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One of them was a branch Sahelian, their head mage, and she’d been trying to barricade herself in a fortified room when Hierophant came and stomped out the notion by casually wresting her sorcery away from her. I’d left him to interrogate her and gone to supervise the movement of the prisoners instead. We’d made a gate into Twilight right outside the walls and we were herding the disarmed prisoners across by groups of twenty, into the tender waiting embrace of legionaries waiting on the other side. We’d be marching them straight into a warded prison pit that Juniper had ordered dug inside our camp, where the Jacks and the phalanges would begin interrogating them for news about the state of the city.

I was now leaning against stone on the same parapet Lady Semira had stood on when we’d talked, watching it unfold as I chatted with Captain Diara.

“- moved them to a freehold in the Green Stretch as soon as I could afford it,” she told me, speaking of her parents. “My brother’s still out east in one of the Bassa towns, I think, but we haven’t talked in years.”

“I hear it’s good land down in the Stretch, so long as the levees don’t break,” I said.

“It is, but there are dangers. People were worried it was going to be trouble when you first took the throne, Your Majesty,” Captain Diara admitted. “That’s passed, of course. Now they know that even if comes to steel there won’t be paladins knocking at the doors for ‘tithes’ and pointed questions about troop movements.”

The Order of the White Hand were still considered heroes, back home, tragically destroyed by my father in the first stroke of the Conquest. The freeholders of the Green Stretch had been significantly less convinced of the heroism of said paladins, not without reason. Callow had been occupied by the Dread Empire for so long it was easy to forget that the Old Kingdom hadn’t been saints. It’d not been worse than most nations out there, but it’d not been any better either.

“It’s the Tower my dispute is with,” I said. “It’s the Tower I’ll settle it with.”

The captain slowly nodded, expression hard to read. Whatever she might have said was not to be, as Masego strode out of the stairway with his robes sweeping behind him. He looked in a fine mood, and I could smell the scent of power still on him. He was holding magic.

“Time for me to check on my sergeants,” Captain Diara tactfully said. “It was an honour, Your Majesty.”

“It was my honour to hear you harangue those poor bastards for half an hour,” I replied with a smile. “See you around, captain.”

She offered a salute to Hierophant as he passed, which he returned with an absent-minded nod before coming to stand at my side.

“Got anything good?” I asked.

“Several of the ciphers the Sahelians use when scrying,” Masego said. “It will be of use when intercepting their communications.”

“Cutting High Lord Sargon off from Malicia would be ideal,” I admitted. “It’ll be easier to force his hand that way.”

Malicia had soulboxed him when she’d put him on the High Seat, which meant she could effectively torture him with impunity and at will, but that was the kind of tool she wouldn’t use blindly. If he wasn’t contradicting an explicit order from the Tower when he surrendered his granaries to us, the ruler of Wolof was a lot more likely to fold. There wasn’t a lot I could threaten him that would be worse than what Malicia could do with half an hour and an incantation.

“It will do Sapan some good to study higher order mathematics,” Hierophant mused. “I’ll make her work on the ciphers with me.”

“Surprised she doesn’t know about those already,” I said. “Ashurans are famous sailors and navigation’s all about numbers and stars, way I hear it.”

“She meant to be a healer, so what they taught her of mathematics at that academy in Ashur was insultingly limited,” Masego said, sounding peeved. “Sabrathan sorcery encourages specialization, Catherine, as the knowledge overlap between its different disciplines is supposedly very limited.”

I hummed in understanding. For all that Hierophant had always rather looked down on the sorcery the Thalassocracy of Ashur practiced, what I’d heard of it was rather impressive. They had finer healing mages than the Praesi and they could whip up winds and storms out of blue sky. Sabrathan magic did seem to have pretty stark limits on what could be done well with it, though, so I wasn’t surprised Masego held it in such low esteem. He’d been raised to treat magic as something more than just a tool, a philosophical quest for the truth of Creation. There was little chance of him respecting people who, in his eyes, willingly chose to cripple themselves before even beginning that quest.

