“Men pray only to angels because their devils need no summons.”
– King Edmund of Callow, the Inkhand
“See, I thought that too at first,” I mused. “That I owed you some sort of explanation. But then I had another think, looked back at what I actually did. And, really, what’s the worse you can put on me? I was curt with a kid. I told a Named who came in my tent uninvited to get the Hells out before I tossed her out.”
I shrugged.
“I hurt a heroine’s feelings,” I said. “Twice. Ah, what utter perfidy.”
The last sentence I uttered with a cocked brow and the driest tone I could muster.
“I suppose we’ll have to get through this the usual way,” I announced. “I’ll bring the hammer and nails if you bring the cross, White Knight: if I’m going to be crucified over a trifle, the least you could do is go halfsies on the materials.”
Hanno’s face betrayed no reaction to my words as he studied me, calm as ever. No, perhaps calm was the wrong word, for it implied a degree of peace. Indolence, when at its worst. The White Knight was a creature of certainty, which leant him the appearance of calm, but there was nothing peaceful about certainty. Especially in the hands of a hero, who could so often weave from it either death or salvation.
“You’ve not often had an equal, have you Catherine?” the dark-skinned man pensively said. “A few superiors, I imagine: most of them unkind or untrustworthy, more marks in the making than someone whose lead was worth following. And followers by the thousands, that one is beyond denial. Not all of them truly beneath you in skill and strength, either. You might insist that the Woe are more allies than subordinates, but when has one of them ever tried to give you an order?”
I rather hoped this wasn’t about to segue into a little speech about the nature of the Woe. I’d had quite a few people try their hand at those over the years, most with knowledge of the individuals involved about as deep as Keteran grave. Usually it was some sort of hackneyed comparison with the Calamities. I’d even once asked it of Black, out of morbid curiosity, to which he’d mildly answered that given the way even individuals who’d borne the same Names could vary so wildly in motivation and disposition any attempt to force precedent in groups of Named was, at best, misguided. Which had essentially been an elaborate way of telling me the Calamities were the Calamities and the Woe were the Woe, and anyone trying to hack at the truth of either to fit both into the mold of legacy was a fool. There were good reasons I remained fond of the man to this day.
“I will assume that this is meant to, eventually, reach something baring vague resemblance to a point,” I said.
“If you perceive me as being subordinate to you, or allied, then you have a rather sweet temper,” Hanno said, sounding rather fascinated. “Yet the moment I am seen as demanding answers from you or being set above you in some manner, you bare your fangs without hesitation. I have never seen it so neatly displayed in sequence as it was today, which I’ll chalk up to exhaustion on you part. You are rarely so easy to parse.”
I pushed down the toothy, slightly nasty smile I’d been about to send his way. No need to feed the metaphor.
“Most people don’t enjoy being described to themselves, Hanno,” I said.
Might be there was some part of truth to what he’d said, though. Adjutant saw more of me than anyone, so he’d be able to tell me – from there, it’d just be a question of how to smooth away that wrinkle. I couldn’t afford to have obvious levers on my temper in my position, especially when I had a nascent Name. Mantles tended to put the best and worst of you in sharp relief, so it was all the more important to know what those were.
“You are not most people,” Hanno calmly replied. “Already the measured part considers adjustment, while the one forged by your teachers begins to ponder if this is not a manner manipulation.”
It wasn’t difficult to manipulate who respected you, I knew. I did it all the time. His vocalization of that fact did nothing to put out the ever-burning embers of suspicion that seemed to fall asleep around fewer people every year.
“We’ve strayed far from whatever grievances you might want to bring to me,” I said. “Which I’ve yet to hear, regardless.”
“You were unkind to a scared and tired child of fourteen, for reasons which had little to do with her,” the White Knight said. “If you could offer an apology or a reassurance so that she does not believe the foremost villain of our age had personal enmity towards her, I would appreciate it. I am, however, aware I have neither right nor means to compel this of you.”
