Cordelia woke up looking at the moon.
The sky spread out above her, a river of darkness with glistening jewels for stars and brightest among them the crown jewel of night. The midnight eye, she thought. She was not manacled, the fair-haired princess found, but she was chained. Someone had set her down on a throne of stone from which twisting chords of Night slithered out, forming into shackles around her hands and feet. Trying to rise up, Cordelia found her legs wobbly and half-fell back into the seat. She groaned as she bruised the back of her knees against the stone, forcing aside the pain to look around. She must be atop the tower, she thought. The view could come from nowhere else.
And there was only one person who could have brought her here.
“I do not believe,” Cordelia said, “that you would abduct me only to then ignore my presence. Shall we dispense with the theatrics, Catherine?”
A long moment passed and she wondered if she had not just made a fool of herself, but from behind her came the sound of a match being struck. Though she felt the urge to twist around on the seat and look back, Cordelia forced herself not to. Appearances mattered even more when you were at a disadvantage. Instead the acrid smell of wakeleaf drifted to her, lazily carried by the breeze, and she heard that familiar limp drag itself across the stone. A soft step and then the sharp rap of the staff on stone, all a fabricated display of weakness. The Warden of the East could still move as swiftly and gracefully as a cat when she needed to.
Catherine Foundling limped into sight from her left, moonlight lapping at her back like the tide at the shore. Even the jarring colours of the Mantle of Woe were drowned in strands of Night, as if she wore a cloak woven from it, and only the cherry-red burn of the pipe allowed Cordelia to see anything at all under the dark of the hood. One piercing brown eye set in a face carved by hatchet, all sharp angles and severity. It was only those ever-expressive lips that broke from the blade edges: always smiling and smirking, grinning and baring teeth.
The Warden drew back the pipe to blow a long stream of smoke, veiling her face in darkness for a moment, and Cordelia was left without a window to gaze through. When the red burn returned, it was to an amused little quirk of the lips. Like she knew a joke no one else did.
“Hanno would have seen the trap coming,” the Warden of the East lightly said. “You do know that, right?”
Cordelia let the barb pass through her. This was a negotiation, diplomacy. Allowing the woman on the other side of the table to irritate her was handing her further advantage when she already had many.
“It is decent manners to offer refreshments when entertaining a guest,” Cordelia calmly replied. “I believe a tart red is the traditional kind vintage for stargazing. A bottle from lakeside Aequitan if you have one.”
Unlike the rest of the principality the large cities near the coast had never truly become Arlesite even after the Aquitanii were conquered, so the ancient tart grapes were still used in the vineyards. Aequitan reds from the south were unpleasantly sweet, Cordelia had found, best drunk with small game or not at all.
“How fortunate, then, that you are not a guest,” the Warden drawled. “If you insist on wine, Hasenbach, there should be a bottle by the seat. You can pour for yourself.”
Cordelia did grope around, finding to her relief that her legs were steadying, and hid her dismay when she saw that it was half-empty bottle of Vale summer wine that rested on a low table. She could have used a drink that did not taste like it had been mixed with cider to settle her nerves. The Queen of Callow’s hopelessly provincial taste in wine had been speculated by some to be a clever way to display Callowan pride, given the famously poor reputation of those vintages, but Cordelia had sadly learned better. She took a deep drink of the glass she’d poured, much more than was polite.
Awful.
“You’ll be able to stand before long, if that’s what you were trying to do,” Catherine idly said. “The binding was just a little rougher than I meant it to be.”
She had little practice with bindings, Cordelia thought, because she so rarely took prisoners. Had the sideways reminder been on purpose?
“Duly noted,” she replied. “As we have now both found a vice to nurse, given the circumstances I believe it would be forgivable to do way with the usual courtesies.”
The face disappeared into the dark, a cloud of smoke flowing out.
“Indeed?” the Warden amusedly said.
“Indeed,” Cordelia confirmed. “I imagine that your plans for the Book of Some Things are nearing their end, which invites urgency in our talks.
For a moment she thought she saw the other woman wince at the mention of the artefact, but it might have been a trick of the light. A single fleck of red cast just as many shadows as it did their opposite.
