Chapter Book 7 46: Penultimate

I sometimes felt like the shepherd from the stories, stumbling on the half-buried lamp and rubbing it so I might ask the djinn for wishes.

Though there were two wonder-makers in Serolen and neither were bound to anything as dingy as a lamp, it was still betting it all on their ability to make my wish come true: usurp Kurosiv’s apotheosis ritual without killing thousands, if not millions, of Firstborn. Sve Noc had allowed me time to find a solution, a way other than them rolling up their sleeves and getting into a death match with their would-be devourer, but what was the point if the medicine was as brutal to the drow as the disease?

If the deaths were inevitable the Sisters would choose their talons over faith in Hierophant’s works, whom they neither liked nor trusted. They’d been clear about that much. I had been given much authority as First Under the Night, but ultimately I was not a queen here for all that they called me one. I was a councillor and it was not my place to decide how they were to defend their godhead, or what fate they would countenance for their people. It was frustrating to have my hands tied, but I knew that to be unfair.

I had kept myself in check in Praes because there was still so much about that land I did not understand, too much to have the right to make the decisions I wanted to, and every bit of that was a hundred times as true in Serolen. It still left me restless. Ysengral and Rumena did not need me to fight their defence against the traitors for them, a kind of warfare I had little experience in besides, and unless either of the Traitor Generals came out to fight I wasn’t needed for muscle either.

It left me in the uncomfortable position of being the highest-placed person in Serolen after Sve Noc in principle, but having very little to do in practice. Instead of going around chewing at my nails I turned to the Losara, the sigil I had founded in the Everdark and charged with the duty of priesthood and oathkeeping. The numbers of it had increased tenfold under Ivah’s careful stewardship, but unlike any other sigil inexistence its numbers were spread out all over Firstborn territory – there weren’t that many of them in Serolen, but then they weren’t supposed to be fighting anyway.

It was not unlike holding court back in Laure, handling petitions to the crown. My Lord of Silent Steps had affairs in hand, not unexpectedly, so it was the matters related to my title of First Under the Night that were asked of. Which left me sitting with a bearded old drow who looked about to keel over. Its wheezing was not to enough to deceive me into thinking it weak, though: its presence in the Night burned, powerful among the rylleh of the Losara.

“This one would not dare question the designs of one so high,” Mighty Trokel said, “yet it is not time, Losara Queen, for your words to be set down?”

“You want a book out of me,” I said, almost amused.

Their fate of their entire race was in the balance and yet they wanted a holy book out of me. Mighty Trokel inclined its head in agreement, another Mighty – a younger one called Solvobod, my purple paint not covering only its face but instead its entire bare torso – picking up the thread.

“It is known that the First Under the Night has no time to spare for setting down its sayings,” Mighty Solvobod said, “and this is only sensible.”

“Of course,” I drily agreed. “And?”

Much hemming and hawing as they tried to figure out how not to offend me with their request, until I got it out of them: they wanted to assign me a scribe, someone to set down my words and ask me questions whenever I had the moment. A tortured compliment about my being a skilled speaker of riddles was unravelled down to the blunter bone of them being aware that I usually only taught through conversation, so they figured the only way they’d get a book out of me was someone actually following me around and doing that.

I wasn’t exactly eager at the prospect and made it clear that certain conversations would be barred, which they fell over each other to agree, but they weren’t wrong to ask this of me. I’d been named First not because the Crows thought I had a knack for religion but because I was well placed to serve as a herald and advisor, someone who could help them fit the Firstborn in the complicated tapestry of the Burning Lands, but I was their high priestess. I could not leave only silence behind me.

“And I suppose you’ve already a scribe in mind for that?” I asked.

“This one offers itself to the purpose,” Mighty Trokel replied, stopping to wheeze halfway through.

I mulled over that. It was rylleh, so it could be counted on to get out of the way without dying pointlessly when fights came. I glanced at Ivah.

“Mighty Trokel has some renown as a chronicler,” my Lord of Silent Steps noted.

