Chapter Book 7 45: Kernel (Redux)

I thought I’d gotten a sense of the Yeshala territory, but I’d been wrong.

The streets weren’t empty the way it’d seemed from up on the Soaring Stairs. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a market fair out here but neither was it a ghost city with a few terrified souls shivering behind closed doors. The three of us had barely turned our first corner before we nearly stumbled over a handful of nisi sitting in an alcove and chatting about a recent game of inic cin as they wove reed baskets. None of them noticed the edge of our illusions glimmering against the wall, but we quickened our pace anyway. They were the first drow we encountered, but hardly the last.

We found a sort of half-hidden trading where dzulu were bartering meat and greens for small wooden beads and sharpened obsidian – well shaped, fit to serve as knife blades – and mere streets later drow were sneaking to the side a run-down temple painted entirely in shades of yellow to hang small white ribbons from hooks on a wall. The ribbons were simple cloth, but I could see that there were glyphs on the hooks. Prayers for luck and good health, for the misfortune of your enemies. Life still breathed in Yeshala lands, it just kept out of sight. Like rats hiding from the light.

Never once did we see a Mighty anywhere, though perhaps that should not have been a surprise. There were so very few of them compared to the numbers of the Firstborn, not even one in ten, and none of what we’d seen would be if interest to them. Nisi were expected to do all this, the labour of keeping cities standing, because it was the work fit for them. Real drow, real people, pursued only the accumulation of Night. Nothing else was worthy of one’s time. Still, it was evident the Yeshala had seen better days.

That so much of the territory was run down or broken meant the Mighty were using dzulu and nisi for war labour, not abandoning them to their affairs, and the consequences of that were obvious. They wouldn’t have been, in the Everdark, but deep down that was why I believed that Kurosiv’s philosophies – which would survive them, I had no doubt of that – were doomed to lose. See, when the Firstborn had been living in grand old ruins sigils had been able to fight over who got the nicest part and it’d reinforced the order of things: fight well, gain Night, live better.

Now, though, it wasn’t so simple. Serolen was a trove of stolen treasures, but large parts of it had been built over the last few years. And those quarters had been unquestionably superior for nisi and dzulu, who’d never got to taste comfort anyway since the niceties were reserved for Mighty. Nine out of ten Firstborn had been force-fed the realization that they didn’t actually need Mighty to make their lives better. And whenever sigils turned to the old favourites, raiding all the neighbours and slaughtering on a whim, now Firstborn were actually losing something. Their comfortable lives were being infringed on.

One of the first things my father ever taught me was that the tool tyrants needed to maintain their grip on power was not fear but apathy. And just like Mazus squeezing the blood out of Laure until there was the scent of revolt in the air, the Mighty here were chipping away at that apathy one inconvenience at a time.

Even if you’d only risen an inch from the bottom of the barrel, no one liked losing that inch. Mighty who kept too close to the old ways, Kurosiv’s gospel, made things worse for the bulk of the Firstborn. In Procer or Callow that’d end with the nobles knifed and changes made, but of course it wasn’t that simple here. It took more than sleep and a knife in the back to kill a sigil-holder. But the wind was turning against the old ways, because the old ways were fucking awful for everyone except the strongest Mighty and now there was a visible, known alternative.

So the Mighty would find their cattle growing less and less obedient, apt to lashing out through the means the tenets of Iserre had given them, and the clever ones would learn to go with the wind. They’d use it to increase their power at the expense of their rivals, throwing a few concessions at nisi and dzulu as the price of prosperity, until it became common sense that it was the better practice. And then, one day, the cattle would grow mutinous again. Maybe they’d look at other kingdoms and see their lives could be better, or because the Mighty got too hungry again and their subject suffered for it.

The reason didn’t matter so much as what would happen: all of this, once more. The same cycle, over and over again. All the Kurosivs of the world lost eventually, because they weren’t the natural order of a single goddamn thing – they were parasites.

And no matter how tight the saddle, you could only ride a tiger for so long before it remembered it wasn’t a horse.

We ghosted through the streets, avoiding people as much as we could and heading straight north. We’d have to take one of the winding paths around the hills to get to the Relic Grove, but the wasted time taking the streets had cost us was worth it. The Soaring Stairs and the other large avenues would be crawling with Mighty by now and there were bound to be a few with a Secret that’d see through Ibrahim’s Mirror. Our gamble was that by the time they’d realized this was an infiltration instead of the prelude to an attack and begin sweeping through the territory, we’d be long gone.

I was not fool enough to call it a success yet, but these were odds I’d roll dice on.

We took a long, diagonal street leading to the northwest because it was completely empty but the longer that lasted the more uneasy I felt. Akua clearly felt the same, as she gestured for us to stick closer together. We found out why the street – and all those around it – were empty after we got to the end of it, finding a marketplace stripped bare. At the heart of it, hammered into the paving stones, a large iron pillar covered in number glyphs stood. To it were bound what had to be at least three hundred dzulu, thick chains to which drow were shackled on both sides radiating out of the pillar like spokes of a wheel.