“We’ll be ending this soon,” Catherine Foundling casually agreed. “The attack on the tower is going south in a hurry and-”
She suddenly paused, then sighed and snapped her fingers. There was a flare of Night and a curse from someone else’s mouth. Cordelia rose to her feet just in time to see a shape being tossed over the edge of the tower. The one-eyed queen limped there, then cast an irritated look downwards.
“I can see in the dark, Kallia,” the Warden peevishly called out, “and I’ve traded the one eye for a hundred. Try that again when you’re actually invisible, not just quiet.”
There was a loud thump and a snap, then a hoarse shout.
“Crows,” Catherine Foundling muttered, shaking her head. “If she doesn’t stay down with the second leg broken I’m going to need to have a talk with that girl. There’s a difference between determined and goddamn stubborn.”
Cordelia glanced down at her glass, allowed herself a grimace and then polished off a third in a single swallow. It seemed that there would be no rescuers coming to free her, which was unfortunate. Buying time for them to come had been in the back of her mind, but she would have to negotiate without that card up her sleeve. Adjusting her angle accordingly, the blonde princess discarded any thought of a bargain from even relative strength. The only way she would pass through this victorious was by discovering what it was that Catherine Foundling truly wanted and how it could be leveraged into a compromise.
Cordelia took a few steps around the stone seat, finding that her Night chains followed without restraining her, and laid her elbows against the back of the throne. She felt Catherine’s eye back on her even as the wink of red was taken away, replaced by a plume of smoke that drifted up to the cloudless sky.
“I was given to understand that the Book of Some Things is a manifestation of Good stories,” Cordelia calmly said. “Though I do not believe there is precedent for such an act, one might assume that destroying such an artefact would have dire consequences.”
The Warden of the East smiled.
“Assume,” she repeated. “That’s been a problem lately hasn’t it, Cordelia? How often you’re forced to assume.”
The wrong approach, the princess acknowledged without missing a beat. That had not been a personal attack made because the one-eyed queen was feeling defensive, it had been a barb made out of derision. I misread signs and was mocked for it. She did not mind. That, too, was actionable information. The Book was not the keystone then, either destroying or ingesting it. There was another motive underlying all this chaos. What? If she found this, she found the key to it all.
“Then disabuse me, Catherine, by all means,” she pleasantly said. “If I have made an error let us resolve it.”
Even from a change of subject she should be able to glean a hint. The Warden’s smiled turned sharp and Cordelia’s heart sunk. She had mistepped again. I will lose every time until I learn what game it is we are playing, she darkly thought.
“Have you ever wondered why it is that you’re held in high esteem by so many rulers,” Catherine Foundling nonchalantly said, “but when heroes look at you, deep down most of them believe you’re a failure?”
Cordelia straightened, elbows leaving the back of the throne as she set down her cup on it.
“Only a handful of Named alive have ever ruled,” she replied. “Or even held high office. Few understand what those responsibilities entail or what the limitations of a crown are.”
Heroes, in particular, grew strong through uncompromising conviction. It encouraged the belief that simple solutions would suffice no matter the situation, which was wildly untrue. Strength grew into ever more complicated a word the higher you came to stand.
“That’s true,” the Warden amiably replied. “It’s not what most of them are built for, even if they don’t want to admit it. But then they’re hardly alone in that, since you’re only looking at the half of the truth that you like.”
An idle step forward, even as Cordelia warily took her cup in hand.
“They see you as a failure,” the Warden of the East said, “because you did fail.”
The tall princess’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly, the first genuine stirring of anger of this conversation rearing up its ugly head until she smoothed it away.
“That’s the gap in perspective, Cordelia, that you’re not seeing,” the one-eyed queen continued. “A lady, a king, they look at what you did and applaud. It was an impossible task but you moved mountains and held up the sky, compliments galore. But heroes?”
The Damned shrugged.
“What they see is that Cordelia Hasenbach took up an impossible task and then she failed,” the Warden said, “when victory against impossible odds is the very foundation of what a hero is.”
