“You bargained for my soul, dear devil, and that is what you received. Is it my fault you did not stipulate it was to be my original one?”
– Dread Emperor Traitorous, trading the soul of a single gnat for infernal enlightenment
We shed the illusions like one would shed a cloak.
We’d get more use out of us being the Black Queen and the Archer right now, though there was also an aspect here of knowing I should not press my luck too much. I was a villain who’d just finished the first part of her plan, securing the expected victory, which meant I was due a nasty surprise if I kept going down the path. Best to shake off this story and embrace another before the teeth of it could come around to bite me. Gods forgive me, but tonight I would be following down the path Kairos Theodosian had so brazenly blazed through while he lived: always scheming, always at odds, so that very same thing that should be burying you instead kept you alive. I did not miss the Tyrant of Helike himself, for he’d been cruel and feckless and admirable only in his qualities turned against others, but sometimes I did miss the times I associated him with in my memory. The days where my foes had breathed and there had been an end to them.
“So what are we doing now?” Archer asked.
She’d caught up to me quickly enough, swift on the stride as she was, and shrugged when I’d asked if she had any difficulty shaking off the opposition. I would have given her good odds of pulling this off even without Creation’s favour blowing into our sails, so I was not surprised. None of the Named I’d seen of the band of five so far were made for the subtle side of things – well, neither of the Procerans anyways. I still knew distressingly little about the Maddened Keeper.
“When you asked me for the Harrowed Witch for your band,” I said, “you gave me two reasons. The first was that her stealth sorceries were impressive. The other was-”
“Aspasie is good at calling up the dead to chat with,” Indrani finished. “Which has been worth more than gold, Named being Named. So who is it we’re going to be chatting with?”
“The same man whose body we need to make disappear,” I said. “If the Wicked Enchanter has been seen walking around but his corpse is still on a slab, fingers will start being pointed.”
“We get my witch or your dead body first?” Archer asked.
She was a practical woman, my Indrani, and I really did enjoy that. Not the kind that would balk at either borrowing – it wasn’t stealing if you were a queen, probably – a dead body or calling on the spirits of the dead for questioning. Much as I liked, say, Hanno I suspected he’d not be up for a spot of corpse robbery without several serious questions first being asked.
“The corpse,” I mused. “Quiet-like, yeah? The point is to get it to the Harrowed Witch, so we’ll avoid being seen bringing her there.”
If we showed up there with a known necromancer in tow we’d be giving away the game. I cast a sideways look at Indrani.
“Her dead brother’s still haunting her?” I asked.
“Sure, but it’s more nuisance than trouble,” Archer shrugged. “And I’ll answer the question you’re building up to before you ask it, spare us both some trouble. She can be trusted, Cat. She’s not Woe, won’t ever be, but she knows who to close ranks with.”
It’d have to do. It wasn’t like the villains we’d picked up since declaring the Truce and the Terms were all black-hearted treacherous devils, though admittedly we had picked up a few of those. It was just that, as a rule, they tended to be a lot less preoccupied with other people’s wellbeing than the White Knight’s lot. Villains, I’d learned, were not beyond loyalty. But they had the loyalty of wolves, to the pack that bit and bled for them, while heroes instead had the loyalty of knights: to oath and realm and Good. It didn’t necessarily make the champions of the Heavens pleasant people, but on the other hand I couldn’t deny that Hanno’s side of the fence counted not a single rapist or thrill-killer. There were days, when the likes of the Mirror Knight’s ingratitude and ignorance became so very grating, that it was tempting to forget things like that. Tempting to forget that there was more to villains than the Woe and the Calamities, that the banner I’d chosen to bear had flown tall over millennia of dark deeds.
I couldn’t afford to close my eyes to that, going forward. Not if the Truce and Terms were to one day be remembered as the prelude to the Liesse Accords, as I so badly wanted them to be.
“I’ll take you word on it,” I said. “We need to get a move on, ‘Drani. There’s a least one of that band that’ll remember to go look for the Enchanter’s corpse as soon as nobody’s in danger anymore.”
She snorted.
“Wouldn’t count on that,” she said.