The paint on many of their faces was faded or cracked, but there was no mistaking that these people came from at least a dozen different sigils. At least half, though, were Yeshala. Bile began to rise in my throat as I took steps closer, shaking off Akua’s warning touch on my arm. It was the pillar I looked at, the count being kept. Numbers, but also a few words. Not just these dzulu but also a dozen ‘batches’ before them. Mighty had carved into the iron pillar how many were to be kept and for how long, the number glyphs ominously slashed through when the time had passed.

“They man the pillars with their own people when they don’t take enough of ours,” I murmured, genuinely appalled. “Mighty Yeshala was the one who sent its dzulu here.”

It was one thing to know that even dzulu were considered barely better than animals in the eyes of Mighty, another to see them chained here like cattle awaiting the abattoir. Akua stood at my side, golden eyes hooded as she studied the pillar.

“They are meant for the tower in the Relic Grove,” she murmured. “It is why the pillar is so close to Rozhan territory without needing defence: these lives are claimed by a higher power.”

My fingers clenched. I’d known they were taking dzulu from our side of the canals, Rumena had told me as much in the war council, but it hadn’t been sure whether it was as work slaves or sacrifice. I should have known, I thought. If they wanted pairs of hands, they would have taken nisi as well. They want dzulu because there’s a few Secrets’ worth of Night in them. Masego was the only one of us who could not fluently speak and read Crepuscular, so he shot us a curious look.

“When are they meant to be moved?” he asked. “Knowing the frequency of the sacrifices will be of some use.”

“Two days,” I grimly replied.

If this didn’t end in two days, the drow I was looking at were all dead. Or worse. And I don’t think I can end this in two days. Akua met my gaze from the corner of hers, visibly sharing in the thought. She looked away after a beat.

“Other Firstborn seem to be avoiding the area,” Masego noted. “We should continue down this street, it will quicken our pace and lessen the risks.”

Throat tight, I nodded. Grim as the logic was, it wasn’t untrue. But before we could move, there was an interruption.

“We need,” Akua Sahelian quietly said, “to free them.”

I felt the weight of those golden eyes on me without needing to turn. My heart clenched. The calculus was plain to see, as it so often was at times like this. If we freed them, the enemy would know we’d been here. Maybe not immediately, but sooner than otherwise. And if we got caught, were forced to retreat or fight our way out before getting to the tower, it might be a lot more than three hundred drow that died for it. And on the other side of the balance was a hard truth: if we did not save these people, they were dead. And we would condemn them to that fate simply because of a risk, a potential danger. Not a certain consequence.

I knew the choice I would have made if I’d come alone. Knew it deeply, instantly. And some part of me recoiled at the thought of how very comfortable with sacrifices I had become.

“Masego?” I asked.

“So long as the spell is not too powerful, I can maintain the Mirrors through it,” Hierophant said.

He did not seem particularly concerned with the moral question to wrestle with, I thought. Indifference, or was he simply trusting me to wrestle with it for him? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

“I have had enough of shackles, Catherine,” Akua murmured. “Especially those made of iron.”

I studied her face. She had already made her decision, I realized. She would free the dzulu whatever I said. And so I shivered, knowing in that moment that I had both succeeded beyond my wildest hopes and entirely lost control of the situation. So I said the only thing I could say.

“We must be quick,” I replied, “and then cut through the Rozhan territory in a straight line.”

It wasn’t even that difficult, when it came down to it. The shackles had been made to resist Night, not sorcery, and so Akua sent a spell shivering down the nine chains one after another that simply popped the shackles open. The dzulu milled about uncertainly, some even fearfully. Thinking it might be a trap. But when one of them hesitantly tried to leave and nothing struck it down, there were excited shouts and within moments they were scattering in every direction. We waited until our path was clear, then ran for the Rozhan grounds to the east.

I could not see Akua’s face, but somehow I knew she was smiling.

The Rozhan were a smaller sigil than the Yashala, having taken up a territory that was a thick half-circle around the east of the Relic Grove. Theirs were poor lands, most of them still woods, and their inhabited holdings were essentially knots of houses and temples closely clustered together in clearings. The rest was tall trees split only by a few paths, used for hunting and patrolled by Mighty but otherwise abandoned. Cutting through wasn’t all that difficult. The Rozhan were on war footing as well, though, so we did have to duck two patrols that we might not have known were coming if not for my ties to the Night.

Just because I couldn’t tell how many there were or how strong didn’t mean I couldn’t feel them coming at all. Kurosiv was yet a usurper.

Before long we reached the end of a shallow dirt path and found ourselves standing at the edge of our destination: the Relic Grove. Only a threshold made of four arm bones lined up between two twisting oaks announced the end of Rozhan territory, but all three of us could sense it. There was power in the air, and the fog we could see up ahead was not of natural make.

“I have been looking forward to this,” Masego cheerful admitted. “The Firstborn usually shy away from anything that could be considered necromancy, it is an interesting change of pace.”