“Would you, if you did?”
I almost wondered who it was that’d asked that, before I recognize my own fool voice. The question had slipped out of me before it could be put away in the back of my mind, my lips moving of their own accord. Some part of me had expected some classical answer to come out of the White Knight’s mouth before a heartbeat had passed, but that was doing Hanno disservice. The Ashuran hero considered the matter seriously, only answering when he was certain of his answer. I trusted his words more for that, twisted as the thought might be. It was one thing to say you would never but we both knew it was different when you actually had that power. I’d come up the ranks of the Empire talking of reason and compromise but later in my career, when I’d had the strength to dictate terms, how many times had I refrained from doing so? People always found it easy to dismiss the thought of drink before sweet wine was pressed to their lips.
“No,” he said. “It is not a crime to be uncivil. Regardless, it is not my place to give such orders.”
“You give orders to your heroes all the time,” I retorted, and raised a hand to quiet him when he began to answer, “You don’t get to call them requests when people listen to them every single time, Hanno.”
“That is only the use of my authority as a representative under the Truce and the Terms,” the White Knight told me. “It is not a personal matter.”
“Yeah, so that’s nonsense,” I said. “We dressed it up real good, put it in ink and slapped some impressive seals onto the parchment, but pretending even for a moment that our authority isn’t personal is ridiculous. Heroes don’t listen to you because you’re a high officer of the Grand Alliance, they listen to you because you personally command their respect – either because of your record, your Name or your character.”
“That sounded almost like a compliment,” Hanno said, sounding amused.
I rolled my eyes.
“Look, to keep my side in line I have to show I’m powerful, ruthless and I’m willing to send a few plumb opportunities their way should they toe the line,” I said. “For you it’s more like a virtue pissing match paired with your war record – and on top of that you’ve got just a dash of divine right to lead, since this whole mess is somewhat crusade-shaped and you’re the White Knight.”
“I would ask how a virtue pissing match would take place in practice, but I’ve learned better than to provoke your talent for the descriptive,” the White Knight noted.
“I’m serious,” I flatly told him. “Tariq was everyone’s favourite grandfather, until he made a deal with me once. He’s still digging himself out of that hole. If he pulled out the same kind of tricks right now he used to catch my teacher, I’m not sure he wouldn’t get a hero after him for it. Why? ‘cause he made a truce with a villain. His virtue bragging rights were put in doubt, his heroic ‘reputation’, so now he couldn’t do the job you do even if he wanted to.”
“Trust in the Peregrine ebbed because a villain was instrumental in his resurrection,” Hanno corrected. “There is long precedent in corrupting magics and even necromancy being used on heroes, which means those with only glancing knowledge of those events have reason to worry about him being unduly influenced.”
He paused.
“Heroes who learn of even surface details of the affair tend to dismiss such concerns entirely,” he noted. “I would argue you overestimate how deeply the Princes’ Graveyard affected his repute, at least as far as faith in his judgement is concerned.”
“And you don’t think it’s grotesque,” I said, “that butchering an entire village by plague didn’t get people wondering about that, but that evening did?”
“I do not judge,” the White Knight replied. “Now less than ever.”
“But you do, Hanno,” I hissed out. “Because you chose to be part of a structure, and that structure doles out judgement all the time. It judged that your kid, the one whose answer to fucking death on the march was to get down on her knees and pray, she’s the good one. She gets to live. Mine, the one who actually tried to bloody well do something? Well, he was bad. He gets to die.”
His dark eyes were kind, which only strengthened the streak of anger that’d torn through me.
“How close was the mirroring?” Hanno quietly asked.
“The Scorched Apostate,” I said, baring teeth. “A mage too. His sorcery mimicked Light, with a tinge of fire to it.”
Tancred was the greater loss here, damn me twice for it. Healers were useful, but most were mediocre in fight against other Named unless they were part of a band of five. The Scorched Apostate would have been useful in half a dozen ways, from his eyes to his sorcery to the potential contribution to the Arsenal. What was the Stalwart Apostle going to do, except dole out Light? If the Heavens were going to pick the children they saved, they could at least pick them better.