It was a moment of cold, cutting clarity that followed the words. The pieces fit, suddenly and cruelly. The sneers she had found buried deep in the gaze of so many Chosen, that simple marrow-deep disbelief that she had not been able to fix everything and prevent the inevitable. The ugly assumption not so much as whispered but ever present that somehow, she had chosen Procer should fall.
Impossible was not a word any of them genuinely believed in.
“Bearing a Name would not have made keeping the Principate together easier,” Cordelia evenly said. “Given the Truce and Terms, it would have instead significantly complicated my efforts.”
She would have been both above and under the White Knight in authority, the boundaries of jurisdiction so blurred as to be useless. Cordelia entertained the thought, briefly, but could only see a disaster in the making.
“And that would matter if Procer was your wheelhouse,” Catherine said, rapping her staff against the side of the throne.
The sound almost made her flinch. It was like rattling the cage of a songbird that’d sung out of tune.
“But that’s not the duty you’re after, is it?” she continued. “You’ve thrown your hat in the ring to be Warden of the West and that’s a very different creature.”
And there, Cordelia thought, her line of argument collapsed. She drank from the cup, the too-rich taste filling her palate, and set down it down again on the stone to a neat little note.
“You speak as if not having been Named is a mistake crippling my ambition, that I cannot see the world the way many heroes do,” the blue-eyed princess said, “but you are wrong.”
She stepped back, chains following so lightly she would have thought them made of feathers if not for the shackles.
“That distance, Catherine, that estrangement? They are the very foundation of my claim,” Cordelia said. “I have seen heroes as someone who is not one of them. Witnessed their flaws as only someone who stood outside of their circle can. I can learn namelore, aspects and tricks. All Named do.”
All heroes had to learn their nature, the unseen rules of their trade, and not all received the help of a mentor. There was no shame in this, or in her remaining lack. She was a quick study.
“What cannot be learned is the understanding of where heroes falter,” she told the Warden, meeting the dark eye lit in red. “Where they step beyond the bounds of duty and do more harm than good.”
She never would have sought to be Warden of the West without it, so the princess thought it almost absurd to count it a weakness. It was not unlike chastising a bird for having wings.
“Our gap in perspective can and will be bridged,” Cordelia plainly told her. “I am not unaware of its costs. But I count it a worthwhile trade for having removed the scales from my eyes.”
“You’re not listening,” Catherine said. “What is it that you’ve used to push your claim, Cordelia?”
The other woman limped around the throne, leaning her back against it. It was not a restful stance, for all that it was motionless. Cordelia took in the silhouette and could only think of a snake drawing back to strike.
“Armies,” the Warden of the East said, enunciating every syllable. “Nobles. Treaties. Everything except people you’d actually be leading. A First Prince in everything but Name.”
The princess’s lips thinned.
“I do not yet have the sup-”
“You’re not listening,” Catherine Foundling interrupted in a hiss. “Your claim is a test, and you are failing it.”
She pushed off cloak of shadows sweeping behind her as she limped forward and Cordelia stepped back.
“You can learn namelore,” the Warden said. “Of course you can. Just like he can learn politics. But that’s not what a Name is, what a Role is. It’s not asking you if you’re going to be the right person in five years, it’s asking if you are right now. Are you?”
Cordelia’s eyes hardened. No more steps back. Any fruit grew beyond reach if you raised the branch high enough and kept raising it as soon as the hand neared.
“And wereyou a perfect fit, Catherine, when you became the Squire?” she challenged. “Was Tariq Isbili, when he became the Grey Pilgrim? I imagine most Named were not, and so it seems to me that the requirements to wardenship rise every time you are at risk of having an equal.”
The last touch had been a barb and an investigation both, trying to find what lay behind this tirade, but the princess immediately knew she had not drawn blood. The words washed over the other woman like water over a duck’s back.
“That’s the thing, Cordelia,” the Warden smiled. “You’re not my equal. And if that’s hard to swallow, you only have yourself to blame: you had months, years to learn namelore on your own.”
Cordelia scoffed. Quite the simplification.
“Would you have taught me, Catherine, if I had asked?” she mocked. “Are tutors in the art so easy to find? For some skills time is the only teacher.”
