A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 7 56: Brink

The Grand Alliance taken a swing in the face, but we’d get over it. That was the way these things went, really. You rolled with the black eye, threw sand in the other guy’s face come next round and stabbed them good in the belly while they were blinded. I told Vivienne as much when we discussed what should follow our ‘victories’ over breakfast. Her milkmaid braid was undone, falling down her back, and she started blearily at me over porridge she insisted on touching up with honey for some godforsaken reason.

“Have you considered,” Princess said, “that the unreasonable number of brawls you’ve been in might be making your metaphors baffling to anyone remotely normal?”

Indrani, seated between us, finished scarfing down her sausage and licked her fingers before shaking her head at Vivienne.

“Nah, her stuff is always easy to get,” Archer said. “You’re off on that one.”

My successor cocked an eyebrow at me as I winced. Ah, ‘Drani. Even when trying to help, she ended up verbally socking me in the stomach like usual. It was a fair point that if Archer and I were on the same wavelength, there might be a little too much brawl in my metaphors.

“No, Vivienne is entirely correct,” Hierophant absent-mindedly said. “When Catherine gets started it sometimes turns into rather mystifying jargon.”

I grinned, cocking an eyebrow at Princess, whose turn it was to wince. Yeah, Masego was agreeing with her. I wasn’t the only one with a would-be helper tying stones around my feet. Hierophant’s notion of commonly understandable conversation was about three years if magical study removed from any halfway reasonable expectation. Draw, Vivienne mouthed at me, and I inclined my head. I could have tried for the win, but if Indrani caught on to what I was doing she was most definitely enough of a wench to go out of her way to sink my chances.

“Look, my perfectly serviceable metaphors aside the situation’s not that bad,” I said, allowing myself more frankness than I would in a war council. “The hourglass is emptying when it comes to supply, sure, but none of us actually expected our first shot at the walls to win us Keter.”

“I did expect us to land on the walls, however,” Masego noted. “Which we did not.”

I sighed, not arguing the point because he wasn’t wrong. Sixteen thousand dead without a single foot being set atop the walls of Keter was not great for morale. The reports from the phalanges and the Jacks I’d read over while drinking my tea had been pretty clear about that: even the Army of Callow’s spirit had been bruised by yesterday’s battles. It was unsurprisingly worst of all the Grand Alliance in the Proceran forces, which still sported a number of levies. The conscripts had been hardened by the years of fighting, but they’d never be as steady as career soldiers.

“Like I said, we took a swing in the face,” I told him. “But we have a better idea of Keter’s defences now and the next assault we’ll mount will punch through the defences.”

While the Confederation of Praes did not have a Warlock it did have an informal leading mage, Lady Nahiza Serrif. She’d been set to the task of overseeing the Praesi mages during the battle, backing up Masego’s defensive spellcasting to shut down Keteran ritual, but she’d had another duty and she’d discharged it successfully: we now had an estimate of what Legion doctrine called the ‘spellfire volume’ of the Dead King’s forces. As laid out by now-general Grem One-Eye’s Considerations, spellfire volume was the total amount of sorcery than an opposing force was capable of mustering at once.

It didn’t necessarily translate into superior strength in practice, since for example a smaller cadre of casters capable of High Arcana might well overpower a significantly larger group of less-trained mages that could technically deploy more sorcery. What it did give us, though, was an estimate of the enemy’s maximum strike capacity and how much of our own mages we should keep in reserve to defend. In this case, the answer was looking to be a little over two thirds of our casters. That was still a lot of strength loose for us to deploy, which meant a lot of the plans we’d been keeping back were now looking to e viable.

Committing the greater Praesi fortresses, for one, but also Chancellor Alaya’s battlefield applications of Still Water. And since we could deploy these with an expectation that we wouldn’t just be throwing away irreplaceable assets, it meant we could start using our trump cards to make openings for them. No, yesterday had been a black eye but it’d not been a total loss.

“And when’s that going to be?” Indrani asked, curious. “We’re going to be with the besieging force this time, yeah?”

“We are,” I confirmed. “We’ll have to discuss in council who takes their turn sallying out to keep our back clean, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the League with some Proceran reinforcements.”