“Tell me how it pans out,” I shrugged. “I’m curious how much she’ll take to your teachings.”

I was more curious if she was going to end up a long-term threat to people or places I cared about, to be honest, but Zeze enjoyed talking about his pupil and I enjoyed indulging him. While Masego cordially disliked teaching large groups, the way he had when I’d asked him to make my Legion and later Army cadres into mages capable of battlefield ritual magic, he seemed to be relishing teaching a single highly skilled pupil. It was the kind of teaching he was likely most familiar with, I’d eventually realized. Just like Warlock had done with him.

“I will,” he assured me. “Though none of this is why I came. You earlier mentioned intending to scry Juniper for news of how her warring went. Shall we, before I must release the magic I wrested?”

I’d actually figured it would be one of our mages I relied on for that, but if Zeze was volunteering I wasn’t going to complain. And if this marked yet another instance of him keeping someone’s magic in his hands just a little longer than was strictly necessary, well, part of loving someone was knowing when you needed to avert your eye.

“Please do,” I replied.

It didn’t take long to get a hold of my marshal even though the night’s action was far from over, as she’d been expecting me. After the fortress was invested one of our mages had sent word that things had gone well, but not gotten much in exchange: the offensive had still been happening. After a few moments Aisha’s face appeared in the mirror-like circle of magic that Masego had drawn in the air, offering me a smile before disappearing and being replaced with the Hellhound’s thicker features.

“Warlord,” she greeted me.

“Marshal,” I replied. “How did the attack go?”

“We hold Sinka,” Juniper said. “The garrison in the villages began to retreat after skirmishing against our vanguard and we caught fewer than fifty of them. We didn’t get any trouble out of the people themselves, the seneschal fled after leaving orders to surrender without violence.”

Huh. That was unusually caring, by Praesi standards. Most Wasteland nobles would have sent their people into the grinder without a second thought, thinking a few of my soldiers killed a fair trade for bleeding the populace of a port they no longer held. High Lord Sargon’s orders, or the small rebellion of a decent man in a bad position? Hard to know.

“Any moves from Wolof?”

“They tried a sortie,” Juniper acknowledged. “Two thousand household troops, with mage support and about a hundred walin-falme for vanguard. They hit our screening force head on and withdrew when the Order flanked them. They sacrificed the devils to eat the charge and retreated into the city.”

“That looks like a straightforward blunder,” I frowned. “Only two thousand? It’s a large chunk of their forces, but they have to know we’d eat that on the field. Especially when we have cavalry and they don’t.”

My marshal looked pleased, licking her fangs in approbation.

“It was a pin,” Juniper said. “They were tying down our screening force while they hit the men I sent to take Sinka. They waited until after the surrender, when we’d begun to split the force into the smaller garrisons we’ll be leaving.”

My brow rose. That implied they’d managed a night ambush on open grounds while we fielded goblins.

“They had illusions good enough we couldn’t see through them?” I asked.

“The attackers were in the river,” Juniper grimaced. “Deep enough our first sweep with mages didn’t catch them. They had boats hidden on the far side of the Wasaliti under illusions and some kind of half-fish devil in the-”

She turned a moment, leaning towards someone I only dimly heard speak before nodding thanks.

“Sahelian sends word the devils are called nikyana

, and that Wolof usually keeps a few contracts but nowhere as many as we saw tonight,” the tall orc growled. “At least seven hundred of the bastards popped out of the river on our flanks and they would have caught us entirely by surprise without the Silver Huntress giving alarm They don’t use weapons but they’re quick and strong, we lost almost a full cohort before we realized what was happening.”

I winced. Caught out of formation, my legionaries would have had a hard time handling devils. Like with heavy horse, you needed thick ranks and spellfire to handle a charge of those.

“And bleeding us wasn’t even the point of the attack,” Juniper revealed.

My brow rose.

