I’d had enough to drink that I didn’t want to head to bed immediately.
I could have burned out the last bits of inebriation with my Name – and what a luxury it was, that I could do that again – but I preferred leaving things to run their natural course. It did things to your mind to habitually ignore your body’s limits. Whether it was no longer sleeping or going from drunk to sober in a heartbeat, I suspected that the more Named estranged themselves from their mortal foundation the more their Name gained purchase on them. You couldn’t use that power constantly, bathe in it, without being changed by it in turn. Better to grow used to the occasional bout of patience instead, even when it felt like all the world was running out of time.
The palace had beautiful gardens, one of which the servants had called a ‘night garden’ in Alamans, and curiosity drove me to limp my way down that very path. The air was fresh but pleasantly without bite, which made the stroll a pleasant enough way to let the last of the drink fade away. Like so many beautiful things in this beautiful city, the night garden was a work of art. Small glass lanterns in purple and blue had been lit, revealing perfectly cut green grass and low hedges. The paths were circular, half-hidden by deep flowerbeds in wine red and golden yellow. They led to a gazebo that was all wrought iron.
Even the chairs, which seemed made entirely out of a single exquisitely folded piece of iron wire. The skill that must have taken attracted my eye just as much as the plush cushion someone had laid out on it, which spoke sweet nothings to my aching leg. Sitting at that low table with the dwarves this morning had taken a toll and the herbal brew I’d drunk only worked for so long. I still took the time to enjoy the strolls before sitting under the gazebo’s roof, looking out over the edge of the garden and onto the still-lit streets of distant Salia. I’d laid my staff against one of the iron pillars, but that didn’t mean I was unarmed.
When I felt the attention settle on me like a pinprick between my shoulder blades, I discreetly flicked my wrist under the table and felt my knife, the knife, fill my palm. I pricked my ear to try to pick up on the footsteps, but what I heard instead was a sigh.
“Fresh back to the Name, and already you’ve picked up all your old tricks,” Vivienne said. “It’s a mite unfair, I must say.”
“Fair is for children,” I quoted, watching as she came into view.
Slinking out of the shadow with the grace of the thief she had been for many years, Vivienne Dartwick did not cut a figure so different as before she had taken up her Name. She had grown no taller since becoming the Princess, and though perhaps the cut of her chin was a sliver sharper and her eyes grown a little more grey than blue, I could point to no other visible change. It was just in the way she carried who she was. The milkmaid braid on which her circlet rested could no longer be thought of as anything but a crown, and the calm she had found while I trawled the depths of the Everdark had gained… weight. Gravity. She no longer needed to frown to look serious, it was something she wore as much as her clothes.
“We’re in a pleasant mood, I see,” Vivienne drawled, drawing back the chair across from mine before sitting. “Did it go that badly with Hasenbach?”
I grimaced.
“It went well enough,” I said. “She pushed back on the Dominion’s proposal, but she did it in a way that can’t possibly be seen as Procer meddling in their affairs – she’s making sure they have more power, if anything.”
Not that a diplomat of her calibre would have made so elementary a mistake.
“So it’s the grass under your feet she wants to cut,” Vivienne mused. “Not exactly a surprise, Catherine. She’s been an advocate for keeping Named away from the levers of power since the start, and the Wardens as you’re pushing them have their hands on more than a few.”
I grunted, waving it away. I wasn’t interested in going over my talks with Hasenbach when they were still so fresh. Better to divorce myself from the moment first, let the emotions calm.
“You were looking for me?” I probed.
She nodded.
“I’ve received reports,” Vivienne said. “Masego and the Rogue Sorcerer sent word.”
My eye narrowed.
“And?”
“They’ve ‘proved the fundamental principles behind their theory to a satisfactory extent’,” the Princess quoted. “Which is a relief, I’ll admit. I don’t see a way for us to win the war without setting loose Below’s stories.”
Neither do I, I thought.
“If they proved the principles it just means that Zeze’s theory that the Bard is muting Below’s stories is true,” I said instead. “Not that they’ve figured out how to undo the muting. Did they get any further?”