Even after the Principate had spent years being ravaged, it still had by far the largest cavalry contingent of all the nations of the Grand Alliance. After the casualties her cataphracts had taken at the Battle of the Ruins to keep Chief Troke’s flank from collapsing, Basilia was sure to want to use someone else’s cavalry on the field.

“Nice,” Archer said. “Been talking with Alexis about a trick we could use on a Scourge, it’d be interesting to try out. Doesn’t tell me when we’re taking our crack at it, though.”

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Not for a few days at least. We need to see to our wounded and let the soldiers rest for a bit.”

Much as I disliked waiting, given the dire state of our supplies, you couldn’t repeatedly send armies into the meat grinders and expect them not to break. We’d prepare for the assault and get it going as soon as morale had solidified.

“Good,” Masego said. “I have begun studying the damage the fallen tower made to Keter’s wards when it fell through the wall, but it is a difficult matter and enemy interference complicates it further. Time will help.”

“Doesn’t it always?” I easily replied.

It was the most precious resource, when making war, and always the scarcest. I left that breakfast in a better mood, some of the gloom for last night shed now that I some sleep in my body and a semblance of a path forward. I spent two days conferring with Named and generals, laying out the skeleton of the assault to come, and Hierophant even tossed some good news our way. The fallen tower, while it might not have destroyed the wards that made it unfeasible to reduce the walls of Keter by sorcery, had weakened several sections of them. That knowledge allowed me to add some flesh to the bones of the plan, Juniper further refining it.

And then we had trouble.

It had now been five days since the Battle of the Ruins, and it’d gotten bad enough that we’d had to call a war council over it. It drew raised eyebrows when I brought General Abigail instead of Juniper as my second, but everyone there had concerns great enough it didn’t even end up warranting a spoken question.

“If we were not stranded,” First Princess Rozala Malanza frankly said, “half my army would have deserted by now.”

I winced. The Jacks had told me it was bad, but not quite that bad.

“I’ve had conversations with the Stygians and the Penthesians that bordered on threats to walk,” Empress Basilia admitted. “And if they do walk, others will follow.”

“It’s not the nobles we have to worry about, it’s the rank and file,” I flatly stated. “We can hang a few aristocrats and the rest will fall in line, but we can’t hang an army into being fighting fit.”

“Threat of death will do little,” Chancellor Alaya agreed, “when most of the Grand Alliance’s soldiery is now convinced it is going to die anyway.”

Which they were, and Gods forgive me but I couldn’t even blame them. Our supply situation had been known for some time by select officers – inevitable, since we were already rationing and there were now about two weeks of food left – but we’d kept a lid on the real sucker punch: the dwarves weren’t going to be supplying us with anything. The deal with the Herald of the Deeps had fallen through and his replacement, Lady Sybella, was perfectly willing to leave us to die until we bent to the even steeper terms she’d offered. Soldiers weren’t always the most learned of people, but most of them could do simple mathematics.

There were two weeks of food left, none more around or coming, and it had taken more than two weeks to get to Keter through the Twilight Ways. Which were, anyhow, shattered.

The realization that even if by some miracle Keter was taken quickly enough everyone the Grand Alliance had brought north was likely to starve to death in the aftermath had been a knockout blow in the wake of the black eye caused by our first failed offensive. Morale had cratered, and even in the Army of Callow some soldiers had refused to leave their tents and attend their duties. We’d come down hard on those, hard enough that it’d not spread, but it was all balancing on a knife’s edge. The Legions had held up about the same, but the less disciplined armies had not. Most of Procer’s fantassins were no longer taking orders and Hakram was so busy cracking heads to keep the Clans in line he almost hadn’t been able to come today.

Of all forces only the Lycaonese had been unaffected, instead throwing a feast they’d called a ‘wake’ where they got drunk and spoke each other’s eulogies before declaring themselves already dead and sworn to fight Keter to the last. Even Cordelia had gotten proper sloshed, I’d heard, which I was rather sad to have missed.

“Our captains are petitioning to know of the terms the Kingdom Under asked and why they have been refused,” Lord Yannu told us. “That part, at least, appears to remain unknown.”

“Have any of you learned where the leak came from?” Rozala asked.

I grimaced.

“I have,” I admitted. “The phalanges found the source.”