An endorsement, in other words, but I was not satisfied.

“How old are you, Trokel?” I asked.

The old drow looked surprised. While it was nowhere as aged in looks as Rumena it lacked the bland agelessness of most its kind, so I’d bet a couple of centuries at least.

“This will be my six hundred and thirty-third year, Losara Queen,” Mighty Trokel said. “I once thought to die an ispe, but had a stroke of fortune in war.”

Meaning it’d gotten to harvest a motherlode of Night and found its lifespan significantly expanded, but gotten stuck looking older and never bothered to change the look. Six hundred and thirty-three years, I thought, the vast majority of which it would have spent as rylleh or close. The highest of the Mighty, save for those who ruled over even Mighty.

“Ivah,” I said, “who is the youngest among the Losara?”

“I am uncertain,” the silver-eyed drow admitted. “But I can know the answer in an hour’s span, Losara.”

It paused.

“Nisi, almost certainly,” Ivah added.

Yeah, I’d figured it would be one of them. It was why I’d asked.

“Find out,” I ordered. “I want called to me the youngest Losara who knows their glyphs.”

Surprise, and not just from my steward among the Losara. They’d caught on quick.

“You mean to make them your scribe,” Ivah said.

Trokel, I noted, had not dared to do the same. Perhaps fearing I would take it as insubordination and rip the life out of it.

“I will have two,” I said. “Trokel, old and rylleh. And the other, young and nisi.”

I met the old drow’s eyes, saw how it looked like it was itching for a pen, and for a moment I was improbably reminded of Nestor Ikaroi.

“You stand high, Trokel,” I said. “Sometimes that’s the worst place to look at history from.”

My Name thrummed in approval, pleased, and it warmed my veins. They bowed. I told them Trokel would begin following me as soon as the other scribe was found and that was the end of the petition, though I cut short entertaining another: word came through a runner that one of my wonder-makers had left the room where they’d been holed up in half a day.

It was time for me to have a talk with Akua Sahelian.

Akua had taken to wearing black since we’d come to Serolen, I’d noticed.

It wasn’t enough to make her blend in with the Firstborn – that would have been difficult, when she had curves enough for a dozen of them – but it did make her stand out less than, say, Cordelia Hasenbach and her colourful riding dresses. Tonight it was a loose, long dress with faint accents of gold swirling up the ribs she’d chosen to wear, paired with a cloak of the same cloth and a gauzy black veil that cascaded halfway down to her back. The veil was kept in place by a slender carved band of gold, one of the few pieces of jewelry she still wore nowadays.

It was far from the most alluring dress she’d ever put on, but there was something attractive about how obviously comfortable she was in the clothes. This was, I dimly realized, as dressed down as she’d probably been allowed to be back in Wolof. It would never do for a Sahelian to be too casual in their clothes, yeah?

“Now you stare,” Akua said, sounding genuinely exasperated. “Should I just have put on a mutton’s pelt a few years ago and called it a day, Catherine?”

Her wearing only a pelt actually sounded like something I wouldn’t mind seeing in the slightest, but I decided that lying shamelessly was the best part of valour.

“Of course not,” I lied. “I was just wondering where you’ve been keeping all these dresses.”

“Pocket realms,” she archly replied. “I forged one while in Praes and a second on the way to Salia.”

I really should start using Night to do that, I noted, I had the capacity.

“Good to know,” I said, then invited her to sit.

She did, still eyeing me with some irritation. Unlike me, who had to fold like a praying mantis, she somehow made sitting at the low tables the drow preferred a graceful thing. How she managed that with legs longer than mine I’d never be sure, but it was probably dark magic of some sort. I worked out a kink in my shoulder, then caught her eye.

“So,” I said, “what’s the verdict?”

“It is theoretically possible,” Akua said, and I did not hide my relief.

“Casualties?”

“From taking back the Night?” she replied. “None.”

“Masego was worried taking out the nails would kill them,” I said.