“The Twilight Sages left scars,” I said, “but this isn’t necromancy, not exactly. Technically Mighty Kavian is still alive.”

“But not truly sentient,” Akua noted. “Ego death is still a manner of death.”

Masego nodded in approval.

“We’re not getting into that debate here,” I said, sensing tricky grounds. “We have work to do. Do you remember the rules?”

“We must always be in contact,” Masego said, sounding displeased.

“Do not touch the grave-trees,” Akua dutifully added.

“Good,” I grunted. “I’ll go in front, Zeze behind me. Let’s try not to wake up Kavian, yeah?”

Settling into a single file line, Akua taking my cloak and Masego hers, we passed the threshold of bones. To the power-blind the Relic Grove would have seen like nothing more than misty old woods, the trees tall and twisted and its grounds covered with dead leaves no matter the season, but the illusion lasted only as long as it took us to encounter the first grave-tree. In the side of large, thick ash tree whose branches were spreading out like the fingers of a hand, there lay a small stone stele to which a drow skeleton had been nailed.

The part that had Masego’s hand twitching at my back, though was that the Night in it had yet to fade.

“No relic,” Akua murmured, sounding a little disappointed.

“There’s probably a Secret or two in there that Mighty would value a great deal more than a fancy spear,” I said.

“One cannot make an earring of a Secret, darling,” she replied.

I rolled my eye, pulling us forward. One of the dangers of this place was that the Secret behind the mist would actively try to get us lost and make us stumble on graves, but there was no chance of that so long as I could feel the beacon of power that was the obsidian tower in the distance. Mostly getting through was slow, tedious limping forward on a forest path that was barely distinguishable from the rest of the ground.

“How long have Mighty been trying to harvest Kavian?” Zeze asked.

“Seven hundred years and change,” I said. “The days where entire sigils disappeared in there are long past, but they still get a few fools every year.”

Akua let out an interested noise.

“Did you ask Sve Noc what Secret it is that allowed it to remain for so long?” she asked.

I snorted.

“Are you asking me, Sahelian,” I drily said, “to reveal the secrets of my communion with dark goddesses simply so that your petty curiosity might be satisfied?”

There was a beat of silence.

“I am,” Masego brightly replied.

I heard a half-choked laugh coming from the back. Fine, be that way.

“It’s the Secret of Recurrent Echoes,” I said, “only it’s not actually supposed to last this long. Just a handful times, opportunities for the holder to murder some other drow and take their body.”

And Mighty Kavian had spent the last few centuries methodically doing the latter, but never the former. Andronike figured something had gone wrong with the part of the Secret that maintained sapience, probably because Kavian had tried to make it repeat much more at the expense of mental stability. The end result was that a Night-presence of the old monster popped out whenever someone disturbed the Relic Grove, murdering everyone involved and shackling their Night before disappearing again. The whole thing was like fucking honey for Mighty: a fight against a legend and a massive payoff in Night if they won? It’d taken literal centuries before cocky sigil-holders stopped feeding their sigils into the place.

The Rozhan Sigil had come into existence out of scavenger crews that’d figured out how to get their hands on some of the lesser morsels from the outskirts without bringing down Kavian’s wrath on their heads. They took care of the graves in exchange, apparently, and had some Secrets entirely about the matter. Back in the Everdark the Relic Grove had been a maze of stone and lichen buried at the bottom of a city that’d been shattered by a dwarven incursion, but it had taken very well to being moved to Serolen. Kavian’s blank consciousness had grown to permeate all the fucking trees around here, like some sort of sickness, and now there was…

“Stop,” I whispered, and immediately they did.

The grave-tree before us was larger than the last, a massive willow that had grown around three steles, but that wasn’t what had given me pause. There was a shape crouched on the branches, a slender drow whose eyes were scanning the mists. It passed over us twice without seeing us, my shoulders tensing as it did. See, the old Relic Grove had been stone and lichen. But this new one, moved into the woods? It’d had old, strong life to work with. Trees that’d been around for centuries, if not longer. And with Kavian’s consciousness spread out, it had caused… echoes. The Mighty whose Night and belongings were the relic of the name drew from the life of the trees, forming these… things.

Little more than shadows, but wielding Night and completely unkillable. Even if they got repeatedly smashed into nothingness, all it would do was cause the shade to dwell into the tree until enough life accumulated again for it to manifest. It was possible to end the phenomenon by destroying the tree, of course, but anyone who did that instead got to deal with Mighty Kavian itself. None of us moved, even our breaths growing more quiet, but the shadow was still looking at the mist.

“It knows something is here,” I murmured.

I got a shake from Masego at my back, agreement. Fuck, we weren’t going to pass with it looking for us. And it was smart enough to notice the light from Ibrahim’s Mirror when we got too close to something, those things were known to attack Mighty who used Secrets of stealth.

“Akua,” I said. “Distract it.”