“I take it he is dead,” the White Knight asked.
“The Dead King got the drop on me,” I straightforwardly said. “Kid fell asleep, the new ghouls ate and replaced my escort while I was studying the remains of the village and turned him into a Revenant.”
I saw him, saw the cast of his face and his mind as he almost asked why a village had become remains, but then he thought better of it. He had a knack for knowing when to advance and when to retreat, this one.
“I’m sorry,” Hanno said. “It would have been a blow, and Pascale’s survival would have been salting the wound.”
“I shouldn’t have been curt with your kid,” I conceded. “But I will not apologize for speaking the truth to her, either.”
The sooner she learned that providence was not a panacea for poor decisions, the better.
“That,” the White Knight calmly said, “is where we disagree. You did not speak the truth to her, you simply spoke in anger and dismay.”
“They’ve got it all handled, then? How lovely,” I scathingly replied. “If the Heavens have it all under control, forgive me for meddling. I’ll march my armies home and leave you lot to the business of winning.”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,” Hanno quoted, “nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, that act of faith would have killed dozens of thousands. That is what you said, word for word. Regardless of your sarcasm, I disagree.”
“How many little villages did the zombies eat, to make up an army whose numbers warranted three heroes and a fourth forming to fight?” I said. “Five, ten, twenty? You really think none of the people there ever thought to pray their way out of it? They still died, White.”
“You take helplessness for negligence,” the dark-skinned man flatly replied. “Do you sincerely believe that, if the Heavens had been able to empower a champion during those tragedies instead, they would have stood by and done nothing? There are rules, Black. What you condemn as apathy, I mourn instead as inability.”
“Gods should not need to be excused,” I harshly said. “If you’re to claim yourself as the source of all that is Good, then either triumph or stop strutting about. If faith is a wager, then at the very least they should have the fucking decency to acknowledge it.”
“Below are deities as well,” Hanno said. “While deploring that the Heavens are not omnipotent, in the same breath you rage only at the half of the Gods trying to mend-”
“I’ve seen the work of Choirs,” I softly interrupted. “And I do not call that mending. I’ll say this for the Gods Below: utter bastards that they are, they always grant the precise measure of what was bargained for. And they don’t ask you to kiss their feet for it first.”
“Because Below does not have agents or servants,” the White Knight sharply said. “It has horses, and they are ridden ‘til they break. Or are you so enamoured of the Hellgods you will not acknowledge that by the time hero’s blade bites into the flesh the villain is long dead? That whatever beauty, whatever decency there might have been in what drove them at first, it ever transmutes into deaths and red madness?”
“I find it rich of you to argue this, given that before the Graveyard the two oldest heroes were the Saint and the Pilgrim,” I snorted. “Which of them did not have a body count to match those of the greatest villains of their age? Above warps you just as much as Below does us, except we’re supposed to pretend in your case it’s a good thing. It’s almost like wielding great power and rubbing elbows with unearthly entities for decades has consequences no matter what direction your prayers are headed.”
Vivienne had made it plainly clear that the Dominion of Levant would rather leave the Grand Alliance than sign onto the clause I’d pushed to be added against named rulers, but I still believed in the principle: Names affected you, everyone knew that. It was just that the side dressing in white had convinced itself into believing for them it was never a bad thing.
“Would you have balked at comforting a child you scared, in the days before you became the Squire?” Hanno simply asked.
That stung, though half the sting came from the surprise. I hardly ever thought about those times, nowadays. In every way that mattered the girl Catherine Foundling had been died when I chose to take the knife Black had offered me.
“I some ways I was even worse of an ass at sixteen,” I replied, unsure what the true answer to his question would be. “And you’re falling into that old heroic trap, White: looking back at olden times and thinking they were a golden age instead of an age just like this one, with troubles and joys both.”
