Chapter Book 7 11: Descent

My soldiers cheered as I rode back into camp.

I’d had a party waiting for me shortly outside the gates, led by Vivienne herself. She’d pulled me in tight for a hug, to my surprise and pleasure, before we took the saddle and headed away from the prying eyes atop the walls of Wolof. I’d expected there to be something of a strange mood in camp after I’d spent a sennight in captivity, but if anything my sudden return seemed to have been expected. Like I’d been a given that I would pull a trick, find a way out of the pit. It was as once oddly touching and brute burden. Sooner or later, I thought, I would lead them to a doom there would be no bearding. The thought of the look on their faces then had my stomach dropping.

It wouldn’t do to return grim-faced, though, so I smiled and laughed and stopped to speak with men and women I recognized. There were more than I’d expected. The First Army had pulled heavily from rank and file of the Fifteenth, back when it’d been first raised, and in some ways it had seen less action than other parts of the Army of Callow. There were fewer holes in the ranks here than there would have been in the Third or the Fourth.

When I first got to my tent it was to a warming sight: all of my closest companions had gathered there. Gods, even Pickler had come and it was even more of a chore to pull her away from her work since Robber had died. Akua kept to the back, tactfully keeping away from Vivienne, but I found her eyes and inclined my head. I’d speak no more of it for now, but I’d not forgot whose scheming it would be that got me out of that cell. Scribe was keeping her company, anyway, another whose presence surprised me. Wine was poured, though little of it – it was before Noon Bell – and I was asked about my time imprisoned. There was a great deal of outrage when I explained I’d pretty much lived in the lap of luxury, with good wine and interesting books.

“It figures even in a cell you’d stumble into a better bed than us,” Indrani complained.

“Even got to maul Malicia twice,” I cheerfully added.

I had a thousand questions to ask them, but before getting to it I wanted a wash and a change of clothes. Pretty as mine were, I wasn’t going to keep wearing what my foes had given me. Masego insisted on inspecting me for illness or enchantments, which I agreed to once I was clean from the dust of the road, and most of them took the hint that I wanted to wash immediately. Hakram lingered, no doubt to brief me on all that I’d missed, but to my surprise so did another.

“A private word, if you please?”

I eyed Scribe with surprise. Over the length of our association she’d made it a point to avoid getting Adjutant out of the room whenever she reported to me, as if to make it perfectly clear that she was not trying to usurp his position at my side. I doubted she would have broken that custom without reason, so I slowly nodded before glancing at Hakram.

“We’ll talk before the evening council,” I said. “I need to be caught up.”

“And more,” Hakram gravelled. “The envoys.”

Ah, that. Yeah, it made sense the orcs wouldn’t begin the journey back to the Steppes until I was out of Wolof. Not only had we been meant to speak again but there would be no point in making a deal with me if I were to stay Malicia’s prisoner.

“Bring in Vivienne for that, then,” I said.

“I’ll see what can be done,” the orc drily replied.

He gave Scribe a nod before taking his leave, limping away on his iron leg. That left me alone with the Webweaver in my tent, for the first time in what must have been ages. I poured myself a cup of water with lemon slices in it, asking if she wanted one with a cocked eyebrow. She declined, standing rigidly before my desk. I still couldn’t see her face in more than small glimpsed, always half-faded, but from the way she held herself I would have thought her nervous – or at least as close to it as a woman like Eudokia ever came.

“Now you’ve got me curious,” I admitted. “This isn’t professional, is it?”

“Not entirely,” Scribe admitted. “I would like to make a request of you.”

My brow climbed up. That would be a first. I’d sometimes wondered if there was still a woman under the Name or if she’d died when the Calamities had split.

“What about?” I asked.

I wouldn’t accept or decline without knowing more, but I didn’t actually believe that’d been what she was baiting with her lack of elaboration. She was, I was growing certain, genuinely uncomfortable having this conversation. Was it about Black? No, we’d talked of that before. Of loyalties. It wouldn’t make her like… this.

“You still have in your possession the corpse of the soldier that Marshal Nim possessed,” Scribe said.

“Marshal Nim can’t possess shit, Scribe,” I amiably said. “The Black Knight did that.”

Neither of us were particularly comfortable matching that Name to anyone but Amadeus of the Green Stretch, but best we got used it. I did not think it likely he would ever resume his old Name, which meant that even if Marshal Nim survived the tussle over the fate of Praes someone else would step in and fill those shoes. Scribe conceded the point with a nod.

