A Practical Guide to Evil

“Red runs the Tower’s mortar.”

– Praesi saying

Within an hour of entering Ater, Akua Sahelian was sought out for a conspiracy to overthrow the Empress. By the end of the day, no fewer than seventeen such offers had been made to her.

“It is all very tasteless,” she mused. “A defeat against an invading enemy – Callowan, too, how classical – paired with a great gathering of nobles at the imperial court, everyone scheming to overthrow the Tower and a vague sense of doom looming over all these proceedings. One would be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled into a tragedy written now by Adomako. Any moment now we will stumble into a scene of overdone symbolism.”

The golden-eyed sorceress paused.

“A wounded gazelle being fought over by lions,” Akua decided. “It’s always lions, isn’t it? There is an excessive fondness in our writing for the beasts, Kendi, given their general uselessness.”

“You are mad,” Kendi Akaze harshly replied. “And not even in the way fools honour. Do not think I will not sell you out to the Tower at the first opportunity.”

Perhaps it was the presence of the Amaranth around her neck, the way the ancient artefact drowned out all the pettier emotions, but Akua had found herself growing fond of the man. He was remarkably straightforward in his hatred of her, and though he had not attempted to kill her since their mage duel in Kala she suspected it was only a matter of time until he tried again. She did not blame him for this, of feel particularly offended. She had led the man’s sister and several of his kin to their death at the Folly they named after her, and that was a better reason for hatred than most.

“I expect several of the nobles who approached me for treachery did so on Malicia’s behalf,” Akua amusedly replied. “Not that my having committed to nothing will soothe her fear of me in the slightest.”

“And why should she not fear you?” Kendi said. “All the world knows you seek her throne.”

“Naturally,” Akua agreed, draining the last of her cup.

She had lost the habit of pairing wine with antidote. The taste was no longer familiar to her, after drinking from other bottles. Her fondness of it had thinned. Her fondness of many things had thinned, the sorceress thought, and rose to her feet.

“Let us be off, Kendi,” Akua said. “There is time to be wasted and I would waste it elsewhere.”

Out in the City of Gates, not these luxurious apartments that felt like they were closing in on her from every direction. Like a noose slowly tightening. Kendi made an unpleasant comment about her intellect, charmer that he was, but he followed. He always followed.

How else, Akua thought, could he find the moment to stick the knife?

They went into the streets of the capital, followed by a horde of shadows. Spies belonging to three dozen different lords and the Eyes, soldiers, Sentinels and two – no, three assassins. Really, an illusionary veil? Akua had first made her reputation bleeding fae, this was insulting. She informed the man as much after melting off his limbs in a cloud of acid before turning to ask her other would-be assassins to try it again tomorrow, for she was not in the mood for sport today. Her shielding spells came up quicker than the arrow came down, so a few blood-curling screams later the last remaining assassin fled.

“Someone will succeed,” Kendi told her. “Sooner or later, you will fail.”

“I can always count on you for perspective,” she replied, patting his arm fondly.

He looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, which put her in a good enough mood to make up for the sloppy assassination attempts. Even the Jacks would have done better, and they’d only been around for a few years on top of being led by a whiny heroine. Akua found, as she walked the streets, that Ater was a pot about to boil over. The capital had swelled with refugees not only from Nok and the outskirts of Thalassina but now also the swaths of the Wasteland that’d been ravaged by the civil war. It was said that the City of Gates held half a million people within its walls, but she knew that to be inaccurate – it was usually closer to three hundred thousand, only growing when famine struck other parts of Praes.

At the moment, though, she suspected that there truly might be five hundred thousand people in the city. A disastrous number to try to keep fed during a siege, no matter how full the Tower’s granaries, and the city was poorly equipped to host them besides. Large swaths of the capital were abandoned, and though it was better than living in the streets making a home in those districts was barely livable. District mages would keep the sewers working, the wards in good state and keep an eye out for epidemics but wouldn’t really go out of their way to help beyond that. There were only so many of them and the city was enormous.

It’d once been custom for wealthy nobles to patronize sections of the city, but Malicia had stamped out the habit to consolidate her control over the capital. Would she reconsider now? Unlikely, Akua decided. The situation was too volatile for the empress to be willing to take on such a risk. Her wanderings through the half-ruined streets were noticed not only by spies and soldiers but also by the refugees themselves: someone must have recognized her, for a crowd began to gather. And, as crowds were wont to be, it grew angry. At first she wondered if she would have to retreat under shield spell as a mob tried to tear her apart, but then laughter choked up her throat as she made out what was being shouted.

“Down the Tower,” the crowd shouted.

“Death to Malicia,” the crowd insisted.

And, worst of all-

“Warlock, Lady Warlock,” they shouted. “Sahelian. Save us, Sahelian.”