“Or perhaps you are falling into that old villainous trap, Black,” Hanno said, “of refusing to look back at who you were in fear of what it might make you question now.”
“Funny thing, about fear,” I said. “I’d wager I know it a lot better than you, Sword of Judgement. I don’t get to kick my decisions upstairs when I have to make them.”
“And you believe this to be easy?” Hanno said, cocking his head to the side. “That restraint, patience, faith – they are somehow easier paths to follow than those you tread?”
I bit my tongue, because even angry as I was I would not descend into petty insults. That beat of silence let him take the initiative in speaking again.
“The child you so disdain,” the White Knight said, “had magic to call on. Enough she could have fled or fought the undead. Yet when death swallowed her little corner of the world, she did neither. She sought a way to heal the people who doubted her, and when all she knew failed her she still did not give up. She threw away what she was to help others, Black, and I will not let you even imply that such a decision was cowardice or laziness. It was courage, and a refusal to compromise over what she held dearest.”
“And if her story had been just a little off,” I said. “To the side, and it just didn’t quite settle into the proper groove for a Name – would you still be praising her then? Because she would have made for a courageous corpse, true enough, but we’d have a rampant plague on our hands.”
More corpses, and those would not be the sort inclined to stay in the ground. It was all nice and good to be principled, until those principles started applying mostly to the way the world should be and not the way it actually was.
“Yet that is not what happened,” Hanno said.
My frustration mounted.
“But it could have-”
“It did not, nor will it,” the White Knight said, sounding the faintest bit irritated as well. “She is the Stalwart Apostle, a story of faith in the dark rewarded. You were advising her to act in a manner that goes against her Role, Catherine. If she takes the wager, she’ll win every time.”
“She couldn’t have known that in advance, Hanno,” I said. “Or you, for that matter. Are you telling me we should give advice to kids that’ll get them killed most of the time?”
“I believe we should advise people according to who and what they are,” he replied. “Yet your objection, I see, is not with the advice some young Named benefit from being given.”
“You can’t tell people that praying will solve things,” I flatly said. “It won’t, except in one in a hundred thousand occurrences like this. If that’s what you put out as a story, that’s what people will do instead of acting to save themselves. People can’t rely on the Heavens for that, they’ll just die.”
If prayer somehow summoner heroes to the peril, or called forth angels or really anything useful at all this wouldn’t get stuck in my throat so much but it wasn’t like attending fucking sermons at the House made you able to use the Light.
“People rely on the Heavens for more than just intervention,” Hanno chided me. “Faith in Above guides a soul both on Creation and beyond; simply because it does not call a storm of fire does not make it worthless. Besides, prayer does not preclude action.”
“If you’ve got time to kneel and mutter, you’ve got time to raise a palisade,” I bluntly replied. “One of them’s a lot more useful than the other.”
“I understand that you do not keep to Above,” the White Knight said, frowning. “Nor would I expect you to. Yet your insistence that faith and ability are mutually exclusive is, to say the least, insulting.”
“Faith doesn’t keep the dead out,” I said.
“Most the time,” Hanno gently said, “neither does the palisade.”
But there was the gap, I thought. He was phrasing as prayer, faith, making it some grand old thing. But what it was, in practice, was sitting and hoping someone else would solve your problems for you. And I couldn’t abide that, not in people I was supposed to respect, not even if it worked. Because for most people it didn’t, and you couldn’t call it a solution if it worked one time in a thousand. But there was no point in arguing this with him, was there? This was a man who’d embraced the role of champion for the Choir of Judgement and never looked back – he’d been able to call on the judgement of the Seraphim with the flip of a coin for years. There was no questioning that kind of closeness with the divine and telling him the only two gods I’d ever liked were the ones I’d helped make would only amuse him.
“Nothing more to be said on this, I don’t think,” I sighed.
