A Practical Guide to Evil

The last campfire before the plunge, I felt, ought to have been more momentous than this. Instead it was strikingly mundane, the rabbits Cordelia had shot during the day’s travelling ending up roasted by Masego over the open flame as I went to pick up firewood and Akua groomed the horses. I’d actually thought I’d get out of firewood duty by catching a few birds, but Zombie had gobbled the first up – purely out of spite, the damned bird didn’t eve need to eat – and screeched so loudly the rest had scattered, so down into the brush I went. I tied her to the tree furthest from the fire, informing she had been a Bad Girl and She Needed To Learn Her Lesson. She cawed at me rather skeptically, which I did not take to be a good sign.

I blamed the Sisters, they were a bad influence.

I got back with the last batch of dry wood in time to get my skewer fresh off the fire, Cordelia doing a decent job of hiding her horror as Masego told her why it wasn’t actually a good idea to cook with hellflame even though the temperature was more stable.

“The taste of brimstone is quite overwhelming,” Zeze sagely told her. “My experiments were conclusive.”

“By that he means that Indrani talked him into scrapping our entire meal twice,” I drily said, swallowing a groan as I lowered myself into sitting on the ground.

It was a nice little clearing that we’d chosen as our camp site for the night, surrounded by just thick enough a thicket that it gave us the illusion of privacy even as we sat in the midst of a host of fifteen thousand Firstborn. I’d set down a boundary line in Night that added some genuine privacy to the appearance of it, but getting the drow to actually keep their distance had been more difficult. Upon learning that I intended to eat fresh meat nineteen sigil-holders had volunteered their sigils to hunt game in my name, and they’d been halfway through talking themselves into duels over the privilege when I put my foot down.

Amusing as the thought of five thousand Firstborn scouring the countryside of the Ways clean of every living creature larger than a mouse was, Cordelia’s rabbits would be quite enough.

“I am not sure whether that is technically blasphemy,” the fair-haired princess noted, “but I cannot help but feel that it should be.”

“It sometimes shows that you have never been hosted in Praes, darling,” Akua told, strolling out of the woods. “Dinner canmost definitely be blasphemous.”

Cordelia, feet not going over the side of the blanket she’d laid on the ground by so much as a hair and hands folded primly over her lap, offered the other woman a flat stare as she sat to my left.

“It sometimes worries me,” she said, “that when you speak of Praes, it is hard to discern what is a jest and not.”

“And if you think that’s a joke, I’ve eaten what she thinks is appropriately seasoned chicken,” I muttered at Cordelia under my breath. “It’d make you wish for the goddamn brimstone.”

“Your national dish is stew, Catherine,” Akua retorted, unimpressed.

“Stew’s good,” I protested. “We eat it all the time.”

There was a choked noise that sounded suspiciously like suppressed laughter coming from my right. I narrowed my eye at now suspiciously expressionless princess.

“Out with it,” I sighed.

“I once asked the palace’s head cook to make traditional Callowan beef stew for Princess Vivienne,” Cordelia admitted, “and she offered me her resignation.”

An indelicate snort from my left, followed by the two of them letting out quiet peals of laughter. Typical, I grimly thought. Like the country of my birth, I was plagued by base treachery out of Praes and Procer. Fucking nobles the both of them too, I glowered. I wasn’t sure how that played into it yet, but give me long enough to think and it absolutely would. A skewer was pressed into my hands and I looked up to Masego’s smiling face.

“Eat your rabbit,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”

I bit down on the juicy flesh, still glowering.

“Fine,” I told him as I chewed. “But just because it’s you asking, Zeze.”

I polished off the rest of my rabbit skewer and was hungry enough to dip into the bag of dried berries afterwards, though it wasn’t long before we moved on to the kind of dessert I actually enjoyed: a bottle of aragh, which Akua had been keeping in her pocket space for the entire trip like a complete hog. She hadn’t opened it yet, though, so as I did I informed her of my forgiveness.

“How generous of you,” Akua replied, impressively enough without so much as a hint of sarcasm.

“Sometimes, when she wants ours things, she says it’s taxes and takes them,” Masego told Cordelia.

The recently retired First Prince of Procer fixed me with a stare that could best be described as soulful disappointment.

“Eh,” I shrugged. “Why even be a tyrant if you can’t steal booze from your subjects?”

It was a pretty good stare, I’d give her that, but I’d had to deal with the Grey Pilgrim for years. No one did disappointment like Good’s communally mandated grandfather, may the old bastard rest in peace. I poured a cup and pressed into Masego’s hand as he rolled his eyes – it was somehow even more distressing a sight now that only one of them rolled all the way around the socket – and grabbed the cups for the rest.