“I would like for it to be passed into my custody,” Eudokia the Scribe said.

I blinked. That, uh, hadn’t been what I was expecting. I wasn’t sure what I actually had been expecting, but it was emphatically Not That.

“Masego’s studying it,” I finally pointed out.

Or at least he’d been doing so when I’d been captured. It’d been too much to hope he would be able to give me the aspect that’d done this, but I wanted at least an understanding of the mechanics involved.

“He believes he has already learned all he can,” Scribe said. “I believe he would be amenable to closing the matter, should you ask him.”

Huh. She wouldn’t even have needed to spy on him for that, I reminded myself. Zeze considered her like an aunt of sorts, he would have simply told her if asked.

“So I feasibly could give you the body,” I acknowledged. “And we’re going to walk right past why I should – for now anyway – to ask instead why you’d want that corpse in the first place. What are you going to use it for?”

She had to know I’d ask, I thought. I was not exactly known for my policy of handing over dead bodies to Named without asking questions. She had to have known, and still she hesitated before answering. That was fascinating to me, given who I was dealing with.

“I want to Inscribe it,” the Scribe said.

I swallowed a grin. Oh my, that’d definitely been an aspect. I was finally getting a peek at the juicy secrets of the Calamities, was I?

“And what does that do, exactly?” I asked.

“When I first began to us the method,” Scribe quietly said, “it was little more than a trick. I could make my words… weigh more than those of others. Make them linger where they were written.”

But tricks improve, I thought, and this one she’d refined until it became an aspect.

“By the time I met Amadeus,” Scribe said, “I could make eyes and ears of vermin. Sometimes I could even Inscribe instructions onto others that they would be beholden to obey.”

I calmly set down my cup on the desk. Living people, living creatures. Yet she was now asking for a corpse.

“You can make corpse-puppets,” I said. “And the higher quality the corpse, the better the results.”

“The first one I made was a puppet,” Scribe said, and I glimpsed a faint smile. “Little better than undead. Yet when I was destroyed, I retrieved the corpse and found that what I had inscribed could be retrieved. That there was more. The inscription had changed. I used the changes, and so the second was… something more.”

I breathed out a soft, incredulous laugh as it all fell into place.

“Gods Below,” I said. “You madwoman. You actually made a Named, didn’t you? By fucking accident.”

“We began calling him Assassin after the fourteenth iteration,” Scribe told me. “Wekesa helped me with the inscriptions that made it coherent enough for sapience, based on the contract Tikoloshe was bound by. Quickly enough we realized that the primary limitation was the quality of the base material. Most bodies could only carry part of the inscription before they began to wither. “

“So you used dead Named,” I said.

Assassin had died over the years, I thought. Dozens and perhaps even hundreds of times. And every time the Scribe had retrieved the corpse, ripped out the inscription and shoved a refine version into another dead hero’s corpse. Gods, had that been what my father did with all the Callowan heroes he’d nipped in the bud? Dropped them in some crypt, stashed away until Eudokia needed more materials? I was as appalled by the desecration as I was impressed by the brutal pragmatism.

“This one was possessed by a Black Knight,” Scribe said. “I will only be able to Inscribe seven parts in ten, at most, and there will be need for extensive… surgery so the resulting entity has a human silhouette. But he would be a match for the Assassin we were using in the decade prior to the Conquest, by my estimation.”

I could think of a way or two to use such an asset, I thought, but I still far from sold. It would, for one, not be my asset.

“How much control on the entity do you have, after you Inscribe him?” I asked.

“It cannot refuse a command from me,” Scribe said, then grimaced. “I fear you do not fully understand, Queen Catherine. I do not simply write words on dead flesh when I do this. I give of myself. It is the wholeness of the aspect. He cannot act against what I make of him, because there is nothing else to the entity.”

When I had fought Akua in the depths of Liesse, when I had passed through the Fourfold Crossing she laid out before me, I had glimpse of a life in which I had kill the Assassin. Goblinfire had done it, masses of it. It’s not a metaphor when she says she invests her aspect, I realized. It’s physically in the corpse. Practically speaking, it was probably why the construct could mimic Named abilities to some degree. The ‘Assassin’ wouldn’t have aspects of its own, but it wasn’t just flesh and power either. Not exactly. So if the body’s destroyed with goblinfire or demons it probably ruins her aspect too, I decided.

