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A tower aflame, with a man sitting on stairs below and two looming presences on the sides.

My jaw clenched but I said nothing. I ought to be getting used to talk of that night, anyhow. Gods knew my ear would be filled with prattle about it soon enough. I’d had a terse conversations about it over scrying ritual with both Cordelia and Hanno, the Bard blacking out half the stories of Calernia had made that necessary, but those had only been barebone talks. The meat of the information I’d passed on had been through written reports, so it was inevitable they’d want more out of me. I’d been there that night and known more about what was unfolding than perhaps anyone save the Intercessor. Would that it had been enough, instead of a bell being rang for the death of all the Principate north of Salia.

I waited for Archer to have crammed a few mouthfuls and washed them down before the questions began, which she seemed to appreciate.

“So,” I said. “Salia.”

“I handed back our little heroes to the White Knight safe and sound,” Indrani said. “But he was more interested in having talks with Alexis. He’s trying to get a grasp on the details of what happened out east, I think.”

The Silver Huntress had been involved in nothing I’d not already passed on word about, so if Hanno was looking for an angle he’d be disappointed. He’d already politely asked about the artefact that had ‘wounded the Intercessor’, but I’d given him nothing. As was my right. Hierophant had built it from scratch, refining the lessons we’d learned trying to trap her in the Arsenal, and he had no claim on any part of it. Even the… Book of Some Things – ugh, that name – wasn’t something he had a right to, strictly speaking. I’d set plenty of precedents for stealing aspects and making artefacts of them without anyone else having a claim on them.

No doubt he’d try to ask Sapan as well, if he hadn’t already, but that would be another dead end. Masego had kept his temporary pupil far from the work, and though an increasingly skilled mage the girl was nowhere near close to the league needed to understand sorcery of such calibre. She wouldn’t be until she either grasped High Arcana or transitioned into a Name that’d bridge the gap of her understanding.

“Let him,” I grunted. “He’s going fishing in a desert.”

There had been a time where I would not have been so wary of Hanno of Arwad, but that time had come and gone. Calernia was falling apart, that was part of it, but there was more. While I had sworn to the Grey Pilgrim that I would reconcile with the man, the word I was getting out of Salia was making that task out to be increasingly difficult. I leaned forward towards Indrani, even as she began carving out the sides of the Tower.

“And the rumours we heard?” I asked.

She grimaced, brushing back a strand of wet hair sticking to her brow.

“You know I don’t have the touch like you and Zeze do,” Indrani began. “The knack for telling if someone’s a claimant, how their Name is coming along.”

“You’ve been around Named,” I said. “You’re familiar with what mantles feel like.”

“Sure,” she waved away, “but I don’t have fancy eyes or whatever the Hells it is you use to get it right so often. It’s just impressions for me. Not saying I don’t have a guess, just reminding you it’s that.”

“Consider me warned,” I drily said.

She rolled her eyes at me, but the levity was short-lived.

“Only met with him twice,” Archer said, “but I don’t think he’s the White Knight anymore.”

“Fuck,” I said, with great feeling.

I’d been afraid of that. The point of the knife scratched against the tableside, shaving off small slivers to outline flames.

“He a claimant?”

She raised a flat palm then wiggled it, equivocating.

“He can definitely still use Light,” Indrani said. “And he’s got something. But I can’t tell if it’s the favour of the Seraphim sticking close to him or something else. My nose isn’t fine enough to be able to tell those apart.”

I sighed, sipping at the cup of lemon water I’d poured myself and wishing it were wine. There was still a day of riding ahead of me, though, and a bellyful of wine would it that a bloody chore.

“He’s a claimant,” I finally said. “Has to be. If it were Judgement, they’d have done something one of the three times Hasenbach used the ealamal.”

Salia had been beset with demons and devils multiple times until enough mages and priests were scraped together to ward the capital and begin layering the countryside with expanding protections. The First Prince had used her angelic weapon thrice to shut down the Dead King before the need passed, when the Witch of the Woods had arrived and set down a great working that would greatly hinder diabolism within the principality’s borders. Now word had it that priests were gathering to the fortified town where the artefact was kept in flocks, Light filling the sky day and night. When the ealamal was next used, Cordelia Hasenbach did not intend for its power to spread no further than Salia’s borders. Given that such a power was all but guaranteed to slay any Named sworn to Below, it should be no surprise that I was less than enthusiastic at the prospect.