“They infiltrated a mage cadre with escorts to try to grab Vivienne in the chaos,” Juniper said. “The Squire and the Apprentice drove them off, but apparently it was a close thing. The moment the grab failed the entire attack was called off and they retreated into the river.”

I let out a low whistle. That’d actually been a sharp play from Sargon, assuming it really was the young lord’s plan. Vivienne was one of the few people in my army I couldn’t afford not to bargain for, if she were taken prisoner. Should Sargon threaten to put her head on a pike unless I retreated, he would have me in a very tricky position.

“Total casualties?” I asked.

“Between Sinka and the plain, we lost three hundred and twelve,” she said. “Cost them at least two hundred where Tanja held command on top of the forty and so we captured, so there’s that, but they’re keeping to standard Praesi tactics when it comes to soaking up casualties with devils.”

Forty years ago, before the Reforms, orcs and goblins would have been right with the devils eating those Callowan blades, I thought. Bleeding so that their betters wouldn’t. Looking at the hard cast of my marshal’s face, I suspected I wasn’t the only one who’d thought that. I quickly went over the fall of Jinon for her and concluded with the prisoners now headed her way.

“Good news,” Juniper said. “I have mages and the Huntress following the diabolists on the river. We’ll try to hit them before they can retreat to Wolof.”

“Take prisoners if you can,” I said, “but our people come first.”

I wanted diabolists, but I didn’t need them that badly. A handful grabbed off the field weren’t going to be enough to handle the Hellgates, I was going to need a genuine diplomatic concession to secure that many. Juniper nodded, offering me a crisp Legion salute before the spell died and the magic displaying her face dissipated. I rolled my shoulder, sighing. It was already a long night and it was still far from over. I turned to Masego.

“Assuming the prisoners are out, I’ll need to help establish our own garrison here,” I said. “Do you think you could check the wards for nasty surprises?”

The Concocter would be coming along later too, to see if my idea about how get into the city was feasible.

“I will,” Hierophant said, burning eyes swivelling lazily in their sockets, “but I expect you’ll have more pressing matters to attend to.”

“Like?”

“Aunt Eudokia just walked through the gates,” Masego said, “and she looks in a hurry.”

Scribe looked both healthier than when I’d last seen her and deeply exhausted. It was the good kind of exhausted, though, the kind you got from putting all of yourself into something you loved. Her back was straight and though as always my attention slid right off her – save for the same detail, the perennially ink-stained hands – I got a sense of vitality from her that she’d lacked when she had first reached out to me in Hainaut. I had come to believe that, more than anything, Scribe thrived on being useful. The cause didn’t matter much, it was about stretching her abilities to the limit. In a way it was like Ranger’s thirst for worthy fights, though neither woman would thank me for the comparison.

“Queen Catherine,” she greeted me, shortly bowing.

“Scribe,” I replied. “Pleasure to have you back with us, though I expected it would be back at the camp.”

“There has been a change of plans,” she said. “The envoys heard there would be an assault on Jinon, and they insisted on speaking with you here.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“They want to see if I’m strong enough to beard the Sahelians in their own backyard,” I said.

Which was fair enough. Nobody liked backing a losing horse. Besides, orcs respected strength above all and this bunch was more opportunistic than most.

“How long until they’re here?” I asked.

“A quarter hour at most,” Scribe said. “I requested of Archer that she slow their passage through the Ways, but there are limits.”

“She’ll do what she can,” I muttered.

My mind was already racing ahead, putting the pieces in place. I would have preferred having Vivienne here for this, since any deals made would be inherited by her, but that’d be hard to arrange. This wouldn’t end with a single conversation anyway.

“Indeed,” Scribe said. “A stark improvement on her predecessor in every regard, Archer.”

I eyed the villainess amusedly. She’d been less than fond of Ranger even before the Lady of the Lake had put an arrow an inch away from her heart.

“Thanks for the heads up,” I said.

