A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 6 26: Palaver

“Hold not even the least of the laws of men in contempt, for where their like is absent rule only the laws of beasts.”

– Isocrates the Harsh, Atalante preacher

I’d learned over the years that there were a lot of unspoken rules in Alamans culture.

Many them seemed about social status at first glance, in a way that made every mudfoot Callowan hackle in my body rise, but I’d eventually been forced to admit it was a little more nuanced than that. The Alamans were the most populous of the three Proceran peoples – Vivienne believed that there might be as many as three times more of them than Lycaonese – and I suspected a lot of their culture had been shaped of need to keep that massive amount of people at least halfway orderly. The Ebb and Flow might be a vicious wastrel thing by anyone’s standards but the Wasteland’s, but not every custom should be painted with the same brush. As an example; the typical Alamans reluctance to ever contradict a social superior in public wasn’t from their ways being more set in stone when it came to the aristocracy, but arguably from the opposite.

Proceran royalty worried a lot more about public opinion than I’d ever believed such a rapacious lot would, because to them it could be a lethal thing. The Alamans understanding of authority was fundamentally rooted in a ruler having the graces of the Heavens of the people, so losing either tended to have an ambitious sibling or cousin remove you for the good of the family – when it wasn’t done by another noble family entirely, one which had recently proven competent and popular. That sort of thing was exceedingly rare, in Callow. Back home when rule of holdings passed to another house it was usually because the last one had died to battle or Praesi madness, or the sparse cases where the Albans and Fairfaxes had stripped a house of its titles for some manner of treason. And that last one was damned rare, since some houses had flown the rebel banner and even fought battles against the Fairfaxes while still retaining their titles after their loss.

I’d found it fascinating that while back home it was broadly assumed that Proceran peasants were starvelings constantly robbed by their princes, the common folk of Procer in truth had their rights guaranteed by law: a set of rights known as ‘Salienta’s Graces’, which royals naturally tried to squeeze around but were very leery of outright breaking. The sole lawful check on noble abuses, in Callow, was the crown being petitioned for intervention. Sure, it was an open secret that if some baron began to trouble their people too much they were likely to one day not return from a hunt or mysteriously choke on their supper, but if violence was the only way to end a crime then there was a weakness in the law. It’d been humbling to realize some of the last remaining Callowan nobles might get outright rebellious if I tried to cram down their throats the legal rights for the commons that Proceran folk took for granted.

Not because they intended to abuse their subjects, no, but simply because the crown would be weakening their authority. Right or wrong didn’t enter the equation, just the balance of power, and that was a hard thing to swallow even for me – whose opinion of Callowan nobles had long been, one might say, uncharitable. It’d also made me reconsider a lot of the conversations I’d had with Cordelia Hasenbach over the years, approaching them with fresh eyes. Her threshold for losing power in Procer had never been outright rebellion, as it could be argued to be for me, but simply growing unpopular enough that there would not be much trouble if someone of good repute toppled her through the Highest Assembly. Hells, hadn’t people tried to overthrow her with only middling backing just because it seemed like her decisions were getting unpopular? A lot of what had seemed to be hemming and hawing for its own sake back then could now be understood differently, if not necessarily be more forgivable for it.

It’d been almost as fascinating to me that lowborn Procerans tended to cling to those unspoken rules even more tightly than the nobles, as if deviating from them would be taint on their character. Christophe of Pavanie was, from what little the Jacks had been able to dig up on him – genuinely obscure origins had, there, been an even finer shield than an empire’s worth of spies – of middling but not outright lowborn birth. His family would have been from the equivalent of a town’s eldermen, in Callowan terms, but not necessarily influential or all that wealthy. Comfortable enough to ensure he’d be able to read and write, though, and evidently have some tutoring in the etiquette of the well-bred. Which was why the Mirror Knight had not spoken a single word about the conversation I’d had with the Hunted Magician, even though he was very clearly itching to.