“So the Hierarch is still tying them up,” Indrani noted, sounding admiring. “It’s been years, Cat. Didn’t think the man had it in him.”

“Kairos always had a knack for putting the right madman in the worst place,” I acknowledged.

Indrani set down her knife to drink and I sighed, massaging the bridge of my nose. If Hanno was a claimant to the Name I suspected that he was – and the First Prince had implied as much through her last letter – then we had trouble on our hands. I was dead certain that Cordelia Hasenbach was a claimant to Warden of the West as well. It was the Names of my lot that commonly saw claimants kill each other in a competition for the prize, with Above’s works having a reputation for being comparatively gentler, but it was a little more complicated than that.

I doubted the two of them were at risk of swordfighting in the streets, but the growing divide between them was turning into a dangerous fault line for the Grand Alliance. The competing claims over the Name were the manifestation of something altogether more dangerous: competing visions for the West. I had been made the warden of Below’s works, the guide of its champions and the arbiter of its faithful, but there would need to be another. An equal for me, someone standing on the other side. And it was beginning to look as if the claimants to the Name had very different ideas about what the Role behind it. Ideas that might be mutually exclusive.

I knew the two of them passing well, and neither of them were particularly good at bending when they thought they were in the right. The feel of the region was said to be reflection as much.

“How was the city?” I asked.

“Hasenbach is still beloved in the capital proper,” Indrani said. “She’s kept them fed while the world goes to shit and she closed the doors on demons. The streets are in her corner, even if there’s the occasional riot. But outside? That’s where the soldiers are, and there it gets muddled.”

I drummed my fingers against the tabletop.

“Hanno’s been out on the fronts,” I said. “Several of them and from the start. He’s been a lot more visible than her.”

“He’s been pulling miracles out of his ass left and right, you mean,” Archer bluntly said. “He’s popular even with your folk, Cat, and I don’t need to tell you how impressive that is.”

I nodded. Hanno had been part of the Tenth Crusade, fought at the Red Flower Vales under the Iron Prince, and my people were not the sort to easily forgive that. Not even in a hero. That he’d won so many of my countrymen over might have been a subject of genuine worry for me if Vivienne hadn’t become the Princess. I need not worry of him having undue influence when there was a Callowan heroine for my people to look to for orders.

“This ‘Prince White’ business,” I said. “How widespread is it?”

“Most soldiers call him that, and a fair few even in the city,” Indrani bluntly said. “Nobody gives much of shit that Hasenbach rustled up a few folk to sit in the Chamber and vote that a foreigner can’t become the Prince of Brabant even if the crown is offered.”

A foreigner, a growing political foe and one Named to boot. It was like some malicious deity had cobbled together a mess whose very nature was bound to make Cordelia Hasenbach see red. I’d seen her get increasingly angry at the ‘Chosen’ for complicating her efforts to save Procer as the war progressed, and now that the realm had shattered under the weight of horror the leader of the Chosen was being acclaimed as a prince.

“There’s no longer a Brabant,” I said. “The dead hold everything but the southwestern corner, and it’s only a matter of time until those fortresses fall.”

“It’s not Prince White of Brabant they call him, Cat,” Indrani said. “It’s just Prince White. And they don’t seem to concerned about where his borders lie, you get me?”

Hellgods, I did. Cordelia was right to be both incensed and worried. If Hanno wasn’t the prince of anything in particular, then he was the prince of everything. If people, nobles and armies, started acting like he really did have that authority? My lips thinned. That was not an authority that could live side-by-side with that of First Prince. One of the titles would strangle the other.

“This is more than just a heap of trouble,” I finally said. “It’s lake of it deep enough for Calernia to drown in.”

If either of them made a move against the other, there was a very real chance that the Grand Alliance would implode before we even began the march on Keter. It wasn’t the thought of either left dead on the ground that worried me, since I doubted either would go that far. But if there was a confrontation there would be a clear winner, and while most the forces would likely follow that victor the most ardent partisans of the defeated would balk. There would be a split, and we simply could not afford that if we wanted to live through the year. They’d be pushing over who got the Book of Some Things, too. Both of them were intelligent enough to know it’d be a boon for their claim and that I’d been intending it for the Warden of the West regardless.