That had the entire room’s eyes swivelling towards me, save for one pair. General Abigail Tanner stood like a woman headed for gallows with her name written on the rope, the perpetual dark rings around her eyes standing out even more starkly for her bleak expression. With those watery blue eyes and that frazzled hair she looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a year, which might well be the truth. I flicked a glance at her, nodding. She cleared her throat.

“It was the Third Army,” General Abigail said. “I have standing orders for my Supply Tribune to underreport our stocks in food and goblin munitions, which made it stand out more obviously when it was on record we were a week away from running empty and we still didn’t get sent anything.”

It was very much against regulations to do what she’d just described, the underreporting so the Third would be sent extra stocks, but she wasn’t the only one who worked her numbers along those lines. The adjunct secretariat had dug deep and found she and her officers weren’t skimming, just using the extra stocks as a reserve in case supply was shaken, so she’d gotten off light. Some docked pay, a reduction of her pension and Juniper had pretty brutally chewed out. She’d blushed red enough at the screaming it had shown even on those sunburnt cheek, but the pension reduction had actually brought tears to her eyes.

That was the internal discipline of the Army of Callow, though. The problem that’d begun in her backyard had ended up much larger than that.

“How did it spread from there, general?” Razin evenly asked.

I replied in her stead.

“Her Supply Tribune’s subordinates began asking questions and they found out that no space had been cleared in our camps for the arrival of fresh supplies,” I said. “It was a small leap from there, and the shock of the realization was enough that several got drunk and loosened their tongues. From there, it was the simple spread of soldier’s gossip.”

It was unsurprising it’d spread across camps. The Grand Alliance armies were encamped close to one another and shared common walls, turning the fortified ring into something like a city of tents. With soldiers having little to do but gossip given the general idleness of a siege between assaults, the moment rumours began to spread it was a given they’d take like wildfire.

“It was my officers, so it’s my fault,” General Abigail said. “Can’t take that back, but I offer you my apologies and my resignation.”

Her tone had gotten, I thought, slightly hopeful by the end of the sentence. Though I would have liked to simply refuse her offer, it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t entirely have the leverage to make that decision alone, not when it was the Army of Callow that’d leaked the secret that got us into this mess. If the rest of the Grand Alliance wanted her resignation, I’d have to give it.

“It would change nothing,” First Princess Rozala said. “The cat is already out of the bag.”

“It might make things worse, truly” Empress Basilia noted. “Turn her into a figurehead for the resentment to gather behind.”

Yannu was less convinced.

“Is she to escape punishment, then?” he pushed.

Razin shot me a shrew look.

“Has the Army of Callow already dealt out discipline?” the Lord of Malaga asked.

“It has,” I said. “No demotion, but docked pay and pension as well as some other disciplinary measures.”

An argument could be made that under some regulations she should be whipped, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. It’d make the Third Army boiling mad if Abigail the Fox was whipped in front of our assembled soldiery.

“She should be punished for failure of command, not the mistakes of her men,” Prince Otto bluntly said. “That is her crime. Going any further would be unjust.”

The general’s face fell and I suppressed a smile. You’re not getting out of command that easily, Tanner. Yannu Marave remained displeased and Rozala actually seemed like she was leaning his way in practice, whatever her words, so I threw them a bone by having her added to the latrine-digging duty rotation for a week. Neither of them were actually out of blood so they were satisfied with the light humiliation, though they really should have figured out that it would only make her more popular with her men. Soldiers liked seeing generals get their hands dirty. Being born a noble came with some blind spots, I mused.

It wasn’t like a brewer’s daughter would be all that concerned with her lordly dignity.

Crestfallen, General Abigail retreated behind me and we moved on to the thick of the meeting. What the Hells were meant to do about any of this.

“We should make the price asked by the dwarves public,” Empress Basilia suggested. “The anger should turn sentiment around.”

“That’s a risk,” I grunted.

Rozala agreed.

“If despair wins over anger, we might well be forced to agreed to the terms of the Kingdom Under by our own armies,” the First Princess said.

Yannu and Razin backed her on that, the Lord of Alava frankly stating that most the Dominion captains would not hesitate to clamour for the bargain to be struck since Levant was ceding no territory.

“Should part of our army agree while another does not, the discord could get out of hand,” Chancellor Alaya said. “We cannot afford to be fighting each other instead of the dead.”