I was a queen, you see, and a duly recognized high officer of the Grand Alliance. If I wasn’t going around breaking the Truce and Terms myself, making myself into an outlaw and so throwing away all privileges, he might hate it to the bone but he’d not deny that I was his social superior. Mind you, that would only hold so long as we were out in public. And considering we’d long left behind the Workshop and entered the Alcazar, the thin barrier that’d ensured his sullen silence as we walked was soon to be stripped away. My first instinct had been to bring him to the small room where I’d received him earlier, but since it was currently filled with a mess of cards and the Wandering Bard’s latest corpse I’d naturally reconsidered. There was a small private parlour in my quarters here where we ought to be able to talk, though, and it’d do just fine.

The protective working of Night I’d laid on my door had dispersed when I’d been stabbed by the Fallen Monk earlier, so all it took to open my rooms was the use of a key. I gestured for the Mirror Knight to follow me in then closed the door behind us.

“Do you drink?” I asked, unclasping my cloak.

The man looked taken aback by the question, standing awkwardly in his full plate as I tossed the Mantle of Woe atop a dresser. I could hardly mock him for that, since if I’d been wearing proper armour instead of ceremonial dress I wouldn’t have gotten stabbed in the neck by the Monk. Black’s insistence on wearing plate seemingly at all times had never seemed more justified.

“Er, yes,” the Mirror Knight said. “Your Majesty.”

“Good,” I grunted. “Do take you helmet off, and stash that sword somewhere I don’t have to watch it seethe at my continued existence. I’m not going to stab you in my own parlour, I assure you.”

His eyes widened.

“I did not mean to imply faithlessness of you by keeping my arms,” the man hastily assured me, sounding like he very much wanted to wince.

He left the Severance near the door, propping it up against the wall like it was some farmer’s hoe instead of tool for deicide, and after looking around for somewhere to place his helm and failing he simply held it in the crook of his elbow. Uncomfortably, one assumed. Meanwhile I unearthed what looked like some Proceran bottle of red from an overly fancy drink cabinet before liberating two crystal cups – a donation, I hoped, since the thought of Callowan coin going into paying for those had me more than a little displeased – and setting all three of those things on the table.

“That ought to do,” I said, and flicked a glance at the helm. “Put that on a dresser, would you?”

Amusing as it might be to watch him try to juggle holding his war helm and drink at the same time, it’d bode ill to make sport of him before our conversation even began. I uncorked the bottle with a pop and had moved to pour when I caught sight of the appalled look on the hero’s face from the corner of my eye. Ah, yes. I was of higher rank, so pouring was either a breach of etiquette or implied a nonexistent degree of intimacy between us. Smothering a sigh – it’d be hypocritical to benefit from useful Alamans ways then complain of their inconvenience in the same breath – I flipped my grip and offered the bottle to him. With surprising deftness for a man still wearing gauntlets, he poured first for me and then for himself. I nodded thanks and sat, while he followed suit in the latter a heartbeat later.

“You have questions,” I said.

Safer to frame them as that than objections. Someone confused could ask for clarifications without it being a threat, but to object implied a degree of authority I had no intention of allowing him in this conversation. The Mirror Knight’s lips thinned.

“You as good as solicited a bribe from the Hunted Magician and threatened to purposefully fail your responsibilities to him if one was not offered,” Christophe de Pavanie flatly accused. “Worse, when that bribe was offered you took it.”

I hummed.

“If I had simply asked questions of the Hunted Magician,” I said, “what would have happened?”

“He would have lied,” the Mirror Knight curtly said. “But you would not have disgraced yourself and the office you hold. He should have been imprisoned until a truthteller could be brought to the Arsenal.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was basic grounding in reality or a belief in the general perfidy of villains that had him aware that the Magician had no real reason to tell the truth if pressed, but I could work with it either way.

“Assume I had done this,” I allowed, to his visible surprise. “What would have followed?”

“A truthteller-”

“Who?” I pressed.

“The Peregrine,” he said, “or perhaps the Exalted Poet.”

“The Poet was a traitor who openly sided with the fae in battle,” I noted.