I shook my head. Tempting as it was to take the Mirror Knight and his ilk as all Light and no brains, it’d be mistake.
“Wind was out our back and the sun in their eyes in there,” I reminded her. “We get in scrap with them again, and we’ll get what Revenants get. A third time and it’ll be us with the wind in our faces.”
“Won’t make them any smarter,” Indrani pointed out.
“We fought their two frontliners and ambushed the eyes,” I said. “Someone serves as the thinking head of that band, we just haven’t run into them yet. Any cart’s a bad cart if you take off half the wheels.”
Hopefully Adjutant would be keeping whoever that was pointed in the right direction, cleaning up behind any mistakes Indrani and I might have made. Not that we’d be the ones having made the greater share of mistakes in there. The two Procerans here, in particular, had proved significantly easier to handle than I’d expected. It made a horrible sort of sense, now that I thought about it, because though I heard about things the Mirror Knight had done all the time I couldn’t honestly recall a single story where he’d been the leader. He wasn’t even a band’s second, most the time: he was the brawns to the Witch of the Woods’ magic, Hanno’s vanguard or bait for the Silver Huntress. Was this a blunder of our own making, I wondered? The man’s an ignorant ass, but has anyone actually tried to set him straight and teach him to recognize what’s going on around him? It ought to have been his responsibility to see to that, sure, for he was a grown man and few of us had gotten to have our hands held through the process of gaining power. But then was it not undeniably a blunder to let a hero with that kind of power stew in a puddle of his own obtuseness, growing ever more frustrated and wary?
Something to consider more in depth later, I decided. It would be Hanno’s failure more than mine, but I’d never spoken a word about it either and that made for shared responsibility. Indrani and I had been moving even as we talked and quickened our pace further as we fell into silence, her longer stride letting her take the lead as she guided me through the hallways of the Arsenal. I inquired as to our destination and learned that after the Wicked Enchanter was butchered before half a hundred people, his body had been taken away to the Depository. I’d been a little surprise to hear that, considering that was the part of the Arsenal where all the weapons and artefacts were kept in crates until they could be shipped to the fronts: it was a storehouse, more or less. But it was apparently a storehouse with some fairly secure sections, and as one of the parts of this place where no Named resided it’d been deemed as the least provocative of the places to stash a villain’s dead body.
“There’s going to be guards,” I said.
“Of course,” Indrani agreed. “But people aren’t allowed in and it’s a sealed room.”
Meaning that if we went in and, after a few moments, popped back out asking the guards where the Hells the body was there shouldn’t be anyone able to gainsay us. I could dump the corpse in the Night until we got it to the Harrowed Witch, so we wouldn’t essentially be blatantly lying with a dead body strapped onto Archer’s back. When we got there the whole affair turned out to be, well, surprisingly straightforward. There was a full line of guards by the door, Lycaonese by the looks of them, and their commanding officer had the key to the wards. I was recognized, even without my cloak, and when I requested entry they didn’t even bother to ask me why before accepting. Obviously I had the right, since this was a dead villain and I’d been his representative under the Terms, but I was somewhat surprised at how utterly indifferent the Lycaonese were to the whole thing.
They key to the wards was a simple stone disk that unmade the sealing enchantment on the steel-barded door when pressed into a slot above the handle and it remained in there even as I opened it and slipped inside. The tingle of other wards washed over me as I did – probably a few to prevent coming in by Arcadia and Twilight, and perhaps to prevent summoning within – but there was no other defence. The dead body was in the back, on what was very clearly four wooden shipping crates covered by a slab of steel, thought at least someone had placed a white shroud over it. There was no corpse-stench in the bare stone room, which meant the corpse had been preserved. By alchemy and not enchantment, I noted, since the sharp tang of embalming fluid and something more like flowers was lingering in the air. Good, the Night wouldn’t disrupt anything when I took the body then.
I checked it was the Enchanter under the shroud, sought Indrani’s confirmation it was the right man and received it with a nod, then I seized Night a heartbeat later. The body sunk into the darkness I wove under it, and I breathed in through my mouth as I began choosing my words.
Time to raise a ruckus about the theft of the body I’d just stolen.
