been busy of late.”

I cocked an eyebrow, making my disbelief blatant enough even she would pick up on it.

“It looks like a good shot at blowing through one of the gates of Keter,” I said. “What is it that’s more important, exactly?”

Just the right amount of disbelief and flattery, which should…

“My very opinion,” Adanna irritated said. “As if anything the Blacksmith could make would…”

Her mouth snapped shut and she eyed me warily.

“Why is it you came to visit again?” the Blessed Artificer asked.

“We need war assets accounted for before we move out,” I lied, “so we can assign them properly.”

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly more. She didn’t call me a liar, though she was clearly suspicious, because that was very much a legitimate reason for me to be here.

“I am sure Prince White will inform you when my work is ready for such considerations,” Adanna said, emphasizing Hanno’s recent title.

Well, no need to ask who she thought should be Warden of the West. I ‘reluctantly’ conceded that she was right and I really ought to wait for him, which gave her the pleasure of having caught me out trying to go around Hanno instead of figuring out what I was actually for. I let myself be ushered out without protest. I’d got what I needed from her: my next lead. The Bitter Blacksmith was involved in whatever it was that Hanno was up to, and while the Sword of Judgement was surrounded by people who’d obscure his movements should he ask the Lycaonese heroine would be much easier to track.

There were two Bitter Blacksmiths, a brother and a sister who were respectively a villain and a heroine. Helmgard Bauerlein was the eldest of the pair and though unlike her brother she was not a mage and did not work magic into her blades she’d still been the one picked to work on Severance in the Arsenal since she was better at handling exotic materials. In a time without the Truce and Terms, I was pretty sure one of them would have killed the other by now, but instead they’d both been recruited and kept in different theatres of the war – the north for the villain, the Arsenal for her.

Going by memory, we’d sent her Rozala’s way after all with another batch of Named from the Arsenal. The Princess of Aequitan’s armies saw a lot more siege warfare than Hanno’s did, so it’d been a natural fit. That was a good turn for me, since it meant the horse the Bitter Blacksmith would have saddled to get to Hanno’s camp would be from Princess Rozala’s spare horses. Something I was well within my right to ask about as a high officer of the Grand Alliance. Took me another hour to find out, but not because I was being put off: it turned out the Bitter Blacksmith hadn’t actually ridden out from Rozala’s camp but form Salia instead, presumably using a different stable.

I picked up her trail after remembering that the First Prince had once mentioned to me in passing setting aside a dozen stables and attendant horses for Named and dignitaries, when asking me about how many villains could actually ride a horse. One of those, I found out, had loaned out a horse to Helmgard Bauerlein. I wasn’t going to get lucky enough that the Blacksmith would conveniently reveal to a stable hand where Hanno had disappeared to, but I did get something out of investigating there: the horse had been taken yesterday afternoon and wasn’t expected back until tomorrow. I thanked the girl and limped away with two answers.

First, the Blacksmith had been headed out to the countryside outside the city. This wasn’t in Salia. Second, her usefulness to whatever Hanno was up to would end around tomorrow. Meaning whatever it was it was both ongoing and incomplete. It made sense, I grimly thought. Cordelia’s own mission in the Salian archives, whatever it might be, was not finished either. Claimant symmetry.

I hit the northern gate of Salia and had the watch captain there rustle up the commander for the evening shift yesterday, but it wasn’t through there the Blacksmith had gone. I tried the eastern gate instead and found her trail there. Good. Rode straight to the Army of Callow’s camp afterwards, to get my hands on the finest map I had of the region. There I ran into a dead end, because as far as that map had to say there was fuck all east of Salia. Townships and grain fields, but the closest city was two days’ ride away and that was too long for what I’d found out. Had Hanno just been looking for a quiet place to gather heroes and solidify his backing there like Cordelia had done with her princes?

No, it couldn’t be that. Whatever he was up to was ongoing, I’d already established that. He was actively doing something out there, not just looking up a place to do something later. Which meant my map didn’t have the right information, or at least the right kind of information. So what was it the Sword of Judgement had been looking for that wouldn’t be on my campaign maps? It wasn’t like Hanno actually knew the principality, he’d spent even less time here than I had. I went through a glass of wine thinking of that until I realized the obvious: Recall. The aspect, which I suspected him to still have to some extent, gave him access to anything a human hero had ever learned about Salia.