Save us, Sahelian, Akua dully repeated. Had anyone ever spoken more absurd a sentence? It would have been the work of a moment to whip these dirty, desperate people into a raging mob. The fear was thick here, the Black Queen’s name on half the lips. The Queen of Callow would come and kill them all, they said, like she’d done to the refugees that’d tried to cross into the Fields of Streges. She was here to bury the Empire, bury them with it, and it was all Malicia’s fault. Five years ago you would have rioted at anyone trying to overthrow her, Akua thought. How quickly gratitude faded in the City of Gates.

“They’ll turn on you too,” Kendi said from behind her. “Tear out your throat like animals. It won’t last.”

It would have been so easy, to whip them into a frenzy and send them rioting into the streets. To sow the seeds of a chaos only she could calm and through that, oh through that she would rise. Climb the Tower until there was nothing left above, no one worth bowing to. So Akua climbed a broken house, a sea of people gathered before her, and told them the truth.

“The Black Queen will not kill civilians,” she said. “The Army of Callow quarrels only with the Tower. Stay indoors, stay out of the way, and you will be safe.”

It was not what they’d wanted to hear, she thought, as a rippled went through the crowd. They’d wanted blood, wanted death, wanted something to sink their teeth into. It was easier than going back to their hovels, afraid and cold. So she gave them something more.

“I have nothing left but my magic to offer you,” Akua said, “but that much I will give you. Bring your wounded, your sick. I will see to them.”

Something more than fear and cold. The first few were children – broken limbs, coughs, lungrot – but by the time she was done with them already people had begun to act. To organize. A run-down mansion that was clean and dry was opened to her, beds dragged into the great hall and what clean linen there could be rustled up volunteered. Strangers did this who had not known each other for an hour, with a smoothness that surprised. Jino-waza. A few hedge mages came forward and she taught them a spell to boil water and conjure clean water before continuing with the work. They came in as a trickle, already a line running outside for half the district and kept in order by large men with makeshift cudgels, but the trickle never slowed.

Akua’s magic did not tire. Fingers reattached, infections burned out, broken bones soldered. Cuts closed, parasites flushed out, nerves regrown. She had done this all many a time, after the Army of Callow saw battle. With Night instead of sorcery, but she was only better for the change. She was not sure how long she healed, the faces and people blending, but eventually she found she was drenched in sweat. The Amaranth kept getting caught in the red silk collar, so she set it down to the side and returned to the work. Immediately the heat washed over her, form the fire and the people and the Wasteland’s pounding sun, but she mastered herself. A man was ushered in with his young daughter.

She had a fever, which Akua’s finding spell told her was from an infection in the stomach. It would be more tedious than difficult to heal, which she informed them of. The man – a tall, heavy sort with soldier’s scar – looked heartbreakingly relieved.

“I knew you’d come through, Lady Sahelian,” he said as she began the spell. “You’ve always done right by us.”

Curious, she spared the man a glance.

“I mean no rudeness,” she began, and he snorted.

“I was only a soldier,” he said. “But I served under you at First Liesse. Would have at the Second too, if my wife hadn’t gotten pregnant with my youngest. The name’s Kamau.”

There was, to her dim horror, open pride in his voice at having served her. How desperate must you be, that the memory of my follies is the raft you now cling to?

“I was never disappointed by any of those I led into Liesse,” Akua said, uneasy at the lie.

At feeling the need to tell it.

“It’s been hard times since,” Kamau admitted. “What with your lord cousin taking over in Wolof, some of us were sent away. We tried to head south, but it… didn’t go well.”

“The Green Stretch turned you back?” she asked.

“No, not them,” the man said. “Callowans on the other side of the Wasaliti. Just farmers, at first, but then the Legions – the Army of Callow, I guess they call themselves out west – got bloody too.”

He grimaced.

“We lost my wife fleeing back to the Blessed Isle,” he admitted. “It’s only this one and my son now. I have no words for how grateful I am you’re helping her.”

His eyes turned harsh.

“Would that you’d killed them all at the Doom, Lady Warlock,” he said. “We’d be better off for it. Next time, yeah?”

Her throat tightened, the magic flowing from her palm into the girls’ belly almost wavered. I used you, she almost told the man. I used you all, until you were spent and dead and when you were I never looked back. Can you not see that? Can you not see that soldiers swung the swords but I own every death?

“It was a bitter day for all who knew it,” Akua croaked, lips gone dry.

“Been a lot of those since you started the wars – I hear the scholars call them the Uncivil Wars,” Kamau said, but suddenly paled. “Not that I meant this was your fault at all, Lady Warlock, I-”

Could not possibly speak a sentence more damning than that one, Akua thought. But she painted a smiled on her face, moved the lips and soothed his fear.

“Need not explain anything,” Akua said, then withdrew her hand from the girl. “It is done, dear. Be careful to drink only water until tomorrow, and don’t eat anything even if you get hungry. Your stomach is very sensitive, you’ll spew it right back up and it would hurt you.”