The damned song just wouldn’t leave my head, I mused as I poured myself a fresh finger of aragh and knocked it back.
“The henhouse stands unlatched
All within, by the fox snatched.”
A fresh change of clothes had done me some good, though that wasn’t the main reason I’d done it and ordered Indrani to do the same before sending her out. Smoke had a particular scent to it, and not one easy to hide. At least one Named was bound to notice if we kept wearing garments smelling of a fire we weren’t supposed to have been anywhere near. I dressed formally, or at least what passed as formal for me: having a soldier queen’s reputation meant I could dispense with a lot of the finery some other crowned heads might be stuck wearing. The heart of it was a high-collared and long-sleeved tunic of dark green, bordered in deep gold and going down to my calves. It was split all the way down to my belly by more elaborate embroidery in the same golden colour, though buttons kept it closed and close against me all the way up to the hollow of my throat – where the sole button I’d left unmade prevented the tunic from digging into my skin.
A broader belt that I was used to in good leather was kept in a complicated knot I’d taken me ages to learn how to make without Hakram’s help and ended in a long stripe going down to slightly below the hem of my tunic. The buckles were gilded and a few patches as well though they were inscribed with the Crown and Sword instead of simply polished, lending the whole thing a rather ceremonial look. Trousers of the same good cloth and colour ended in knee-high boots of fine make, which I’d insisted have enough room for a knife to be slipped in. Up the sleeve of my tunic, an old gift from Pickler I more rarely wore these days had been made to serve a again: a complicated set of knots and leather strings that could have a knife falling into my palm a beat later if I flicked my wrist just right. With the Mantle of Woe on my back, my hair pulled back into a long braid and a bare circlet of gold that sat high on brow as my crown, for once I looked like a queen and not a soldier with a looted crown.
There might be more truth to the second of these, in the end, but appearances were too useful a tool to be discarded.
I’d abandoned my rooms not long after making use of them, preferring instead to return to that same small parlour in the Alcazar I’d used to entertain the Hunted Magician. The half-empty bottle of aragh from earlier had been pining for me there, along with what looked like little slices of bread with some sort of mousse on them. It smelled like meat and spices and it tasted delicious, so I polished off a few while waiting for Archer to return with the Harrowed Witch in tow. I was careful with crumbs and stains, since I was not going to go through all the trouble of dressing up regally only for the impression being ruined by mousse on the corner of my lips. The song stayed with me, and as I hummed absent-mindedly my brow rose: someone had knocked at my door. That wasn’t Indrani, who would not have bothered herself with courtesy like knocking before entering a room in general, much less a room I was in. I discreetly brushed off some crumbs from my cloak and gathered myself on the sofa.
“Enter,” I called out.
So here they go, once again, I hummed under my breath. Chasing a red tail into the glen.
Adjutant was the first to step into the room, giving me a bow that told me two things: this was a formal visit, and he did not trust whoever was with him with even the light knowledge of our usual informality with each other. Considering who it was I’d sent him out with, I could understand why. The Mirror Knight entered behind him and I noted with approval he’d been made to relegate his sword and shield before coming into my presence. The staff of yew laid lightly on my shoulder was a comforting weight, even though it was more a focus of my powers than a weapon. Behind good ol’ Christophe was not his perennial shadow the Blade of Mercy, to my surprise, but instead a more familiar sight.
The Repentant Magister, Nephele Eliade, was the very painting of what people thought of when talking of a Free Cities beauty. Though her face was sharp in cast and her nose strong, pale grey eyes and luxurious long dark hair would have made her worth a second look even if she’d not been a supple and curvy woman. There was a highborn look to her, in the way she stood and spoke, that’d made it easy to believe she had been born to the highest reaches of the Magisterium of Stygia. The Eliade, I’d been told, remained one of the most influential families in the city-state to this day.