A heartbeat of silence, then a quiet incantation. From the corner of my eye I saw a ghostly light bloom to our right, behind the thick leaves of an alder tree, and the shadow saw it too. Without hesitating it leaped in that direction, chasing the spell, and I tugged urgently for them to follow me. I put aside the pain in my leg, making haste, and I could see that the shadow was hacking away at the tree now – and the light further running away. A splendid choice of spell. Now we just needed to-

To come across another grave-tree, a twisted elm with two skeleton-adorned steles, before which stood a shadow wielding a long spear of crystal. And it’d definitely just see the light from Ibrahim’s Mirror on the branches. Fuck. So that was why the mist had been trying to push us here. It was just smart and malicious enough for something like this.

“Keep touching,” I said, “and run.”

It didn’t know where we were under the illusions, but that didn’t matter: it came at us in a burst of Night, shattering all three spells in a singe thrust. I wrestled down my instinct to turn around and fight, knowing that I was the only one who could guide us through the mist. Instead I ran as fast as I could, every stumble having me curse how fucking unnecessarily long their legs were compared to mine. No longer maintaining the Mirrors, Masego was freed to fight as well and I felt bursts of magic erupt behind me as I guided us through a thick knot of branches that whipped at my face.

Akua cursed and a pine shattered to our left as the faint pop of a shielding spell broke. I took us off the path and through bushes, ignoring the thorns as they tore at my cloak. Masego grunted and I felt the ripple of his aspect unleashed, something catching flame far behind. Eye ahead, Catherine, I reminded myself. I couldn’t be sure how long we ran like that, weaving between trees and stones and winding forest paths, but my heart was pounding in my throat when we finally stopped. My back was drenched in sweat, but we’d finally shaken off the shadow.

“We are too far for it to follow,” Hierophant panted.

He was even worse off than I was, I saw with a twinge of satisfaction. Akua, on the other hand, didn’t even look like she was sweating. Urgh. Couldn’t she be bad at more things? It was starting to get irritating. We caught our breath together, then Masego wove a new set of Mirrors.

“We’re close,” I told them. “It’s up ahead.”

We took our time with the last stretch, knowing it to be the most dangerous. The dead leaves covering the forest floor thinned, revealing smooth stone beneath. The trees here rooted through it, shattering stone and spreading rubble, and it seemed like every ten feet we came across one of the tree-graves. It took us almost as long for that last stretch as it’d taken us for the rest: I was in no mood for another run, so I had us circling whenever I caught sight of a shadow instead of risking being caught. But we got there, at long last, and from the mists rose the silhouette of a great obsidian tower.

Although it wasn’t actually that great, I noticed when we got a little closer – stopping at the edge of the trees, wary of being seen by the Mighty that’d be guarding this place. The tower was maybe sixty feet wide and thrice as tall, nothing to sneer about but not exactly gargantuan. Made sense, if Kurosiv has set their minions to build several. It was pure obsidian, though, fitted not in blocks but like the polished pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The precision of that was impressive. Concerningly, though, I could see a fucking door.

A quick look told me there were windows at the very summit, large ones facing every cardinal direction, but were the people assigned here really forced to climb every time they wanted to enter?

“Can either of you see a way in?” I whispered.

Akua shook her head, but Masego was staring at the wall with his Summer-forged eye.

“There are hidden mechanisms in the pieces, bound to Night,” Hierophant told us. “Releasing the workings would seem to free a slab to be pushed in.”

“A secret door,” Akua enthusiastically said. “Well done, Hierophant.”

She was, I thought, enjoying this little jaunt a little too much.

“Can you Wrest it open?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “But there are people within.”

“The place is too thick with Night,” I admitted, “I can’t actually feel out drow. It’s like smaller flames hidden in a bonfire.”

“I can see four at the bottom of the tower,” Hierophant said. “And some shapes at the summit, near the windows, but they are veiled.”

It wasn’t just anything that his eye would be unable to see through, so that smacked of Kurosiv weaving a little something. Best to avoid there entirely.

“Are the two parts of the tower connected?”

“They are. There is a middle chamber as well,” Masego added. “The sacrificial altar.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“How do you know?”

“There are gutters for the blood,” he said.

I swallowed a grimace. Shouldn’t have asked. This was going to get tricky, I thought. There was bound to be at least one strong Mighty among the defenders, which meant I’d likely have to pull out Night and that would give away the game. We’ll have to crush them fast, get a look at the ritual and run, I thought. There was no helping it. I turned towards them and-

“We need to move,” Masego said. “They are coming out.”

I blinked in surprise but did not argue. There had been nine drow in the tower, and every single one of the seven that left had been rylleh. There were, I gauged when they left and I could tell them apart from the ambient Night, not one but two sigil-holders among them. All of them went due west, leaving only two at the bottom. Once they had passed I voiced the question that had been on my mind the whole time.

“What are they going after?” I muttered. “There shouldn’t be-”

I took a look at the eastern horizon for the first time, having a good angle at last, and paused. There was a large plume of smoke going up.

“Masego,” I evenly said. “Did you set the Relic Grove in fire?”