She shook her head. Not good news, then, but far from bad news.
“Reports, plural,” I invited.
She half-smiled.
“The Severance is in the city,” Vivienne said. “Unless Hanno has another artefact that needs to be carried around in a sealed enchanted coffin.”
“Official correspondence did mention he’d sent for it,” I noted. “Best to have it here, I agree, with the Arsenal being closed.”
“I thought I’d mention it,” Vivienne idly said, “because an old acquaintance is on his way to Salia as well. Christophe de Pavanie was seen on the main northern road, summoned south.”
I drummed my fingers against the iron table, the cacophonous clang of it oddly satisfying.
“Let me guess,” I mused. “The Jacks also caught sight of the Blade of Mercy and the Bloody Sword obeying the same sort of summons.”
She smirked, I sighed. With the Valiant Champion already in the city, that meant all the heroes most likely to be able to survive wielding the Severance were soon to be gathered in Salia. Hanno was looking to settle who was to wield it, I thought. And he’d decided to spring that on me without warning. Anyone but a hero touching that sword will lose their hand and maybe their head with it, I reminded myself. He might not have seen it as something to warn me of because no villains can be considered candidates. I’d be brought in when the decision was to be made, not for the footwork. Or so the most charitable spin I could put on this went.
“I’m not pleased he’s looking to surprise me,” I admitted.
Vivienne studied me a long moment, loose-limbed but sharp-eyed.
“You sound almost resigned,” she finally said. “Like you’re preparing to make your peace with that and a hundred more insults.”
“There need to be a Warden of the West,” I sighed.
“And it’s either Prince White or Princess Blue, yes,” Vivienne frowned. “Yet they’re both in the running for the prize, as I understand it. So why does it sound like you think Hanno already has the bird in hand?”
“We need to win the war, Viv,” I quietly said. “And I like Hasenbach for the peace, I genuinely do, but I don’t think she’s the woman to get us to it. Indrani was right when she put it to me: when we hit Keter, it’s the Sword of Judgement we’ll want leading the charge on those walls. Not the First Prince.”
I believed, honestly, that for all my differences with her Cordelia might make the better Warden of the West. She was better suited to the role in a world where the Liesse Accords had been signed. But now that I’d walked away from the room where I had shared a drink with her, I could see the… fragility in her candidature. Cordelia was too bound to Procer and its ugly games, was not respected as a military leader and most of all she knew too little of namelore. The Book of Some Things might help there, I thought, but giving it to either claimant would be an open endorsement on my part. Something I was rather hesitant to risk.
“Indrani’s smarter than she pretends,” Vivienne finally said, “but she still thinks through Refuge.”
I cocked my head to the side.
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“It’s about the individual for her,” the Princess said. “What they can personally do. That’s enough to assess most Named, and I think she’s sharper than either of us when it comes to reading people, but it doesn’t apply to something like the Warden of the West.”
“They’re in opposition, Viv,” I pointed out. “They bring different things to the table, and when one is chosen what the other would have brought is lost. It’s the same as when I became the Squire, only with more politics and a lot less stabbing.”
“You’re underestimating the both of them,” Vivienne bluntly replied. “They aren’t villains, Cat. They’re too proud to take a loss easy, either of them, but this doesn’t end with a tantrum or a corpse. If Hasenbach takes the Name, you still have the Sword of Judgement leading the charge against the walls of Keter. He’ll just be doing it at her order.”
My lips thinned. My experiences might have coloured my understanding of this, I thought, she was right there. But she was giving too sunny a shine to the whole affair.
“That’s not how pivots work,” I replied, shaking my head. “If you don’t really lose anything by the choice then there’s no weight and it’s not a pivot in the first place. Something’s at stake, Vivienne. Maybe we won’t see it immediately, but the choices we make always come back to haunt us.”
Two Wardens, I thought, and the Dead King. Trying to end the Hidden Horror and use his bones as the foundation of a new age. That story would not end the same way for Hanno and Cordelia, my instincts told me. It felt like I was trying to catch a fish swimming underwater, seeing only the faintest hint of a quick-moving thing in the dark. I was afraid, I could admit it in the privacy of my own mind, that making the wrong choice here might lose us the war long before we ever saw the walls of Keter.