“Does Malicia know?” I asked. “Ranger?”

“Ranger does,” Eudokia said. “Malicia does not. She is aware that Assassin has ‘died’ in the past, but believes him to be a manner of wraith possessing bodies.”

Which wasn’t even entirely wrong, as tended to be the case with the best lies. Huh. That would be a trump card up our sleeve dealing with the empress. Which was probably why Scribe figured I might agree to let her make it. And it wouldn’t be a real Named, I thought. That had implications, considering the other opponent I was facing here in Praes. An entity with some of the abilities of Named but who could not be manipulated or predicted the way they could? That was a rather more tempting offer than just another knife to pull on the Dread Empress of Praes. The trouble remained, of course, that in the end it wouldn’t be my sleeve that card was up in. It’d be Scribe’s tool, and Scribe’s loyalty to me was not on solid foundation.

Her enmity with Malicia was very real, though, I judged. It was what she’d broken with my father over. And she despised the Intercessor as the architect of Sabah’s death. Could I trust her, though, to use this almost-Assassin to match those threats instead of pursuing her own goals? I took my cup, sipped at it for a bit as I felt her study me.

“And what do you want to us the thing for?” I asked.

“I would like to assassinate Malicia,” Scribe frankly said, “but I recognize that there are political realities and that the Tower is likely too well-defended for an incomplete Assassin. Instead I would commit him under your command to offensive operations against her cause.”

That was believable enough, but why would a lie from the Webweaver’s mouth would be anything else? Best to be blunt, I decided, and avoid misunderstandings.

“I’m not comfortable with giving you that kind of power when you have no personal loyalty to me,” I honestly said. “Especially when we’re in Praes. And while I don’t doubt you could grant me partial control, I don’t have the time to handle that on top of my other responsibilities.”

To my mild surprise, she nodded without seeming particularly offended.

“I understand,” she said. “In other circumstances I would have offered that Adjutant be placed in stewardship over the entity, but given his coming departure I would venture that Vivienne Dartwick is now the best candidate.”

First my right hand and now my successor. She’d picked the names well, couldn’t deny that.

“And you’d surrender part of the control without argument?” I said, somewhat skeptical.

“I recognize the investment in trust and resources you are making,” Scribe calmly said. “I will not pretend offence, though I will remind you I can do significantly more damage to the Grand Alliance with a few letters bearing your fake signature than a dozen Assassins.”

I was not unaware of that, but ‘I didn’t cut your throat with this knife’ wasn’t much an argument for giving someone a sword either.

“So what is it you do want?” I pressed.

“The right to brief Princess Vivienne on operational opportunities and present targets of my own,” Scribe immediately said.

Ah, there it was. Even after she’d been evicted from leadership of the Eyes here in the Dread Empire by Malicia’s own spymistress, the Webweaver still had more spies here than Callow did. That meant she’d be able to indirectly guide what we used Assassin for by simple dint of often having better information than we did. I hummed. She could also simply go back on her word and use the entity for whatever the Hells she felt like doing, of course, but that wouldn’t be like her. And though you might yet betray me, I thought, even if you do it will be to Black. I simply couldn’t believe he’d order her to use something like the Assassin on anyone dear to me.

“Hierophant will supervise,” I finally said.

As much because I wanted someone I trusted in that room as because if I robbed him of the opportunity of witnessing that he’d sulk at me for months. Even through the aspect I saw a surprisingly girlish smile light up Eudokia’s face, as she eagerly agreed and began to thank.

I could only hope, I thought, that I had not just made a grave mistake.

The gold and grain began reaching us half past Noon Bell, after I’d washed and Masego had declared be to be in the fullness of health.

It was only good sense to check the merchandise when you bargained with Praesi, so I unleashed Zeze and Akua on the goods while I got caught up with my informal council. There’d been next to no skirmishing in my absence, as it turned out, and Juniper believed what few blows had been traded to have been accidental. Patrols running into each other by happenstance, nothing intentional. As I’d expected it had been Akua – with Vivienne along for formal authority – who’d conducted the negotiations that’d pressured Sargon into my release. High Lady Takisha had been most eager to get her hands on the Sahelian library.

Akua had even tied up the affair neatly by ensuring the three tomes she’d sent south as proof that we did have the library were precious enough the High Lady of Kahtan wouldn’t be too miffed by our ending the negotiations. It was a nice touch, and I told her as much.

