“When using tigers you don’t have enough time to gloat, when using rats you risk awkwardly running out of gloat before the end: true equilibrium is found in a pit of humble man-eating tapirs, beasts that have never once failed me.”
– Dread Empress Atrocious, later devoured by man-eating tapirs
I woke up with a stiff back and an aching leg.
I’d courted as much by sleeping in a chair instead of a bed, but I’d not had it in me to retire to my rooms. Groaning as I shook off the last pangs of sleep and felt out the throbbing side of my leg – today wasn’t going to be one of the goods days, I could already sense it – I pulled back my hand to settle my messily loose hair some. The pale glow of the magelights in the healing ward’s private room was hard on the eyes, somehow harsh and cold compared to the way the light of day felt. The Arsenal was not growing on me: the endless bare hallways and the dusty air had me more restless than even the Everdark had back in the day. Below the earth, moving through caves and tunnels, it’d still felt like my feet were on the ground. Here, though, it all felt fake. Unnatural.
Swallowing a yawn and stretching, I finally made myself look at the man lying on the bed by chair. Hakram’s upper body was bare and I could see his hairless and muscled chest rise and fall as he breathed, the steady rhythm ensured by the sorcery woven over his mouth and nose. A ball of spelled air, made thicker and almost translucent by the nature of the spell, was ensuring that he would keep breathing steadily even should his body fail as it already had several times. Gods, my heart still clenched every time I looked at him. I could not see the leg and the chunk of hip – including bone – he’d lost, as they were under the blanket, but there was no hiding his carved-up flank and the stump of his arm. The priests, the mages and even Masego were all in agreement: there could be no healing most of this.
In time flesh would grow back over the bared ribs and the stumps would cease to be purplish scabs, but there could be no question of attaching another limp even if we managed to get another one from an orc or even grow something through sorcery. Wounds inflicted by the Severance could be fully mended by neither sorcery nor Light. I’d already asked Hierophant to begin work on prosthetics, but the cuts through bone at the hip and leg were… Hakram’s fighting days were likely over. After months of bedrest and the finest prosthetics the Arsenal could create, he might be able to walk around without help. Might. But he would no longer be fit for battle, that much couldn’t be denied. I did not realize I was worrying my lip with my teeth as I looked at him until the door was cracked open and I released it.
My lips were dry, and my teeth sharp, so I tasted a fleck of blood against the roof of my mouth as I turned to see who’d intruded.
“Cat?” Archer quietly asked as she poked her face in. “Ah, good, you’re awake.”
She opened the door further with her foot and came in with a wooden tray. The smell from the pastries on it, some sort of Proceran pasties filled with cheese and herbs, wafted in.
“Breakfast,” she announced.
“Thanks,” I wanly smiled, waving her in.
I noticed a steaming mug besides the pastries, filled with something liquid and dark. Indrani crossed the room, letting the door close behind her, and passed me the tray even as she sat down in one of the seats by mine. The moment my hands were occupied supporting it she pre-emptively stole one of the pastries, which had my lips twitching, and I settled the tray on my knees with a nod of thanks. I sniffed at the mug and my brow rose when I recognized the distinct scent of the herbs Masego used to give me for pain back in the day.
“Cocky had a few,” Indrani shrugged in answer when I glanced at her.
How like her, I fondly thought, to mention that in a transparent attempt to draw attention from the gesture of bringing the mug. Or from having remembered this precise recipe even years later. It was rare for her to bother with little things like this, usually when someone brought me a meal it was – the thought soured me, and I breathed out shallowly. I made myself take a bite from one of the remaining pastries, the crust falling apart in my mouth and the warm cheese drowning out the taste of the herbs. It was tasty enough, and filling, so I tore through two before stopping to breathe.
“Thanks,” I told Archer. “Didn’t realize how hungry I’d gotten. What time is it?”
“An hour before Morning Bell,” she replied.
Past dawn, then. This would make it the longest night of sleep from the four I’d had since the culmination of the Bard’s plots in the Arsenal. Indrani had not, I noted, bothered to wipe away the mess of crumbs she’d made eating her own pastry. Hiding a slightly crusty smile at the sight, I sipped at the brew. The taste was as dubious as I remembered, but it’d do wonders for my leg without needing to draw on Night.