And thank you a hundred times over, Indrani, for passing that piece along. The dark-haired man’s face went slack in utter surprise. They’d fought on the same front, as I recalled. They must have known each other. I would have a lot more sympathy for his dismay if that friendship might not have led to the Bard getting her picked truthteller in a key position, had this all happened differently.

“I – are you quite certain?” the Mirror Knight croaked out.

“It has been confirmed by multiple witnesses,” I said. “And that is not the heart of the issue, regardless: every single truthteller in the Grand Alliance is a hero.”

“I do not see the issue,” he replied, sounding entirely honest.

Because that just wasn’t how he saw the world in the end, was it? Heroes – the Chosen – were honourable and good, so even us wicked Damned must recognize these qualities and believe in their word when it was given. It was a shade of the same sentiment I’d so deeply despised in Tariq, that bedrock assumption that only the mad and the lost could ever choose anything but service to the Gods Above. It was a way to see the world that simply did not allow for disagreeing equals.

“The word of heroes isn’t trusted by the Named I have in my charge,” I bluntly said. “Most of them have fought Chosen at some point in their lives-”

“It is not a crime to have stopped crime,” Christophe burst out.

“No, but it is ridiculous to ask villains to believe in the impartiality of heroes when they’ve almost certainly fought with one of their friends or companions in the past,” I patiently said. “You yourself came into the Arsenal all but accusing me of plotting to murder the Red Axe-”

“For which I apologize,” the Mirror Knight said through gritted teeth. “I was given reason to believe such a plot was afoot.”

“And you believed it,” I said.

He began to apologize again but I raised my hand to stop him.

“I’m not here to rake you over the coals for that,” I said. “Mind you, I’ll want to know why you came to believe that, but my point is that you did believe it. Because there is no trust between us.”

I paused to let him digest that, taking up my cup at sipping at it. Some strong-flavoured red. From where in Procer I had no idea, but it was pleasant enough to drink.

“You are saying,” the Mirror Knight slowly said, “that the lack of trust goes both ways.”

I’d led him to that, true enough, but that he’d gotten there at all meant he was likely someone I could deal with. Not like the Saint, whose principles had cut both ways and never bent an inch even when they led her to facing death standing all alone. Ignorance I could mend, zealotry I could not.

“At best, using heroes to settle villain affairs would be seen as weakness on my part,” I bluntly said. “At worse, it would be seen as collusion and plot.”

“Whether that is true or not,” Christophe said, “it remains that you threatened the Hunted Magian with withholding the protections he is due by law.”

“Is he?” I said. “He plotted with the Wandering Bard to help an assault into the Arsenal – this is fact, not supposition, even though my proofs are limited. I would have been well within my rights to cut him loose and offer him up in chains to stand before a military tribunal.”

“Then it is even worse,” the Mirror Knight said, “for that was your duty, and you laid it aside for a bribe.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I laid nothing aside,” I said. “He’ll still stand trial as he should under the Truce and Terms and I have received nothing from him save for words.”

“Just because the bribe was not delivered-”

“I asked him for reasons his coming tribunal might have to refrain from a brisk hanging being the sum whole of the judgement rendered,” I sharply said, growing irritated with the constant accusation of bribery. “Not for any sort of bribe.”

I’d bloodied my hands enough for three villains, but the accusation that I might be corrupt was still enough to infuriate me. I was a cheat and a killer, but I was not godsdamned crook.

“You were promised a fairy crown,” the Mirror Knight unflinchingly replied. “That did not escape me, Black Queen. The purported scheme that brought me here was your attempted seeking of queenship over Named, and this eager pursuit of Autumn’s regalia does nothing to abate my fears.”

I breathed out, gathered my calm.

“I don’t care,” I bluntly said.

He blinked in surprise.

“That entire project is being kept secret for a reason, and it’s been approved by people a lot more important than you,” I said. “If the White Knight wants to bring you into the circle of those aware of its nature I’ll consider agreeing to it, since you’ve already stumbled onto the outskirts, but ultimately that’s not my decision to make.”