“The shadow set the Relic Grove on fire,” he corrected. “I only redirected the flame.”

“Ah,” Akua smiled, “so that is why they are leaving. They need to put out the flames before Mighty Kavian goes berserk.”

“I’m going to get blamed for that one too, aren’t I?” I sadly said.

“Well,” Masego said, “you did bring me here. So in a sense, it is your fault.”

That little shit. If I’d actually had the time to take him to task for that I would have, but we needed to get in and get gone before the enemy returned.

“Get us in,” I ordered. “Akua, you and I hit them fast and hard.”

We took our position smoothly, Akua already beginning to incant. I couldn’t, since the moment I pulled on Night I’d be outed. Masego had neglected to mention that the slab of obsidian freed was ten feet tall, but he used the Night from the mechanisms to do so anyways. Which revealed two very surprised rylleh, both in Yeshara colours, baring their spears at us. I pulled on Night, quick and deep, and began to form a wedge of blackflame when… it unravelled? Akua’s shrivelling curse took one of them in the chest, dropping it, but the other one shot through the door towards me as Night slipped through my fingers.

What the fuck?

I might actually have gotten a spear through the chest if Masego didn’t Wrest again, killing the Secret it used to speed forward. It stumbled, and abandoning the thought of Night I instead focused my Name and struck: my sword cleared the scabbard in a heartbeat, cutting through the wrist that came up to defend the rylleh’s neck. Akua hit it with a small curse that made it spasm, though, and I smoothly drew back my blade and feinted – it moved to dodge to the left, and the edge of my blade went right into its skull. It spasmed again, Night gathering, but Masego killed whatever Secret that was before it could get anyway.

“Catherine,” Akua said, “what happened?”

My teeth clenched.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted.

But whatever it was, it’d nearly gotten me killed. We hurried inside, all of us aware our time was already beginning to run out, and took in the sight of the circular obsidian chamber. Every surface save for the carved stairs leading up to the central chamber was covered in glyphs, each carved into the precious stone and then filled with molten silver. It was striking sight, though that was not why my two mages paused. Masego took a few steps forward and then went still, eye moving without pause, while Akua took a slow turn around the chamber before kneeling in front of the wall facing the door.

I left them to that, instead limping to the nearest wall and rapping my knuckles against it once. Solid. I focused my Name and struck at it with my staff, the dead yew bouncing off. Yeah, that was fortified with Night. The impact wasn’t the same as if it was simple obsidian. Probably the whole damned tower had been built using it and it was running through like veins, which was why I’d had so hard a time picking out the drow inside. Destroying this place with Night would take me a long time, it’d be much easier with pure physical strength – and I didn’t have nearly enough of that on hand.

There’d be no breaking the tower tonight, and having Masego try to Wrest the threads running through was just asking for Kurosiv to get involved. This would stay a scouting trip, so we’d best make the most of it.

“So what are we looking at?” I asked.

Masego was in his trance, lost in thought, so it was my other mage I was speaking to. Akua frowned, still kneeling before the wall of silver glyphs.

“These towers are altars,” she said. “That much is certain.”

“Charnel pits to feed Kurosiv,” I said, not hiding my disgust.

The Sisters had made their entire race into an ever-red altar hidden behind the Gloom, once, but it had not been for their own benefit. This was simple, ugly greed.

“Indeed,” the dark-skinned sorceress said, “but while this has been their function so far it does not appear to be their primary use.”

“Ominous,” I muttered. “So what is?”

Akua looked like she’d bit into a lemon as she rose back to her feet.

“I cannot tell,” she admitted. “These are not structured like any glyphs I’ve seen before. Night-workings have a… syntax to them, Catherine, but it is entirely absent here.”

“Because this is not a Firstborn ritual,” Hierophant’s calm voice cut through.

My fingers clenched.

“Tell me Kurosiv was not fucking fool enough to borrow a ritual from the Hidden Horror,” I begged.

Masego took a step closer to Akua, ignoring me, and after demanding her attention without a word he raised his hand to point at a line of silver glyphs.

“There,” he said. “And now two lines below, the closing half. You should recognize this.”

Golden eyes followed his instructions, then narrowed.

“I cannot believe I missed that,” Akua murmured.

“You have flesh eyes,” Masego dismissed. “You cannot look at the entire pattern at once the way I can. It was only a matter of time before you recognize it.”

I loudly cleared my throat, which finally got their attention.

“Someone,” I said slowly, enunciating every syllable, “please tell me that Kurosiv was not fucking fool enough to borrow a ritual from the Hidden Horror.”

The looks on their faces were not promising.

“It is not just a ritual,” Akua told me.

“You’ve seen the original with your own eyes,” Masego continued.

I froze.

“Wait, you’re telling me…”

“This appears,” Hierophant said, “to be an adjusted rendition of the ritual that destroyed the Kingdom of Sephirah and made Trismegistus into a god.”

Fuck, I decided, was not quite strong enough a word for how bad things had just gotten.

Getting out of enemy territory was more long than difficult.