Sepulchral had been handled more by Vivienne, though, and there the talks had been rockier. Not for any misstep on my heiress’ part, but because Abreha Mirembe had wanted more than simply the arsenal the Sahelians kept in their vaults: she’d wanted a formal alliance between us, as well as the backing of the Grand Alliance. Vivienne had put her off by saying we couldn’t agree to that without the First Prince’s permission and the backing of all four remaining great lines of the Blood, which Sepulchral had recognized for the putting off it was.

“She warned us that the time for sitting the fence is coming to an end,” Vivienne told me. “That the civil war will be coming to a close soon, one way or another.”

“Or another yet,” I mildly said.

High Lord Sargon hadn’t been wrong, when he’d implied that Sepulchral was about as trustworthy as a hungry tiger. I’d been happy to throw her the occasional bone so far because she was a thorn in Malicia’s side, but I was not enthused as the notion of Abreha Mirembe holding the Tower. She’d probably hold off on backstabbing us until the end of the war on Keter, I figured, but she’d be trouble in the years that followed. Dread Empress Sepulchral would have no real interest in reforming the empire into something less poisonous to everything it touched, and I honestly suspected that she’d pull out of the Liesse Accords at the first opportunity.

That was not acceptable to me.

“We will need to take inventory of the coin and grain as they come, Catherine, but I believe in both cases our expectations were lower than the reality,” Aisha told me. “Wolof’s treasury, in particular, appears to have been fuller than we thought.”

“My cousin has been sacking the hinterlands of Askum rather relentlessly,” Akua noted. “It would not be surprising that he aimed to steal wealth along population.”

That or Malicia had been propping up his reign with gold. As had been pointed out to me last year, given that she still drew taxes from most of Praes, half her army was gone and most foreign markets were closed to her the empress was actually sitting on a lot of gold she didn’t have that many uses for. Solidifying the position of the High Lord she’d soulboxed would have been a good investment for her.

“How much are we talking, Aisha?” I asked.

“If the wagons are all carrying the same amount of coin, we would be looking at around a million aurelii,” the Staff Tribune replied.

I let out a low whistle. In the year after Second Liesse, when the shock of the second largest city in all of Callow and the crisis that’d followed was still hitting us the hardest, my tax revenue for the entire Kingdom of Callow hadn’t actually been much higher than that. I let that sink in for a moment.

“Well,” I finally said, “I suppose that makes up for the ransom money being stolen back.”

That got some smiles, the good mood infectious. It’d been a long while since out treasury had been quite so full.

“We’ll give a cut of the loot to Razin and Aquiline,” I decided. “As they helped us take it.”

Maybe a tenth? Much like my own countrymen Levantines tended to get pissy about anything they saw as charity – the pride of our fellow poors, I amusedly thought – so I might have to end up calling it an early wedding gift. The gold ought to help them strengthen their position in Levant after the war, too, assuming we all made it there. I would repay my debt to Tariq Fleetfoot in full, one bite at a time.

“So who was it that tried to rescue me, by the way?” I asked.

“Indrani led the attempt,” Vivienne said. “But Masego, the Silver Huntress and the Barrow Sword went as well.”

I let out a small whistle. Not a bad lineup, for a jaunt like this. I’d have to ask Archer how far she’d made it, for Sargon to find it worth filling my cell with guards.

“I suppose I ought to encourage that,” I drawled. “And since we’re rich, we ought to throw a feast before all the gold’s gone. Tonight.”

“A fire?” Juniper asked, leaning forward.

“It’s been too long,” I agreed.

My soldiers would get rewards of their own, extra rations and ale casks being broken out to celebrate our successful ‘siege’ of Wolof, but tonight I’d share a fire with my friends.

We did it proper.

Akua found us a good place, slightly away from the camp but not too far. Indrani and Hakram dug the pit, Vivienne got the benches and Pickler started the fire. I went with Aisha to obtain a few drinks – some of them smuggled, but we knew those tricks – while Juniper began to roast the pig. Masego rustled up a few wards, just in case, and we got old Legion cooks to make us a pot’s worth of the old staples from the War College. By the time the sun came down, we’d claimed our hilltop and seats as Juniper began cutting into the pork and the usual haggling began.

“I am a princess, nowadays,” Vivienne attempted. “Of Callow, too. Arguably-”

The rib chops were dropped unceremoniously into her plate as I cackled along with Indrani.