“Something old,” I murmured. “Old enough it wouldn’t on our maps anymore.”

Hanno wasn’t a ritual sort of man, so it wouldn’t be a forgotten place of power. The Bitter Blacksmith was the key, I decided. It was a sort of place he’d need her expertise for. The odds were decent it’d be a structure of some sort and I was out of my depth, so I went to find an expert of my own.

“You’re looking at this wrong,” Pickler said.

“That’s why I’m here, yes,” I drily replied. “Now tell me something I don’t know, if you would.”

“Male goblins lose their teeth easier, but they grow back until much later in their lives than most women,” my Sapper-General helpfully said.

I actually hadn’t known that, but I still gesture obscenely at her out of principle. After having taken her amusement at my expense, she then bothered to actually help me.

“He’s not going to need a blacksmith for a structure,” Pickler said. “It’s too far out her expertise. It’ll be something smaller, Catherine. Like a trap, or maybe a lock.”

I paused, going still in my seat. A lock. Fuck, I thought. Let me be wrong. The lock wasn’t so important as what you found those on. Pickler cleared her throat loudly. I cocked an eyebrow at her questioningly.

“You’re going the I-figured-it-out face,” the Sapper-General told me, looking irritated.

“Eh,” I said. “I might have. Maybe. Why’s it making you cranky?”

“Because you didn’t tell me what you figured out, you rude fuck,” Pickler said. “Do you expect us to just read your mind?”

I considered her for a moment, cocking my head to the side, then smiled beatifically.

“Thank for your teaching me about goblin teeth, Sapper-General,” I sweetly replied.

She cursed me all the way out of her tent, as was only just. Smiling as I was, my mind raced ahead. I needed another set of maps, but that wasn’t the kind either the Army of Callow or the Legions of Terror would have. The Blood, maybe? I grimaced as I limped my way through the camp avenues. No, Levantine maps were infamously terrible. They’d actually used Proceran ones when fighting the Legions in the central Principate. The Dominion was close enough they should have the maps, but unlikely to have them. I needed people who’d been recording history for long enough that… Ah, I grinned. It happened that I did know a historian, and a pretty good one too.

Secretary Nestor Ikaroi of Delos, though in practice an ambassador from the League of Free Cities, was not officially that. So while he fulfilled the functions, the First Prince had not lodged him in one of the empty palaces of the Lineal: if she did, it’d be something of an insult when the formal diplomats arrived since they’d be put on even footing. It was already mid afternoon by then so it was with slight impatience that I found the officer of the Jacks that Vivienne had left in the palace and found out where he was being lodged. Amusingly enough it was only four streets away from where the Goethal manse I’d visited that morning was, so I rode back to the neighbourhood.

One a horse. It made Zombie jealous, but she was just a tad too noticeable and I was trying to be discreet.

Secretary Nestor received me with all courtesies, visibly expecting me to be about to tell him which claimant we should back, so he was rather surprised when instead I asked him a question as a scholar. Surprised and rather flattered, by my estimation.

“So the Secretariat does keep extensive records of the lands that became Procer even before the Principate was founded,” I said.

“We do,” Nestor said. “Nicae had extensive trade and marriage ties to many of the great reales of the Arlesite south and most of the League imported spelter from what is now Orne before it became cheaper to buy it from the Empire instead. We have a great many contemporary firm and weak sources for the chronicles, though we ever seek to refine our knowledge.”

“And what have you got on Salia?” I asked.

“Less than we’d like,” Secretary Nestor admitted. “We tried to reconcile the stories from Chansons des pierres et du vent with contemporary tribal conflicts, but there is not much to use. The region only began to rise under the Vezelons and then the Merovins, fairly late in Alamans history.”

Well, it was worth asking anyway.

“In any of your histories,” I said, “is there ever mention of a dwarven gate in Salia?”

The old man leaned back into his seat, looking very interested.

“It has been alleged,” the white-haired scholar said. “As I’m sure you know, the Kingdom Under rarely keeps a gate for more than a century or two – with the exception of the Mercantis gate – so the location of many have been lost.”

“Of course,” I smiled, not having known that in the slightest. “But there are indications there might have been one in what is now Salia?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Secretary Nestor said. “There are repeated mentions of the ‘Carrouges fairgrounds’ in different chronicles, which drew some skepticism as fairgrounds were sacred to early Alamans – it was forbidden to fight there – but there are no Mavian prayers in the region that would explain such a truce being observed.”