We just legged it north as far as we could, then circled until we reached one of the canals that fed Serolen’s and took a boat back down. It was refreshingly uneventful, leaving me with a long while to digest what we’d found out. I was silent most of the trip, lost in my thoughts. Had the Dead King genuinely given out his oldest trick to a would-be rival, or was there a trap laid at the heart of the ritual? We couldn’t know, not having seen only one of the towers, and I was beginning to think it wouldn’t matter.

Either way, the Firstborn would end. Whether it was that Kurosiv devoured their kind and then Sve Noc or that Neshamah finished ripping out the Night as he’d attempted at the Battle of Hainaut, it would be a disaster that might lose us the war. The Dead King gaining Night would be significantly worse, but even if Kurosiv got their way without a hidden price then the young god would walk away and free all the armies assaulting Serolen to reinforce Keter just as it was getting besieged.

When we returned to the fortress I left my companions behind, heading directly to the airy temple at the summit where the Sisters roosted. It was a simple enough place from the outside, a rough square of stone whose roof was tiered and walls were entirely arches, but the inside was raw, untamed Night. Not even when I had tried to eat the Book of Some Things had the feel of it been so strong. I could no longer see or feel anything save an endless black expanse in ever direction, and it was in that void that the Sisters came to me.

Gods, even lesser gods, were beyond tiredness. Yet somehow I thought, looking at the two of them, that they seemed exhausted.

“We wane,” Komena said, her eyes hard. “The tide has turned against us.

And I knew she was speaking the truth, for the mantle of divinity was feeble on their shoulders. Her voice had not echoed with things dimly understood, her very presence did not send a shiver down my back. Night had been made to suffer Ruin, and then been wounded further by Kurosiv’s betrayal. They were goddesses still, but of a great deal less than before.

“Kurosiv is not stronger than you,” I said. “I could still drive them out of their followers.”

“Not yet,” Andronike quietly agreed.

“It’s why we need to fight them now,” Komena said. “You know it’s true, heart of my heart. If we wait until their strength surpasses ours, only defeat can ensue.”

“They won’t come out to fight you this easily,” I said. “Their entire strategy is based on holding their ground, daring you to take a swing.”

That was the conclusion I’d come to, on the way back. I’d thought that Kurosiv’s strategy was oddly defensive, at first, considering the Dead King was pushing north towards Serolen and there were no iron cast guaranteed when dealing with Neshamah. How long could they truly afford to wait to become sole god of the Firstborn? Except I’d misread what they were actually after. It didn’t give a shit what happened the drow, it was only after apotheosis. They’d gladly devour their own kind and walk away. So now it fell into place.

If we attacked their side of the river, the blood flowed to the towers and Kurosiv was strengthened while our numbers waned. If we waited this out, Kurosiv would finish its ritual and devour all its followed before taking a swing at Sve Noc.

“We would not be the victor in that strife,” Andronike told me, having followed my thoughts. “We hold great power, but much of it is dispersed in others. It would be our lesser still, but…”

“Concentrated,” I finished with a grimace.

Selfishness had its strengths. Still, it also had weaknesses.

“The defensive stance only works if their sigils stick with them,” I said. “And I expect that, hardliners or not, few of those Mighty are going to be eager at the thought of being eaten. We need to arrange talks and out the truth.”

If enough of them believed us, enough defected back, it might not even come to a fight between deities. We could just take back the towers by force and smash them before the bloodshed fed Kurosiv.

“Is it your right to attempt this,” Andronike acknowledged.

I eyed them both with a frown. They weren’t going to stop me, but neither was buying this as a solution. Why?

“You are First Under the Night,” Komena curtly said. “You were appointed to attempt what we would not.”

I decided to let it go. Their reasons were their own more often than not, why would this be any different? Besides, I had a more urgent worry.

“I tried to use the Night, when we were out at the tower, but it failed,” I told them.

“That is known to us,” Andronike said.

I rolled my eye.

“Then do you also know an answer to the question I shouldn’t have to voice?” I asked. “What the Hells happened?”

Komena grimaced.

“The Night is coming apart,” she said. “Your Hierophant took it to the brink of destruction and it has been pulled in too many directions since.”

I winced.

“How bad?”

“The power itself is still functional, the trouble is that it is invested,” Andronike said. “In Mighty, in workings, in Kurosiv’s hoard. If it could be all returned to our hands and redistributed it could be mended, but as it is…”

“We will have to begin eating old workings soon,” Komena said. “Else what you experienced will repeat.”

“It is difficult to predict where the lack will happen,” Andronike admitted. “There are too many wills involved.”

So Night was finite, and it too many people took chunks of it up to wield there might not be enough left for whoever was trying to – even if they should be able to. That sounded, I thought, uncomfortably like the fate the Sisters had bargained to avoid: the Twilight Sages borrowing more than they could repay.

“We are not unaware,” Andronike coldly said, “of the resemblance.”

I raised a hand in appeasement.

“If we slice open Kurosiv our books are out of red, right?” I asked.