“This is borderline treasonous,” Vivi whined. “What do I have to do to get a shoulder cut?”

“Be named Aisha Bishara,” Hakram drily noted.

“It’s a little sad when being royalty doesn’t even get you on the right side of nepotism anymore,” I said, but then I caught Juniper’s hard stare being turned on me, “-is what I would say if I shared her opinion, which is obviously wrong.”

I got a satisfied nod for that, letting out a breath for that. I’d gotten used to juicy tenderloin cuts, I wasn’t going to let pride get me demoted back to chops. After we’d gotten our plates filled according to the arcane and mysterious system Juniper had developed over our years of companionship – Zeze got downgraded to leg for having suggested using a magical fire while Indrani got bumped up to fillet for having actually listened during briefings for a whole week – the bottles got opened the drink flowed freely. Aragh and ale, mostly, but some wine too. Nok pale for Akua, to Aisha’s profuse mockery, and Vale summer wine from my personal stock.

It was a reality that invitation to these little fires had come to be seen as a prize, a mark of favour from the Black Queen and her inner circle, so while I wasn’t going to spoil the whole thing I’d made some concessions to the inevitable. People came by, staying for a time before leaving. Razin and Aquiline were first, curious to try pork cooked in the orc way, and though they wanted to hear of my captivity at first the ended up spellbound by a tale Aisha told about ancient Taghreb legends that claimed her people had some kinship with those of Levant, that they’d been brought west on great ships by strange and cruel gods. It was why Taghreb disliked ships to this day, she told them.

I thought it more likely that the whole living in a desert thing had inspired a healthy dislike for seafaring, but what did I know?

The older Named came by, after that, and with them both Grandmaster Brandon Talbot and General Zola. The Refuge crowd, Silver Huntress and the Concocter, kept close to Archer. Akua caught the latter’s interest by speaking about some of the potions her family had accrued over the years and they ended up in an animated discussion in what I believed to be tradertalk, but Alexis the Argent and Indrani mostly spoke to each other in stilted, stiff tones. They didn’t argue, I saw, but it was hardly a triumph of diplomacy. They’re trying, though, I thought. Or at least Indrani is.

Juniper and I got into it with General Zola, who’d fought at the Doom of Liesse under General Afolabi. She’d been a supply tribune, then, but their legion had gotten into enough a mess during the battle that it’d been all hands on deck. Pickler actually seemed to be enjoying a talk with Brandon Talbot, to my surprise, though what little I overheard told me why. Marchford had been his home long before it was my personal fiefdom, and it was Pickler I’d once ordered to rebuild the defences there. The walls had been pulled down after the Conquest, but I’d had no intention of leaving my holdings so vulnerable.

Hakram and Ishaq were quietly talking on the other side of the fire, which I considered to be a situation well in hand. The Barrow Sword saw Adjutant as a peer of sorts, and that meant Hakram could work him I ways I could not. I wanted him disposed to pitching in for the peace in Levant after the war, so preparing him for it early was important.

The last to visit were the kids, well after the others, and though I’d expected Sapan to stick to Masego’s side as a barnacle the way she usually I instead found that she and Arthur Foundling wanted to hear from me. Like the lordlings my captivity was of interest to them, but more than that they were rather excited by the way High Lord Sargon had been forced to release me even as I lay in his power.

“Look,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with a good sword. Stabbing the right people can get a lot done, don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise, but if you want a win that lasts longer than a season you’ve got to use other levers. The stuff that actually makes the world go round.”

“Was it not your use of the Night that forced him to surrender?” Sapan skeptically asked.

“I could have stolen his treasury with Night and it wouldn’t have done a thing,” I shrugged. “The man who taught me, he was a stark believer in the victory of cleverness over power. I’m not as much of a purist – Gods know I use artefacts much more than he’d be comfortable with – but he was right that power doesn’t mean much unless you know how and where to apply it.”

“Because it was politics that forced the High Lord to bend,” Arthur Foundling frowned. “Not power.”

I nodded.

“Night let me take his library, clean out his vaults,” I said. “But I knew what to take because I knew what was important to him. The power wouldn’t have meant much without the second part.”

“The Carrion Lord taught you this?” Sapan asked, a little hurriedly.

As if she’d been going through with it before she could think better, I decided with a grain of amusement.