“There is more,” Scribe said. “I received word from my agents in the northeast: the fortress of Chagoro has fallen.”

I took me a moment to place that name in my mental map of Praes. It was one of the main fortresses north of the High Seat of Okoro, an important strategic position since it was close to the two easiest passes into the Northern Steppes. It was the keystone of Okoro’s northern defences, and supposedly one of the thornier fortresses in the region.

“Who holds it?” I frowned. “It is one of the Clans?”

High Lord Jaheem Niri was one of Malicia’s supporters and his domain has been largely spared the depredations that most of Praes had suffered, so this was something of a surprise. The Niri could still field one of the largest private fighting forces in the Empire, and they wouldn’t skimp on their northern defences when there was trouble in the Steppes. A surprise attack by supporters of Sepulchral, maybe?

“No one holds it,” Scribe evenly said. “It is full of corpses.”

My thoughts ground to a halt. What?

“My agents confirmed that the killing was done by blade, over the span of less than an hour, and that the assailants took no casualties,” she continued.

“That’s absurd,” I bit out. “How many soldiers were there in that fortress, Scribe?”

“A little over a thousand,” she replied.

“It can’t be the Dead King,” I frowned, “he’s bound by oath to attack neither Praes nor Callow. Who could-”

I closed my eyes, abandoning the train of thought. It was a dead end, there were too many monsters out there in the wilds that I knew little about. Capacity for destruction, for killing, was not that uncommon. It would instead be much more useful to figure out who gained from Chagoro falling. I did, since it made Okoro a lot more vulnerable to attacks by the Clans, but this hadn’t been a scheme of mine. Sepulchral benefitted as well, arguably, since anything weakening a backer of Malicia’s helped her cause. She shouldn’t have assets capable of something this flashy, though. Could the Empress herself have done it? She certainly had the ruthlessness, but I wasn’t seeing a gain for her to make. Even of Jaheem Niri had been about to turn on her and she wanted him kept busy, there were better ways.

And this timing, I thought, it was too good.

I wanted to bring the Clans into the war, specifically for them to fall on the back of Malicia’s northern allies, and the High Lord of Okoro had been a major obstacle in that regard. With a major gap in his defences, however, there were now chances that orc clans would go raiding even if it had nothing to do with me whatsoever. And it was coming at a precisely the right time, while I was mauling Wolof with the Army of Callow and Malica’s armies were still making their way up from down south. Okoro stood alone and with its pants down. That wasn’t a coincidence, it was too precise for that, and-

“Black,” I murmured. “Black did this.”

“Ranger is powerful, but not so powerful as that,” Scribe objected.

He shouldn’t have the resources to pull off something like this, that much was true. It was pretty much just him and the Lady of the Lake out there, wasn’t it? He’d not even picked up that nice army of deserters waiting for him in the Green Stretch – though I had my doubts about that, it seemed a little too convenient – and taken them in hand. Archer and Akua had believed, I recalled from the last time we’d discussed the matter in council, that he couldn’t take up such a position. It would be a death trap to be visible, since Ranger was being hunted by the Emerald Swords. My thoughts stalled for a moment after that, as the realization sunk in, because surely he hadn’t.

It was the kind of reckless play I would have made, nothing like the calculating and cold-blooded man who’d taught me. And yet.

“Eudokia,” I quietly said. “Your agents, they said it was done with blades. Did they get a read on the number of assailants?”

“No,” Scribe admitted. “All they could give me was that it looked like halfway through the fight soldiers began fleeing and they were run down to the last.”

And that wasn’t much, wasn’t a confirmation, but it fit.

“Fuck me,” I said. “He used Ranger as bait, Scribe. The Emerald Swords did this. He drew them there to clear out the fortress.”

She blinked in surprise, then after a long moment sighed. Tellingly, she did not disagree. Silly me, how could I not have expected my father would find a way to turn his sole companion being hunted by ten of the most dangerous people on Calernia into an advantage. I’d come by my bastardry honestly, I shouldn’t have forgot. And against my better judgement, I found my lips twitching. Welcome to the war, Black. Finally making your move, are you?