“Masego has not powered rituals with sacrificed fae before,” she retorted without batting an eye. “Winter’s mark is still deep in the Night, Catherine, which resulted in some useful secondary properties. Ripping out the nail would certainly result in death, but dissolving it is possible without killing the host.”

I slowly nodded.

“And in the moments they’re all left without Night,” I began, then trailed off in invitation.

“If dawn comes to pass without it being restored, I imagine nearly all Firstborn save for dzulu and nisi would die,” Akua mused. “Night is what extends their lifespan.”

“So we’ll be flipping the hourglass the moment we begin this,” I muttered.

Which was a risk, but not an unacceptable one. I felt Sve Noc brush against my thoughts and cocked my head to the side, silently asking the question. A soft brush back, pregnant with intent. No, it wasn’t a dealbreaker. Good.

“We’ve got divine blessing so far,” I said, leaning forward. “So what do you need to get it done?”

There she grimaced.

“Living drow willing to let their nail be dissolved so we can find a method that will not have grave consequences,” Akua said.

I nodded.

“We’ve sent out for volunteers and you already have a hundred,” I said.

“We’ll need Mighty, Catherine,” she gently said. “They have a deeper connection to the power, it will react differently.”

I clenched my fingers.

“They might have to be prisoners,” I admitted. “We have some lined up for when it’s been tried, but none want to be the first.”

Sve Noc had so far declined to make it an order to one of their Mighty to lay down on the slab. I was both relieved and indignant that’d been their decision. On one hand, did they know what the stakes were? On the other, Gods, let there be at least one side in this nightmare that halfway deserved to win.

“The point of the procedure will not be to kill,” Akua finally said, “but is a fine line, Catherine.”

I grimaced.

“But no so fine,” I said, “you won’t walk it.”

I was right and we both knew it. She looked away.

“What choice is there?” she asked.

“Always less than we’d like,” I murmured, “and yet we go on.”

The silence that hung between us was not restful. She was not happy, and I could not quite shake the metaphorical pebble in my boot.

“How many rituals is it that you’ve asked me now?” Akua idly asked, golden eyes returning to me.

There was an expression in them I found hard to read.

“Depends on how you count them,” I hedged.

“You always dole out power and trust so freely,” the dark-skinned sorceress. “I once believed that your great flaw, you know.”

“Not anymore?”

Her lips faintly quirked.

“This ritual you ask, it will put in our hands a gift of the Gods Below themselves,” Akua said. “How can you be certain neither of us will be tempted to claim it?”

“I can’t,” I admitted.

She leaned forward.

“How can you be certain it will truly do what we tell you it will?” she asked.

“I can’t,” I repeated. “Anymore than I can be sure Vivienne didn’t spend the last few years undermining me as Queen of Callow, or that Hakram didn’t use me to become the Warlord. It’s impossible to know for sure, Akua. Some things you take on faith.”

Her lips pursed. Not an answer that satisfied. I was, I suspected, being tested somehow. For what I could not know, but it behooved me to tread carefully.

“And should I decide that simply being handed trust and power to wield at your order is not enough?” Akua quietly asked. “That I, too, want to decide?”

My fingers clenched and slowly unclenched. A test, I thought, but a lie here would be a mistake. I met that golden gaze with my mismatched own, the eye I’d been born to and the one I’d lost, and breathed out. A year ago, I was not sure what I’d have answered. But today? I still remembered that moment in the streets, looking at the dzulu in chains, and who it was that’d not been willing to walk away. Some things, I’d told her, you took on faith. But there was more to it than that, and that was the question that lay hidden behind those golden eyes. Am I a prisoner on a longer leash, Akua was asking, or am I what you say I am? One of us.

“Then I trust your judgement,” I quietly replied.

Her face went blank. She nodded, curtly, and rose to her feet. Back to work, not that she even made the excuse, and as I watched her leave my stomach clenched. Pivot, I thought. Faint enough I’d not sense it. A personal one.

And it was too early to tell whether or not I’d regret the answer I’d just given.