“He did,” I replied. “I’d say it’s a shame he’s mostly remembered for the number of Named he’s killed, but that would be ignoring the fact he probably cultivated that reputation very much on purpose.”

“He conquered Callow, ma’am,” Arthur quietly said. “They say it was the governors that did most the ugly deeds, afterwards, but he’s the one who handed it all to the Empire.”

“He’s a monster,” I calmly agreed. “But he’s also one of the cleverest men I’ve ever met, and ironically enough perhaps the best chance we have for peace between Callow and Praes in the coming decades.”

It was why I meant to see him climb the Tower, even now. I could trust my father with the Dread Empire, to curb its worst instincts and tangle it so deeply into the bonds of peace with Callow that it would not be able to free itself of them without breaking. Neither Malicia nor Sepulchral were acceptable alternatives. The trouble was that I was not so sure the man in question wanted to claim the Tower. Maybe at the Salian Peace he had, but it’d been over a year since. And the way he’d left…

The conversation strayed to lighter subjects after that and eventually we sent the kids to bed. That left only us, as it was meant to be, and a second round of bottles was opened. I clenched, suddenly, when I felt Robber’s absence like a gut punch. How many ghosts were out there, just beyond the light of our fire? Nauk. Ratface. Hune. I pulled at aragh to chase the thought away and had succeeded in claiming a pleasant degree of inebriation when I caught sight of one of the phalanges approaching Hakram to whisper in his ear. Seeing he had my attention, he gestured for us to move away from the fire and dragged in Vivienne as well. Once we were slightly away from the others, he wasted no time.

“Word from Scribe and the Jacks,” Adjutant said. “Armies are moving towards us.”

My eyes narrowed. He wouldn’t be meaning the forces under Marshal Nim, which had already been headed our way for some time.

“Sepulchral?” Vivienne asked.

He nodded.

“But more,” Hakram said. “The deserters as well. They’ve decamped from the Green Stretched and they’re in close pursuit behind the loyalists and the rebels.”

Well, it looked like I was overdue a talk with General Sacker. Half the point of becoming her patron was being warned of things like this in advance. I breathed out, trying to parse it out in my mind’s eye. The armies of the empresses would reach us weeks before the deserters were in sight, if not months, but they wouldn’t have begun to march without a reason. They wanted a piece of this too, in some way or another.

“Northeast of Askum, northwest of Ater,” I finally said. “That looks to be our battlefield.”

Deep in the Wasteland, which was bloody campaigning grounds for all involved. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

“Agreed,” Adjutant said. “And it means I can no longer delay my departure. Come morning, we must speak with the envoys and I will leave with them come noon.”

I grimaced. I wanted to refuse. I’d just come back and already he was leaving, but I knew it was not a sensible answer. There could be no replacement for Hakram, no one who would mean what he did to his people or who would know my mind as well.

“Tomorrow,” I reluctantly agreed.

He must have caught my displeasure, for he squeezed my arm comfortingly with his skeletal hand.

“We still have tonight,” Hakram said. “Let’s not spoil it yet.”

I silently nodded, and after a moment he moved away. Vivienne lingered. I looked up at the night sky, the stars spread out as far as the eye could see and the moon glaring down as a pale eye. At least these days I did not feel irrational hatred at the sight of it.

“Beautiful night,” Vivienne quietly said, looking up as well. “Moon’s almost full.”

“It is,” I murmured. “It’ll turn soon.”

Tonight or tomorrow, but no later.

Well past Midnight Bell we began winding down, the drink and heavy meal taking their toll.

Usually we would have slept there, and some of us had fallen asleep, but we were outside the camp and in enemy territory still. Wards or not, it would be a risk. So instead everyone was roused and we began making our way back to the palisades, Hakram carrying a half-asleep Vivienne on his back to Indrani’s vocal amusement. I hung back with Masego to make sure nothing had been left behind, and after he took down the wards I torched the entire hilltop with blackflame. We were mere miles away from Wolof, the beating heart of sorcery in Praes, so I wasn’t going to be taking risks. I was mostly sober by now, having tapered off drinking near the end, so I did not feel vulnerable enough to rush back. I’d intended to walk back with Zeze after he took his last look, but when he did I found that someone else had stayed behind. Atop the burned hill, a golden-eyed shade was standing among the ash. My heart clenched.

Tonight, then. I’d almost hoped it would be tomorrow.