Dwarven presence certainly would explain the tribes being reluctant to fight. The dwarves were not shy about enforcing civility on everyone else. I leaned forward.

“These ‘Carrouges fairgrounds’, were they ever found?”

“I don’t believe so,” the old man said. “There is a town of the same name a few hours to the east of the city, I believe, but the existence of such a gate was never proven.”

Fuck, I thought, even as I felt a swell of triumph. I was pretty sure I’d just found Hanno, but what I’d found was not exactly pleasing. I took my leave from the white-haired askretis, avoiding answering when he obliquely brought up what he’d last come to me to discuss. He took that well enough, declining to press the matter once it became clear I was not ready to commit either way. I rode back to the palace and unfurled the maps there, finding what Nestor Ikaroi had mentioned: a small village to the east of Salia called Carrouges. It shared the name with a nearby swamp.

The afternoon was getting long in the tooth but there was nothing to gain by waiting, so I was back in the saddle within moments of getting some food in my stomach. I took Zombie, this time, to her vocal pleasure. Having bored of terrifying stable hands she cawed triumphantly when we rose into the sky, uncaring that I had first veiled us in Night. The roads were very good this close to Salia so I didn’t gain much time by flying instead of riding, but I did get a much better view of what lay ahead from the heights.

We were just past dusk when I led Zombie into a circular glide over what had to be Carrouges according to the map. The village was both unimpressive and empty. Parts of it had also burned down at some point, most of them around the House of Light. Considering the broken tower that’d once topped the temple was at the heart of the burnt-out husks, I was inclined to blame a lightning strike and everybody being gone for that. The Carrouges swamp, though, was swarming with activity.

It was hard to tell how large the swamp would originally have been, as it’d since been drained. What had to be maybe two hundred soldiers, by the look of the banners a mix of Brabantine conscripts and fantassins, were digging out of the dried mud a massive steel trapdoor. I saw remains of a large stone structure as well, pillars and maybe parts of a roof lying around, but that was broken. The trapdoor was still pristine, and I risked flying even lower under the cover of night. Just as I’d thought, over the steel door a solitary figure was moving around.

Trying to force open the lock in the middle, using long iron poles and what looked like a complicated system of counterweights. I had found the Bitter Blacksmith.

I did not bother to land, instead spurring on Zombie to rise back above the clouds and head back to Salia. I’d already learned everything I needed to, all that showing up there would achieve was a confrontation. When I’d spoken with Hanno, he had stated he wanted to have a conversation with the Herald. That, should an appeal fail, he then wanted to speak directly with the Kingdom Under. For both those things, though, he would need the First Prince to arrange the conversations. Now it seemed he might be digging up an old dwarven gate so he could cut out the middlewoman and make his move no matter what anyone else thought. Something had begun to feel wrong this morning and the feeling was only increasing as the evening went on.

I chewed on that all the way back to the palace, arriving near Midnight Bell, but was no closer to an answer when I found Vivienne waiting for me in the solar. By the look on her face, though, that was about to change. She had a glass of wine in hand and she drained it all when I arrived, slumped bonelessely in her seat.

“Did you ever wonder where the Tyrant learned his gargoyle trick?” the Princess asked me.

“I’d assumed Helikean mages,” I replied, sitting across from her. “Was I wrong?”

“I have my doubts,” Vivienne drawled, “since I just spent an hour avoiding squealing warthogs made of stone on the roof of the Salian archive. Have you ever seen a stone warthog, Catherine?”

“I have not,” I replied, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of my tone.

“You wouldn’t believe how quick on the hooves the bastards are, given the weight,” she muttered. “Or how goddamned loud they squeal. If I hadn’t followed Southpool tripward rules and brought two pigeons to let loose as a decoy the guards would have caught me and we would have had a very awkward diplomatic incident to deal with.”

“But you came through,” I grinned, “as I never doubted you would.”

I received an obscene gesture we’d both learned from Indrani in answer and only then did she begin aggressively slapping down books on the low table. One, two, three – seven all in all, and then one scroll she pressed directly into my hand was not a copy of something but a list. Of all the things Cordelia Hasenbach had been reading for which we did not have a tome of at hand. It was the overwhelming majority, but that wasn’t exactly unexpected. My eye scanned down, brow creasing as it did.