“You don’t usually wake me, much less bring me breakfast,” I leadingly said.
“I did in the Everdark, sometimes,” she defended.
“Like we didn’t make Akua cook whenever we could,” I snorted.
Indrani was a much better cook than either Akua or me, in truth, but she was also in no way above taking a nap and letting someone else handle it after a long day of marching.
“Making the only known poisoner among us handle the stew,” Archer dryly said. “Yeah, that sounds about right for our little Everdark walkabout.”
I snorted. That whole affair had been an exercise in recklessness, it was true, for all that in the end it’d turned out mostly well. I did not immediately answer, instead enjoying the silence as I sipped at my mug. She’d probably come for a reason, but I was in no hurry to press her for it.
“Sometimes I wonder how it would have been down there, if he’d come along like he wanted to,” Indrani said, eyes going to our unconscious friend.
Not even Masego could tell us when he’d wake. There wasn’t exactly a known precedent to call on for demonic taint followed by a cut of the Severance.
“We would have been better off,” I said. “And Callow would have fallen to pieces.”
She hummed, not exactly in agreement but not disagreeing either.
“Always thought you were much rougher on Vivienne and the Hellhound than him, for that mess we found in Iserre,” Indrani suddenly said. “He had just as big a hand in it, but his chewing out was had in private.”
“Juniper and Vivienne had titles, he didn’t,” I replied. “I wouldn’t have been quite to brutal with those two if not for their blunders in ‘welcoming’ me, either. Couldn’t afford not to, after those.”
“You also like him most,” Indrani frankly said.
I jolted in genuine surprise, looking askance at her.
“It’s fine,” she waved. “I’m not getting all jealous on you, Cat. And it’s not like you really play favourites in the Woe. Hakram’s been with you from start, the longest of any of us, so you two have always been the closest in some ways.”
I didn’t bother to argue that I didn’t sleep with Hakram, since we both knew that was a different thing. Her nebulous but inarguably existing partnership with Masego involved not a speck of bedplay, as far as I knew, but that in no way took away from the importance of it to both involved.
“Sometimes I think I might be afraid of becoming Black, if we make it all through the next decade,” I admitted.
She didn’t immediately speak, and I appreciated the moment to gather my thoughts as I drank.
“The rest of you wandering off to see to your own lives, the way the Calamities did with him,” I said. “I never had to worry about that with Hakram. I knew he’d stick with me into Cardinal and the Accords.”
It was never something we’d outright discussed, but more than once common plans had been drawn for things that the two of us would be able to do when the city was raised, together. It seemed faraway now, watching him breathe on that bed. I snorted.
“He wants to make cisterns up in the mountains, you know,” I said. “With canals that’d lead the water down to the city since water’s going to be an issue if it gets too large.”
“Wouldn’t that be something to see,” Indrani softly said.
“Nonsense it what it is,” I smilingly said. “We should drain one the lakes up there and gate it down instead, much more practical.”
How many times had we had that debate? Must have been at least a dozen, I knew all the arguments for and against by rote. It’d gotten stale, retreading the same grounds, but I’d still give a queen’s ransom to tread them once more with him right now. I breathed out, looking away.
“You know you’re going to have to leave him behind, don’t you?” Indrani gently said.
I turned so quickly I almost dropped the tray.
“Excuse me?” I flatly said.
“He’s in no state to be transported,” Archer said, not cowed by my glare in the slightest. “And even if he was, the Arsenal is the best place for him to recover. He can be fitted for the prosthetics here as they’re being made, and there’s not a place with more or more kinds of healers on the continent. If you take him with you Cat, it won’t be for his benefit. It’ll be for yours.”
“I can’t just let him rot here,” I hissed.
“Masego will be attending him,” Indrani said.
“Masego will remember to attend him in between more important things,” I bit out.
A moment of silence passed, Archer saying nothing.
“I didn’t mean that,” I finally said.
It was doing a disservice to him. Masego was sometimes forgetful, but never when it came to taking care of one of us.