The little girl gravely nodded, and her father led her out after another round of apologies that she dismissed. Akua felt faint, as she next man was ushered in. How many of the people she had healed today were in the capital because of an action she had taken? Her folly had been used as the pretext for the Grand Alliance to go to war, for Ashur to ravage the coasts of the Empire, but there were faults closer to home. It was her banner raised that had begun the civil wars that were still raging across Praes, her schemes that had… Akua laid a hand against the wall, dizzied. She felt Kendi’s eyes on her, considering.

Forcing herself not to move with unseemly haste, she put the Amaranth back on and let the ancient grief of the crystallized tear wipe away the knots in her stomach. She returned to the work, learning from men as she did that the High Lady of Kahtan had sent mages do imitate her and now dozens and dozens of highborn were doing the same. When finally she tired, her magic grown sluggish, she told the people as much. Some refugees wept as she went, but more cheered and even more bowed. It sickened her. She turned to the Taghreb woman who had first thought of using the mansion, had risen through the crisis as a leader of sorts.

“I am using you, you know,” Akua said. “To raise my reputation.”

It was true, she thought. It must be true. It was one thing to spare a man, a forgivable whim, but this… she had purpose, reason. She had taken an opportunity offered. The other woman shrugged.

“Maybe,” she said. “But what does that matter, to the people you healed?”

Akua flinched away from her, from it all, but she was not to be allowed to retreat in peace.

“That was reckless,” Kendi said. “She could have turned on you, told the crowd. You just came close to dying.”

“I am always but a moment away from dying,” Akua replied, forcing nonchalance.

The dark-skinned man rolled his eyes.

“Yes, mile thaman Sahelian, lovely,” Kendi said, “but I don’t mean philosophy-“

“Neither do I,” Akua curtly interrupted. “Do you think my return to flesh came without a price? Somewhere in me lies a way for the Empress to kill me with a word. I do not speak in metaphor, Kendi, when I say I am only ever a moment away from death.”

That silenced him, though she was not sure whether the quiet was thoughtful or surprised. No doubt he would soon begin to consider how the Empress might be incited to put her life to an end. Tired of it all, Akua moved towards the centre of the city. The Black Knight, at least, could be relied on for cold company. Marshal Nim was not the Legion headquarters of the capital but instead at her own manse, which Akua promptly headed to. That the servants allowed her and Kendi to enter was a surprise, but not so much of one as the fact that Nim was very obviously drunk. As mfuasa were trained to Kendi went to a corner just out of sight, where he could easily be forgotten, but his gaze missed nothing.

“Marshal,” Akua greeted the ogre. “It appears you have me at something of a disadvantage, drink-wise. Will you not offer me your hospitality?”

Only the Black Knight did not stare her down coldly, call her a snake or sent her away. Instead, to Akua’s dismay, the ogre twitched and then wordlessly gesture for her to sit. Most chairs here were built with ogres in mind, and the bottles on the table were closer to a barrel than what the sorceress would have meant by the term, but Akua found a carafe of terrible Aksum gold and a glass that was not larger than her head. She took a sip, then grimaced.

“This vintage is a war crime,” Akua noted, “and I should know.”

Marshal Nim stirred, as did the golden-eyed mage’s hopes, but they were just as swiftly dashed.

“You were right,” the Black Knight said.

“As is only natural,” she replied, hiding her alarm.

“Malicia doesn’t trust the Legions as far as she can throw them,” the Black Knight said. “I am to share command of the defences with the High Lady of Kahtan.”

Who commanded the largest of the highborn armies come to reinforce Ater as well as the largest coalition of nobles not under Malicia’s thumb. In olden days that would have made High Lady Takisha the Chancellor, but nowadays it mostly meant that the Empress was scheming to kill and discredit her.

“I can’t even blame her, after Kala,” the Black Knight cursed. “They deserted, Sahelian. Deserted!”

A bottle of wine hit the wall, shattering with enough glass spraying everywhere that it would need wheelbarrow to clean up. Akua eyed the other woman clinically. Nim was drunk, obviously, but more than that she was despairing. Not only had she been decisively beaten by Marshal Juniper on the field – which must have stung, considering the Hellhound had not been all that highly thought of among the upper ranks of the Legions – but in the wake of that defeat almost a third of her army had deserted rather than fight. Now she had only her last loyalists and the skeleton legions that’d been left in the capital, a force weaker than the one Marshal Juniper had already beaten.

The Legions of Terror she had been fighting to preserve were effectively dead. The soldiers that’d walked off the field at Kala would not be returning to anyone’s banner any time soon and the Tower would not forget or forgive that desertion – no matter how earned it had been. Even the legionaries who had stayed would be asking themselves why they were still fighting for the madwoman in the Tower that’d turned two thirds of the continent against them. Her Role was broken at Kala, Akua decided. She failed in the central conceit of it, which was ‘the general of the Empire’s armies’. She must either find a different Role or lose her Name.