“I always did find it unusual how few creature comforts you’ve claimed over the years, given your repeatedly professed desire for them,” Akua languidly said.

She was sprawled over her blanket like it was a reclining couch and some oiled-up manservant was about to start fanning her. If anyone thought it was coincidence that the position ended up pressingly her riding dress flatteringly around her, I had a real nice house in Keter I wanted to sell them. She lightly took up the cup when I offered it.

“I guess I ended up more the iron military rule kind of tyrant, huh,” I mused.

“By far the most boring sort,” Akua opined.

She was, sadly, pretty much right. Should have gotten known for a spot of decadence before I started going around in plate and a black cloak everywhere, now I was stuck with the reputation and it was too late to change it. After the war, I promised myself. Pastel dresses for a year. Still, let it not be said I’d allow myself to be cornered without a sortie.

“Besides, Your Highness,” I said to Cordelia, “don’t try to sell me you’ve never pulled at the bounds a bit – no one sits on top of a shitshow like Highest Assembly for years without allowing themselves some way to let out the steam.”

The put-upon innocence that appeared on the princess’ face was believably good, which was impressive because those pretty blue eyes could only do so much for compensate for the warrior’s shoulders on her. Akua jeered at her and Masego was sipping at his drink, looking like he was gauging whether he could get away with discreetly dumping some in the fire – I glared at him to signify he would not, to his chagrin – so she gave ground.

“I did once have a banquet served for Amadis Milenan where every single of the nine services tasted of oranges,” Cordelia conceded.

I cocked an eyebrow. Didn’t sound like much of anything.

“He is,” the blonde princess mildly explained, “deathly allergic.”

Akua actually smiled.

“Ah,” she said. “He could say nothing, because accusing you of trying to poison him would have been an act of treason, if then proved untrue.”

“Oh yes,” Cordelia said, her savagely pleasant smile never wavering. “The near mutiny from the cooks when they were asked to bake bread that would taste of oranges for the cheese platter was worth seeing him squirm in his seat through every single service of a formal state dinner.”

I sipped at my drink, hiding a grin. I’d always known there was a petty streak hidden under the manners, but it was nice to have it confirmed for posterity. I let myself relax into the blanket as the cups emptied and the bottle was passed around, letting the warmth of the fire seep into my bones as Masego was drawn into a conversation about the benefits of a mage guild’s existence – I knew better than to believe Cordelia had laid the breadcrumb leading to that by happenstance – and though Akua occasionally interjected I was happy to let them have at it.

The good feeling was lingering in my limbs, sweet and heavy enough it was hard to tell apart from sleepiness.

“- without standardized magical education, it is impossible for any society to have artefacts on a more than local scale,” Masego said. “If there no common principles a mage cannot undertake the upkeep of the artefact another made, so the knowledge end up kept by apprenticeship lines.”

“Which are vulnerable to being ended by happenstance,” Cordelia acknowledged.

She had it right. Callow had suffered from the weakness over the years, and after the Conquest the Dread Empire had pretty much snuffed out organized Callowan sorcery by interrupting the master-to-apprentice passage of knowledge: only a gutted Guild of Hedges had survived, and all the talent there had been pushed into the Legions.

“Exactly,” he enthused. “Learning should never be so unsafe. Every secret that dies with its holder is a loss for all of Creation.”

I felt Akua’s gaze move to me.

“They’ll be at this for a while,” she noted, faintly amused.

“I can’t tell if she’s humouring him or genuinely interested,” I said.

Akua rolled her eyes at me.

“She seeks a closer relationship with him,” she chided, as if it were obvious. “Our dear princess already has her eye on Cardinal, my heart. She foresees his presence there in the coming years, and catches a second bird with the stone by obtaining his thoughts on the matter of organized sorcery under a central authority.”

Which would inevitably ensue, considering the school that would be at the heart of the city yet to be built. It would draw mages like flies to honey, and you couldn’t just let loose a few hundred mages – or more – in any city without supervision. They’d have to be organized, and the ruling council of Cardinal would be the natural authority for them to be under. Cordelia had a history of endorsing that sort of thing, too, having created the first mage order since before the Liturgical Wars during her reign. The Order of the Red Lion, effectively a guild of scrying-capable mages. I grimaced.

“Thought I’d get at least a year after the war before that sort of thing started up,” I admitted.

Akua flicked my shoulder, which surprised me enough I had to bite down on yelp.

“Poor Catherine,” the golden-eyed sorcerers gently mocked. “She only wants to build the most important and influential city on Calernia, but somehow this has drawn attention and intrigue.”