My fingers clenched at the realization that staying out of it was not an option.

“It’s bad,” Indrani agreed, “but you had to be expecting it. We were never going to march north without an equal for you, Cat. This was always going to have to be settled.”

“It’s a choice with no good answer,” I flatly said.

“Sure there is,” Archer disagreed, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Put Shiny Boots in charge.”

I blinked in surprise.

“You’re in favour of backing Hanno?” I asked, not hiding my surprise.

“He’s a twat,” Indrani said, “but he’s the one with the sword and the cause. I know you like Hasenbach, Cat-”

I made a noise of protest that she pushed right through.

“-but she’s a peacetime queen and this isn’t peace,” Indrani continued. “Diplomacy’s done, talks are done. We’re going for the Crown of the Dead with a big fucking army and a boatload of Named, and Hasenbach’s about as useful as tits on a sparrow for handling either.”

“The reason we have armies and food and weapons is said titted sparrow,” I reminded her. “I won’t argue she’s no warrior queen, but she’s then queen that’s kept us in this war. It’s maybe not as pretty a picture as riding in at the last moment with the sun at your back, but it’s done a lot more to keep us alive.”

Indrani eyed me curiously.

“You like her more than I thought,” she said. “Which is fine, Cat. And I know you’ve never liked turning on allies, that after…”

My stomach clenched. Indrani grimaced.

“Well, you won’t be hungry to leave her out to dry is all I’m saying,” she hurriedly continued. “But come knocking at Keter’s gates, I know I’m going to feel a lot better about having the fucking Sword of Judgement in charge than I would the Queen of the Highest Assembly.”

She met my eye squarely.

“And I think, deep down, so would you,” Archer said.

I sighed. It was a fair speech, and she wasn’t wrong. But she was looking at it through the lens of winning this war and only that.

“They stand for different things,” I said. “Different Roles behind Warden of the West. And I’ll need to have a closer look, feel out the shape of it, but I’m pretty sure that Cordelia’s my bet if I want the Liesse Accords to be what they should be.”

Indrani drank deep of her wine, then sucked at a tooth.

“Maybe,” she said. “Might be you’re right there. But for any of that to matter we have to survive this war, Cat. And I think he’s a better bet for that than her.”

“It’s how we got into this pit in the first place,” I quietly replied, “winning wars and then losing the peace.”

We spoke of it no further than that. She’d said her piece, and as far as Indrani was concerned that was enough. The talk moved to lighter things as she finished her meal, travel stories and scurrilous gossip. Apparently the Concocter was scheming to get the Silver Huntress laid and failing rather spectacularly, a very handsome fantassin captain having gotten sent to the healers after an offer for a ‘spar’ was taken a lot more literally than anyone had expected. Indrani washed down the last of her bread with cold water from the river, then gracefully rose and stretched like a cat. It did interesting things to her figure, since she’d taken off her mail.

She was hesitating, I noticed.

“Did you, uh, have a talk with Masego recently?” she asked.

I half-smiled.

“Yeah, something like that,” I replied.

A pause.

“Did it help?”

I looked down at my hand. My fingers clenched, then unclenched.

“As much as it can be helped, I think,” I murmured.

When I looked up there was no pity in her eyes, which was a relief. I would not have tolerated it. She was pleased, but there was nothing condescending about it – she was just happy to have been of use. I hummed, considering her.

“I suppose good behaviour does deserve reward,” I mused.

“Is Vivienne going to stop stealing my salary?” Indrani drily asked.

I tugged the collar of my cloak, loosened it until fell to the ground. She looked at me with wide eyes.

“Isn’t the army leaving already?” Indrani asked.

And yet she did not look away as I began to pull at the laces of my tunic.

“We’re already late,” I smiled. “A little later won’t matter.”

I got no further argument after that.

I woke up drenched in cold sweat, choking on smoke and feeling warm blood on my hand.