“Agreed,” the White Knight replied. “I do enjoy our talks, Catherine, though I doubt we’ll ever change each other’s mind. If your own philosophy is to be the face and method Evil takes in the decades to come, it is one I can make my peace with.”
I grunted, not replying outright. Of all the heroes I’d met he was one I had most affinity for, but sweet as that could be sometimes on other it only served to bring into relief the things we deeply disagreed on. None of them, though, we worth parting ways over. I’d tolerated worst of people I respected less.
“You’re not bringing me an official complaint under the Terms, am I understanding correctly?” I asked instead.
“Neither Rafaella nor Pascale sought me out for one, that is true,” Hanno confirmed
I might despise the Champion, but I’d at least admit she didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d run to the White Knight after getting her pride bruised.
“I am not demanding answers of you,” the dark-skinned man continued. “I am simply noting your rather famous sense of diplomacy had lapsed of late.”
I rolled my eyes at that. I wasn’t a diplomat, I was just good at maneuvering myself into a position where people had to listen to me or the consequences to them would be horrid. As for handling villains, that wasn’t diplomacy: I was pretty sure you stopped being able to call it that after the first two times you dropped someone at the bottom of an Arcadian lake and left them there for thirty beats before taking back them out to… emphasize the importance of keeping a civil tongue.
“It has been made clear to me I’ve been taking on too much,” I admitted. “It’s taking its toll in a lot of ways, some of them more subtle than others.”
Some were not subtle at all, like the fact that the White Knight had brought back to camp a recruit while I’d brought back a corpse. Hanno grimaced, the expression odd to see on his face. While he was not solemn, neither was he prone to strong expressions. I watched his arm coil as he closed his hand, reaching for something against his palm. A coin, I thought. The coin.
“I have contributed to this, Catherine, and I apologize for it,” Hanno said as my brow rose in surprise. “I many matters I have deferred to you and relied on you to express to the Grand Alliance our shared opinions.”
“It’s not like you’ve been sleeping in,” I drily said. “You’ve been either out there, training heroes or here with me since the war got going.”
“You have duties I do not,” he frankly said. “As a queen and a general. I have known this yet often allowed you to take the lead on shared responsibilities whenever you offered.”
He slowed, looking uncomfortable for a passing beat.
“It was comfortable for me, deferring,” the White Knight admitted. “In the wake of the silence left by the Hierarch’s folly it was pleasant to let someone else take charge and rely on the sharpness of their vision until I got my bearings. And, after, I saw no harm in leaving matters as they were: you excelled, and I could contribute in ways that did not involve changing the way of things.”
“You didn’t force authority onto me,” I said. “I took it, knowingly.”
In those early days, even with our unsettling connection weighing on the scales I wasn’t sure how much I would have trusted him anyway. By that point I’d hardly ever met a hero that hadn’t tried to kill me, much less one who was actively trying to be helpful.
“And it has run you ragged, hasn’t it?” Hanno murmured. “You nearly never allowed yourself to be this… raw around me. Even drunk you are guarded.”
I clenched my teeth. This was starting to sound a lot like pity. Save your pity for the kid who’ll never reach fifteen, I thought. I’m just tired and wicked and wary.
“I would begin handling the formal correspondence with the First Prince and Highest Assembly, if you’ve no objection,” the White Knight firmly offered. “And, considering the many demands on your time, perhaps your end of the Origin Hunts could be passed to another villain.”
“Beastmaster-” I began.
“Cannot afford to alienate the both of us,” Hanno said. “And is well-aware of this. He’ll collaborate with whoever you choose.”
He said as much in the tone of someone who fully intended to make that prediction into a fact, blade bare if need be. The White Knight had taken to Ranger’s wayward pupil even less than I had, which was how Beastmaster had ended up largely in my wheelhouse in the first place.
“I intend to withdraw from the front for some time,” I admitted. “If necessity dictates that we begin preparing an all-out assault on northern Hainaut soon it’ll not be as long or restful a withdrawal as I’d been considering, but as it is I’m considering heading to the Arsenal early.”