“Yeah, couldn’t make too much of it myself,” Vivienne said. “I got the common books, they’re the ones we have in this palace’s library.”

I hadn’t even known we had one of those, but then I’d seen barely a third of this place.

“Any common thread?” I asked.

“The books I did find in the palace are the easy part,” the Princess said. “They’re all about coin.”

I let out a contemplative noise. Huh. Hadn’t expected that.

“How so?”

“Apparently back in the early days of the Principate, the First Prince that talked the Highest Assembly into having a common currency and giving the officer control of the mints was saddled with a condition,” Vivienne said. “The princes were afraid that First Princes would just debase currency whenever they needed quick gold for a war or a palace and fuck over the rest of Procer doing it. So all the mints were to keep count of how many coins were minted and it’d be written on scrolls that the Highest Assembly would be given a copy of at the beginning of every year.”

I blinked in surprise.

“Five of those seven books are compendiums of those scrolls,” Vivienne told me. “The other two are about currency as well, but not Procer’s. It’s about foreign coinage and how much metal there was in it, how much it was worth.”

I hummed again.

“Anything that stuck out there?”

“Callow got fucked by the way the Fairfaxes kept allowing other nobles to mint their coins,” Vivienne said. “Meant no one outside our borders ever wanted to take it. The Dread Empire’s aurelii were considered more reliable even during periods when the Tower was at war with half of Calernia.”

Yeah, I grimly thought, that sounded about right. Ratface had been appalled at Callowan coinage, back in the day, and though we’d never finished edging out the other Callowan coinage I suspected that Queen Vivienne’s reign would see that work thoroughly finished.

“So she’s looking at the old finances of Procer,” I mused.

“Not just that, though,” Vivienne said. “The list casts a broader net.”

It really did. The books in there were all over the place. Going by the tiles there was stuff in there about voting rights in the Highest Assembly, Proceran trade with the League – particularly Mercantis – and more historical stuff. Like the old Lycaonese states before they were turned into principalities, chronicles about Penthes in the last two centuries, precedents for royal land grants in Procer, Highest Assembly records from Orne and Bayeux, and most strangely of all a book about the wars waged by the Republic of Bellerophon. Vivienne was right, it was a pretty broad net that the First Prince had cast.

“I’m not seeing a pattern,” I admitted.

Somewhere in this was the foundation of Cordelia Hasenbach’s attempt to become Warden of the West, but I wasn’t seeing it.

“From the list there are maybe seventy of the named works that are about trade,” Vivienne said. “Either inside Procer or with the League of Free Cities. If I had to guess, that’s the unifying thread. The coinage books are just to understand what the coin was worth, it’s all about where the gold has been going.”

Only that didn’t explain the histories, I thought with a frown. Or the sudden preoccupation with voting rights when at the moment the Highest Assembly was pretty much an empty formality. Why would she-

“Fuck,” I swore. “Merciless, buggering Gods fuck.”

Vivienne poured herself another cup of wine but didn’t even offer me the same courtesy, the ungrateful wretch.

“I take it you’ve realized something?” the Princess drily asked.

“We’re not seeing a pattern because those books aren’t about one thing,” I said. “They’re about two things.”

I rapped a knuckled atop the books.

“She used those to know what Procer’s coin was worth,” I said. “Then the trade books and the foreign currency books are about finding out how large the wealth of other nations was. Specifically nations that were trading with the dwarves.”

“That explains the Mercantis books and the Penthesian ones, they both have gates,” Vivienne said, “but Bellerophon-”

“Hates Penthes to the bone,” I said. “So most of the time, when they declare a war it’s attacking Penthes. That weakens trade in the region, even if they lose the war.”

She was a smart woman, Vivienne, so she caught up quickly.

“That’s what the records of Orne and Bayeux in the Highest Assembly are about,” she realized. “They used to trade raids with the Counts of Ankou through the Red Flower Vales, and whenever their holdings were hit-”

“-they complained about it in the Highest Assembly, trying to get backing from the First Princes,” I finished. “And when Cordelia sees those complains, she knows that trade with Callow was drying up since the Vales used to be our only land path to Procer. It’s about their wealth, not us.”

“It’s insane, Catherine,” Vivienne grimaced. “I know she’s an intelligent woman, but trying to figure out entire treasuries from just these records? To have even a chance, she’d need…”

“Someone capable of reading through an entire library in a day and remember every word,” I interrupted. “Like, say, the Forgetful Librarian.”