“I know,” Indrani said. “Like you know you won’t be able to stay here by his bedside forever. There’s still a war on outside, and it needs you.”
“Some days I wonder,” I darkly said. “We managed to chase off the Intercessor, ‘Drani, but what else do we have to show for this? Entire sections of the Arsenal trashed or tainted, a pile of dead soldiers and Named, a fucking knot of politics to entangle that just got even more knotted. The Mirror Knight has the fucking sword, and he’s not going to give that back even if asked nicely.”
“You drove back a creature that gives even the Hidden Horror the shivers,” Archer said. “If there wasn’t a pack of ruins on fire left behind, Cat, I’d be a lot more worried.”
I took my mug in hand and reached to set aside the tray, swallowing a hiss at the way the move pulled at my leg, but Indrani leaned over and set it on the ground instead. I gestured in thanks, which she airily dismissed.
“And Mirror Knight trying to play politics won’t amount to shit,” Archer continued. “Most Dominion people can’t stand him, and it’s not like him having a real cutty sword is going to impress Hasenbach or Malanza. And if both those two tell him to sit down and shut up, I don’t care whose daughter he’s fucking: there’s no one in Procer who’s going to argue.”
“It’s a sword made to kill the Dead King, Indrani,” I said. “And we only have one of those. That gives him clout, whether I like it our not.”
“Balls to that,” Archer said. “I don’t care how many Mirror Knights we throw at Keter, it’s not going to get shit done. You think it’s the first time the Original Abomination got some scrappy hero with powerful aspects and a fancy sword knocking at his gate? He’ll snap that boy over his fucking knee, Cat. The Saint might have pulled it off, ‘cause she was hard and canny and gone feral in the Heavens way, but the Mirror Knight? He’s just some asshole. Not the worst I’ve seen, and sure he tries, but when it comes down to it he’s still just some jackass with a sword.”
“If he was just that, I’d have gotten him under control by now,” I said.
“Way you told it to me, you treated him like Black and the Empress treated you back in the day,” Indrani said. “That wasn’t going to work.”
“It usually does,” I said through gritted teeth.
And Christophe de Pavanie wasn’t an idiot: I’d shown him how I did things, and then explained why they needed to be done that way. I’d even thought it was working, for all that I was wary of him and probably not hiding it entirely. I still had no real idea what had set him off at the end, though there was no denying I’d botched my handling of his little tantrum.
“Yeah, but you’re the Black Queen,” Archer said. “If you’re being nice to him, it’s probably a plot. If you’re being mean to him, it’s probably a plot. If you’re not being anything to him, it’s probably a plot. There’s a reason it’s Shiny Boots in charge of the heroes and not you, Catherine. Most of them still think you’re out to get them.”
She might be right, but I wasn’t convinced. Still, there was no denying I was in a position where trying to keep forcing the matter would do a lot more harm than good. For now all that I could do was let sleeping dogs lie – and keep an eye on the dogs, just in case.
“Shiny Boots will be coming soon, at least,” I grunted. “By midday tomorrow.”
“The Painted Knife and her band the day after,” Indrani said, “then Vivienne and Hasenbach the day after. It’s going to get lively around here.”
I didn’t answer, resuming sipping at my brew as I watched Hakram from the corner of my eye. Silence stretched out again, almost peaceful.
“I want to be here when he wakes up,” I said. “I can’t help but feel that is the least of the least I could do, ‘Drani.”
“The conference won’t be done in a day,” Archer replied.
But it wouldn’t last forever either, I knew. And if it ended and Hakram had not yet woken up… Gods, how was it a harder decision to leave him behind than to send soldiers into battles where I knew many of them would die?
“Yeah,” I finally said. “It won’t be done in a day.”
It was the coward’s way out, but I still hoped it was a decision I simply wouldn’t have to make. My mug was nearly empty now, so I drank down the last of the bitter brew and set it aside.
“So why is it that you came to wake me, anyway?” I asked.
“Prince Pretty is about and kicking, the Physician finally cut him loose,” Indrani said. “He was looking to speak to you when you have a moment.”
I groaned and began to rise to my feet.
“Might as well,” I said, reaching for my staff. “I feel like I need to stretch my legs a bit.”