“Broadly so,” Komena said.

“Then we start with that,” I grimly said. “And fix the mess once we have their head on a pike.”

The Crows hadn’t picked me as their herald without reason: all I could feel from them at that plan was unyielding agreement.

Even Firstborn, whose concept of peace was closer to truce, had ways to hold talks.

Usually drow diplomacy was along the lines of threatening annihilation if immediate surrender was not given, sometimes a dash of exile or surrendering Mighty for harvesting, but that was between sigils. There wasn’t really a precedent for the scale of the talks we’d asked for since the fall of the Empire Ever Dark, because until the exodus the drow had been united under Sve Noc. Well, divided under Sve Noc really but the supreme authority had been uncontested. So now that there were sigils under Kurosiv and sigils under us, the situation grew a little more complicated.

We settled on ten Mighty for either side, since keeping any more than twenty of that quarrelsome brood in close proximity was bound to result in fighting. The three of the Ten Generals in the city – Ysengral for us, Ishabog and Moren for them – were a given, as was Rumena. It might not have a rank in the Ten, having instead served as the commander of the Southern Expedition under me, but it was comparable or outright superior to many on the list. After that the ranks were filled with powerful sigil-holders, in case a fight did break out, and also me.

We met in the city centre, contested grounds, in a beautiful old temple called the Empty Shore. It was entirely made of wood, a rarity before the exodus, and though the outside was all vivid colours the inside had painted with impossible skill into the illusion of being the shore of a lake under the dark of night. And not a night from the Everdark, for there were even distant stars above. It was exceptionally beautiful, and though no ground was truly sacred to Firstborn most Mighty would hesitate before beginning strife that might destroy this place.

It was us that’d called the talks, so after the usual rounds of posturing – I refrained, knowing that my mastery of Crepuscular was too shallow to risk dipping my toe into the fast-paced trading of taunts – we were expected to state why everyone had been gathered here. I spoke up then.

“Tomb-maker,” I ordered.

Night flared, Mighty tensing at the sensation, and behind me an obsidian wall covered in silvery glyphs. The very same we’d found at the heart of the tower. There was some shuffling on the side of our opponents, but neither of the Generals were surprised. They’d already figured out what last night had been about.

“I will speak plainly,” I said. “This is not the work of the entity that titles itself Loc Ynan. It is a ritual of the Dead King’s make, whose purpose is to make a god from the death of an entire people.”

A pause on the other side.

“Not only us,” I bluntly said, “but you as well. You will be the first to die when the Fate-Giver reveals what fate they truly have in mind for the Firstborn.”

I’d expected a range of reactions to that revelation. Denial, dismay, maybe even violence. It wasn’t even out of question that Kurosiv would decide the game was up and try to devour its followers immediately. But what I got, instead, was laughter.

“See,” Moren Bleakwomb mockingly smiled, “it is as was foretold. Now that they fail against our might, they resort to the cheapest of tricks.”

My fingers clenched.

“This is not a trick,” I flatly said. “I am willing to-”

“It does not matter even if your false gods have tricked you, human,” Moren said, using the world as one would filth. “We know the truth. Sve Noc tried to devour us once, and you think sweet whispers will let us do away with our protection?”

It all went downhill from there.

We got out without a fight, in the end, but we’d lost face and was quietly furious as we returned. The Sisters had hidden something from me, something that’d made all of this a fool’s errand, and I confronted them with the petty mistake. They were neither of them cowed by my anger, but they did deign to provide explanation.

“When sigils began to defect, we took measures,” Komena said.

My lips thinned.

“You tried to drain the Night out of the traitors,” I said. “Like they claimed.”

“It failed,” Andronike plainly said. “There were some who were made nisi, but the leech was ready for us. It usurped mastery of what you call the ‘nails’, severing us from the traitors.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Of course, the existence of the nails was a secret that only a few knew. So when Kurosiv had told their faithful that it took towers to keep Sve Noc at bay, they’d had no reason to disbelieve it. And if I were an ambitious god, I’d even fake a few drains to remind my subject of why keeping the altars wet is so important. And I realized, suddenly, why it was that the Sisters had let me walk into those talks without telling me. Weakness. It was the same reason they’d used Ivah to tell me about the collapse of the Gloom instead of using dreams. They were ashamed of looking weak in front of me.

Neither of them addressed the thought, and not for lack of seeing it. I took it for the tacit admission that it was. No quite enough for me to forgive the way they’d let me make a fool of myself, but enough that I was willing to change the subject.

“We’ve been outplayed,” I said. “There’s no reason for the defector sigils to believe us and every reason for them not to.”

Kurosiv had been planning this for even longer than I’d thought, and planning it smart.

“We must prepare for war,” Komena said. “It will come down to the fangs, Catherine Foundling.”

A war of gods, she meant. Kurosiv and the Crows, savaging each other for rule of the Night and likely destroying most of their race in the process. My goddesses didn’t want to slaughter their own, but they’d still choose that above getting swallowed up by the usurper. I clenched my fingers then unclenched them.