I saw the understanding sink in. Cordelia wasn’t reading those books herself, at least not most of them. She was using the Librarian to do it and then using her as a living reference book to work with. It was insane, just as Vivienne had said, but if there was one woman in Calernia who might be able to pull it off it was Cordelia Hasenbach. Who was, for all her flaws, a remarkably brilliant woman.

“She’s putting hard numbers to how much trade with the dwarves is worth,” I said. “That’s what she’s doing. She’s figured out something about what the Herald wants and she’s following the trail so she can figure out how to flip the negotiations around.”

“That’s good,” Vivienne slowly said. “Isn’t it? We’re in favour of getting the best of the Herald, aren’t we?”

“No when Hanno is going all in on a fundamentally incompatible path,” I cursed. “He’s digging up a dwarven gate to approach them on his own.”

“Cordelia’s position could accommodate that,” the Princess frowned. “She’s not committed yet, she-”

“She is,” I interrupted. “Because of the other thing she’s doing, the one you couldn’t figure out because you didn’t have the conversation with Frederic Goethal I had this morning.”

My fingers clenched.

“Old Lycaonese borders, voting rights?” I said. “Look at the shape of it, Vivienne. Hasenbach was the Iron Prince’s heiress, in principle she’s Princess of Hannoven as well as Prince of Rhenia right now. Mathilda of Neustria died in Hainaut and word is pretty much all the Siegenburg of Neustria died defending their lands. That leaves two people to hold all the north: Cordelia Hasenbach and Otto Reitzenberg.”

And Otto Redcrown had been in that closed council.

“The only reason voting rights would matter,” Vivienne slowly said, “is if she believes that there is about to be a change to the borders of the principalities.”

“The Kingfisher Prince told me this morning that the princes would stand behind her united,” I said. “I think we’ve just found out how she bought that.”

“She’s going to abdicate,” the Princess said.

“Not just as First Prince,” I said. “As Prince of Rhenia and Princess of Hannoven as well. She’s uniting all Lycaonese lands under Prince Otto.”

“Princess Rozala would dare ask as much,” Vivienne said.

“No,” I said, “but Hasenbach is smart. I underestimated her.”

I let out a sigh.

“She’s realized she can’t be a ruler and the Warden of the West at the same time,” I said. “So she’s settling all her affairs before she goes all in on her claim.”

And there would be no room for retreat, I realized with horror, after having cut away so much of what she loved. She would be in it to the knife. And so would Hanno, who fought for nothing except what he was willing to die for: he would not bend, not now that he believed he’d found a way to save us all. Wasn’t that the lesson he’d learned from the silence of the Tribunal: that sometimes you had to take it on your own hands, because no one else would? Fuck, I thought once more. I still wasn’t sure what that royal land grant book was for, but it didn’t matter.

Not when I’d just become clear that the two claimants to the Name of Warden of the West had just begun to plod down path that could not be reconciled. The differences of opinion over the Blood, they’d just been a pivot that differentiate them. The dwarves were the pivot where the knives came out and neither of them were leaving any room for retreat. Hanno was staking his entire soundness as a leader on the gambit of levelling with the dwarves, risking disgrace if he failed. Which he would if Cordelia found her solution and got to the dwarves first. If he lost there, he was done as a claimant.

The entire philosophy he’d adopted in the wake of the Choir of Judgement falling silent would be proved wrong. The judgment he’d finally begun to venture would be proved wrong at its first real test.

On the other hand, Cordelia had burned every bridge behind her before taking her leap. She was renouncing titles and wealth and rule of the most powerful nation of Calernia to become Warden of the West, which she’d prove worthy of by bending the Herald of the Deeps to her will. Something that could be rendered completely worthless if Hanno got to him first and succeeded with his appeal on emotion. All those sacrifices rendered into nothing in the span of a single conversation. My stomach tightened just thinking about it.

“They’re not just rival claimants, Vivienne,” I quietly said. “If one of them wins, it fucks over the other. Strongly. Permanently.”

She studied me with hooded eyes.

“You told me,” the Princess said, “that a pivot cannot be had without a cost.”

It’s too high a cost, I thought. Their trajectory was a collision from which only one would walk away, and I was not certain we could afford to lose either of them. Slowly I shook my head.

“This is not coincidence,” I murmured. “Or fate, and least of all providence.”

And that left only one possibility: enemy action.