That was the pivot, I thought. I was asserting that I had little direct authority over him, which should please him, but it came with the added implication that he was still subordinate to Hanno. Those were the lines drawn by rules and agreement, though, not something immutable. If he decided to push anyway this was going to be trouble.

“Then there should be no trouble with the Hunted Magician being placed under guard until the White Knight can speak of this matter for the Chosen,” the Mirror Knight said.

It wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask, when it came down to it, and in principle I had nothing to lose by agreeing to it. In principle. Practically speaking, I’d be admitting that Christophe de Pavanie was someone who had a right to ask things of me. If I gave in now, would it just invite him to push for more? On the other hand, digging my heels in over even the slightest bump in the road was a good way to ensure this went to the Hells in a handbasket. I’d have to take the risk, then, and maybe phrase it so that I wasn’t actually making a concession.

“I’ll consider him to be the subject of a complaint under the Terms, then,” I said. “The Rogue Sorcerer can see to it that no unseemliness happens when he’s freed from other duties.”

Roland was not the most trusted of heroes, he was too close to me for that, but he wasn’t outright distrusted by his fellows either. He’d serve as an acceptable compromise candidate since I sure as hells wasn’t putting the Blade of Mercy in charge of anything – much less guarding an experienced villain. I’d even managed to make this happen within the appearance of lawfulness, keeping to the Terms. But it was an illusion, I knew that all too well. Pick at the gold on any crown for long enough and you always found the steel that’d put the gilding on.

It was not a pleasant thing to be the side with the gilding instead of the steel, for once.

“That would be acceptable,” the Mirror Knight said, and my fingers clenched.

I drank from my cup to hide my sudden urge to break his nose. Acceptable. Like he was doing me a favour by deigning to accept. The Magician was one of Below’s, there was precisely no fucking part of this that Above’s crowd had a right to dictate to me over. I breathed out, slowly, and forced calm. I glanced at the green-eyed man, finding him looking faintly embarrassed. Not because of me, I decided, I was not so easy to read these days.

“You look like you want to say something,” I said.

“I yet remain in the dark about much of what went on during the attack,” the Mirror Knight admitted. “And it occurs to me I am unlikely to find anyone more apt to tell the tale.”

I hummed. After that little sentence I was less than inclined to indulge him in anything, but that he was asking at all implied a degree of trust in my word: there was no point in asking an explanation from someone you believed a liar. That belief was worth encouraging, I decided after a moment.

“To my understanding, the Wandering Bard’s plot began with the Wicked Enchanter and the Red Axe,” I said.

“Someone passed as the latter in Revenant form, when attacking the Stacks,” Christophe said.

I watched his eyes tighten, his fingers clench, and remembered the few barbs I’d thrown his way when disguised as the Wicked Enchanter’s corpse. Evidently, they’d stung deeper than I’d believed they would. I could confess to that deception, with or without revealing Indrani had been my companion, but to be frank I saw no real need to. There’d been enough chaos going around the Arsenal that it should comfortably remain a mystery, and even if it were suddenly revealed down the line by a twist of circumstance there was nothing all that damaging to reveal in the first place. Arson and skirmishing were not laudable behaviour, but given the circumstances I doubted my word would be gainsaid if I stated it’d been necessary.

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “The object of the plot was to arrange a deep enmity between a heroine and villain, then ensure that they met where many other Named could see the violence that’d ensue.”

“An attack on the Truce and Terms,” the Mirror Knight nodded. “Clever, given that Damned were certain to ask for her head no matter how justified her actions were.”

I wasn’t going to touch that, considering how ambivalent I was feeling at having to pass down sanctions on behalf of an animal like the Wicked Enchanter. Safer to move on, I decided.

“From there, the Arsenal would become a dry bale of hay awaiting a match,” I said. “The Blessed Artificer and the Repentant Magister were made privy to incomplete but dangerous information about a restricted project, while you and your fellows were summoned to fight a false plot that would still have been weeks away from existing at all when word was sent.”

There I paused in significant silence, inviting him to elaborate on that. Just because I was sharing information didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to learn any. The Mirror Knight frowned.