“Fate will not change their character,” Vivienne quietly said. “Don’t throw away the peace for fear of losing the war, Catherine.”
I drew back in genuine surprise.
“You think it should be the First Prince,” I said, taken aback.
My friend had never been all that fond of Cordelia Hasenbach, and though there was respect there it had always been tempered by the memory of the Tenth Crusade and who had instigated it.
“Even for the war, it should be her,” Vivienne said. “We’ve plenty of people who can lead the charge, Catherine, you not least among them. What the Grand Alliance is though, what the armies being led against Keter will be, is a continent-wide coalition.”
She paused, choosing her words.
“Most of the nations involved have been at war with each other in the last decade,” the Princess said. “Leadership will not just be swords and hope, it will be keeping the army from collapsing under the weight of its own feuds. Hanno of Arwad is respected, and even beloved by some, but charisma will not be enough to keep the wheels from coming off the cart after we take our first few punches in the stomach. His way is to lead by example, but what we’re going to need is someone who can bring disparate forces together, wrangle and move them.”
And it was not the Sword of Judgement, she did not need to say, that had spent the last decade and a half doing that with notable skill. The Grand Alliance wasn’t something I’d made, after all, it was something I’d joined. I hummed, eyes returning to the distant lights. She wasn’t wrong. Not entirely right, either, but her words rang true.
“It is all wind before I’ve seen Hanno,” I finally said.
This was too far-reaching of a decision for me to make it in haste. But if I did end up choosing a favourite… well, there were ways to nudge while mitigating the risk. Like, for example, giving the same boon to both while knowing one would benefit more than other. Vivienne softly laughed, drawing my attention. She was looking almost wistfully at the city.
“Even five years ago,” she said, “who would have thought we’d ever sit here? Scheming the fate of nations, dreaming a new order.”
“We’ve come a long way,” I smiled, “since the Thief and the Squire.”
And, I realized in a moment of aching clarity, those same paths would eventually see us part. After the war, should we win, she would reign in Callow and I would sit in Cardinal. I’d have to leave the kingdom for years, I knew that. Too many people would look to me over Vivienne for orders otherwise, no matter who wore the crown, and she must have the change to begin her reign without standing deep in my shadow. My smile turned bitter as we stared out at the city. It was not the last night we would sit like this, scheming and dreaming, but time was running out.
Sometimes I feared the peace more than the war.
Cordelia Hasenbach had called me to palaces, but I found Hanno of Arwad in a small farm.
It’d seen better days, the paint on the wooden shutters flanking, but it was not there that my eye lingered. The muddy path led me around the house to a cattle-wall, one shoddily made. More stacked stones than anything, and unsurprisingly large swaths of it had collapsed over the last two winters. A tall man was kneeling in the dirt, the sleeves of his grey tunic rolled up to the elbows as he stacked the stones anew. Hanno of Arwad was tall and built like a working man, muscled and calloused. The fingers he’d lost to the Severance had been severed at the phalange, leaving stumps, and he had to be careful when gripping with them.
He must have heard me coming, since I’d been hailed by soldiers in a mix of colours – Brabant and fantassins, mostly – before getting anywhere near the farm, but he kept working as I hoisted myself up on one of the parts of the wall that still stood. We’d been here before. I had first met him here at this very farm, though it had been night and instead of a white cloak hanging on the rusty hook outside the house it had been a lantern. There was another change, though, one that surprised me. As Hanno stacked the stones, he reached for a wooden bucket at his side. Wielding a spade with surprisingly skill, he slathered mortar between the stones as he rebuilt the wall.
The barest trace of a smile quirked my lips. That first night, in the dead of winter, he’d just been stacking the stones again. I’d warned him that it wouldn’t stick without mortar, that he was wasting his time. Say what you would about Hanno of Arwad, but he was not one to repeat his mistakes. I waited as he finished a row, settling the stones in the mortar carefully. When the spade went back into the bucket, at last I cocked an eyebrow and spoke up.