And Akua, who had tried to save her life and helped at every turn, was here in her moment of weakness. I could promise you the Legions you want and mean it, Akua thought, and for that you’d follow me. It was the right place, the right time, with the right history behind it. The Gods Below were offering a Black Knight of her own on a silver platter. All it would take was making promises that Akua genuinely believed would be in the interest of the Empire: the Legions had become one of the pillars of Praes since the Reforms, they were well-worth preserving and kept separate from politics exactly the way Marshal Nim wanted them to be.

All it would take was for Akua to speak sweet nothings with a silver tongue.

“You are a fool.”

Oh dear, that’d been her speaking hadn’t it? No matter, she could still salvage this.

“Are you truly so weak-willed, Black Knight?”

Not only was this distinctly not a sweet nothing, Akua thought, but it was arguably the opposite. An insulting something? She drank a bit more war crime to wash down the taste of whatever madness had seized her. Nim was shaken out of her daze by the insults, at least, which was a form of progress. Towards nothing pleasant, but progress anyhow.

“Even if I smash your head in for that, I’ll still be dead before the month is out,” the Black Knight said. “I know what a pattern of three is, Sahelian. I have won once and since suffered a draw. That boy will have my head soon enough.”

“Then find a way to lose on your terms,” Akua harshly replied. “Are you a Marshal of Praes or a maudlin child? Defeat need not mean death. Even Fate can be gamed. As for your precious Legions, what did you expect?”

“That they would stand behind their Black Knight,” Nim roared.

“They did,” Akua calmly replied. “You are not him.”

That cut deep, she saw, but she was not done.

“Did you think this would be easy, Nim?” she mocked. “That you would earn a Name to pluck ripe peaches from the tree? You are villain.”

She threw her own glass against the wall. It shattered most satisfyingly.

“You are the Black Knight of Praes,” Akua hissed. “Have some fucking pride. You lost and your ideal is in tatters, what of it? Do you think a hundred of your Name have not stood where you do, all ashes in their hands and blood in their mouth?”

“It can’t be salvaged,” the Black Knight replied, eyes wild. “We all saw-”

“Then raise it again from the ground up,” Akua cut in harshly. “Or are you so enamoured with being the lesser of your predecessor that you can not do the same he did? This was never going to be handed to you, and it offends me that for even a breath you thought it might be. You are Named to struggle, to rise above what you were. If you cannot tolerate the way of the world, then change it.”

Marshal Nim rocked back.

“I – you,” she stumbled. “What is this, Sahelian?”

“A disappointment,” Akua scathingly said. “I thought better of you, Marshal. A petty idealist you might have been, but you did not lack for spine. The Hellhound did not take if from you on the field, so where was it mislaid?”

Nim looked as lost as she was drunk.

“I thought you would,” she said, hesitated.

Make an offer, she did not say.

“What are you, that I should?” Akua said, rising to her feet. “Naught but a broken thing which knows not what it wants or what it seeks. You have no design, no fire, not even a plan. You call yourself Named but you are a dandelion, a victim of wind and whims.”

She was panting, by the end of that. And wondering if it was the Black Knight she was castigating.

“Stand on your own feet, Black Knight,” Akua Sahelian said. “What use could anyone have for you before you do?”

And so she rose to hers, dizzy. And looking at Nim’s face she felt like cursing, like weeping, like screaming at the top of her lungs. Because when she had walked into this room the Black Knight had been a woman who might had made a deal with her, but now she looked at Akua like someone who wanted to follow her. Like ragged Kauma in the ragged mansion, handed scraps of a fate and yet so odiously grateful. Did she need to set fire to the city, before someone at last screamed enough? Akua fled.

“She will know what you are in time,” Kendi said. “And hate what she sees then.”

“She should already hate me,” Akua bit out.

By the time they got back to her manse it was dark, and so the highborn came out to play. The ones that had approached her during the day were fools and amateurs, but those who fully intended to see the Empress usurped now came crawling out of the gutters. The invitation she received was not signed, but that was the way of such conspiracies. She put on a cloak and returned to the streets, Kendi following dutifully, to see what the conspirators had to offer. One could not topple the Tower without the support of powerful backers. The heavily warded manse she was led to by a guide was dark, and she was brought to a room where twelve sat masked at a great table.

Amused, she stared down the woman at the head of tit.

“You are sitting in my seat,” Akua said.

There was a ripple. Laughter, offence, some just surprised by her gall. Kendi disappeared into a dark corner, already forgotten by almost everyone in the room.

“That remains to be seen,” an indistinct voice replied through the mask.

“Does it now?” Akua mused.