The problem was that no one really had a solution. Our soldiers were rebellious because, well, we were in a fucking terrible situation. If the dwarves hung us out to dry, we were all going to die whether or not we took Keter. Or even worse, some of the most powerful nobles would make it out while everyone else died. That thought would be like tossing a lit match at oil, if it spread widely enough.

“We need to secure our supplies with reliable soldiers,” Hakram said. “Else we risk of deserters attempting to grab food and take their chances with the Ossuary.”

“Wise,” Empress Basilia said. “Though that is only a temporary salve. We need a way to turn morale around.”

And there were some ideas, so we broke up and set about trying them. First was Rozala’s own notion of spreading rumours of our own to flip sentiment: namely that we intended to invade the Serenity once Keter was taken, which was farmland bearing plentiful food. It worked some, but it was an obvious ploy and our soldiers weren’t dumb. There was no guarantee the Serenity would have reserves, that we would be able to reach it and to be honest a lot of the rank and file were wary at the prospect of eating anything that’d been grown in a Hell. It wasn’t enough. Another day passed and the mutters of mutiny only grew.

Mali – Chancellor Alaya’s suggestion was slyer and ended up more successful. A production was made of supplies being brought into the camp from outside even as word was spread that an accord might have been reached with the Kingdom Under. It was pure sleight of hand, the supplies in question coming from one of the larger flying fortresses and having been smuggled out during the night so they could be brought back when everybody was watching. It wouldn’t tide us over forever, I thought, but it might be enough to muster our armies for another assault. Or it would have been, if the news did not then come from further south.

The devils were gone.

The Praesi had seized and suborned the gates before unleashing seven days’ worth of devils on the dead, the main reason we were not drowning in armies as we besieged Keter, but the Dead King had not sat idle. The bindings on the devils had somehow been twisted and they were made to turn on each other, destroying themselves in an orgy of violence. They’d still emptied the southern Kingdom of the Dead of troops so it seemed like only a minor defeat, until one realized what it meant: there was no army left in the way of any deserters wanting to run south to Procer.

That night there were five attempts made on the supply stores, and though none succeeded it soured sentiment. We hanged all who attempted it publicly – two Proceran fantassin crews, a Levantine captain, Penthesians and to my distaste a tenth of legionaries from my own First Army – but however necessary the gesture it only darkened the mood further. We held council again, and this time when Basilia pushed to have the terms of the dwarven deal made public most of the people around the table were in agreement. It was Alaya and I who were the standouts again, sharing the same fear: it was going to give a lot of angry people a reason to get angry at each other.

To Basilia’s honour, she was right about the League’s reaction. Outrage at the demand of Penthes being ceded to the Kingdom Under was so great that there were demands made that the Grand Alliance declare war on the dwarves as well – never mind that the League was not part of the Grand Alliance, or that if the dwarves didn’t feed us we were all going to fucking die. I was even forced to admit that I’d been wrong to fear the worst, at least in the immediate, since it didn’t lead armies to brawl. What it did do, though, was give a halfway decent excuse for everyone wanting to sit out the battles to do it.

Proceran fantassins and levies did it by the hundreds, refusing to take up arms until the terms were accepted, while both the Blood and Chancellor Alaya began to receive petitions to accept the terms even if the rest of their allies did not. Some of the High Lords began to imply that the Praesi auxiliaries, which had until recently been household troops, might be inclined to start following their lead again should the Chancellor not do what was necessary to get them out of this mess. Tensions began to slowly rise across the camps and another council was urgently called.

“We lean on priests and heroes to shame the disobedient into line,” I flatly told them. “As for the High Lords, I’ll take care of it.”

I retreated into my tent and slipped into the dreams of those Alaya had said were most aggressive, inflicting on them terrifying nightmares. Fear did its work: the next morning, much chastened nobles came to reiterate their absolute support for the Chancellor and her wise reign. The other half of that, unfortunately, did not work as well. Some of the priests balked at being given orders by earthly powers, outright refusing to preach as they were told, and though Hanno convinced half the mercenaries to live up to their contract the rest chased him out. It was similarly mixed results with the levies.

The Brabantines that’d wanted to make him into a price rose up, but some of those conscripts had never so much as seen his face until Salia and they were not willing to put blind trust into a stranger. Not even one who was the Sword of Judgement.