“You go on ahead,” I told Masego.

He frowned at me.

“Are your certain?” he asked.

He could see her as well, of course. But it wasn’t Masego’s way to meddle in what he saw as the personal affairs of his friends. I breathed out.

“I am,” I told him.

And he did not ask again. Hesitantly he brushed a hand against my arm and I smiled at him. Nodding and wishing me a good night, he began trodding back to camp. I murmured it back then turned to the hilltop. I limped my way back up through the ash, falling in at Akua’s side as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The two of us stood there for a moment, looking up at the night sky. She was the one to break the silence.

“There is a place I would like to show you,” she said. “Not far from here.”

“Cityside or waterside?” I asked.

“Closer to Sinka,” she said, and her eyes asked the question again.

I nodded. It had, I thought, the weight of the inevitable to it. We made our way through the darkness, sure-footed on small and winding paths. It was beautiful, out here. The sight of the orchards touched by moonlight, dappling the ground, the lights of Wolof in the distance as we went downhill towards the Wasaliti. There was little wind but the night was cool, and the thin breeze was enough to lazily stir leaves. We’d not broken the silence as we moved, her leading and I following, but as we crossed a cove of palm trees she began to talk.

“I did not find it myself,” Akua said. “It was shown to me, when I was a girl of thirteen.”

“Who by?” I asked.

She laughed, the amusement lighting up golden eyes as I caught a flash of pearly teeth.

“Some boy who thought he might become my consort,” she said. “Alas, his hopes were greater than his charms.”

“And I bet you were just the sweetest girl,” I drily replied.

“I was not so terrible, back then,” she smiled. “Not so artless as to be taken in, yet hardly the sharpest of irons.”

She would have spoken the last part of that sentence with a touch of reverence, once. No longer. It was, if anything, disdain. But then Akua Sahelian was, in her own way, one of the finest liars I had ever seen. She had made a game out of charming my inner circle, and largely succeeded even when some of them had spent years despising her. As Aisha had once warned me, that was the famous peril of the Sahelians: they were so charming and so useful that even the cleverest let them in. And then they turned on you. So how much of it was Akua’s truly held beliefs and how much of it the face she wore when around us? There was, in the end, only one way to tell.

The crucible. Trial by fire.

“I barely remember what I was like at thirteen,” I admitted. “Feels like a world away.”

“Much like you were at seventeen, I imagine,” Akua mused. “Swagger covering vigilance, looking every gift horse in the mouth twice. And, in your own way, dangerously insightful.”

I coughed to hide my embarrassment. That was the closest she’d come to giving me a genuine compliment – one not wrapped in anything else, honest praise – perhaps since we had first met.

“And terribly easy to embarrass, of course,” she teased.

“I wouldn’t have been that easy to fluster,” I snorted. “For one, unlike you I was the one taking the boys to dark corners.”

Girls, too, but not as many. I’d tended towards boys when I’d been younger.

“And yet I’m told the redheaded mage you took as a lover had to be the one to seduce you,” Akua said.

I’d noticed that she usually avoided using Killian’s name. Or talking about her at all, really. Not that it was hard, considering most of my closest friends tended to avoid the subject. Even Juniper, who was not known for shyness or tact, had not hazarded to venture an opinion on that whole debacle.

“It’s different when it’s someone under your authority,” I replied. “I thought there was something there, but I didn’t want to…”

“Overstep?” Akua suggested.

I hummed, not disagreeing. In a way. From the moment I’d held command of the Fifteenth I had been both a villain and the apprentice of the Black Knight, both positions that in many ways made me untouchable. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to abuse my position if I cared to, and arguably I had. I’d been very much against Legion regulations to sleep with my own Senior Mage, for one, but rules applied to Named in Praes more or less only when people higher up the ladder said they did. And in my case, Black had been more supportive than anything.

“I’m also not great at taking hints sometimes,” I admitted.

“Truly?” Akua said, tone drier than a desert.

I rolled my eye at her. We swerved to the north well before reaching the shore, to my surprise, still we into the cultivate parts of Wolof’s surroundings. The side of the hill where she led me, though, was cracked. Old scorch marks still blackened the stone, from some ancient battle, and she guided me through the broken grounds until we reached a tall flat stone covered with moss. Akua passed a hand against it affectionately.

“You’ll have to help me move it,” she said.