It was not as if she had not sought instruction. But namelore was not committed to books, its rules were often obscure and there was only so far reading stories would get Cordelia when she had to deal with heroes from all over Calernia. The few heroes she had been in a position to interrogate were usually new and shallow in learning: even Frederic, perhaps the most seasoned hero on her side, freely admitted that he still had much to learn.
“I’m a villain, there would have been no point,” the Warden dismissed. “Which you might have known if you’d asked me. Or if you’d asked any hero but those few you trust – that is, those who already obey you.”
“Is having allies a black mark as well, now?” Cordelia said. “An interesting development.”
The insinuation that she only trusted through control was particularly rich, coming from the Black Queen. The same woman who had put a knife to the throat of every living being on Calernia to force her enshrinement into the Grand Alliance.
“Not a large one,” Catherine scorned. “How many heroes would even back you in an election, First Prince of the Chosen?”
A pregnant pause.
“Ten, fifteen?” she ventured.
The number was roughly accurate, in all likeliness. That the vast majority of these were Proceran was another bitter pill to swallow. It was a weakness, but one she had not had great opportunity to mend. Nearly all Chosen had been on the fronts, far from Salia, and private correspondence with any would justly have been seen by the Highest Assembly as a political act. In a cut of irony, now that the heroes were nearly all in Salia it was even more complicated to approach any of them in private.
The perception that she intended to become Warden through a coup would have… grave consequences, she had grasped.
“Not even a third of the heroes, the very people you’re supposed to lead,” the Warden of the East said, shaking her head.
“I have not yet made my case to them,” Cordelia said, maintaining an even tone. “I would prefer to make it from a stronger position, it is true, but do not mistake timing for inability.”
“So confident they’ll bend your away after a speech,” the Warden chuckled. “How the Hells would you know if that’ll work, Cordelia? You’ve spent years seething about heroes do wrong, but have you actually ever learned what makes them tick? Why do they act the way they do?”
A litany of variations on ‘I believed it was right’ and ‘I followed instinct’ had been her answer when she asked, usually.
“The reason is not as important as the result,” Cordelia replied instead.
The Warden squinted at her.
“Is that you, Tariq?” she said, grinning nastily. “You’re looking good, for a dead man.”
The blue-eyed princess kept the twitch of fury the barb had caused away from her face, instead dismissing the rejoinder with a curt gesture.
“That the Grey Pilgrim committed atrocities does not mean his every act and word was wrong,” Cordelia said, heat bleeding into her tone. “Only that he committed atrocities and was the kind of man who would.”
Calm, she must be calm as the surface of a pond. Catherine thrived in chaos, in the heat of argument. Cordelia would win by keeping her head and grasping why this conversation seemed to have no end point.
“And that is my very point, Warden,” she pressed. “Why Tariq Fleetfoot murdered a town full of innocents does not matter. His reasons, his reasoning, they do not matter: only that he did. I do not need to understand his every thought to condemn his actions.”
Centering herself, smoothing away the last of the anger, she leaned into the opening.
“Besides, for all your harping on about understanding heroes how many of them agree on anything of note?” Cordelia continued. “You pretend there is some sort of common heroic mindset, but half of them would be at each other’s throats without a greater threat looming over them. You reproach me the lack of something that, by and large, does not exist.”
That rejoinder bought her a moment to think. There is no gain for you through this conversation, Cordelia thought. Berating me into dropping my claim is a waste of time when you have half a dozen more direct tools to ensure I lose. And she’d had the impression that Catherine favoured her claim, besides. Was this a favour, then, an attempt to help Cordelia sharpen her claim? It seemed unlikely. So what is it that you are attempting to accomplish, Catherine?
The Warden scoffed.
“Now you’re being naïve,” Catherine said. “Do you think Hanno is popular with heroes because he’s pleasant and good with a sword? He understands what they want, knows what lines they’ll fight him over, and navigates that terrain. You, on the other hand?”
Even in the faint red glow, the outline of a sneer could be seen.
“You’re a diplomat who never learned the language of the other side of the table. You can get by, sure, but in every conversation how much do you miss?”