“A successful assault on the walls would turn sentiment around,” the Warlord said.

“If we could talk them into that, we wouldn’t be struggling so hard in the first place,” I bit out.

Even the Army of Callow was balking, which was like a thorn in my throat: every time I tried to swallow, it bit a little deeper.

“Hard measures have become necessary,” Empress Basilia said.

And we all knew what she meant by that. All of us had still-reliable troops, soldiers that would obey the order to purge the disobedient if it was given. It would be a death blow to morale to bloody our soldiers into lining up for an assault, but with morale already fucked it was starting to look like the least lethal of the poisons to drink to go through with it. Reluctant agreement began to bloom across the table, but the thorn in my throat had not stung so keenly that I’d accept this. Not against soldiers that’d followed me since I was a girl, that had served unflinching through one nightmare after another until we reached the walls of Keter. I did not agree, and brusquely left the council. Juniper followed closely behind, and when we were out of the tent she took my arm. We stood there a moment, our gazes meeting as her hand stayed on me, and a knot of emotions seized her face. Shame and gratitude, anger and pride.

“Warlord,” she finally said, tone thick.

Gratitude won out. We both knew it was the same soldiers whose butchery had been discussed that had put me on the throne and kept me there, and I was almost insulted that she had thought I would forget it. That I would meekly bend my neck to this.

“They won’t do it without me,” I tiredly replied, passing a hand through my hair. “But we can’t do nothing, Juniper. Time is running out.”

It had not been eight days since the Battle of the Ruins, and we both knew that the closer we got to empty stores the more violently desperate our soldiers would become.

“An assault means losses,” Juniper murmured. “That means our stores last longer.”

We both knew that an assault where the entire force did not participate was just throwing lives away, but that was exactly what she was proposing: getting people killed. I pulled away, feeling my bad leg throbbing. I needed to be alone. I worried at the thought like a dog gnawing at a bone, but I saw no way out. So I sat in my tent alone, a bottle of aragh open as I leaned back in my seat with my eye closed. Trying to think of something, anything, that wasn’t just some variation of a butcher’s knife.

The soft sound of someone entering my tent reached my ears, but I did not open my eye.

“I’m not in the mood,” I called out.

“You are in one,” Hakram gravelled. “Which is why you’re drinking alone.”

“I don’t want to talk,” I told him, leaning forward as my eye fluttered open. “There’s been enough of that.”

He looked, I saw, about as tired as I felt. Ignoring me, he sat on the other side of my desk and grabbed the bottle. He poured himself a cup so full it nearly overflowed before draining it all in one swallow.

“I don’t feel much like talking either,” the Warlord admitted. “It’s why I’m here. For the silence.”

I stared at him, unblinking, for a long time. Then I nodded. We had known a great many comfortable silences, the two of us. This would not be one of them, given the dark bent of our thoughts, but maybe it’d me more comfortable here with each other than it would have been alone. So we stayed there and we drank, an hour passing and then another. It was me who spoke, when the bottle was empty and my belly too warm.

“I thought I was done with hard measures,” I murmured. “Past them. But we’re never really done with horror, are we?”

Hakram did not answer for a long while.

“I used to wonder,” he said, “if it was something we stepped into, or something we brought with us.”

And now we know, I thought. We parted ways come dark, but I could not sleep. I felt restless, for all that there was nothing to spend my energies against. So instead I found my steps leading me to the tallest watchtower of our camp, watching over the campfires spread all around me. I stood at the edge of the drop, alone and veiled by Night, and waited. The streak of ice was still there, the old fear that would never suffer to be entirely mastered. Fear of the drop, of the fall. An old friend.

I hated it.

“I’ve been fighting you since I was a girl,” I told the night. “Gods, how many times did I face you?”

I had sought rooftop after rooftop, trying to scour the fear out of me, and yet here it was still.

“Even after all I’ve done, how far I’ve gone, you’re still here,” I said. “Still a part of me. You can be bound and blinded, kept in the cellar, but you’ve never been gone.”

And how hateful was it, that even this small thing I had spent all my life trying to rid myself of could not be changed? I leaned forward, boot beginning to give against the wood, and though I knew the fall would not kill me still my stomach clenched. It was how I knew I wasn’t dreaming: when I fell, in my dreams, there was never any fear. I just tumbled into the darkness, not making a sound, and I was swallowed whole. My bad leg throbbed with pain, a reminder this was anything but a dream.