A pause.

“Who could have possibly foreseen this state of affairs?” Akua mourned, laying a hand over her heart.

“Ouch,” I muttered. “I mean you’re not wrong, but still ouch.”

“You’ll survive,” she retorted, merciless. “Do get out of your head, dearest. It will have been a waste of my bottle otherwise.”

I snorted at that. Fair enough. I dragged myself up, brushing my hand against her shoulder, and cracked my back with a little sigh.

“Fire’s making me fall asleep,” I told them all, having drawn the others’ curious stares. “I’ll go for a bit of a walk, get the blood flowing.”

The ring of forest around us wasn’t all that deep, but the branches and leaves were thick enough that limping to the edge got me the treat of breaking through to a starry sky. Under it the Firstborn had made camp, the absence of fires still strange to my eyes after all these years. They were used for cooking, but no longer than that, and by now had long been snuffed out. The fifteen thousand that Sve Noc had sent south with me had still raised their tents along sigil lines, a far cry from the professional lines and avenues of a Legion camp, but the campaigns had taught the drow the virtues of order.

There was a cross of broad avenues going through the camp now that no Firstborn army would have bothered with five years ago, as well as designated latrine pits and supply tents.

“How many centuries has it been since the Empire Ever Dark fielded armies?” I asked.

I had felt its presence even through the dark and silence. Night hid little from me, these days.

“None have been sent to war since the years after the Gloom descended,” Ivah of the Losara replied.

“So more than a thousand years,” I murmured. “You’re adapting dreadfully quick, Ivah.”

It wasn’t empty praise. There were modern armies that simply hadn’t caught up to the methods introduced by the Legions of Terror during the Conquest, be they the combined arms or the professional ways of making war, and it wasn’t because they’d lacked coin or time to. The Great War hadn’t refined Procer war-making, it’d scrapped armies and beggared thousands into being disaffected mercenaries. And the Dominion was, in a lot of ways, just as tribal as the Firstborn: Ten Generals instead of the great lines of the Blood, captains and companies instead of Mighty and sigils.

The drow, though, were taking well to war on our scale. Tactics were still specialized instead of standardized – the Ysengral for fortifications, the Jindrich for heavy infantry – but I could already seen the bare bones of Firstborn armies emerging and they’d make fearsome beasts to wrestle with. Heavy skirmisher contingents like no one else still fielded, startingly quick massed spear infantry and Mighty as replacements for either cavalry or mage cabals. It was only a matter of time until sigils began to turn into professional soldiery, and when that began the Firstborn would be well on their way to having respectable standing armies.

“Of all our talents, strife has ever been our favourite,” Ivah mused. “Our blessing and our curse, one might say.”

The echo of my words made me turn. I found my successor as the sigil-holder of the Losara – and likely First Under the Night – leaning against a hollow tree. The shadows of the branches reached across its painted face, the silver tree-on-purple cut through like claw marks. Ivah rarely bothered with more than the lightest of armours, my Lord of Silent Steps preferring long coats with wide sleeves paired with intricately woven scarves, and it might have been taken for simple traveller if not for the way its presence burned in the Night. In a way, after what it’d done in Serolen it deserved my title more than me: it had made the first of the new Night, when it slew Kurosiv.

It was connected to it even more deeply than I, for while it’d been my scheme Ivah had been the one to bloody its hands with a spear of yew.

“You’re displeased?” I asked.

“We are what we are, Losara Queen,” the Lord of Silent Steps replied. “I fear not the seeking of Night, only that in embracing the spear we might forget how to hold all other tools.”

That becoming too good at war would see the Firstborn lose interest in the less exciting labours of building a home in the Burning Lands, it meant.

“It’ll be on you,” I quietly said, “to teach them better.”

The Sisters had chosen me for the exile, for the war, but it was coming to an end. They would not leave me afterwards, I thought, for I had spent too long as their herald to be severed from them after. But I would be a priestess among many, no longer the towering figure in the Night I now stood as. That was fine by me. I had been Sovereign of Winter and Squire once, and learned from it that one power always grew over the other. To be Warden was more than the old coat I’d once worn as a girl, but to be First Under the Night was not a small thing either.

Better to make it cleaner, so that fate’s course ran without hidden eddies.

“It will be,” Ivah just as quietly replied, looking up at the sky. 𝗳re𝚎𝚠𝐞𝗯𝙣𝗼ν𝗲l. c૦𝓶

It was the first time it acknowledged what the both of us had known for years: that it had served as the sigil-holder of the Losara while being groomed for my role as high priestess for years, chosen by Sve Noc themselves. Each of the Sisters had their favourites among the Mighty, but neither had thought to elevate one as the greatest of the Firstborn under them.