“So he wants the Clans going on the offensive too,” I mused. “Interesting.”

What exactly my father wanted and how he intended to achieve remained unclear to me, and likely would for some time. If he’d wanted to speak with me, he would have by now. I cast a look at Scribe, who had remained silent as I thought.

“If you offered your services again,” I said, “I’m not sure he would refuse you a second time.”

I was under no illusions that our months of collaboration in any way trumped decades of close friendship. The Calamities had been tightly bound, before they began dropping dead.

“You worry of my loyalties,” Scribe said.

“I don’t,” I said. “I know exactly where they lie. And it’s not empty words when I say that there would be no rancour, should you-”

“I am not a good or pleasant woman, Catherine Foundling,” Eudokia the Scribe said and for a heartbeat I saw brown eyes flashing with anger, set in a tanned and freckled face. “I do not pretend otherwise. I have little use for the morals you espouse or the causes you champion, save when they intersect with my own diversions.”

“But,” I said.

“But I am a woman of my word,” Scribe said. “I believe in contracts and the worth of promises. Even should I decide to leave your side – and if I do it will not be like this, like some beaten dog crawling back to her master’s feet – even then, I would no more reveal secrets learned in your service than I have revealed you those I learned in his.”

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them. How much of that had been truth and how much of it a lie? It was the proportions that made the difference between poison and medicine.

I was going to be betrayed at least once before the month was out, but would Scribe make the second?

“I believe you,” I lied, and we prepared for our guests.

Sometimes diplomacy was about making a point.

That was why, when five orcs passed through the gates of Jinon following Indrani, they stopped and stared at the sight awaiting them for a beat. It was not the throne that caught their eye, though shaping it out of roiling Night had lent it a certain imperious look. It wasn’t the deadwood staff across my knees either, or crow-shaped shadows perched above my shoulders. It was the piles of arms and armour that filled the courtyard, glittering and ornate Praesi armaments spread around like a carpet of steel. Hundreds of swords and shields, of cuirasses and helmets, and not a corpse anywhere around to be seen. Only steel and silence, with the moon high above and dark walls around us.

That was my point: I took this fortress, and I did not even bleed for it.

Archer was hiding a smile as she walked to us through the path. I had a small honour guard around me, a simple line of regulars, and though Hierophant was somewhere above on a parapet it was Scribe who stood behind me on my left. There were five seats awaiting, for the five orcs that the clans I’d reached out to had sent. Scribe whispered the names into my ear even as they approached, their body language wary. Asny of the Graven Bone Clan, taller than even Hakram and sister to her clan’s chief. Valborg of the Stag-Crowned Clan, stooped but strong and eldest raid leader of the Stag-Crowned. Skarod Longaxe, the small but nimble husband to the chieftain of the Blackspear Clan. The twins Sigvin and Sigvun of the Split Tree Clan were the last, rumoured to both be shamans and shapeshifters.

It was the clan I needed on my side the least that’d sent two envoys, ironically enough. The Blackspears, the Graven Bone and the Stag-Crowned were the three largest southern clans, but that wasn’t actually why I’d reached out to them. I had decent relations with the Red Shields and the Howling Wolves – Juniper and Hakram’s clans – and they were among the great orc powers too. No, those three were here because Malicia had raised them over other orcs by ennobling their chiefs as Lords of the Steppe and empowering them to collect tribute on behalf of the Tower. The Split Tree twins, on the other hand, were here for slightly more complicated reasons.

Their clan was respected and well-connected, boasting a number of genuine spellcaster shamans, and it’d made the Split Tree Clan an important part of the alliance that’d formed around the Lords of the Steppes. Those three clans had… mixed reputations. The Split Tree being part of the alliance lent it respect it badly needed, considering when the Howling Wolves – currently the largest and most well-respected of the clans – were at the head of the alliance opposing the Lords of the Steppe. For me that meant having them on board was much to be preferred, if a bargain was to happen, but they weren’t strictly required. Archer left their side after offering me a grin, coming to stand at my right. As the orcs approached a legionary came forward with a plate holding a large cut of salted pork and a mug of beer.