“Is that the lesson?” I asked. “That it’s not about getting rid of you, it’s about continuing the fight?”

I thought of the night I had become the Warden, the dream of it. The faces I had worn, their warnings. Do better, one had whispered. Don’t flinch, the other had ordered. And beyond them, the Beast that had waited. That I felt coil around me now, warm breath against my neck as it opened its maw.

“I don’t believe that,” I murmured. “Maybe there’s never really an end like we want, like you get in the stories – a clean cut, a last light – but we do get to win, sometimes. If we bleed for it, if we’re clever and brave and we don’t bend with the current of the world.”

My fingers clenched, then slowly unclenched.

“This isn’t good enough,” I told Creation. “This place, this end, this taste of ash in my mouth that I know too fucking well. It’s not enough.”

And something like indignation burned in my belly, because deep down I had always wanted the world to be fair – for fairness, for good to be baked into its bones – but it wasn’t. It was blind and brutal, and the only lights you found down there in the dark were the ones you’d lit.

“Maybe you don’t care,” I said. “Maybe it’s a game to you, always was. Fine. But a game has rules, and I swear to anything out there listening that in the space between those I will carve a semblance of fairness. And if you won’t help me, then get the Hells out of my way.”

I had told the Beast I no longer feared it and meant every word. So I closed my eye, breathing out, and left my staff.

Then I took a step forward and let myself fall.

The Beast laughed, laughed loud enough for the world to quake and to drown out the scream of my fear. But it held me tight, warmed me and lent me its strength. My Name burned bright, chasing away the dark, and finally I was able to See. There was an above and a below, and below me I saw them all laid out. A never-ending sprawl of objects in motion, stars in the void. All the stories, the possibilities of them, and though the enormity of it threatened to snuff out my mind like a candle the Beast kept me together. And as I fell, as the enormity came ever closer and hurried towards me, I saw what I was looking for.

An object in motion.

I opened my eye, back cold with sweat, but I was not falling. I was still on the edge of the tower, a step away from the fall and fear coiling cold in my gut. Maybe it’d always be like that. Not the fight, because there would always be a fight – if not this one, then another. Maybe it was about the victories you could steal from fear, the lights you lit. I looked up, breathing raggedly, and above me I saw the clouds of poison had parted. The night sky was a river of stars, breathtaking and depthless. I might never have thought to look up, if not for all this.

Dawn found me sleeping there, swaddled in the Mantle of Woe.

“Two days,” I told the war council. “Give me two days.”

“What have you learned, Black Queen?” Rozala Malanza asked with a frown.

“That the world is always larger than we think,” I replied. “So give me two days, and I will give you a miracle.”

They did. They watched me like a hawk all the while, spies and envoys dogging my every footstep and growing impatient as I did nothing more than prepare for a battle they did not think would be fought, but on the dawn of the third day an alarm was rung. An army had appeared south, its trail of dust piercing past the cover of the poison clouds. I sent a single messenger and waited at the edge of the camp while it woke up like a hive, ramparts being manned and officers sent for. But the dust parted, the army approached, and worry turned to surprise.

These were not the dead. It was an army of dwarves, thousands strong. I had seen true, then. Today would be a pivot, for us and for them.

The greats of the Grand Alliance trickled towards me, a war council forming, but I already knew what it would be about. Who was to go speak with the dwarves, they would say. And that I would go was a certainty, but there would be bickering about the rest. Too many could, while few must be sent. So I had sent a messenger for a diplomat enough of them would trust. The conversation died, smothered in the cradle, as Cordelia Hasenbach rode up to our side atop a warhorse.

“Warden,” she greeted me, blue eyes sweeping over the others.

“There,” I smiled at the others. “Does this compromise suffice?”

It did.

The Herald of the Deeps received us formally in his tent.

Not in a stiff manner, I meant, but in the same way he had once received me deep below in the Everdark: after a few courtesies were traded, small wooden bowls were brought out. Relics whose grain was left rough, without varnish or polish. Seeker Balasi himself came into the tent with an opaque glass bottle in hand, pouring half a cup’s worth of sudra in each bowl before taking a step back. The liquor looked like wine, but its surface trailed vapour and it looked on the verge of boiling. The Herald had once told me no bottle of the drink, which dwarves used only on important talks, had ever left the Kingdom Under. The Named’s green large green eyes sought out mine and he offered a respectful – though not deferential – nod.