“Afraid?” I asked.

A long silence.

“Yes,” Ivah murmured.

Its jaw clenched.

“It is one thing to kill a god, another to grow a garden from its bones.”

And the flowers born of blood were lovely, I had learned, but ever poisonous. I had tricked Winter into death and devoured it only for it to rot me from the inside. Yet in the end, was that too not an answer of sorts?

“How do you kill a god, Ivah?” I asked.

Silver eyes on mine.

“You make another,” it replied, thoughtful.

If you don’t like the altar the Firstborn worship at, I thought, make another. We stood there under the starlit sky of the Twilight Ways for a long moment, the two of us leaning against threes in companiable silence.

“I wish,” Ivah murmured, “that you did not have to leave. That we would keep you.”

My heart clenched, but I would not answer the sentiment with a lie. It offered me a wisp of a smile.

“We borrowed you for our purposes,” the Lord of Silent Steps said, “and you borrowed us for yours. It was a fair bargain, the faith doled out repaid threefold.”

“The Firstborn,” I acknowledged, “have never failed me.”

And I found that I meant every word of it. Baffled, disappointed and sometimes angered but never failed. From beginning to end, they had kept their oath like a knight’s pride and a devil’s due.

“We have long memories, Losara,” Ivah said. “We will not forget Callow’s Queen or the soldiers we bled in the mud with. That affection, I think, may just survive us both.”

I looked down at my hands, those worn old things that’d never quite wash out the red.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” I smiled, daring to hope.

It softly laughed.

“It would,” Ivah murmured. “It is a long road ahead, and we could all do with a few more friends on it.”

“Then do not be afraid, Ivah of the Losara,” I gently said. “For we’ll be walking it both, and I count you as one.”

The drow stiffened at the words, like a cat afraid of scalding, but as the moments passed it unwound.

“And you,” Ivah brusquely spoke into the silence, as if afraid to get the words out.

I did not smile, afraid it’d shame it, and instead let silence linger. The embarrassment only thickened, though, and I need only glance at the cast of its shoulder to know it felt like squirming. Taking pity on it, I cleared my throat.

“You sought me out for a reason?”

Ivah nodded in acknowledgement.

“Words has arrived from Creation,” the Lord of Silent Steps said. “We will be the last to arrive in the hinterlands Keter. The Praesi fortresses arrived last morn.”

I half-smiled.

“The last to the party, huh,” I murmured. “Best make our presence count, if we’ve made them wait.”

Ivah pushed off from the tree and offered me a bow, shallower than it had been before Serolen.

“Good night to you, Losara Queen,” it said.

“Good night to you, Lord of Silent Steps,” I replied.

It left the same way it had come, through the dark, and I returned to the warmth of the fire and company. There would be precious few moments like those, in the coming days, so it would not do to waste even a single one of them.

We crossed back into Creation a little before Noon Bell.

Riding ahead on Zombie, taking to the sky, I noticed two things in quick succession: first, once you got high enough the clouds of poison thinned enough you didn’t even need to breathe through cloth. Two, even as the first sigil set foot in the dust of the Kingdom of the Dead a battle was being fought about a mile to the north of us. Much as I my instinct was to spur on Zombie and get into the thick of it, I held myself back and took in the situation from the sky. The Crown of the Dead was a dozen miles to the west, the great fortress-city jutting out of a chasm miles deep and a spire of black stone rising even higher, and around it in a loose circle I could see the encamped armies of the Grand Alliance.

Fortified camps, too. Pickler had been busy, because though the angle wasn’t right for me to see everything it looked like the Grand Alliance had encircled Keter with ramparts of its own. It had then gone further and built a ring of walls behind the camps, something called contravallation. Sensible, I thought, given that the Dead King still had armies out in the field that’d be headed our way. We’d be fighting as much from the back as the front while the siege continued, we’d known that form the start, but I was still impressed Pickler had gotten so much done so quickly. She has Legion sappers now as well, I reminded myself.

Zombie circled slowly up in the sky, the wind batting as my face as I returned my attention to the battle up north. By the look of the banners and the massed cavalry being used, it was Rozala Malanza and the army that’d held Cleves out there in the field. On the other side I saw mostly a mass of bones, with only a few necromantic constructs – the dead had numbers, maybe twenty thousand to First Princess Rozala’s ten, but it wasn’t helping them much. The Proceran shield wall held, Light burning away the poison in the air and tearing through the skeletons in thick rivers to disrupt their formation. And by how quickly the constructs were going down, I’d guess there were Named on the field.