I’d expected Cordelia to keep busy, given that she was not a woman prone to idleness, but I was surprised when the Losara watchers I’d put on her told me exactly how busy she’d been. Apparently her every waking hour was spent either meeting with sigil-holders or historians, her translators stuck as close to her as shadows. I caught her after a meeting with one of the rylleh of the Ysengral – no matter her old rank or recent exploits, she did not warrant the time of one of the Ten Generals – and got her to sit down long enough for a drink and a meal. Neither were of the kind of quality she must have been used to, but I did notice she dug into the pheasant with relish.

“I enjoy the taste of game,” Cordelia admitted, “but I had to refrain in Salia. A noticeable preference for hunted birds would have drawn comment.”

“Ah,” I hummed. “The Lycaonese savage enjoying hunting too much would have been a bad look.”

I received a thin smile that pretty much confirmed my guess. During the years where Cordelia was an outright foe, I’d never considered how fragile her position truly was. She’d pretty much won the Great War, that much was true, but the years of peace afterwards had been extremely dangerous to her. She was a Lycaonese ruling southern peoples who tended to dislike and dismiss her kind, walking a tightrope even when her victory had still been fresh. It was no wonder she’d had to be so careful with the perception of her, when you looked at what her reliable supporters had been.

The core of her backers were damn far from Salia on top of being the poorest, least populated and least influential of the principalities. The Lycaonese had proved in the wars then and since that their armies were the finest in Procer and punched well above their weight, but she couldn’t actually bring that strength to bear: most of it had to remain pointed north, keeping back either the Chain of Hunger or the Dead King. She’d built a bloc of southern supporters, sure but her majority in the Highest Assembly had never been large or solid.

It’d been only cleverness and her initial reserve of goodwill from winning the Great War that’d allowed her to push through her early reforms. Well, that and skillfully getting the people on her side. For a foreign savage come to the capital as a conqueror, however gentle of one, Cordelia Hasenbach had been impressively well-loved by the people of Salia.

“I was always surprised,” I said, “that you never got the House of Light on your side. Gods know I would have had a priest standing at my side at every session of the court, if I could have found one willing.”

I hadn’t, or rather there’d been plenty willing to attend but none as my open backer. It’d been enough of a headache to find someone in good standing willing to anoint me as Queen of Callow, and I was still half-convinced that I’d only found takers because it’d been an open secret at that point that Praes and Procer were looking at the borders with hands on their swords.

“They courted me early in my reign,” Cordelia admitted, “but what they wanted of me I was unwilling to give.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“The seat in the Assembly the lost after the Liturgical Wars?”

Seemed like the likeliest prize. It’d been part of the bait that Scribe had used to get Holies to back the coup against Cordelia, a promise of restoring it made in Rozala Malanza’s name.

“They were not so bold,” the fair-haired princess chuckled. “They wanted me to exert my influence to make an exception to the foundational possession laws for the House.”

I squinted at her, trying to remember what those were. I’d actually heard about those, Pickler had praised them in a report because of how easy they made it to build defensive bastions.

“Right, Lycaonese princes have different rights,” I said. “No one can own land in your principalities except for the royal line, everyone else is renting.”

“It is a little more nuanced than that,” Cordelia said. “Some lands have been held in the trust of certain families for centuries, with written treaties between our royal lines and theirs that prevent revocation without certain conditions.”

“So the priests were pissy about having to pay rent for their temples,” I said, amused. “And you told them to stow it and keep paying.”

A less generous woman than I might have called the expression she made at that a moue.

“The Holies wanted the right to hold lands and raise sovereign monasteries, as they do in southern principalities,” Cordelia said. “I explained to them that the refusal to parcel royal rights goes back to the rule of the Iron Kings and is considered sacrosanct, but the frustration at being unable to secure a northern foothold is an old one.”

She elegantly shrugged.

“Our relationship significantly cooled after that, though it was never outright hostile until events boiled over during the coup,” the princess finished.

I grinned.