It had been hours since she used magic. She was still exhausted, but her disdain for this farce lent her strength. Power billowed out tearing through the anchored illusion forcing shadows and then, obeying her will, cutting cleanly. One after another, twelve masks dropped. Some were hastily caught, but not enough.

“High Lady Takisha,” Akua noted, locking eyes with the woman at the head of the table. “How bold.”

“I’ll have to kill you for this,” the High Lady of Kahtan coldly said.

She laughed, scornfully, in the woman’s face.

“Ah yes, so that instead these fine conspirators might instead support your bid for the Tower,” Akua said, running a finger across the table. “No doubt you gathered this little event because you were able to climb it on your own. You are known as a woman highly lacking in ambition.”

A moment of silence.

“She has you there, Muraqib” a masked man carelessly said.

“Without my support and that of my vassals, you have no chance of success,” High Lady Takisha evenly said. “This will have a price. First comes the restoration of the Name of –”

“No,” Akua said.

Startled surprise. This was not, the sorceress knew, how this conversation was meant to go.

“Pardon?” High Lady Takisha said.

Akua was so very tired of this, she realized. Of the cloak and dagger plots, of the pit of hatred and betrayal that was the Tower. Of this empire of endless teeth, guzzling down its own people not to achieve anything but for the mere purpose of continuing to exist. And they were part of it, too, these masked fools before her. Teeth in the maw.

“You do not make demands of me,” Akua said, and it felt good.

“You are mistaken if-”

“Who are you, Takisha Muraqib, that I should take heed of you?” Akua asked, honestly meaning the question. “All I see is the last rat standing. What have you won, what have you done, that your displeasure should give me pause?”

“Hard talk, coming from the Black Queen’s concubine,” a man bit out.

“I would have more power as Catherine Foundling’s bedwarmer than you ever have or ever will wield,” the golden-eyed aristocrat laughed in his face. “That’s why you’re here, all of you, in this room instead of halfway across the city plotting to back someone else.”

She swept the room with her gaze.

“So let us dispose of the pretence that you are owed for this conversation, that this is a favour done onto me,” Akua said. “You are vultures circling a wounded lion but too afraid to take the plunge. I need you?”

She moved her lips into a smile.

“You need me,” Akua corrected, “and you, High Lady Takisha, are still sitting in my seat.”

Silence stretched out, and something like relief welled up. At last, she thought, the end. They would balk and turn on her, Malicia would end it and- and Takisha Muraqib, hatred in her eyes, rose to her feet. No, Akua thought. No. How can you not seen that I have nothing to threaten you with, no one behind me? You are a High Lady of Praes, the sharpest of irons, so why are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? Why, you misbegotten Hellgods, do I keep winning?Appalled, Akua Sahelian took her seat at the head of a table where twelve of the most powerful lords and ladies of Praes sat.

“They measure your back for knives already,” Kendi told her as they left. “You will not be forgiven for this.”

“Then why,” Akua sadly asked, “did they let me do it to them?”

She returned to the manse, sagged into a seat, and closed her eyes. Exhausted beyond words. Behind her she heard Kendi moved, but somehow she was still startled when pain bloomed on the side of her head.

Akua woke up. The Gods were laughing and Akua Sahelian woke up. Her back hurt, and fingers found a bloody scar on it, but she was breathing and when she rose in her bed she found Kendi Akaze seated across from her, eyes smiling. On a low table before him there were two objects. One was the Amaranth, smashed to pieces. The other looked like a strip of bone, carved with so many rows of small runes that it was hardly recognizable.

“Lodged in your spine,” Kendi amiably said. “It was difficult to remove it without paralyzing you, but I managed.”

“Why?” she croaked out.

“Because you are in pain,” he said. “And I want you to drown in it without your necklace to save you.”

“This is madness,” Akua hissed.

“Is it?” Kendi said. “I followed you today. You have won the people, the Legions, the nobles. The Empire is in the palm of your hand, the Tower yours for the taking.”

He leaned forward.

“And what do you think of that, Akua Sahelian?” he asked.

He was not lying, she realized with anguish. She’d known it too but shied away from looking the truth in the eye. After a lifetime of scheming and murdering, after struggling and betraying and burning every bridge there was to burn, the Empire was in the palm of her hand. She let it sink in, settle into her mind, until an answer came from the heart of her.

Akua threw up all over the marble floor.

“That’s what I thought,” Kendi said with cold, hard satisfaction.

Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

The knowledge of that circled Malicia’s thoughts like a vulture, never close but never far. Amadeus’ little orphan, turned into a brutal warlord, was marching on Ater to kill Alaya of Satus. Malicia tried to set the thought aside, but all the news brought to her only made it stand out more starkly. Her impostor in Mercantis had been unmasked, the devil slain and now the Forty-Stole Court was maddened with rage. They had cut all ties with the Tower, placed the Empire under embargo and offered a fresh round of loans to the Grand Alliance at courteous terms. And, worst of all, they had sought the protection of Empress Basilia of Aenia.