“It was a letter,” he admitted. “From one of my friends within these walls, though when I arrived and sought her out she told me she had sent no such thing.”

“And that friend’s name?” I asked.

“You would know her as the Bitter Blacksmith,” he said. “She passed through Cleves on her way to the Arsenal, and the friendship we struck then remains.”

His friend had been sleeping with the Hunted Magician for some time, I immediately thought, which meant he might have been the one to send that false letter using his access to her quarters. Although that hardly fit when I considered it more deeply: the Magician’s relationship with the Intercessor had been transactional, and he was unlikely to have taken a risk like leaving a parchment trail on her behalf. Especially not a letter coming out of the Arsenal, where everything is read through before it’s allowed to leave. No, most likely he or another of the Bard’s helpers had gotten their hands on some writing of the Bitter Blacksmith’s before passing it on. Another traitor would have then forged the letter outside the Arsenal and sent it to the Mirror Knight. Considering that the Concocter had ties with the smuggling ring of this place and bargained with the Bard as well, she seemed a more likely suspect there.

I’d still ask the Grey Pilgrim to confirm the Bitter Blacksmith’s words if he could, just in case.

“A forgery,” I said. “One that ensured you would come here and act aggressively.”

His face soured but he did not argue with my words.

“I suspect we were meant to be at each other’s throats,” I said, delicately skipping over the part where we actually had been. “So that when the Court of Autumn struck we would be divided and unready.”

Back in the Stacks, the Mirror Knight had varied wildly between tales when addressing my impersonation of a Revenant. I’d dismissed that as stupidity, back then, but in retrospect a more charitable interpretation might have been that he’d been utterly confused as to why he was there at all. It wasn’t anyone’s natural leaning, not even mine, to begin by entertaining the notion that you’d been brought in because you were bound to fuck things up somehow. It made sense he would have been grasping at straw instead, desperately trying to figure what was going on around him. Yet the Intercessor had known exactly what she was doing, on the other hand: he’d been picked as much for his… inflexibility as for his potential to take up the Severance. A danger in both the short term and the long one. Gods but I hated fighting the Bard. Even when you won you lost.

At least we’d made it through better than she must have anticipated, my little trick of going directly to the Doddering Sage forcing her to use the Hunted Magician early – which ultimately came back to bite her, since it was one of the things that allowed me to figure out he’d been working with her – and the stroke of inspiration that was sending in Adjutant leading the Mirror Knight straight to my door later, no longer seeing me as an immediate foe. The memory of Hakram’s body on that stretcher came back and I gritted my teeth. Inspiration had its costs. Yet when the fae had hit the Arsenal, they’d not fallen upon a pack of twitchy Named ready to blame each other but instead faced a few separate bands of five hunting down the Bard’s schemes. What should have been a hard blow instead became a distraction, which I was honestly rather pleased about. If it’d really gone to shit in the Arsenal, the fae likely would have been able to make straight runs for the sword and Quartered Seasons and broken both.

“The fae went for both the Severance and the Hierophant’s research, both of which represent a potential way of killing the Dead King,” I said.

“But why?” the Mirror Knight quietly asked. “Why would anyone, even one of the Damned, try to doom Calernia to an eternity of undeath?”

“The Bard’s been pulling strings for a long time, using a lot of different faces,” I said. “She led the First Prince by the nose towards the creation of a weapon that might kill the Hidden Horror as well – the corpse of an angel of Judgement – but it has since been gleaned that the use of the weapon might have catastrophic consequences for all of Calernia. The idea of using it was laid aside, for now, but if Cordelia Hasenbach is stripped of every other option and annihilation comes to call…”

“Then the First Prince will do as she must, and sacrifice many to save the rest,” the Mirror Knight said, sounding admiring. “How like the Damned, to attempt to make use of virtue as a flaw.”