Masego would be there, who I’d not seen in too long, and if I got lucky maybe Indrani would be as well – although in that sense the getting lucky would be coming after her presence was confirmed. Gods, that’d do me some good as well. When shady, ambitious Levantine villains were starting to look tempting it meant it’d been too long. And, Hells, even if she wasn’t odds were that Nephele would be there. That remained an enticing piece of unfinished business.
“You should,” Hanno encouraged. “We’ve ended the immediate threat of the plague and the Grey Pilgrim is tracking down whatever remnants might have been seeded – he might come to take Pascale for a journey soon – so aside from military matters you should be able to hand off there’s no pressing need for you to remain.”
“The Blood might come to you with another beehive that got kicked,” I told him.
“The Barrow Sword?” he asked.
I snorted.
“Guess,” I said.
“I expect it will and in a compromise that pleases no one in particular,” Hanno said. “Either separate rolls of the Blood for the villainous, or admission into the existing ones with most of the attendant privileges stripped out.”
Which would be a massive gain for Ishaq anyway, though well shot of what he wanted. Much as he might protest otherwise, the Barrow Sword very much wanted a little corner of Levant to rule. One where he could begin gathering other Bestowed from our side of the fence, and began smashing his way into a degree of prominence at some other family’s expense. He was not so much a fool as to think he had a chance of toppling the Isbili, but he was ambitious enough I would not put it beyond him to have an eye on taking one of the great cities belonging to another founding bloodline.
“Either way I can’t let them simply bury the man,” I said. “It’ll close the door on any other Levantine villain joining us, and I swore oaths otherwise besides.”
“I’ll advise restraint and compromise, then,” the White Knight replied. “Yet even that does not seem too pressing a need – scrying back and forth with Levante will take months.”
“So long as the Holy Seljun and the rest of them know I’ll frown on Ishaq being cheated,” I said. “At the very least the man is owed recognition for the things he’s actually doing.”
“A sensible stance,” Hanno nodded. “Is it him you’ll be naming as your stand-in for the Origin Hunts?”
The Barrow Sword, serving as some poor freshly-risen Named’s introduction to the Truce and the Terms? No, that had disaster written all over it. That’d need someone with a defter touch, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to spare Hakram.
“I’ll probably pull the Rapacious Troubadour back from Brabant,” I frowned. “He’s certainly got the knack for finding hidden things.”
Archer would probably have taken him into her band of five, compulsive killer or not, if she’d not already been full-up. I was rather happier with her trusting her back to the Harrowed Witch instead, even if she’d murdered her own brother – sometimes it could be slim pickings, when it came to recruiting ‘trustworthy’ villains. With his thirst for death and songs sated by the access the First Prince reluctantly had given him to death row prisoners, the Troubadour had nonetheless proved to be damned useful. He’d predicted the skirmishes between refugee camps and the Brabant locals months before they happened, even identifying the likely ringleaders for violence on both sides, which had allowed us to snuff that whole mess out in the crib. He’d also brought two other Named into the Truce and the Terms without there being violence involved, one of them even being a heroine, so between the instincts and the silvertongue he was probably my best bet around here.
I’d need someone to keep an eye on him, but that would also have been true if I named anyone outside the Woe.
“I don’t suppose I could talk you into sending for the Hunted Magician instead,” Hanno tried.
I snorted. The mage was much too useful in the Arsenal to be sent traipsing around the countryside.
“I’d thought not,” the White Knight sighed. “I’d hoped it would be someone halfway respectable.”
“I’ll take that as a backhanded compliment,” I said.
He smiled, surprised, and to my own surprise extended his arm to take the bottle of brandy in hand. He poured us each a cup with neat, measured spills that wasted not a drop.
“What are we drinking to?” I asked, taking my cup and raising it.
“Trouble waiting until tomorrow,” he toasted.
Hells, I’d drink to that.