A title the entire League of Free Cities had recognized after the fall of Penthes, along with the worrisome one of ‘Protector of the League’. Not only had the entire League of Free Cities followed Mercantis in severing ties, but now all its ports were closed to Praesi ships and the city-states were mobilizing for war. To join the war against the Dead King, Ime believed, but she could not be sure. All Malicia could know was that there was only one large military force on Calernia uncommitted to warfare, and that it was her hard-bitten foe. That hatred would linger for decades, lead the south to oppose her for the rest of her reign. If she had one.

Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

Ashur was still sundered in two, but it was no longer starving because Malicia no longer controlled the fleet meant to blockade it. The necromancers that’d usurped the fleet of Nicae through use of Still Waters no longer took her orders. They had taken to raiding the coasts of Ashur and the League for plunder and corpses. For now they traded with Stygian slaver ports for supplies, but that would be clamped down on by ‘Empress’ Basilia. They’d have to find other ports of call eventually, and Malicia feared that the Tideless Isles – scoured clean of corsairs by Ashur – would appeal. Her own masterstroke turned pirate might begin raiding the coasts of Praes.

Out west the Dominion had been stabilized by the First Prince’s clever diplomacy after the Isbili were wiped out in some sort of blood magic ritual, but the Black Queen had won the higher prize by making the leading couple of Levant her pupils. Procer itself was finally collapsing even in the face of Hasenbach’s inhuman efforts to keep it together – the first secession had happened six months later than Malicia’s prediction, which was a staggering delay. The First Prince had kept together her empire with little more than letters and diplomacy as it tumbled into utter ruin. Malicia was genuinely admired the feat, but Hasenbach had not lasted long enough. The collapse was happening too early, there was nobody left in the Grand Alliance in a position to contest Callow’s influence.

And Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

And all the ruinous reverses abroad were nothing to what trouble had now fallen on Praes. Wolof had been knocked out of the war, the alliance of Aksum and Nok subverted by a foreign power and now Okoro was cowering in its fortresses. The Clans had elected a leader, but Malicia was uncertain whether or not it had been Chieftain Troke Snaketooth. All the informants of the Eyes had gone silent overnight, and while the orc she’d made bargains with had been in the lead last she heard, there was no telling who had triumphed. Worse, the horde of greenskins was not only going nowhere Nok but it was very clearly marching on Ater, burning and pillaging everything in its path. Malicia was now facing the distinct possibility that even if the Grand Alliance retreated the Clans might still sack a weakened Ater.

Ater itself was slipping her fingers. She could feel in the way that Rule was weaking, the wat fewer people truly saw her as the Dread Empress of Praes. Sentiment in the streets was turning against her, the Legions were a mutinous wreck riddled with desertions and the nobles come to attend the imperial court had plots the way stray dogs had fleas. She’d remained ahead of them, so far, but she was a dancer with a shrinking stage to dance on. Gods, even district mages were getting murdered out in the ruined districts. With a goblin steel blade, so it was likely some Legion deserter stirring up trouble. The only force Malicia could still truly trust in was the Sentinels, and the thought had rage frozen in her throat.

These were the same soldiers that had nailed her father to the floor of his own inn, and Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

The brutal little bitch could not be bargained or reasoned with, she was out for blood and no matter what Malicia threw at her she seemed to come out on top. The battle in the Wasteland that should have broken her army had instead seen it reinforced, Marshal Juniper crowned the finest general to come out of the War College and Sepulchral bending the knee. It was even more ridiculous than Wolof, where even captured she’d somehow still claimed victory. Next she would be struck by lightning and somehow gain the power to call on storms, the absurd chit. There was no going around her, either. The First Prince no longer even bothered to read her letters and with Mercantis turning on her she no longer had an intermediary.

Only strength would make the Queen of Callow listen, and while the host gathered in Ater’s shadow outnumbers the Army of Callow it was not Malicia’s. It belonged to a hundred different nobles, too many of them traitors. And even if it gave battle, the empress was not certain it would win. The Army of Callow had humbled even the Legions, which had triumphed against the armies of the old Praes handily. Malicia still had the Tower’s arsenal, and for the first time in her reign she was deploying the artefacts and horrors that a thousand tyrants had sealed in deep vaults, but she had… concerns. Even should these powers bring her victory, it might be the kind worse than a defeat. Yet what else was she to do?

Alaya did not want to die, and Catherine Foundling was coming to kill her.

It was a relief when Ime came to meet with her, a distraction from her thoughts and their downwards spiral. Connect told her that her spymistress’ loyalty had weakened but not in a harmful way. The nuance was hard to read, but Malicia had learned. Ime must have thought of running, then. She had not, Malicia remined herself. For now, that was what mattered.