“That’s the spirit,” Archer grinned. “I’ll keep watch on Hakram, you go and breathe some slightly more fresh air.”
I washed myself and changed clothes first. With a washbasin and a cloth, not a bath: the Arsenal had no source of water, which meant it had to be brought in from Creation by barrels. The practical limits to doing that meant it was permanently rationed, and though I could have probably flouted the rule I saw no real reason to. I dragged out a leather hunting doublet – which I’d never actually used for hunting – and loose black trousers I could tuck into my boots, pulling my wet hair into a braid and loosening my cloak around my neck. It wasn’t exactly court clothes, or queenly ones, but I had a limited patience for both and the only way I’d ever put on full Proceran royal dress was if they dressed up my corpse. Cordelia somehow managed to make it seem natural, but I had a deep and instinctual distrust for anything involving that many ribbons and knots.
I’d asked attendants to find out where Prince Frederic was before going into my quarters, so by the time I left them the answer was awaiting me. It also had me raising an eyebrow, since I’d expected any conversation between us would be taken care of in a private audience room or either our quarters. Instead the Prince of Brus was currently breaking his fast in the meal hall where I’d found Archer on the day of my arrival. Except she’d used it when it was empty, while around this time there were bound to be more than a few full tables. Well, at least my hair would dry a tad on the way there. I’d somewhat learned my way around the Arsenal, what with all the traipsing about I’d done here, so to get to the hall I needed no guide.
It was a quick enough walk – the architects who’d designed the place had clearly known the Alcazar would be hosting the people who paid them, and so positioned it very conveniently – and I got through it briskly, the herbal brew having finally kicked in enough I could put a bit of a spring to my limp without swallowing a wince every time. The meal hall was a little over half-full, as I’d expected, offering up the sight men and women from their twenties to their dotage in three colours of robes. I would have expected some degree of clannishness but even those who most stuck to their own kind, the white-robed priests, had but a few islands of pale while most were spread out. The mages and the scholars, in red and bronze, were seated seemingly without thought to affiliation.
The closest thing there were to clans were actually the tables with Named, which everyone else avoided. In the back, near the corner, the Blade of Mercy and the Blessed Artificer were quietly speaking as they ate together. Closer to me I saw the Kingfisher Prince laughing at something Roland had said, the Harrowed Witch looking at them warily but also seemingly a little charmed. More than a few gazes turned my way when I limped in, a hush falling over the room. I said nothing, only making my way to Prince Frederic’s table and clapping Roland’s shoulder in thanks when he made some room for me to sit by his side.
“Your Majesty,” the Harrowed Witch greeted me.
“Good morning,” I said, then nodded at the others. “And to the both of you as well.”
“Better yet for the pleasure of your company, Queen Catherine,” Frederic Goethal smiled.
“Yes,” the Rogue Sorcerer drily said. “That.”
My gaze flicked to the side of the Kingfisher Prince’s pale neck, where a thin red line went around with an even neatness that was somehow pleasing to the eye. Hells, if I’d not known better I would have believed it a tattoo. A rather tasteful one, at that.
“This is highly unfair,” I complained. “How does the scar make you prettier? Mine just make me look like I got mauled.”
I got treated to the sight of Frederic Goethal’s eyes going wide in surprise, and the Prince of Brus politely coughed into his fist as Roland loudly choked. I glanced at the Witch, cocking an eyebrow and she reluctantly offered me a nod of agreement. See? It’s not just me.
“I thank you for the compliment, Your Majesty,” the Kingfisher Prince got out.
“Catherine,” Roland muttered, aghast. “You can’t just hit on a prince of the blood in the middle of the meal hall.”
“I’m just stating the truth,” I protested. “Look at Aspasie, she’s not disagreeing is she?”
“I have finished my meal,” the Harrowed Witch hastily said, “and so take my leave, with your permission.”
Before said permission could either be offered or denied, she just as hastily bowed and made her escape. A cannier tactician than I’d expected, that one.
“Look what you did,” Roland reproached.
“War makes beasts of us all,” I solemnly said.