“I offer you meat and drink from my table,” I spoke in Kharsum.

They each took a bite and a sip – I noted that the Blackspear envoy, Skarod Longaxe, went first – and only then did the wariness leave them. I’d just formally given them my hospitality, and though the custom was not as ironclad with orcs as it was with Taghreb it wasn’t something to lightly cross.

“Good, we’re done with the shite then,” Asny of the Graven Bones grunted, spitting to the side. “Hail, Black Queen.”

“Hail, Asny of the Graven Bones,” I replied, faintly amused. “And to you all.”

It got growls in answer, rough acknowledgement.

“You wanted to have talks, Black Queen,” Skarod Longaxe said. “Talk, then. You’re not the only one with a war on.”

“That one’s her war too, unless she’s stopped trading weapons to our enemies,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned peevishly said.

I hadn’t. Hakram’s revision of the proposal that’d troubled me so much had proved viable in arming the clans we wanted armed in the Steppes. We’d taken to buying dwarven

weapons through Mercantis, which while relatively low-quality were cheap and came in large crates. We traded them to friendly clans in the north for amber, furs and raw iron ore – which we then traded back to Mercantis at a mark up, making a small but tidy profit. We could sustain that trade route for years, considering Callow had nowhere enough trading barges to flood either market to the extent that prices would lower. The kind of diplomatic flourishes I’d gotten used to trotting out in Procer would be useless here, so instead I leaned into my natural instinct.

“You hitched your chariot to a dying horse,” I bluntly told them. “It’s time to cut loose before it drags you down with it.”

Asny barked out a laugh.

“You’ve got guts, Queen, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But it’s a little soon to make that claim, yeah? Tower’s still standing.”

“There are many who have fought Dread Empress Malicia, over the years,” Sigvin of the Split Tree said, voice soft for all that she was built like barn door. “Some even had the better of her, for a time. None still remain.”

I smiled at them, all teeth and malice.

“If my armies are at the gates of Ater, what use do I have for any of you?” I said. “When the Tower falls – and it will – what reason do I have to care about your enemies butchering every last one of you? If you’re of no use to me, you’re meat. Now is when you earn your worth.”

Skarod Longaxe, envoy for the Blackspears, spat to the side on some soldier’s shield.

“So you want us to kneel to your little favourites,” he said. “Which will you crown, Black Queen, the Howling Wolves or the Red Shields?”

He bared his teeth, contemptuous.

“Will you make one of your servants chief first, just to tie it up neat?” he mocked. “Your own little puppet king in the Steppes, ready to do your bidding.”

“Fuck that,” Asny of the Graven Bones growled. “We’re too many corpses deep in this feud to roll over for the Wolves.”

“Little has been offered,” Sigvun of the Split Tree Clan mildly said. “Much has been demanded.”

I drummed fingers against the arm of my throne.

“Did I ever speak of surrendering to anyone?” I asked, irritated. “The next person to put words in my mouth will be made to swallow them.”

“We’re under hospitality,” Skarod Longaxe harshly said.

“Hospitality keeps you your life, Longaxe, not your teeth,” I replied.

Asny and Valborg laughed, though the twins looked unamused.

“Are these talks not meant to broke peace between us and the Howling Wolves, then?” Sigvin of the Split Tree asked.

“I’m here to broker a war,” I said. “If you want to make peace with the Wolves, make peace with the Wolves. It’s the business of the Clans, not Callow.”

I stared them down from my throne, the crows stirring at my shoulders. The attention of the Sisters was not in the shards, leaving them as little more than creatures of shadow, but they still made an intimidating sight.