“And for that little piece of work you got to rip their fangs out,” I said.

Vivienne had watched with attention and more than a little relish as the wealth and land of the Proceran House was methodically dismantled in the wake of that mess, noting that they priests even had to pretend to be grateful since she wasn’t coming down on the actual people – it was the riches, the properties and the trades, that Cordelia had confiscated for the good of the war effort. In the years to come, the House of Light across the Whitecaps would find that it had a lot less coin to throw around when it wanted to get its way.

Like Vivs, I was already looking forward to the furious shrieking.

“It was only a matter of time until another First Prince did the same,” Cordelia demurred. “Besides, your own religious adventures are rather more interesting.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“The House Insurgent is all you too, Hasenbach,” I drily said. “I wouldn’t have gotten so many firebrands on my side without the Tenth Crusade knocking at the gate.”

“I meant a different sort of religion, First Under the Night,” the princess amiably said.

“Eh,” I shrugged. “The Crows and I came to agreement, that’s all.”

“There has been a great deal of speculation as to how you became high priestess of Night,” Cordelia delicately hinted.

I rolled my eye at her.

“You can just go fishing openly, you know,” I told her. “You’ve already made your oaths.”

Hesitation. How rare for her to wear it so openly.

“Even though,” Cordelia carefully said, “I yet hold the key to the ealamal?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I really wish you’d smash that thing over your knee. But yeah, holding that doesn’t mean you don’t get your seat. In case you hadn’t noticed, people having held – or holding – knives at my throat doesn’t really disqualify them from sitting in my council.”

“The Doom of Liesse’s continued existence does indicate a degree of flexibility on your part,” she conceded.

Sure, I thought, flexibility. Let’s go with that.

“So what is it that you’re actually curious about?” I asked, changing the tack.

“Much,” she drily said, “but most as to how you successfully convinced Sve Noc to appoint you their high priestess. Rumours run wild, from your having triumphed over them to your souls having been melded.”

The last one was actually not entirely untrue, which was a little disconcerting to consider.

“I headed for the Everdark after the talks went south in Keter,” I said. “By then it was clear that Malicia and the Dead King intended war, which weakened your position, but my armies were battered and I was without allies. The Firstborn were the only Evil polity left, which made them pretty much the only candidates for getting help.”

“So you did not intend priesthood from the start,” Cordelia said.

I snorted.

“I thought I’d make a bargain with the Priestess of Night, not even knowing she was actually a they and not Named in the slightest,” I said. “Only that went out the window almost immediately. Firstborn don’t really negotiate with humans, and the Sisters were a lot more interested in Winter than anything I had to say. Besides, the Everdark was falling apart even without the dwarven invasion I arrived just ahead of. It was a fucking mess, Cordelia.”

“Not the worst position to bargain from,” she mentioned.

I grimaced.

“Winter,” I admitted, “kept me frozen in the aftermath of one of the worst days of my life. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have. So after I realized I could make my own sigil and bestow fae titles, I struck a bargain with the Herald of the Deeps for the destruction of Sve Noc in exchange for the right to bring any drow following me to the surface as an army.”

Utter surprise, though smoothed away quickly.

“You fought them?” Cordelia asked, leaning forward.

“I did,” I said, “and they gutted me like a fish. I lay down on the ground to die, down there in Great Strycht, and only survived because they needed me to finish eating Winter. If Akua hadn’t saved me then, Sve Noc would have slurped me up like tepid gruel.”

I did enjoy the faint look of disgust she made at that lovely image.

“We had a shot at turning it around on them, after, but I’d had Winter ripped out of me by then,” I said. “And I felt… freer for it. It’d broadened my perspective. So instead of continuing to fight like bears in the pit, I asked for their help.”

I grimaced.

“Begged, really, when it came down to it,” I admitted. “Because it was the only way out that wouldn’t irreparably fuck one of us: someone being willing to lose, willing to bet on trust before it’d been earned.”

She studied in silence, for a long time, and I felt uncomfortably naked under her gaze.