“Akua Sahelian spent most of yesterday healing refugees,” Ime said, moments after being seated. “She then met with Marshal Nim in her private manse. Late that evening, she disappeared into a warded location – my agents were slain trying to find out with who. There were no survivors.”

“I will summon her to the Tower, then,” Malicia said, cocking an eyebrow. “As was the intent from the start. With the alternative being death, she will give us the names and facilitate a purge of the most disloyal.”

“I thought you might say that,” Ime evenly said. “But she’s too dangerous to be allowed to live, Malicia. She has too much support while yours wanes.”

Malicia stilled.

“What did you do?” she harshly asked.

“I used the kill switch,” Ime said.

The empress mastered her anger. Only she had been supposed to be able to give that order. Yet another way her authority was weakening.

“Now we have no match for the Hierophant,” she said. “Which might well lose us the siege.”

“It’s much worse than that,” Ime said. “I used the artefact, but she’s still alive. It was removed, Your Majesty. We no longer have a leash on her.”

Malicia’s fingers clenched. The Warlock – or close enough – was now free to act against her without deterrent. And she could not simply order her killed, because even should such an attempt work and fail to trigger an uprising against her killing Akua Sahelian might well get her killed by virtue of there being no one able to stop Wekesa’s son from mauling the defences of the capital. Her mind spun, looking for angles, but there were none. No answer, no clever trick.

From her silence, Ime must have come to the same conclusion.

“I advised against recruiting her,” Ime quietly said. “She’s always been a risk-”

“I know what you advised, Ime,” Malicia barked out. “I assure you, there is no need to remind me. I deemed it necessary at the time.”

She’d meant to kill the Sahelian or surrender her back to the Grand Alliance’s custody the moment an arrangement was reached, either way ending her as a threat. Where had she found a mage trustworthy and skilled enough to find the artefact in her spine, much less remove it?

“We need to prepare to pull out of Ater,” Ime advised. “Set our enemies on each other and approach again from a better position. It might be time to seriously consider wedding either Sargon Sahelian or Jaheem Niri. It keeps them committed and us in the game.”

Jaheem Niri was already married, not that he wouldn’t murder his wife in a heartbeat to become the imperial consort. The prospect of marrying either was repulsive enough that Alaya felt physically nauseous. She closed her eyes, looking for any other way. Ime stayed silent for a long time, then rose to her feet.

“I will prepare what I can, Alaya,” the spymistress said. “Think on it, that is all I ask.”

The empress stayed alone in the council room for a long time, with only silence and that ever-present thought for company. Eventually she rose to her feet, the sky outside turned to night. Sleep, she thought, sleep would put it all in perspective. But her quarters were not empty. On the table by the enchanted window, a woman was leaning back her seat, boots against the rim of table two hundred years old as she looked down at the city. Fair-haired and tanned, she had in her hand a crystal glass from Malicia’s personal cabinet that she was refilling with wine from a silver flask. In her lap lay a lute, old and worn but still beautiful.

“I am told you are particularly vulnerable to Speaking,” Alaya said. “I wonder, would I even need to vocalize to make you kill yourself?”

The Wandering Bard turned to offer her an insolent blue-eyed grin and a sloshing toast that spilled wine on her leathers.

“Those who live by the sword tend to get killed with swords,” the Bard shrugged. “You know how it is, I’m sure.”

“You are on the Red List,” Malicia said. “Kill on sight.”

“And yet here I am,” the Bard noted, “still breathing.”

A moment of silence.

“So you are,” Malicia conceded.

The other woman laughed throatily, by the sound of it already well on her way to drunk. The empress knew better than to believe it made her any less dangerous.

“Have a drink with me, Dread Empress,” the Bard said. “I had… well, I wouldn’t call it luck all things considered, but it was a fateful draw.”

Best to humour her for now. Malicia stepped aside to take a cup from her personal cabinet, which as she’d suspected was wide open already, and took a glass match for the Bard’s own. She set it down on the table, eyebrow cocked, and took a seat of her own. Casually, as if this were not the knife’s edge. The Bard set down the lute on her lap to lean forward, pouring Malicia’s glass uncouthly full from her flask. The empress politely took her cup, breathing in the scent, and froze. She took a tentative sip. It was truly horrid wine, somehow tasting of mud, but Alaya knew it well. She’d been drinking it for years with someone now lost to her. Her heart clenched.

“Fate’s a bitch,” the Wandering Bard confessed. “I should know, I’ve served as the closest thing Calernia has to one since before… well, written calendars really. Only the Riddle-Maker’s older and his kind didn’t really bother with that sort of thing.”

Ice, let her be ice. Smooth and cold and polished enough this old monster would see only her own reflection.

“You will not distract me with interesting fragments of history,” Malicia said. “You came here with a purpose.”