My breath was uneven, panicked, and my hair matted against my head. I forced myself to steady my breathing, in and out until my heartbeat was not so wild. I tossed aside my covers and slid out of my coat, careful not to put my weight on my bad leg. A few limping steps led me to a cabinet where a bowl of tepid water and folded clothes awaited. I splashed my face and my hair, trying to get rid of the sweat, but it was a lost cause. I’d need a bath when we entered Salia tomorrow, I felt like I’d drenched myself in filth. At least my monthlies had stopped again since I’d become Warden of the East, we were right around that time and I’d always hated riding a horse while bleeding.

The Intercessor hadn’t managed to steal that particular comfort away from me, at least, which was a close to a victory as I’d found in Ater.

The gift of the Sisters told me it was past Midnight Bell, not quite halfway to Early Bell, and I sighed as I dripped water down on the cabinet. There was no point in crawling back into bed, sleep wasn’t going to come. I felt wide awake, like I’d just been in a battle for my life. I slipped into trousers and loose green tunic, belting on a sword and a good pair of boots. My hair I left loose, for once, but kept I beneath the hood of a simple grey cloak. If I lit a few candles in here the phalanges would be there in moments, asking if I needed anything, but I did not feel like answering them. Neither did I feel like reading through my correspondence for the dozenth time, so instead I veiled myself in Night and slipped out into the sleeping camp.

Even in the middle of the night there were people out and about, patrols and sentinels, but they were easy enough to avoid. We’d encamped on the shore of the same river where Indrani had found us, but much further down: it was narrower and shallower here. And a greater distance from the paths we used during the ‘day’ – as much as it was ever day in the Twilight Ways – but losing another hour setting out come morning was well worth access to running water. I slipped through the wards and headed for the riverside, following the light of distant stars. I found a pleasant nook there, a flat stone nestled in a dip between hills that overlooked the water.

The flowing water was a soothing sight, the way the light of the stars touched the water. It almost looked like fish swimming in the water, the way I’d sometimes glimpsed them near the shores of the Silver Lake back home. The wind was slow, gentle, and I could hear it move the tall grass like a finger stroking a spine. It was warm out, even with the breeze, and with a long sigh I closed my eye. Let the tension that had tightened my shoulder since I woke up leave with the wind. Tariq had made a beautiful realm. I thought of that, sometimes, when trying to understand what kind of man the Grey Pilgrim had been. He’d done dark things, crossed lines even I had balked at.

But the Peregrine had been a man capable of great beauty as well.

My sword belt was pressing against my side uncomfortably, so I unclasped my sheath. Opening my eye, I laid both palms on the pommel of my sword and leaned forward to rest my chin on my hands. I waited, patiently, for the last dregs of the nightmare to leave me. I did not hurry it, fight for it, knowing now form experience that only made it worse. I breathed in and out, letting the wind carry it away like smoke. And that was when I saw her.

I had been, you see, haunted by a ghost ever since Ater.

Not an apparition or a phantom of guilt, but rather a creature of flesh and blood. She had not followed me immediately out of the city, but she’d caught up when the Army of Callow halted in Laure for resupply. Vivienne had told me as much. But while the ghosts had never been far, she had not sought me out either. I’d left opportunities, made them even, but no implicit invitation was ever accepted. Whatever it was that had driven Akua to follow me into the Twilight Ways, she was keeping it to herself. But the journey was coming to an end now, as by midmorning tomorrow we would be gating out near the outskirts of Salia, and so at last my ghost found me.

She was no longer a shade but her steps were still so very light. Her dress was in gold and red, a riding cut for travelling but still ornate in that Praes highborn way – the collar and sleeves were touched with pearls. The cloak over it was grey, almost the same shade as mine, and her hair was kept in place by a hairpin of chalcedony. Shaped like a swan. She turned to me and my heart caught in my throat. How long had it been since I’d seen those lovely golden eyes in a face of flesh and blood? It made a difference, knowing the creature before me was more than smoke and mirrors. Made it more real. More dangerous. She approached in silence and I did not contest it.

My eye returned to the river even as she sat on the stone. By my side but not touching. I could feel every inch of the distance without needing to look. I kept to my silence, listened to the breeze stirring the grass.

“Nightmare?”

I could have lied.

“Almost every night since Ater.”