Interest piqued, I put my back into it and we toppled the stone to the side. It revealed a narrow, uneven passage going deeper into the hill. Akua glanced up at the sky, as if checking on the height of the moon, and nodded.

“Now is the best time,” she said. “Come.”

It was uncomfortable squeezing through the passage and the stone tore at my clothes some, but aside from the burn of my bad leg there was little to hinder me. To my relief the passage led to some sort of broader room, pitch dark – not that the darkness was trouble for me, blessed by the Sisters as I was. Here I could stand to my full height, and Akua almost, but it was still small. She showed a low fold in the stone to our left, though, and after crawling for a foot or so I followed her into a small cavern. I stopped almost immediately after rising, stunned.

It was not a large cavern, perhaps twenty feet wide, and most of the ground was covered by water. The sides had been scarred by spells, like the outside, but here the heat of the spell used has turned entire swaths of stone into something like smooth glass. And what brought it all together was the long opening in the ceiling that looked up straight at the night sky: the moon and stars were reflected perfectly on the water and the walls, as if we had crawled through the earth only to somehow stumble onto a slice of firmament. Akua leaned against wall, water lapping at the stone not far from her feet, and offered me a gentle smile.

She did not say anything, or need to.

I came to stand at her side, enjoying the coolness of the stone. There was no warmth from her, either, though we were almost close enough to touch. She was yet a shade, and a shadow had no warmth to share. We stood there for a long moment, silent and unmoving, as the stars and moon ghosted on stone and water. Eventually I felt her moving closer to me, and said nothing. My stomach tightened.

“Until tonight,” Akua quietly said, “I was the only person in all of Creation to know of this place.”

I did not ask what had happened to the boy. It was Praes. I knew well what had happened to the boy who had once wanted to be consort to a Sahelian. And I knew, too, what it meant that she had brought me here. Shared a wonder and a secret with me, asking for nothing. But, perhaps, hoping. We had toed the line closer and closer, as the years passed, but the line had always been there. Tonight she had not even touched me, and still somehow it felt as if it had been crossed. I turned enough to look at her but not to invite more. She’d always been gorgeous. I’d thought as much from the first time I’d glimpsed her in that tent.

Often, though, she made a spectacle of it. Magnificent dresses and jewelry, seductive smiles and teasing words. Right now, though, I found not a trace of it on her face. I could barely even make out what she wore, save that it was a dress, and there was nothing seductive about the look on her face. It was, I thought, longing and perhaps something like hunger. There was nothing veiled about it, and the nakedness of that realization had my stomach clench with desire and something else. I did not move, either closer or further away. A moment passed, heavy, and my arm tensed as she slowly began to lean closer – eyes on mine, asking. And I answered the question by turning away, looking down at that field of stars she had stared with me. I did not see her expression. Did not let myself see it, else I hesitate.

I must carry it out to the end, even if it stung. Especially if it stung.

“Even now?” Akua quietly asked, voice ailing.

“Even now,” I got out.

“I had thought it would be different,” she whispered. “There is… I chose you over my family, Catherine. My home. Everything I’ve loved since I was a girl, save for my father – and even his death I set aside, refusing vengeance on your own for it.”

“I know,” I said, wretchedly.

But her folly had been the death of Liesse. One hundred thousand lives, every single one of them in my care. My care. Even if the Gods Above and Below had demanded of me forgiveness of Akua’s folly, it would have been the same answer. I was who I was, and in the end that was a creature of long prices.

“It’s not something you can win,” I murmured. “That’s not how this works.”

Because that was the last thing that needed to be stripped away from her so she could truly enter the crucible: the thought that if she was kind, if she was good, if she fought for the cause the two of us might have a future together. It tasted like ash in my mouth to rip that out of the unspoken between us, but it must be done. The silence stretched out.

“There is no end to it, is there?” Akua finally said. “The shadow cast by that day. No sun that will chase it out.”

I smiled mirthlessly.

“We all live in it still,” I replied.

And always would. I still avoided looking at her, oddly ashamed, and so it was in utter surprise that I felt soft, cool lips press against the corner of my mouth.

“So we do,” she said, moving away.

Her golden eyes shone. Could a shade cry? I did not know.

“I would like you to leave, please,” Akua Sahelian said.

I didn’t argue. All I could wonder was if this was the way Hanno had felt, back in the day, when he flipped his coin and it spun in the air. Before it had landed.

By morning she had not come back, as I had known she would not.