“Trust,” she softly repeated. “It always comes back to that, does it not?”

“They repaid it in full,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of things I regret over the years, Hasenbach, but that night in the deeps will never be one of them.”

Blue eyes considered me.

“You call me both Hasenbach and Cordelia,” the princess said. “Do choose one, Catherine, the irregularity grows irksome.”

“That an invitation?” I teasingly said, cocking an eyebrow.

She met my eyes.

“It is,” Cordelia frankly said.

I cleared my throat, surprised and a little embarrassed.

“All right,” I croaked. “Cordelia.”

Shit, I’d called her that before so why was using the name now making me feel like blushing? A change of subject was in order.

“I’m told you’re sitting down with a lot of sigils,” I said, perhaps a tad gracelessly.

She looked faintly amused but let it pass without comment.

“I have been trying to discern,” she said as she tucked back her braid, “what lies ahead for the Firstborn.”

My gaze sharpened.

“You want to know what kind of a neighbour Procer will be getting,” I said.

“I love the Principate and always will,” she admitted, “but in this I must embrace a broader perspective. When the war ends, Calernia will not be the same land it was when it began. What is it that the Firstborn seek as people, what are their needs and hatreds? I would understand, before negotiating the treaty with Sve Noc, what the place of the drow is to be in the coming centuries.”

She was, I thought, probably the only ruler in the west that was actually pursuing that line of thought. There was a reason she’d made for a dangerous foe.

“And what did you find out?” I idly asked.

“You do not rule these people,” Cordelia replied, blunter than was usual for her. “You are considered a manner of prophet, a religious symbol, but power is in the hands of the Ten Generals and the most powerful sigils – under the vigilant gaze of Sve Noc.”

“My place as First Under the Night is temporary,” I acknowledged. “I was appointed to guide the Firstborn in their settlement on the surface and serve as a vessel for necessary reforms, but I’m not meant to stay in the seat. I’ll be surrendering the title at the end of the war, like all the others.”

All except the last, the one that lived under my skin.

“You have steered them to a strong diplomatic position,” Cordelia acknowledged, “but I fear that situation cannot last.”

“You think they’ll make themselves into a problem after the war,” I said.

“The most troubling issue is that drow do not trade,” she replied. “There is some barter, admittedly, but no coinage and no merchant class. Their society is turned towards subsistence and war, with few other pursuits.”

“So Procer’s stuck with a neighbour that’s more interested in the Night gained through raids than anything that could be had in peace,” I summed up.

“Building Serolen has already begun changing them,” Cordelia noted. “That much is clear. Though Mighty keep to strict sigil divisions, nisi and dzulu living side by side wane in that perspective. I expect the tendency will end in larger sigils founding their own cities and sigil loyalties turning into city-state loyalties. By then, the needs inherent to feeding a city will ensure the development of some sort of internal trade – and thus a form of coinage and industry.”

I hummed, not disagreeing. I doubted it’d be anywhere as clear-cut as what she was describing, but I didn’t disagree with the thrust of the prediction. She underestimated, though, how much Night mattered to drow. War would always be a central part of who they were so long as the prize was there for them to fight over, no matter the other pressures.

“That form of the Firstborn state should prove a welcome trade partner to Procer,” Cordelia said, “and so change the balance of power on Calernia indirectly – with less pressure form the north and northern principalities growing wealthier from the change, the Principate’s energies will likely turn towards the Free Cities.”

“Basilia will have,” I mildly said, “very little tolerance for that.”

“There will be war,” Cordelia frankly said. “Not in our generation or the one after that, but in time it will happen. My hope is that the framework of the Grand Alliance will keep that war local and contained.”

Optimism, I thought, but then I thought it was much too early to make predictions about what after the war would look like.

“So,” I said, “your issue isn’t with the drow in the long term. It’s how they’ll be during the…”

“Growing pains,” she delicately suggested.

I snorted, but if the shoe fit…

“You’re afraid they’ll burn bridges before settling down,” I pressed.