Sometimes I slept through them, but this was not one of the good nights. I breathed out.

“You?”

“I no longer dream.”

A moment.

“It reminds me too much of the Mantle,” Akua said. “Nothing, then colour again.”

I’d never asked her what it was like, being kept in the Mantle of Woe. Never quite dared to. I had known she was not truly awake but not much more than that. A lucid dream was curse enough, I thought, if you knew you could not wake from it. Silence continued in the wake of the words, but it was not comfortable. We had said so many things, the two of us, been so many things to each other, that there could be no such thing as an empty silence.

“I am glad he died.”

I snorted.

“I never quite believed you, when you said you didn’t blame him for your father,” I said.

“It was what you wanted to hear,” Akua replied.

I cocked my head to the side, a concession.

“I wish I had killed him myself,” she finally said.

I looked at the water, at the silver glint of stars.

“I wish anything else,” I told her.

“It wounded you, to wield the knife,” Akua said, considering me. “Good. Good.”

I breathed out a laugh.

“I don’t think that’s one I’ll get over,” I admitted. “I think it’ll be one of those scars that stay with you, never quite healed.”

“You have dealt out many,” she said, merciless. “It is only fair, Catherine, that you would bleed in turn.”

And how strange was it, that I found comfort in that? In the lack of sympathy, of pity. Stone was hard and cold, but there was a constancy to that. You could make walls of it, rely on it for shelter.

“The world might be ending,” I said. “Or at least our little corner of it.”

“The world is always ending,” Akua replied, indifferent. “The First Dawn promised a Last Dusk.”

I chuckled.

“Quoting the Book, Lady Warlock?”

“Even the Book of All Things has its truths,” she said. “I no longer have the luxury of blindness.”

“Did you ever?”

I felt her smile without turning.

“If I had died young,” Akua said. “But you took that from me. You made me a prisoner instead.”

“Imprisonment was the least of what was owed.”

“You made me a servant.”

“You did that to yourself. There only so many fates your people allow for scrapped iron that is not discarded.”

“And then you freed me,” Akua quietly said.

I kept silent.

“Only you did not such thing,” she said. “You taught me the prison, so that I might carry it with me everywhere I went.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“Have you?” I asked.

She did not answer. She didn’t need to. I had wanted, once, to make her the offer the very night she spurned the Empire. To offer her a way out, a way not to even the scales but put weight on the right side of them. To be enthroned in Liesse, keeper to a greater evil. That night in Salia had not allowed me the luxury, but it did not feel like a defeat. It was not scheme I had laid here. It was not a trick or a play or something that would need to rely on surprise or luck. I had laid a foundation, stone after stone, through years of patience. What did it matter, that a fateful moment had passed?

Fate was character, and I now knew Akua Sahelian’s.

“You mean me to hold the Dead King prisoner.”

I was not entirely surprised. I’d kept that almost silent and never once spoken the full intention out loud, but against the Intercessor it wouldn’t have been enough. She would have been able to follow the thread of the story that was Akua Sahelian and learn it anyway. But only, I thought, if it was likely to work. If the groove was there.

“To take a broken throne in the depths of Liesse,” I said, “and hold back the tide.”

“And should I refuse?”

I shrugged.

“Nothing. It needs to be taken willingly.”

Silence stretched out. She watched the river as well, her breathing quiet.

“I would have seen through you,” Akua said, “if you were not in love with me, at least a little.”

I kept my eye on the river.

“You do not deny it,” she murmured. “I almost wish you would.”

Then she quietly laughed.

“Will it be a wound as well, Catherine?” she asked. “Will the scar stay with you?”

It would have been wiser not to answer.

“Yes.”

I’d never quite got the hang of wisdom. Neither had she. Soft fingers – warm now, flesh and blood – cupped my cheek and I did not fight it, let myself be turned to face her. I met her gaze, felt her breath against my lips. But I had my lines and she knew them, read them anew on my face.

“In matters of self-mutilation,” Akua Sahelian murmured, “you truly have no rival.”

Her fingers released me. She rose to her feet.

“I will see you tomorrow,” she said.

I looked at the river but listened to the sound of her steps until it faded. She had not agreed, I thought.

She had not refused either.