I’d first encountered Nephele in Hainaut, as in the early days of the war against Keter she’d already been our foremost authority on the Dead King’s necromantic constructs. Even Akua had expressed admiration when she’d read her work on ghouls, and the shade was rather stingier with praise than Masego. In those days there’d not yet been an Arsenal, so the Repentant Magister had moved wherever there was a need for her. Her presence was always an easy sell, given that while she was not an impressive combat mage she was an extremely talented healer and capable of making artefacts that more than made up for her lacking offensive spellcraft. I’d found her rather pleasant, and not only because she usually wore tight velour dresses with dipping necklines. I would have expected someone emerged heroic from the horrors of Stygia to be eager to distance themselves from anything and anyone bearing Below’s mark, but she’d turned out to be almost serene about it.
That calm certainty, the knowledge of her place in the world, had been damned attractive and I’d begun making polite inquiries about her preferences – flexible, thank the Gods – to what I’d thought might just be a receptive audience when she’d left Hainaut to help found the Arsenal. Unfinished business, all in all, but not unpleasantly so. The kind that might even be picked up should the situation allow. Now, though, I had to consider her in an entirely different way. Already the Hunted Magician had told me that Nephele was part of whatever the Blessed Artificer was up to, only for her to be turning up here as well? I couldn’t be sure she was part of the Mirror Knight’s band of five, not yet, but neither would be it an unwarranted assumption. What is it you’re actually up to, Nephele? No third hero followed the first two, which I found interesting. It meant there were still three of them out there, out of my sight.
“Your Majesty,” Hakram greeted me. “If I may?”
“Proceed, Adjutant,” I granted, leaning back into the sofa.
“I present Christophe of Pavanie, the Mirror Knight,” the orc said, “and Lady Nephele Eliade of Stygia, the Repentant Magister. They would humbly request audience of you.”
The Mirror Knight looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, but he didn’t actually contradict Hakram. Huh, I’d not believed he had it in him. Nephele’s face was unreadable, not trace of our previous acquaintance there to be found. I poured myself another splash of aragh. Was that a bit of a sting I felt? We’re never as charming as we think we are, Catherine, I reminded myself.
“Then be seated,” I said. “I expect this’ll be interesting.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” the Repentant Magister said, bowing slightly.
Gods, that accent. Helikeans sounded like they were spitting out every other word in Chantant, but the Stygian accent was like silk in the ear. Didn’t hurt that she had one of those smooth, throaty voices either. The Mirror Knight offered a curt nod and seated himself briskly, the heroine following suit more gracefully a moment later. Hakram stepped back, standing behind the sofa they occupied and looming as only an orc of his towering height could.
“There is a traitor in the Arsenal,” the Mirror Knight gravely said.
My eyes moved to Adjutant, who nodded, then returned to the other two as I cocked a brow.
“I take it you have evidence for such a claim,” I said.
“Two Revenants were allowed past the wards,” the hero said, “which is impossible without someone on this side letting them in.”
My eyes flicked to Nephele, who bowed her head.
“I believe they were not truly Revenants,” the dark-haired heroine evenly said, “but instead masking their true identities through an illusion. Which does not change the truth of what Christophe has said: there is a traitor in the Arsenal, and likely more than one.”
Well now, wasn’t that interesting? Not the revelation itself, as it was a conclusion I’d been inching towards myself for some time – the Bard would need boots on the ground to pull off something like this, there was only so much that could be done without willing hands – but that they’d bring it to me of all people. Nephele had allegedly been sniffing around Quartered Seasons, which for someone with only cursory knowledge of my intentions might very well look like an attempt at apotheosis, and the Mirror Knight both disliked and distrusted me. I sipped at my aragh, considering, and delicately set down the cup.
“I am surprised,” I said, “that a man who accused me of plotting murder not a bell ago would now come to me with such tidings. Unless, of course, you mean to accuse me.”
The Proceran hero grit his teeth and did not look away from my gaze, dark green eyes matching my own.
“I see what you are, Black Queen,” the Mirror Knight said, tone curt. “You have fooled the White Knight and broken the Grey Pilgrim, but I see you. Carrion Queen, heiress to a lord of the same: you burrow into the heart and then claim the body for yourself. You stole the armies of Praes, the Kingdom of Callow, the Tenth Crusade and now you would do the same to the Grand Alliance itself. I will not let you make yourself queen of the Chosen and Damned, Gods preserve me in this.”