A victory in the making. At guess, Neshamah had sent out some expendables to hinder the crossing of the Firstborn and Malanza had caught it flatfooted. Tied them down with the cavalry, did you? I mused. She’d always had a knack for cavalry tactics, even back during the Tenth Crusade. It had been her tacit threat to send cavalry south into Callow and hit the Vales from behind that’d forced Juniper and I to give her a fight at the Battle of the Camps.

I waited until the first two sigils had crossed and a vanguard had been established for the Firstborn before going out to return the favour. Night came clean and crisp when I pulled, flowing better than it had since Hainaut – and even better than before, at least when the sun was out. I unleashed trail of black flame through the heart of the enemy formation, torching Bones by the hundreds as Procerans cheered. It had a charming element of novelty to it, the Principate’s soldiers being glad of the sight of me. The battle had already been won before I arrived, and my contribution just helped turn it into a rout.

I passed twice more, dropping trails of fire, and noted approvingly that First Princes Rozala was moving to encircle the dead. It’d be a mistake against a living army, since cornered soldiers fought like devils, but undead didn’t rout so there was no point in leaving them a way out. Bones just got stupid and disorganized when you killed enough of the Binds leading them, some of the bands wandering off as the cohesion of the army broke down. The forward ranks of skeletons kept breaking themselves on the Proceran shield wall, increasingly less skilled in that assault, while fantassin companies swept the flanks and the cavalry began riding down the bands of skeletons that broke away from the host.

Already over, and it was looking like light casualties for the Procerans. Now we just needed to win the next hundred of these, all the while besieging the single most powerful fortress in all of Calernia.

I left First Princess Rozala to her moment of glory, knowing that after Cleves her soldiers could likely use a battle having gone cleanly their way, and rode Zombie back to the beachhead. Sigils had begun to spread out during the hour I’d spent north, the Firstborn assembling into a marching column headed for the camps to the west, and seeing that General Rumena had it well in hand I saw no need to stick my oar in. It’d been herding sigils around since before the city I was born in was founded, it didn’t need me breathing down its neck.

Impatient at the pace of the advance even though I knew in the back of my mind that the drow were quick on the march as far as armies went, I landed long enough to have word sent to my companions that I’d be heading out to the camps in advance and took to the sky again. Zombie was in a good mood, I noted, having puffed her feathers vainly at the cheering earlier and remained convinced she’d been the star of the battle ever since. I saw no need to disabuse her.

The flight west was longer, the winds turning strange and quarrelsome the closer we got to Keter, but we made good time. I watched with thinned lips as the hulking shape of the Crown of the Dead rose ever higher, that island of stone connected to the land around it only by four great bridges. I’d tread one of these on foot, once upon a time, and before this was over I would again. A look back and a flex of Night told me that the Firstborn were mostly done crossing by the time I reached the camps, the column snaking west along with First Princess Rozala’s victorious army.

It was with a sense of vindication that I led Zombie into a slow circling glide above our camps, taking in the sight of the armies that’d been gathered. There’d never been a coalition like it in the history of Calernia: Praes and Callow, Procer and Levant, the League and the Empire Ever Dark. All the greatest armies left among the living had been marched here for our great siege of Keter, and though I knew that was no guarantee of victory the sight of it was deeply satisfying. We’d done it. Through Hells and high water, we’d mustered all that was left to muster. Now we simply need-

Power bloomed, deep in the heart of Keter, and my blood ran cold. Sorcery rose from the camps, but it wasn’t us the Dead King was aiming at. As a torrent of magic shot up in the sky, past the great spire and the green clouds, Creation shivered.

Then the sky began to fall, one panel at time.

I thought it an attack at first, when shards of northing hit the ground and kicked up great clouds of dust, but the few that hit the camp broke harmlessly against the defensive wards. I had seen this before, I realized in a moment of eerie clarity. Just not from this angle. I looked back, to the drow and saw that the last few sigils had been dropped down from a height. Like the Army of Callow was, when Akua shattered the Twilight Ways under us.

“Gods,” I croaked out, as destruction spread as far as my eye could see.

Miles in every direction, one break at a time, like a ripple on the surface of a pond. We’d brought the great muster of Calernia here to besiege Keter, I thought, so the Dead King had broken the Twilight Ways. How much of them I couldn’t know – miles, a third, maybe even enough that the realm itself would begin break down. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Neshamah had let us in and then tightened the noose: now there could be no retreat.

We would take Keter before supplies ran out, or we would all die.