“No,” I finally said. “We still have one card left to play.”

This was a game of deicide, now, and I just happened to have brought to Serolen the finest expert of that art in all of Calernia.

It wasn’t exactly hard to find Masego. He was in his laboratory again, dissecting another corpse. How he was being kept supplied in fresh bodies was a question I’d decided not to ask. I plopped down in the chair I was pretty sure he was leaving there mostly for my visits, then groaned as I stretched out my tired limbs. He didn’t turn, but I felt his eye glance at me through the back of his head before returning to the corpse.

“We can’t stop the ritual from happening,” I informed him.

Masego paused in his study, leaving the ribcage of the drow whose internal organs he’d been looking at kept open by steel contraption.

“I thought that might be the case,” Hierophant replied. “It is a clever conundrum they present us with. Making war to destroy the towers might strengthen Kurosiv enough it can slay Sve Noc, while leaving our foe to their devices ensures they will devour much of the remaining Night and then your patronesses afterwards.”

I was entirely unsurprised he’d caught on to that. Masego might be utterly uninterested in war as a rule, but deicide was an exception. To him this would be a genuinely interesting puzzle to figure out, or maybe something more along the lines of fencing.

“Diplomacy has failed,” I said. “We tried to warn Kurosiv’s sigils, but they got their story out long before we even knew it needed contradicting.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“And their excuse?”

“Sve Noc tried to drain the rebels out of Night when the first raised their flags,” I said. “They’ve been claiming the towers are tools to ensure that can never happen.”

The rebel Mighty probably figured that Kurosiv was skimming off the top, but that we’d come out trying to get them to pull down the towers had instead probably cemented in their minds that they needed to stay up at all costs. The talks had come across like an attempt to land a killing stroke now that we were losing, not us trying to save their damned hides. Masego let out an amused noise.

“And so the few Mighty capable of deciphering parts of the glyph array recognize the parts related to draining and believe them,” he said. “Perhaps we should consider backing this Kurosiv instead, Catherine. They certainly seem to be the more skillful of these would-be gods.”

“That’s not in the cards,” I firmly said.

Even if it were possible to convince Kurosiv to turn on the Dead King and refrain from devouring their race, they were chronically untrustworthy and their ideals were repellent to me. On top of that, in the long term I’d just be saddling Procer with another kind of enemy looming to its north. No, there was no bargain to be made there. Besides the Sisters might be a pair of murderous, thieving crows but they were my murderous and thieving crows. We’d entered the nightmare together and we would leave it just the same.

“Unfortunate,” Masego shrugged. “So what is it to be our plan?”

“If we can’t stop the ritual,” I said, “then that leaves us only one choice.”

He leaned forward, face brightening.

“Usurping it,” Hierophant said, sounding pleased. “A most interesting idea.”

“We came here to gather the original Night anyway,” I pointed out. “We can kill two birds with one stone. When Kurosiv tries to eat the Firstborn, instead we return all the Night to Sve Noc and wipe the slate clean. We shake off the Bard, get our affairs in order and move to join the fight in Keter.”

“That should be possible,” Masego mused.

“Good,” I grinned. “We can return with an army of refreshed drow at our back, which sh-”

“Ah, you misunderstand me,” Zeze absent-mindedly interrupted. “It is possible if, like Kurosiv, you are willing to kill every living drow in the process.”

The grin went away.

“Start from the premise that I’m not willing to do that,” I said.

“Then you expect too much of me,” he honestly replied. “I am not familiar enough with Night or soul work to do this to the level of precision you require.”

He paused.

“I could perhaps lower the casualties to somewhere between two thirds and four fifths,” Masego finally added. “Anything more than that would require Akua’s help.”

It was a life raft, and I boarded it eagerly.

“But with her help you could do better,” I said.

“Presumably,” he said. “She has experience harnessing the power of lesser gods into fixed systems that I lack, and her arrays in Liesse were precise to a degree I had believed unfeasible. As for soul work, we’ve explored different branches of the discipline – it is conceivable that she would know a method to remove the nails safely that I would not.”

“Then we’re putting the two of you on this,” I said. “Everything else is kicked down the ladder, Zeze. Anything you two need you get it, and even if the Dead King comes knocking at the gates I want you to keep working on our usurpation ritual.”

He didn’t look all that happy about being interrupted in his study of Firstborn physiology, but the kind of work I’d asked would not be unpleasant to him. If he’d not already been getting into his own project, I suspected that he’d be outright eager.

“I’ll inform her myself,” I continued. “In the immediate, do you need anything to get started?”

The glimmering eye swivelled towards me, visible under the cloth.

“Live test subjects,” Hierophant said. “Expect deaths. Our first attempt to remove the nails are unlikely to be anything less than traumatic.”

My stomach clenched, but I slowly nodded. I’d ask for volunteers, people knowing the risks. But if I couldn’t get enough?

Well, I guessed we’d see how far I was willing to go when extinction was on the line.