“It is the nature of the beast,” Cordelia grimly said. “Before there can be city-building and trade, there needs to be an accumulation of wealth and food. Since you’ve taken measures to restrict the strength of the Mighty-”

I gave her a very innocent look that she did not buy in the slightest.

“- then it will not be achieved by a sigil accumulating an overlarge amount of nisi and working them as effective slaves,” the blonde princess said. “Given that the one resource the drow will have in abundance is skilled warriors, that leaves acquisition by force as their path forward.”

And the Firstborn weren’t fools, we both knew. They’d not keep raiding each other when the real wealth was south and still recovering, poorly defended.

“You can get ahead of that,” I said.

“I will recommend that First Princess Rozala do so,” Cordelia frankly said. “Lending the expertise of our merchants and farmers after some guarantees of safety would only be common sense. But that is, ultimately, a bandage wrapped around a slit throat.”

That was, I suspected with an undercurrent of amusement, a Lycaonese expression translated into Chantant.

“There’s another way for those warriors to gain wealth,” I idly said.

She stared at me with piercing blue eyes.

“So you did foresee it,” Cordelia said. “I thought you might have, when you backed the Praesi request to have those orc mercenary companies recognized under the Accords.”

“You need them,” I pointed out. “Even when we’ve dealt with Neshamah the undead will remain – they’ll just be leaderless, roving bands instead of an army. And you have the manpower to take back the south and most the heartlands, but beyond that? Your armies are the worst off in the Grand Alliance.”

“So you would have us hire mercenaries,” Cordelia said, tone thick with distaste.

“It’s your way out,” I said, “and they’ll need to be foreign. Procer’s blown through its fantassins these last few wars and you won’t have the people to spare to fill those ranks again because there’ll be a massive amount of land to reclaim.”

“And so we hire drow and orcs to claw back our lands,” she said, “further strengthening their image as allies and not monsters out of legend while filling the coffers of their fledgling nations.”

I smiled at her, though I couldn’t lay claim to much praise over this. I had, after all, stolen Hakram’s plan wholesale and fitted it to the Firstborn.

“And the goblins?” Cordelia pressed. “Princess Vivienne has already announced that Callow will open its borders to them, which I believe to be your work.”

“Don’t undersell her,” I mildly replied.

She’d not needed any convincing at all, even though we’d both known it would make the Matrons livid.

“There were attempts to poach my sappers, during the fight for Twilight’s Pass,” I noted. “I expect that now Callow has opened the gates, some of the attempts to bring in tribes will grow more serious.”

“You want to make a world where they have roots everywhere,” Cordelia quietly said, watching me. “Orcs, goblins, drow. You would drag them out of our bedside stories and give them places at our hearths.”

I met her gaze.

“When I was nothing,” I calmly said, “they backed me. Not the Matrons, not the Clans, but them. The greenskins, the rank and file. And when my back was against the wall, when I was lost and grasping for allies, I went into the dark and returned to Iserre at the head of an army of the Empire Ever Dark.”

My jaw clenched.

“I owe them a lot, Cordelia,” I said. “And I will pay every drop of that debt back, come Hells or high water.”

If I needed to cut out parts of Calernia so the drow fit it better, I would. And I’d do the same for Robber’s people, for Nauk’s. Hakram and Pickler had found paths and if they needed them seared into the ground, well, it just so happened I was a deft hand with fire. In this, at least, I was yet my father’s daughter.

“You have,” Cordelia said, “one of the most vicious conceptions of loyalty I have ever known.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“And?”

“I do not entirely dislike it,” the princess admitted.

She finished the last of her dessert – a sort of pudding whose main ingredient was, I believed, a kind of fermented algae – and set aside the silver spoon.

“You have my thanks, Catherine,” she said.

“What for?” I asked.

“I believe,” Cordelia smiled, “that I now know the bargain Sve Noc will accept.”

Two days later, in the depths of the temple-fortress, a Mighty lost their Night without dying.

Now it was all over except for the violence.