“So, is it me or you definitely used Recall to pick up some masonry?” I teased.
A small laugh as he rose to his feet, dusting the dirt off his knees. The Sword of Judgement was more than simply tanned, darker in skin than a Taghreb but still short of the Soninke. His mother had been one, he’d told me, but his father had been Ashuran. Hanno’s brown eyes had always given off a sense of steadiness, all the more reassuring when paired with his plain but honest face, but while they still did there was something missing now. The calm, I thought, that’d always lurked beneath. The serenity born of certainty. It was gone.
His gaze, I thought, was warmer for it.
“I asked the Sculptor,” Hanno told me. “He spent half an hour reminding me he is an artist and not a mason, but he had some very useful advice about mortar anyhow. Good man.”
He wasn’t. The Arlesite was very much one of mine. Murdering the woman who’d killed his wife had been somewhat excusable, sacrificing half a dozen people to animate the impossibly lifelike statue of her he’d sculpted significantly less so. He probably did know his way around the mason trade, though, I wouldn’t deny that part.
“He is certainly a man,” I casually answered, then cast a scrutinizing look at the wall.
Hanno smiled.
“And?”
“Won’t be holding back a Crab anytime soon,” I said, “but it looks solid. Should hold.”
He looked pleased.
“I have been meaning to repay the lending of this house,” Hanno said. “A few afternoons of work and I should have the entire wall back up.”
I snorted.
“Do make your guests help,” I suggested. “You’re bound to be swimming in nobles by now and I’d pay good silver to see their like kneel in the dirt.”
“A fine idea,” Hanno said.
His eyes were amused, I noticed.
“You can hang your cloak over mine, if you’d like,” the dark-skinned hero continued.
Ah, I grimly thought, the classic Callowan blunder. Shot in the foot by my own spite. I coughed.
“I have a bad leg,” I argued. “Surely you wouldn’t make a sickly maiden like myself kneel.”
He eyed me consideringly, as if deciding whether or not he wanted to unpack any of that.
“You can hold the bucket,” Hanno finally said.
“Eh, I’ll take it,” I shrugged.
It was pretty heavy, so naturally I cheated. I put my staff across my shoulders and hung it off the edge, moving around the angle until it was easier to bear. Hanno looked more amused than anything, beginning to work again as we talked.
“Rafaella tells me you’ve helped the Blood come to terms with the Barrow Sword,” Hanno said.
His hands moved deftly to spread the mortar, but I knew better than to think that meant he was not listening to my words.
“It’s a little larger than that,” I said. “But it went well, I would say. They’ve kept what matters to them while giving Ishaq and the others enough rope.”
“Rope?” Hanno asked.
“Rope,” I repeated. “Whether he uses it to hang himself for pull himself up is for him to decide. Either way, he has his shot now.”
The short-haired hero – it was cut even closer than last time I’d seen him, barely more than stubble – let out a noise of agreement.
“It is a reasonable compromise,” Hanno said. “And holds all those who would enter the Rolls to a higher standard, which the true gain of it all as far as I’m concerned.”
“Are you?” I asked.
He paused, turning to meet my eye.
“Concerned, that is,” I elaborated.
A moment passed.
“You wield ambiguousness as deftly as Tariq ever did,” Hanno finally replied, which was not entirely a compliment. “It was fairly bargained and no law was bent. I would have liked to be seated at the table, but I understand why I was not.”
“That is your own doing, Prince White,” I mildly said.
His growing conflict with the First Prince was, I had come to suspect, why he’d not been invited. The Blood liked him, I knew that well. As was only natural considering he was a famous warrior, Bestowed and the Tribunal’s own champion. But Cordelia had done much for them, and they had sworn oaths of alliance to her. It would have toed the line of dishonour to turn on her now and bringing in Hanno would have been an endorsement of him. Too close to betrayal for comfort, I figured. He’d begun working again, but at my words his movement stuttered.
“You disapprove?”
A simple question, calmly asked. It carried more weight than any two words should bear. I clenched my fingers and unclenched them, balancing the bucket against my shoulders.
“Haven’t decided yet,” I said.