I didn’t mention that, according to the Dead King’s parting words in Salia, when the Painted Knife arrived we’d be learning the exact magnitude of the mess that would have ensued from Cordelia pulling that trigger. I suspected it was… not negligible, which might go some way in explaining why the Intercessor had struck now of all times. With her secrets about to come out, she urgently needed to cut down on the Grand Alliance’s options or there would be absolutely no reason for the First Prince to even consider using the Bard’s preferred path. It also explained why this had been rather open engagement, by the Intercessor’s standards: if that secret being revealed would burn all the bridges that were currently aflame, she was not losing much in a longer sense. And while trying to shape my Name might have been one of her reasons for coming out, I very much doubted it was the only one: it wasn’t the Intercessor’s way to get only one bird per stone.

“We fought better than the Bard expected,” I said, which was not exactly true but not exactly false, “so she had to tip her hand further. Her traitors within the Arsenal took action – the Hunted Magician, the Exalted Poet, the Maddened Keeper-”

Christophe’s brow rose.

“Was this Maddened Keeper the one responsible for the demons?” he asked. “I did strike down a woman, after taking up the sword.”

“That was most likely her,” I said. “Information is sparse about how she got here or why she did anything, since there’s nothing quite like a demon of Absence to obscure your trail.”

“How grotesque,” the Mirror Knight said, disgusted.

I wouldn’t disagree, there. There wasn’t really much of anything that could ever justify use of demons.

“The Fallen Monk and the Rex Axe are the last two known collaborators,” I continued. “The former attempted to kill me and then the Hierophant, while the latter tried to assassinate the Kingfisher Prince after I sent him to ensure her safety.”

The man started in surprise.

“You tried to ensure the protection of the Red Axe?” he said.

“She’s a prisoner,” I flatly said. “And therefore in our care until she has stood trial. Prince Frederic struck me as the man to see to her safety and I was not wrong in my judgement, though that task ended poorly for him.”

“Antoine tells me he was wounded,” the Mirror Knight tried.

“He’ll live,” I said. “I’d be surprised if it doesn’t leave a scar on his neck, but he’ll still be ridiculously pretty even with it.”

The green-eyed man snorted, though he then tried to disguise it as a cough.

“It is an act of gallantry for a man to receive a scar in the defence of a woman, even if it is in the defence of herself,” Christophe de Pavanie said. “I’m sure he will wear it as the badge of pride it is.”

I had my doubts any sort of a prince would take to a murder attempt so lightly, but you never knew with Procerans. Not that it’d mean a thing, anyway. Whether or not the Kingfisher Prince complained under the Terms, such an egregious and open breach of them would have to be addressed. Not that we could hang her twice, anyway, though some of the Named in my charge were bound to argue for me to at least try.

“Might be,” I said, noncommittal, and sipped from my glass.

The dark-haired man half-smiled and reached for his cup, until now left untouched, fingers closing around the gilded crystal rim before he froze. Slowly he looked up at me, dark green eyes narrowed.

“We wouldn’t have had this conversation,” the Mirror Knight quietly said, “if I’d not taken up the sword, would we?”

I hesitated for just the fraction of a moment and my mind whispered mistake as Christophe de Pavanie’s face closed down. He rose to his feet, curtly bowing.

“If I might take my leave, Black Queen?” he said. “If there any need for further discussion, we can speak again after the Red Axe is released.”

Wait, what? From what part of this conversation had he gotten that?

“And what do you mean by that, exactly?” I mildly asked.

“That once the White Knight comes, it must be recognized that like myself and other Chosen she was made a tool to the Wandering Bard’s schemes,” the Mirror Knight. “The only righteous outcome is to pardon her for her actions.”

“That is not my understanding of the situation,” I coldly said. “And neither do I believe it will be the White Knight’s.”

Christophe de Pavanie, risen to his full height, stared down at me with green eyes.

“I pray you are wrong,” he said, “else I will be forced to ask a question I would rather not.”

“And what would that be?” I replied, thinly smiling.

“What is the Sword of Judgement, without Judgement?” the Mirror Knight asked.

Just a sword, he didn’t say, but I heard it anyway as he left with the Severance and I didn’t stop him.

Just a sword, and he had one of those too.