This time it was the Prince of Brus that choked, but in amusement. After mastering himself he poured me a cup of what looked like warm milk – with honey and something else in, maybe cloves going by the smell? – and offered it, which had my eyes sharpening. This was a rather informal setting, but he’d still poured for me. To an Alamans, which this one was for all that he’d spent the last few years being the darling of the Lycaonese, that implied either intimacy or the sort of admission of lower status that a prince of Procer would not, strictly speaking, need to offer me. Over the years First Princes had often tried to pass kingship of Callow was a rank of nobility below their own office, making it equivalent to that of the lesser western royalty instead.
Cordelia Hasenbach had never tried that with me: even back when she’d called me Your Grace instead of Your Majesty, it’d been with the implication that a proper queen of Callow would have warranted the latter appellation.
“Thank you,” I slowly said, cocking my head to the side.
It was a statement, what he’d just done, and he’d chosen to do it in front of more than half a hundred people. Including several Named. The sole Named among Proceran royalty had just implied intimacy and trust in me in a subtle but very public way, which would not be something without consequence. I drank from the cup, and though it was too sweet for my tastes forced myself to swallow. Frederic Goethal had been raised to the Ebb and Flow during an era that Procerans still called the Great War, so I did not doubt he knew exactly what he’d just done. It explained why we were meeting here, even. It also left me feeling somewhat indebted to him, even if I’d not sought out the gesture, which I doubted was a coincidence.
“How is the Adjutant, if I might ask?” Roland quietly said.
I told him, and the conversation drifted towards that and other idle talk about the state of the Arsenal – there would need to be a hard look taken at the tainted parts of it before the First Prince could step foot here – that lasted until my cup and their plates ran empty. The Rogue Sorcerer skillfully took his leave after that, which left me alone with the Prince of Brus.
“I must confess to a degree of restlessness, now that I’ve been allowed to escape the infirmary,” the Kingfisher Prince idly said.
“I can sympathize,” I said.
I’d spent a lot of my early years as the Squire going from one healing ward to another.
“Then perhaps you might care to escort me to that fighting pit in the Frolic, Your Majesty,” Prince Frederic suggested. “If I do not exercise my arm at least a little I might just go mad.”
Mhm. A genuine request, or just an excuse for the two of us to be able to talk in a more private setting? Either way I had little reason to refuse.
“I could use the walk,” I agreed.
It’d been idle but pleasant talk all the way to the Frolic, which was empty at this time of the day.
Mind you it was an amusingly fresh experience to pass by a brothel with a genuine Proceran prince, an establishment he couldn’t possibly have missed even if he was too polite to comment on it. The fighting pit was just as deserted at the rest of this area, rafters empty and sand untouched, although by the looks of the pair of practice swords left at the edge of the stands a servant must have come through at some point. I cocked an eyebrow at the fact that there were two swords there: unless the Kingfisher Prince had ceased using a shield, that meant he expected to be exercising his arm against someone. Unhurried, the fair-haired man went down the stairs and undid the straps keeping the dull swords in place.
“The First Prince will be arriving tomorrow, along with your Lady Dartwick,” Frederic Goethal told me. “Word was sent to me overnight.”
Quicker than we’d thought. They’d get here the same day as the White Knight, then.
“Good to know,” I cautiously replied. “We have much to talk about.”
The pale-skinned man took up one of the swords, testing its weight first by holing the grip and then by a succession of swift swings.
“You and I do as well, Your Majesty,” Frederic Goethal seriously said.
He tossed me the sword, which I’d half expected. It’d been well thrown so I snatched it out of the air easily. The balance was a little off for me – I preferred a heavier pommel and a longer blade – but I was out of practice anyway. It’d hardly make a difference.
“It’s been some time since I used one of those,” I warned him.
“So I’ve heard,” the Prince of Brus said, eyeing me openly, “yet the instincts will still be there, and you have the fitness for it.”
I might not have been entirely opposed to being looked up and down by Frederic Goethal in different circumstances, but it hadn’t been that kind of look: he’d been gauging callouses and muscles, not how well I might fill my clothes.
“Swords and a chat, huh,” I said. “Fair enough. I can work with that.”