Which was, if nothing else, true. His hands began moving again.
“I did not seek it out,” Hanno said.
“Didn’t fight it either, the way I hear it,” I noted.
He breathed out a laugh.
“No,” Hanno frankly admitted. “I did not. I could do more, so I did. I will not put on a crown, but neither will I refuse the authority when I can use it to do good.”
It was my time to pause, taken aback. The once White Knight had spent the last few years making a point out of staying out of anything resembling politics unless dragged into them. It was a very different song from the one I’d heard in the Arsenal that he was now singing. I had not, I’d admit, expected this much of a change in him even though the reports from the Jacks had hinted otherwise. Named were, for better or worse, set in their ways. Was that why he was no longer the White Knight and instead claimant to another Name entirely?
“It’s not just doing that,” I finally said. “You’re not a fool, so let’s not pretend that the struggle between you and the First Prince isn’t a crack spreading across the Grand Alliance.”
“Our differences can and will be resolved peacefully,” Hanno said. “But they exist for a reason. I do not believe that Cordelia Hasenbach should lead us against Keter, and even less that she should shape the nature of Good in the coming era.”
“That sounds,” I mildly said, “rather like a judgement.”
A pause.
“Yes,” the Sword of Judgement said. “It is. My own.”
Not the same song I had thought, like a fool, finding only the shallowest part of that. It was hardly the same fucking singer, by the sound of it. No wonder he’d lost his Name, he’d essentially discarded the central tenet of the beliefs that’d turned him into the White Knight. I bet you couldn’t even use Light for while, I thought. Until Fate could decide if you were turning villain or not. I rolled my shoulder. This wasn’t a claim, not quite – I’d not given him that opening the way I had Cordelia, the opportunity to define himself in the face of the Other – but we were on the road there. Best I even the grounds before we got there, though, else I would be seen as backing a horse.
He’d need to be brought in on the pivot the First Prince knew and he did not. He’d taken the talks with the Dominion as I thought he would, but there was another conversation happening in Salia that he’d know very little about.
“There’s something you need to know about,” I finally said.
Almost reluctantly. I knew, objectively, that I was not breaking Cordelia’s trust by speaking of this. He was a high officer of the Grand Alliance, he had a right to the information. And still the reluctance lingered. I forged through it, laying out the demands the Kingdom Under had made in exchange for supporting our attack on Keter. He listened carefully, finishing another layer of stones and beginning the mortar work. When I finished, he kept silent for a while. Considering the situation.
“The treaty you brought back from the Everdark includes an obligation for them to provide foodstuffs at cost for any force engaged in warfare against Keter,” Hanno noted. “Are they not breaking the bargain?”
“Toeing the line,” I replied. “We need reserves of food with the armies before we set out for the Twilight Ways, and they’re not technically obligated to provide that even if we could pay for it. Which, for the number of troops we’re marching north, we cannot.”
It would be the single largest army fielded on Calernia in my lifetime, if the League truly joined its forces to ours. Largest living army, anyway.
“So while they might be bound to provide foodstuffs at cost should we lay siege to Keter, by then we would have consumed our own reserves and stand completely at their mercy,” Hanno summed up.
I nodded.
“So it needs to be seen to here, before we march out,” I said. “At the latest a few days after the second wave of reinforcements from Praes arrives, which is in a week and a half. Any later than that and we begin damaging our changes of taking Keter.”
We’d be eating through our reserves without being on the march, making us ever more dependent on dwarven help which they would charge us all the more for. That and with every day another few miles of the Principate were lost, the Dead King’s armies swelling with the dead they had butchered. If he devoured enough of Procer, there was a real chance that even if we mustered the entire continent against him we’d still lose in a pitched battle. Keter was our only real shot at ending this in time, decapitating the snake. Neshamah knew that as well, of course.
He’d be waiting for us, and every day we waited his defences grew more terrifying.
“I agree that the Herald is in opposition to others in the Kingdom Under,” Hanno slowly said. “You are certain he is of Above?”
“Leaning that way, at least,” I replied. “Dwarven Names are harder to read.”