Which was not untrue in principle, she thought, but stood an empty objection in practice.
“Hypotheticals,” Cordelia calmly replied, circling the throne as she spoke. “Generalities. You stick to those because there are no true examples to draw in, Catherine. Those that you could, you agreed with my answer. Sometimes even supported it.”
The Warden of the East stood behind the throne, the princess before it, and she took back the cup she had left on the stone. The wine was still terrible, but to a parched throat it would be better than nothing.
“You have no practicals, Cordelia,” Catherine harshly said. “That’s the entire fucking point of what I’m saying: your record with heroes is line after line of nothings. It’s not enough to avoid most mistakes. It’s not something that lands in your lap if you’re the least wrong, you have to win it.”
She snorted, face disappearing as a stream of smoke spewed out.
“But here’s a practical, since you like them so much,” the Warden of the East said. “You want to be a leader of heroes, Cordelia, when you know so little of them it would barely fill a thimble and most of them wouldn’t trust you to empty a chamber pot.”
Trust could be won. It was not an auspicious beginning, she would concede, but beginnings were what you made of them.
“But bad as that is,” Catherine continued, “worse is that you never considered making the sacrifices that would have made up for your lack. You know who might have filled you in on namelore, done it eagerly even?”
The smiled turned sharp.
“Hanno of Arwad.”
“A rival claimant,” Cordelia replied. “This is nonsense.”
“Would he be your rival right now, if you’d asked him a year ago?” Catherine retorted. “If you’d reached out after the Arsenal, tried to understand the heroes instead of sitting on your anger and pride?”
Yes, Cordelia’s mind whispered, but she was not as certain as she would have liked. She was not without faults. If she were, the last words she had spoken to her uncle would not have been in anger.
“Much can be changed if one shuffles around the past,” Cordelia said. “And regrets are easily found. Or are you still proud of your journey to Keter?”
“It was a fruitful disaster,” the Warden easily replied.
Unashamed even now.
“You have known many of those,” she mildly said. “From the Liesse Rebellion to the bloody end of the Dread Empire. Are you so certain you want to revisit old mistakes?”
She drank from the cup, more to wet her lips and win breathing room than to drink. You are going to shrug it off again, Cordelia thought. Because this is not a match in your eyes, is it? You do not win by getting the better part of the argument.
“We’d be here all night, but I’m game,” the Warden laughed. “It’s not my time that’s running out.”
The Lycaonese princess stilled in surprise.
“Now now, Cordelia,” Catherine chided. “Surely you didn’t think keeping me talking would delay the ritual, did you? It can keep going without my hand guiding it.”
It made no sense, she angrily thought. If all that Catherine wanted was to consume the Book of Some Things, then there was no need for all this theatre. Cordelia was a valuable hostage, she could have been kept in a cell and left to rot. Instead she was here, circling an empty throne and talking with the person whose time was most valuable in all this affair. The Warden was getting something out of this conversation, otherwise she would not be having it, but Cordelia simply could not tell what.
“What happened to the Sword of Judgement when he came to the tower?” Cordelia asked.
“We had a pleasant talk,” Catherine easily replied. “And he was tossed back out.”
You cannot beat us through this, Cordelia thought. No, that was untrue. In every way that matters you have already beaten us, so why is it that you are still playing? Even if some feline impulse of cruelty had taken her, the Warden did not have the time to torment the defeated. It made no sense. Why would she keep playing a game she had already won? The princess drank the last of the wine, washed it down. And as she set it down hastily, almost dropping it, she froze. Remembered another time she had stood across a very dangerous woman and heard a cup topple down.
You kept playing a game, Cordelia thought, when you had not yet won. And simply because she was defeated, because Hanno of Arwad was defeated, did not mean Catherine Foundling had won. She found the Warden of the East’s dark eye, glimmering red. It was never us you were playing against, was it? Her pulse thrummed, she straightened her back. She had found the thread, now she only needed to follow it down to the end.
“And how many sins did you hang around dear Hanno’s neck?” Cordelia too lightly asked.
“Enough,” she laughed. “You know, I actually think that all this enmity between you two goes back to a single moment.”