I noticed that the staff he usually took everywhere, crooked wood adorned with metal chimes, was nowhere in sight.

“Warden,” the Herald of Deeps said, “I greet you in peace.”

“Herald,” I replied, returning the nod. “Your arrival is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Creations holds us all prisoner to its whims,” he said, then turned to acknowledge my companion’s presence. “Princess Cordelia.”

“Herald,” she calmly replied, then glanced at the bowls. “You honour us with this service.”

Balasi didn’t sit at the table with us, this time. He’d not approached again after taking that step back, instead standing behind the Herald with a face that might as well have been carved out of stone. It caught Cordelia’s eyes just as it did mine. The Herald had always preferred to let the deed-seeker do most the talking when it was possible. Something had changed.

“If these talks are not to be called of import,” the green-eyed Named said, “I know not which deserve the word.”

A pause.

“I come to fulfill our bargain, Warden.”

My brow rose.

“Has Lady Sybella been recalled as negotiator for the Kingdom Under?” I asked. “I’d thought you replaced.”

For a long moment, the Herald neither moved nor answered. Not so much as a blink of those luminous eyes.

“A sennight ago,” the Herald of the Deeps finally said, “I entered the Hall of Hearths and sought the King Under the Mountain as he sat the Diluvian Throne before the great land-kings of our kind. I demanded of him to summon all dwarves to war and strike bargain with the Grand Alliance, so that we might end the Dead King once and for all.”

My throat caught. A calmer presence in the back of my mind noted a detail: a week ago. Either this Hall of Hearths was close to here, or the dwarves had a way of travelling long distances quickly.

“And did he accept?” Cordelia quietly asked.

The green-eyed dwarf twitched in what I thought might be dismay.

“He refused,” the Herald said. “And in his anger at my presumption, cast me into exile.”

An exile that’d come here with an army, I thought, but my stomach was sinking even as I kept my face calm. So the Herald of the Deeps had come here with his loyalists to lend a hand to the fight. I would not turn away the help, but it was not the help we’d needed. Food was to be our saving grace, not more swords.

“But I gave an oath on my staff to fight for the terms I accepted with all my might,” the dwarf quietly said. “So I did.”

Cordelia stilled as I leaned forward. Power burned in the dwarf’s green eyes, old and deep and without the slightest semblance of humanity to it.

“I slew the king on his throne,” the Herald of the Deeps said, “and declared all of his line to be without burden or purpose. Unfit to rule.”

I let out a sharp breath. Burden and purpose were the words dwarves used for Role and Name, I knew, but I had heard Balasi use them in a more religious context before. They seemed as much philosophy as namelore.

“And you got out of there alive?” I said, incredulous.

“Snapping my staff of office released the many spirits I have bound over the years all at once,” the Herald said, sounding darkly satisfied. “The soldiers of the land-kings had greater concerns than to hunt me.”

I felt like reaching for the drink even though it wasn’t done cooling. That was, I thought, one hell of a way to resign. Still, for all that the Herald’s act of defiance was impressive I was having some difficult parsing the implications of it. Fortunately, I had brought Cordelia Hasenbach with me.

“You have not come,” Cordelia mildly said, “as a representative of the Kingdom Under.”

The Herald grimly chuckled.

“Princess, there no longer is a Kingdom Under,” he said. “It has been a thousand years since the Kings Under the Mountain truly ruled, but the dignity of their blood kept the land-kings as part of the same realm in name.”

He bared his teeth.

“I murdered that last restraint,” the Herald said. “Twice over, when I declared the bloodline unfit: no brother or sister can be ushered into the seat to serve as a fresh figurehead. Instead every land-king now claims himself the true owner of the Diluvian Throne.”

“Civil war,” Cordelia said.

“Not one of them but thirty,” the green-eyed dwarf replied. “A hundred, even. All of the old wars let loose again, without the King Under the Mountain to call for peace when a side wishes to surrender. It will be to the death, Princess Cordelia, until the Diluvian Throne is filled once more or the empire shatters all the way through.”