“Indeed,” Hanno gravely replied, eyes dancing, “how dare your largely unprecedented and very useful power not be universally applicable. Most unfair.”
It was hard to flip him off while holding the staff and bucket, but I was motivated enough to manage it. He laughed but turned serious soon after.
“The Herald is acting boldly because the odds are against him,” Hanno said. “I recognize the instinct, I’ve seen it many a time. By striking first and early you prevent the greater force from mustering against you. There is our solution, Catherine.”
“Going over his head?” I said. “It’s been considered. There’s a risk of pretty brutal backlash if the dwarves take offense to our trying to play their factions against each other.”
“There won’t be,” Hanno firmly said. “Already the Herald is using great misery to bring about some design, which must be benevolent if his Name has not balked. For him to turn to vengeance after being caught out abusing his power would surely see him fall from grace.”
“Those are thin grounds to make so important a bet on,” I frowned. “Not all heroes are saints, and they’re certainly not all above burning those who burned them.”
“You assume he cannot be reasoned with,” he pointed out. “I would speak to the Herald myself. “Whatever work this is all in the service of, I am sure he can be helped to find another way to it. And if he will not compromise, then there are those standing against him.”
I sucked in a breath.
“If he’s warned we’ve figured out he’s after something, we lose our only advantage,” I said. “He’ll cover his tracks, maybe even poison the well with the rest of the Kingdom Under to make sure we can’t go above his head without paying for it. That’s a lot of things risked on faith in a man who is actively using the prospect of the annihilation of the entire surface as negotiating leverage.”
“If he did not intend the betterment of Creation, the fighting of an Evil, he would not be a hero,” Hanno calmly said. “I understand your hesitation, for you have fought heroes for much of your career, and the Herald of the Deeps has not earned trust.”
He laid his hand on a stone, turning to meet my eye.
“Yet does not mean it should not be given,” Hanno of Arwad said. “Plots will not see us through this, Warden of the East. The answer lies not in forcing his hand but in freeing it to do good.”
Hanno knew his namelore well. I had not needed to offer him the opportunity: he had made it himself, by bringing my Name into this. And in the same breath, as Cordelia had revealed where she and I would struggle should she rise, Hanno had done the same. The man who had once been the White Knight believed in Good. In heroes, in the champions of Above. He believed, genuinely and deeply, that they were forces for good and that their good was a force of nature as real as the wind or the tides. It wouldn’t be over laws and rules and treaties I fought him, because Hanno didn’t particularly care about any these.
If he believed a law unjust he would not follow it, and would not expect anyone in his place to do otherwise.
That was not something he had it in him to compromise over. When he said he would speak with the Herald of the Deeps, it was because he because there was not a doubt in him that the dwarf would do the right thing once helped into it. And even if that failed, Hanno would not abandon that principle. It was the bedrock of who he was, the belief that people wanted to be Good. That they would do it if you helped them. And the thing was, he was right often enough that I couldn’t just call him wrong. I’d clash with him a fraction of how much I would clash with Cordelia Hasenbach, I thought. But on those occasions where he did choose to fight?
He would not bend. Not a mile, not an inch, not a hair. Every single time we faced each other it would be a fight to the knife, bloody and raw, a chance that the whole edifice might come falling down on our heads.
“That is,” Hanno of Arwad said, “what the Warden of the West must be. Not a king or a judge but the intercessor between necessity and faith. Neither leash nor lash, a guide to the lost and hand to faltering. And, when there is no other recourse, the sword against Evil.”
The world shivered. He would not rule them, I thought. The heroes. He would not bind or marshal them to a cause or purpose, because he trusted them to follow their own. Hanno trusted heroes, believed in them in a way that I simply could not. I had cut too many of them open to believe them anything more than men. There would be no centre under him, no throne. The Game of the Gods would have rules of engagement, but it would not change: the same old war would be fought, a hundred obscure skirmishes at a time. Hanno of Arwad stood tall in the morning light, calloused hands resting on stone. Workman’s hands, tireless in their work.
And the coin kept spinning, spinning, spinning.
Foll𝑜w current novels on fre(e)w𝒆bnovel