I made my way down the stairs, leaning on my staff, and after dulling my bad leg with a quick touch of Night leapt down and landed on the sands in a crouch, Mantle of Woe billowing around me. Prince Frederic’s boots touched the pit floor a moment later with catlike grace. His loose white long-sleeved shirt – with those puffy Alamans sleeves – and silken trousers would have made him seem like some lordling who’d stumbled into the wrong place by accident, if not for the comfortable way he held his dulled blade. Idly I spun my own sword to loosen my wrist, considering how best to approach. He’d weigh more, and be quicker on his feet, but that’d been true of a lot of my opponents over the years. It was hard to decide how best to attack when I still only had vague notions of how skilled he might be.
“So the swords are bare, but what is it we’re meant to be talking about?” I probed.
“We have trouble brewing,” the Prince of Brus said, “of a most inconvenient kind.”
Ever light on his feet he approached, and I tested his guard with a flick of the blade he allowed to touch his but otherwise ignored. The fair-haired man began to circle me rightwards, which I reciprocated in the opposite way.
“You’ll have to elaborate,” I said. “It’s been one of those months.”
The prince darted forward, sword going to the side in what I realized too late to have been a feint, but when he struck at a sharp angle that would have hit my swordholding wrist he found instead that a hard blow of my staff forced him to withdraw.
“How unsporting,” Frederic Goethal boyishly grinned.
“I don’t recall agreeing to swords only,” I nonchalantly replied.
He laughed and we began circling each other again.
“I have decided not to press charges against the Red Axe under the Terms,” the Kingfisher Prince said, and my eyes narrowed, “though I am not unaware that ultimately means little.”
“There was no need for that little piece of theatre in the meal hall, if you meant to throw in with the Mirror Knight,” I noted.
“It is a personal decision, not a political one,” he admitted. “I have known hatred, how it can twist you. The Red Axe was done great wrongs, and the depth of the hatred born of them makes anything I have partaken of a pittance. I do not forgive or forget her attack, but neither would I see her slain on my behalf.”
I slid a step to the side, sweeping low with my staff and baiting the attack I’d expected to follow. He was too quick on his feet to resist such an opening, dancing around my sweep and darting a strike out at my shoulder. Grip shifting, I grabbed the edge of my cloak with my freed fingers and swept the strike into the cloth, nearly ripping the blade out of his grasp. Yet nimbly he went, retreating out of my range before I could try to hem him in. The tricky bastard.
“It won’t change that she killed the Wicked Enchanter,” I said.
“Or that she tried to open my throat, lack of complaint or not,” Frederic of Brus acknowledged. “Unfortunately, the latter of these might turn out to be the most trouble. Though I am of the Chosen, I am also a prince of the blood and the anointed ruler of Brus. The First Prince is of the opinion, and to my regret I cannot disagree, that my attempted killer must stand trial under Proceran law.”
“By any reasonable measure she’ll get the-” I almost said headsman’s axe, but it would have been both ghastly and a pun, “- noose for the Enchanter, which would allow us to sidestep that issue outright.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t see where Cordelia was coming from, really. One of the heroes had just stuck a sword in the neck of one of her empire’s ruling nobility, if she didn’t act then she was legitimizing the right of heroes to pull shit like this in years to come. On the other hand, coming from the side of the Truce and Terms, we were going to see more than a few desertions if turned out that we were all subject to Proceran laws. People just didn’t trust the Principate that much, and given what the Sisters had shown me of the plotting in Cleves it wasn’t without reason. The unspoken conflict of authority between the officers of the Terms and the crowned heads of the Grand Alliance had been from open conflict so far, with great care, but this seemed like just the kind of mess to make it into a very spoken conflict instead.
“If the situation in the Arsenal had unfolded differently, that might have been an elegant solution,” the Kingfisher Prince aknowledged. “Unfortunately, the Mirror Knight now wields the Severance and he has ties to the Langevins of Cleves. Whose loyalties have waned even as their ambitions waxed.”
The Prince of Brus raised his sword high, blue eyes cool.
“If Chosen striking at royalty is left unpunished,” Prince Frederic gravely said, “we believe that my neck might just have healed from the first blow struck in the Principate’s next civil war.”