I honestly wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than the Herald coming here with only an army of exiles. It was now a certainty we wouldn’t be getting reinforcements from the Kingdom Under, because its armies certainly sounded like they would be busy for the immediate future. Fuck, I’d hoped- wait, no. Not all the armies were busy, were they?

“It got the impression,” I said, “that neither the lands of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Expansion were under a land-king.”

From context I’d put together that they were under the authority of the King Under the Mountain, at least in principle, though in practice they’d been under the Herald himself. If their throne was empty, though, who did they now answer to?

“Clever,” the Herald smiled. “It is true. Balasi and I rode the Deep River to return there ahead of even the furthest land-kings. They soldiers have answered my call.”

My heart skipped a beat. That was beginning to sound rather more like what I’d hoped to get. The Fifteenth Expansion was the underground of the Kingdom of the Dead, which was filled with fortresses and soldiers. The Fourteenth was the Everdark, which was being colonized with both civilians and soldiers. Together, the regions represented a large number of soldiers. Cordelia narrowed in on another detail, though.

“This Deep River,” the fair-haired princess said, “could it be used by humans?”

My eyes widened. That was a way out our mess, I considered. If our armies could use the Deep River to retreat from Keter after the fall of the Crown of the Dead, extreme rationing might be able to get us back to Procer without killing too many from starvation. We should be able to buy supplies from the Herald as well. Nowhere enough to feed an army our size for long, and I doubted he’d empty his stores for us entirely, but maybe long enough to be able to manage the trip back south without too many dead if we took Keter quickly enough. There would be enough in the Everdark for all of us, but without the Twilight Ways to get them to us there’s no way they’ll arrive in time. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Balasi looked amused.

“It would be death,” the Herald politely replied. “The Deep River is sailed by ship, but it is not water. It is…”

A frown, a look at the deed-seeker.

“Lava,” Seeker Balasi provided.

The Herald nodded, turning back to us.

“Lava. The ships are sailed empty between cities, using currents made by runes,” he told us. “I could protect myself and Balasi riding one, but more would be beyond my capacity.”

I sighed. Yeah, that’d been a little too good to be true. So we were back at the start, supply-wise.

“Your help in fighting Keter would be most welcome,” Cordelia said, “but I must confess our armies have grown troubled. Being stranded far from home without supplies has hurt our readiness to fight.”

“It would,” the Herald acknowledged. “I will not apologize, for the deeds of the Kingdom Under are no longer mine to bear as burden, but I would make restitution as a sign of good will. We will surrender Lady Sybella to your hands.”

I blinked.

“You captured her,” I said. “Where?”

“She was a mere two days away, waiting for you to bend to her terms,” the Herald replied.

My heart beat wildly and I shared a look with Cordelia, whose eyes had lit up.

“She must,” I slowly said, “have been keeping the supplies close, then.”

“Atop a confluence of tunnels, near the shores of the lake you call the Tomb,” he nodded.

Which was far, but even if they hadn’t moved them – which I doubted – it wasn’t that far. We could most definitely trade for supplies with the Herald to keep our soldiers until they arrived.

“They are in your possession,” Cordelia stated.

“They are,” the Herald of the Deeps said. “And though I am not the Kingdom Under, I come to fulfill the terms of the bargain.”

The supplies and his help against the city of Keter and attendant lands. A cession of claim that Cordelia had already convinced the Sisters to accept. It’s better than if he was still part of the Kingdom Under, I thought. The Herald could make a kingdom of his own out here while the rest of his kind fought it out for the throne, which would ensure his fragile beginnings were not simply annexed by whoever ruled close. And it creates a state that has an interest in keep the Kingdom Under split so it never turns around to gobble them up, which is even better. There was no real way for humans to meddle in that mess, but the Herald and his successors would be a different story.

Some of the drow might push for taking back their homeland when the enemy was still weak, I decided, but that trouble was years down the line and not impossible to navigate besides. I glanced at Cordelia, whose face was calm. She gave me a slight nod of agreement, also thinking it the right decision. So I reached for the bowl and took it in hand, raising it.

“Then I greet you in war, Herald of the Deeps,” I said.

They matched me and we all drank deep, the sudra smooth all the way down and leaving that faint taste of copper behind.

We drank, and it felt like a light being lit.