“What I want to know,” I said, “is why you’re fighting other orcs for snow and grass when you could be biting deep in the riches of Okoro instead.”

“We didn’t choose to feud,” Skarod Longaxe snorted. “The Wolves did.”

Bullshit. The Blackspears had wasted no time in using the powers Malicia granted them to try to extort all their neighbouring clans, they’d known it would come to war. They’d just figured they were going to win it.

“Okoro’s belly is well-guarded,” Sigvun of the Split Tree pointed out. “Much of its armies have remained north, its walls are tall and its devils many.”

“We could take them,” Asny of the Graven Bones scoffed. “If we didn’t have to keep half our warriors home to fight off raids, we could smash through Okoro.”

“The only thing you’d smash in Okoro is your skull on Chagoro’s walls, pup,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned dismissed. “That fortress has broken more warbands than you’ve had lays.”

“Chagoro,” I calmly said, “has fallen.”

Five pairs of eyes went to me, stillness hanging in the air like haze.

“There is nothing left between those walls save corpses,” I said. “Do I now have your attention?”

“You lie,” Skarod Longaxe accused.

I glanced at Scribe, who took a single step forward.

“It is the truth,” she said. “My agents have confirmed it.”

That took the wind out of Longaxe’s sails. The Calamities weren’t necessarily loved by orcs, but they were respected. Scribe putting her weight behind this wasn’t something they’d dismiss. Hells, it was the reason I’d sent her with Archer into the Steppes in the first place. Indrani wasn’t known up there, but the Calamities? That name still turned heads, even with most of them in the ground. It’d made them take me seriously enough to send envoys in the first place.

“That changes things,” Valborg of the Stag-Crowned admitted, clicking her fangs in hesitation. “Without Chagoro in the way, we could make it past the fortress-lands.”

“We can’t mount a raid worth a goat’s spit with the Wolves up our asses,” Asny of the Graven Bones said.

“Okoro’s wealth isn’t worth kneeling to our enemies,” Skarod Longaxe said, but his tone was more careful now.

Less hostile, I decided. He still didn’t think much of me or my offer, but the thought of raiding Okoro’s holdings appealed. As I’d thought it might.

“Offer truce,” I said. “If you do, I will back you under threat of ending sale of arms.”

“Truce isn’t peace, but it won’t be easy to swallow,” Asny growled.

“Fight for a thousand years, for all I care,” I snorted. “But do it rich. Do it with great herds of cattle, with granaries of grains and the wealth of a hundred tributes. Do it wielding enchanted blades. You think you’re the only ones who want to sink their teeth there? How many warriors from the Shields and the Wolves do you think would rather raid south than fight you?”

That was why I was sitting with these five instead of clans I could more easily have made allies of, in the end. I could back those friendly clans all I wanted, but it wouldn’t cost Malicia anything. What did she care that there was a civil war in the Steppes, so long as it didn’t spill over anywhere that mattered to her? It wouldn’t conclude quickly enough to be a threat. I actually suspected she’d meant her raising of the Lords of the Steppes to trigger that very civil war, since if the orcs were fighting each other they weren’t making trouble for her. She’d picked clans with badreputations to raise, too, and that didn’t look like a coincidence to me. They were the same clans that were almost guaranteed to have gone raiding at her unprotected back, were they not busy defending their noble titles.

If I turned these, though, not only would the betrayal be a public slap in her face but close to the full might of the Clans would come into play in the greater Praesi civil war.

“And if this truce was sought by your alliance,” Sigvun of the Split Tree said, “you would support it?”

“I’ll even send an envoy at the talks,” I smiled, hiding my triumph.

I said it like it was a concession. Like it wasn’t what I’d been after from the start. Like the moment the rest of them began to agree, as they hesitantly did, I’d not gotten exactly what I wanted: an army that, though it didn’t know it yet, was going to march on Keter with the rest of us.

Now I just needed to figure out why my father had wanted this too, and if the two of us were at war too.