“It’s the only way I can go anywhere,” the Bard snorted, then drank deep of her cup. “Gah, definitely not a lucky draw. But as I was saying, my good – well, you know what I mean – empress, I feel like the time where we were enemies has passed. At least temporarily, yes?”

“You killed Sabah,” Alaya evenly said.

“You liked her,” the Bard noted. “So did I. Most people did, I imagine, when she wasn’t eating or killing them. But she needed to die so I could get my way. So she did.”

Ice, ice. She would not think of kind smiles or the children left behind, for where would that lead her? Only ice would see her live out the year. Malicia moved her lips into a smile, did not let it reach her eyes.

“And how many of my troubles can be laid at your feet, I wonder?” Malicia asked.

“The funny thing is,” the Bard said, “honestly not that much.”

She waved a hand dismissively, trailing wine all over the table.

“I work through Named,” the Bard said, revealing nothing the Eyes had not already told her, “and Named haven’t been your problem. Your empire has been going to shit because you Role doesn’t match your Name.”

“Is that so?” Malicia politely smiled.

“You’ve been ruling like a Chancellor,” the Bard said. “But the Chancellor’s not meant to be on top of things in these parts. A Dread Empress is meant to add, inspire, create. You’ve been dividing, lessening, binding. Chancellor’s work, and that’s why it’s all been going downhill: you no longer have other Named on your side to compensate for that.”

“I told you history would not distract me,” Malicia said. “Did you think namelore would?”

“I just like to talk,” the Bard artlessly confessed. “But let’s be all business, if you want. You have a problem: Catherine Foundling very badly wants you dead and there’s no one left in a position to stop her.”

“Ater still stands,” Malicia said.

“Said every Dread Empress who ever got murdered,” the Bard replied, rolling her eyes. “It’s not a siege that’s going to decide this. You’ve got an empire’s worth of stories come home to roost in Ater, Allie, and that’s what kills or saves you.”

“And here I had thought it would be a blade,” Malicia smiled.

The Bard snorted.

“Sure, if you want to be obtuse about it,” she said. “The blade’s just the natural consequence of the story turning against you. It doesn’t drive the carriage, it’s a destination. And you’re in luck, my friend, because it happens that destination your-head-on-a-pike just isn’t doing anything for me. It’s a bit of pain in my ass, to be honest.”

“What a fortunate happenstance,” Malicia said. “I, too, would prefer to avoid my decapitation. You have thoughts on how this might be achieved?”

“I’m all about thoughts,” the Bard agreed. “Just so many thoughts. So lemme share one with you: do you know when a Named is most vulnerable?”

“At the end of a pattern of three, presumably,” Malicia said.

While those did not necessarily end in death for the villain involved, that did seem to be the prevalent trend.

“Nah,” the Bard slurred, “it’s just before they come into their Name. See, that’s the spot where they’re riding fate but they’re not really protected yet.”

The empress considered the other woman a moment, drinking shallowly from her cup.

“I am told,” Malicia said, “that Catherine Foundling is coming into a Name.”

“Defence isn’t how you win this game,” the Bard said. “So we’re going on the offensive, you and I.”

Malicia’s eyes narrowed.

“How?”

“It’s not set yet, what she’s turning into,” the Bard said. “So we nudge it so it becomes what we need. The east that is land and armies and politics, all the things that pass, instead of the East – the story, the idea. Old Evil and buried grudges, the other half of the world. She’s only as dangerous as what she keeps, you see.”

She was starting to.

“And when she transitions?”

“There’s this joke I love,” the blue-eyed Bard enthusiastically said. “It’s from Ashur so, you know, it’s not actually funny, but it’s great anyways and it goes like this – and stop me if you’ve heard it before!”

She cleared her throat, which somehow had her spilling a third of her cup over her own lute and then cursing before wiping it off effectively with her sleeve.

“Right so there’s this man who goes to a priest, a Speaker,” the Bard said. “And he says that his daughter’s taken up with some Praesi, proper smitten. So he’s come for advice because he needs a time, a place and man to officiate.”

The Bard began chortling, already taken with her own joke.

“So the Speaker gives them, only the man comes back the day after all riled up,” she said. “Says it was a disaster. Why, the priest asks. Did the wedding not go well? And then the man erupts: wedding? I was asking about-”

“-a funeral,” Malicia finished.

It was easy enough to infer from context. The Bard pouted.

“I don’t know why people keep doing that to me,” she whined. “No wonder you’re a villain.”

Malicia ignored her… ally’s petty moaning, herself taking petty satisfaction in having caused it.

“A time, a place and a man to officiate,” Dread Empress Malicia mused. “That is all?”

“That’s the good thing about Catherine, Allie,” the Intercessor grinned, all teeth and malice. “You can always count on her to bring the knife.”