“But,” Nephele mildly said.
“But,” the Mirror Knight continued, tone reluctant, “you are foe to the Dead King and all his works. This I… recognize.”
How kind of him. I was a little skeptical, though, considering that when I’d been veiled as the Wicked Enchanter he’d accused ‘me’ of having made a pact with the Black Queen. Unless he’d been baiting a monologue? Possible, though he didn’t seem like the sort. As far as I knew most of the foes he’d faced since becoming Named had been Revenants, and there was very little subtlety required in dealing with those.
“All well and good,” I said. “But it doesn’t tell me what brings you here.”
“We require your understanding, Queen Catherine, in dealing with these troubles,” the Repentant Magister said. “We are aware that there are… tensions within the Arsenal, but the situation requires investigation nonetheless.”
“You want my permission to run your own Chosen inquisition,” I said.
My tone expressed exactly what I thought of that without needing to say anything more.
“You are on Proceran land,” the Mirror Knight said through gritted teeth.
“Do tell the First Prince that, preferably when I’m in the room,” I drily replied. “I’ve never seen her blush in utter embarrassment before.”
The Arsenal was not in Creation and had been made explicitly beyond Proceran rule by multiple treaties besides. Actual laws here were a complicated issue, with nations being responsible for the people they provided and Named themselves falling largely under the Terms.
“We believe,” Nephele said, “that your second has already been a target.”
My brow rose and I looked at Hakram before returning to her.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“You have heard of the fire in the Miscellaneous Stacks?” she asked.
“I have,” I cautiously said. “You are arguing that the Revenants were responsible for this?”
“It was an assassination attempt on the Adjutant,” the Mirror Knight bluntly said. “You sent him to question the Doddering Sage discreetly, and it was seen as an opening. If my companions and I had not arrived in time he’d be dead.”
Huh. Well, Hakram clearly ought to be grateful at having his life preserved in such a manner by upstanding ladies and gentlemen, I mused.
“That was the plot, Queen Catherine,” the Repentant Magister quietly said. “Your second dead on the ground, and only heroes there among the ashes. Someone is trying to set us against one another.”
She was very much correct about that but given that I was seated across from two of the blades the Wandering Bard was currently swinging at me I couldn’t exactly come out and tell her as much. Still, this was a pleasing turn. I seemed to have accidentally stumbled into the role of authority figure these enterprising investigating rogues might somewhat answer to, which was something I could work with.
“You’ll understand,” I said, “that while I might believe you speak the truth at least in part, I also have sworn responsibilities. Letting Chosen run amok in the Arsenal and interrogate my lot without supervision would be a gross failure of those oaths.”
Nephele was clever enough to see through that, but then she’d been clever before entering this room: she would have known that their request for my blessing to hunt as they wished had no chance of being accepted without some alterations to what had been proposed.
“What if we had one of the Damned with us as well?” the Mirror Knight said. “Someone you can trust.”
“You have a name for me, I take it?” I asked, brow raised.
He looked back at Hakram. The same orc whose life he had ‘saved’, who he would have sent to save unconscious custodians and not been failed by. That decision made itself, didn’t it?
“The Adjutant is a good man,” Christophe firmly said. “It would not be an injury to count him among our number.”
But we know, oh we know, I almost hummed, that in the woods, the fox is king.
This would do, I decided. With Hakram following them and serving as my voice I could count on them keeping out of my way while I expunged the Bard’s influence from this fortress one pawn at a time. With a little luck, they might even actually unearth a real conspiracy that I’d missed.
“Where would you begin?” I said, tacitly accepting.
The Repentant Magister released a long breath, though the Mirror Knight only nodded as this was expected. His due. Dislike cannot dictate policy, I reminded myself, or I would have been at war with every other Calernian nation within a year of my coronation.
“The Hunted Magician has been seen going in and out of the Workshop at odd hours,” the Mirror Knight told me.
Because he’s been carrying on two love affairs with heroines, I thought, the most impressive part of this being that he’s yet to lose a limb. Mind you, if I was the Intercessor I’d consider the Hunted Magician as a good in for the Arsenal: he had a enemy he’d probably do next to anything to avoid being found by, and precious few scruples as a person. If they wanted to dig there they had my blessing.