“Do you now?”
The Warden breathed in deep, face veiled by the dark, and answered through a wreath of smoke.
“The first time you saw each other,” Catherine said. “When he entered that Chamber, spun that coin and you caught it. You each thought you understood the other, for a moment. And you’ve paid the price for that ever since.”
She ran a hand atop the back of the throne, as if amused.
“He thought he was looking at someone who was Good enough to be heroine,” the Warden told her, “and so your every compromise since has been a disappointment. You, on the other hand?”
“By all means,” Cordelia pleasantly smiled, “do deign to inform me of what I believe.”
The one-eyed queen wagged a finger at her.
“You, Cordelia, saw that he respected your stepping in,” the Warden of the East said. “And you thought that meant he respected law, respected how Procer is run. That made him the good hero, the trustworthy one.”
Cordelia’s belly clenched, for that had the faintest ring of truth to it.
“Only he didn’t actually care for either of those things,” Catherine said. “He accepted it as a courtesy, from Named to Named. Because the way you saw it, you might not have the power but you have the conviction – and that’s the part that matters, anyway.”
“You revisit the past so often one might believe you would rather live there,” Cordelia sharply replied.
“It’s an interesting night, that’s all,” the one-eyed queen said, elbow against the throne and chin on her hand. “Plenty there to ponder about. Like the way that you turned down a Name that night, Cordelia.”
“It would not have made anything better,” the princess replied, and meant every word.
“I don’t entirely disagree,” Catherine said. “It was a wise decision in some ways, but it also speaks to the one sin I’ll hang around your neck that outweighs all of Hanno’s: you don’t actually want to be Named.”
A sliver of incredulous laughter escaped her lips before she could smother it.
“Then pray tell, what exactly has all this been in the service of?” Cordelia said, gesturing at the night around them.
“Not wanting it,” the Warden smiled. “You’re doing it because you think it’s your responsibility, your duty, but fight all you like under that flaking coat of paint I still see the same woman that was on the floor of the Highest Assembly that night.”
Cordelia took a step back, jaw clenching.
“The one who snatched Judgement’s verdict out of the air and swore mortal laws for mortal men.”
“It is not that simple,” she bit out.
“It never is,” the Warden said. “And I think you’re right about a lot of things, Cordelia. Heroes should have someone calling them to account. But it’s not enough to be right. To be clever or to be wise. You also have to win it. Because know who else believes that just being right is enough?
She saw the end of that sentence before it came, but that did nothing to dull the sting.
“The same lot you say you’re going to make toe the line.”
“It is not the same thing,” Cordelia snarled.
The calm, the calm failed her. How dare she?
“A Name isn’t a crown,” the Warden of the East said. “You don’t just get to have it because it fits your head, Cordelia. And the way I see it, you’re not Good enough to be anointed or strong enough to be a tyrant so what’s left? Inheritance?”
The one-eyed queen leaned closer, as if to whisper a confidence.
“Whose death is going to give you your power this time, Cordelia?” she gently asked. “Even if you spend the Augur down to the last inch, you’ll run out of kin long before you stand my equal.”
And as the words slid between her ribs like a knife, the cruelty of it opened her eye. It was not an accident, so barbed a phrase. And yet it won nothing. So the cruelty is the point. The Warden of the East had come for her certainties, her belief, with methodical brutality. One after another, sparing nothing. And that is the point. That is what you gain.
Inflicting that before she was tossed out of the tower to land at Hanno’s side in the grass.
“Are you truly so eager,” Cordelia Hasenbach quietly said, “to make yourself the villain?”
“It’s habit by now,” Catherine Foundling confessed, sounding just a touch too grieved to be lying. “But there’s power in it, always has been. So ask yourself, Cordelia, before you make yourself into a heroine” what is that you want that power for?”
She rose as she spoke, hand knocking over the cup that had been left there, and as Cordelia saw it tumbling down she felt a whisper.
Darkness.
She woke up in the grass, a man standing over her. Cordelia Hasenbach met Hanno of Arwad’s eyes and a long moment passed.
“Rough night?” the Sword of Judgement drily asked.