“It’s start,” I agreed. “Come back to me when you’ve found something. I might even have insights of my own to share, as I’m looking into a few things as well.”
“It might be,” Nephele softly said, “that some of your own trusted have not proved entirely deserving of that trust.”
Well now, that was something. A warning, if I read her right. And considering she was one of the Arsenal regulars and there was only one of the Woe who shared that state of affairs? She was warning me about Hierophant. Quartered Seasons, I decided. She’s dug up something about Quartered Seasons, and she’s decided that Masego is deceiving me somehow. Or she was trying to sow dissent between myself and Hierophant. Either way, it was a swing and a miss. Zeze honestly didn’t care enough about my approval to lie, it wasn’t how his head worked. He’d either go through with it anyway or decide it wasn’t worth the trouble, deception wouldn’t be part of the recipe either way. That the Repentant Magister had said that at all, though, was telling. Masego was fairly open about his intention to one day reach apotheosis on his own terms and Quartered Seasons might be seen as a way to that. The Repentant Magister, and likely the Blessed Artificer as well, knew enough about the project to misunderstand. That put the alleged blinding of Masego by the Blessed Artificer in a rather more sinister light.
Someone had just shot up the list of problems I needed to handle.
“I am not,” I said, “in the habit of leaving stones unturned. Go, you two. I’ll speak with Adjutant a moment and send him after you.”
It got a nod from the Mirror Knight and a proper bow from Nephele, though she also carefully studied my face as she moved. I do not know what she found there, but she left looking satisfied. The doors was barely closed and the courtesies done when I turned a steady gaze to Hakram.
“Who’s the fifth?” I asked.
Mirror Knight, Blade of Mercy, Maddened Keeper and Repentant Magister. That made four, which meant there was one left I’d not seen. I would have bet the Exalted Poet, before Nephele’s presence was revealed, but now I had doubts. Bands of five were rarely so heavy on Gifted.
“The Vagrant Spear,” Hakram replied.
Shit, Archer’s second? That explained why she’d not heard armour, but we were lucky we’d not run into her: she likely would have recognized Indrani, glamour or not. Fuck, we actually gotten pretty lucky on that. If I’d not acted to split the band of five, Archer would probably have been outed. The first step never fails, huh? I’d been so worried about good eyes I’d missed the greater threat of simple familiarity. A reminder the victory was rarely quite as triumphant as it felt when it was happening.
“What’s she after?” I asked.
“I believe she is trying to keep the Red Axe alive,” he said. “And was drawn in by the Mirror Knight’s impassioned defence of her right to break the Terms for a revenge killing.”
The Red Axe had travelled with Archer’s band to come here, hadn’t she? And as I recalled, the Spear had almost begun a fight with the Hunted Magician over the Enchanter’s corpse. I’d need to ask Indrani about this, looked like. The way that Adjutant had phrased his answer told me both what I’d asked and his own opinion of the matter, which was rather helpful of him given how little time we had. I’d need to cut him loose soon else his new companions would ask questions, but I still had a bit more.
“Mirror Knight,” I said. “Your opinion of him?”
“There is more him than I had anticipated,” the orc gravelled. “Genuinely unambitious, but he clearly sees himself as the flagbearer of Proceran heroism with all that entails. And he’s on the edge, Catherine. Sometimes he snaps at the Blade of Mercy and the boy always looks surprised, so it can’t be habitual.”
I slowly nodded. That made the man even more dangerous, truth be told. People did stupid and dangerous things when they felt they had no other choice. I was glad I’d asked, since that would change how the Knight would need to be handled: carefully, in a word.
“On your end?” Hakram asked.
“Going to ask the Wicked Enchanter some questions,” I replied. “Indrani should be here any moment.”
“Then I’ll leave, they might be waiting for me outside,” Hakram said.
And we would not want them to run into each other. I got up to clasp his arm before sending him out, and when the door closed I closed my eyes and breathed out. The song hadn’t quite left me, I found as the hum left my lips.
“Yes we know, oh we know
That in the woods, the fox is king.”
