A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 6 70: Solved Game

Usually the Twilight Ways were a beautiful place, but this time they were as a sea of the wounded and dying.

We did what we could. What few mages were still capable of casting spent themselves raw in the healer tents, the healers among the House Insurgents moved wearily from one half-corpse to another and I demanded the same of every Named that could still move. Tariq, looking himself a step into the grave, moved tirelessly even and he grew more and more wan. Masego – borrowing the last gasps of the Summoner’s sorcery – taught the Apprentice emergency surgery on the most brutal of the beds, snatching the slightest sparks of life and fanning them back to a flame. Even Akua, though some refused her help and I had to surround her with a protective detail. I went as well, of course. With Night little more could be done than delaying death, but that served a purpose.

Every hour meant one more priest Light was no longer burning up from the inside, one more mage whose limbs ceased trembling enough for them to be able to cast. I couldn’t save them, for Night would ever be the power of a thief, but I could steal them enough hours that someone else might be able to. Time grew clouded, the kind of mist where one could get lost for a lifetime going around in circles, and I went from blood to blood. Soldiers with faces chewed off, with limbs ripped and bones that’d pierced through the skin. And the screams, Gods, the screams. I pulled out poison and curses, slowed the flow of blood to a crawl and forced hearts to keep beating, Night coming to my hand sharp and steady.

I lost myself to the beat, knowing that General Zola and Adjutant would see to the needs of the Second without me.

It was only when the power grew sluggish in my hands, when my weave slipped and I almost drew poison into a young goblin’s heart instead out of his veins, that I forced myself to stop. Night didn’t heal in the intuitive manner that Light did so any mistake on my part was likely to kill the wounded involved. I limped away after passing my patient to a priest who couldn’t be older than seventeen – I have taken a generation of my people to war, I grieved, harvested them like a farmer reaping wheat – and leaning heavily on my staff. My leg throbbed so harshly I felt like I might weep, and now that I had released Night my vision was swimming. One of the phalanges, who’d been following me like loyal hounds all night, came close to offer me an arm to lean on. I gestured curtly for her to leave me be.

I forced myself to ignore the moans and weeping from the tents, the soldiers that would not be saved because we did not have enough left in us to save them. The wind kept carrying them to my ear, though, and so further and further away I went. I found a grassy hill, past the outskirts of the camp, where I slowly slumped into the cool blades of grass. Faintly I saw the phalanges beginning a watch around me, but they were not obvious and I made myself not notice them. I leaned in the grass, staff at my side, and looked up at the twilit sky of this strange realm we still understood so very little. I rested my eyes but did not sleep. I was, somehow, too tired for it. I couldn’t be sure how long I stayed like this, but eventually I heard footsteps coming up the hill. Not Hakram, I thought, and immediately felt guilty. If the phalanges had not gotten in the way there was nothing to worry of, so my eyes remained closed.

I was only when they lowered themselves into the grass by my side and groaned in pain that I recognized who it was. Tariq’s joints were, I had gathered, sometimes even worse than my own bad leg. Not even the favour of angels could entirely protect one from the ravages of time: the Grey Pilgrim was as perfectly hale as one of his advanced age could be, but he was still very much that age. Heroes didn’t get to cheat aging the way my side did, forever frozen at the apex of our growth and power.

“The Apprentice has retired as well,” the Peregrine said. “Though the Hierophant continues. He is a young man of remarkable willpower.”

I half-smiled.

“He is more mind than body,” I said. “Always has been.”

I suspected it would appeal to him a great deal, to become entirely an intellect and be stripped of all the weaknesses and needs of the flesh. The smile faded soon enough, though. I could not hear the wounded from here, the wind prevented it, but I could imagine it so vividly only concentration kept their cries from reaching my ears.

“There is no other army like this,” the Grey Pilgrim eventually said. “I have seen many battles, Queen Catherine, but none ever spared so much thought to keeping its own alive.”

I would not claim to be the spirit behind that, not when all I had done was imitate the Legions of Terror while being in the position to recruit priests as well.

“There’s always too many dead,” I tiredly replied. “Always, Tariq. Even when we win.”

The old man laughed, and while amusement would have infuriated me there was not a trace of that in the sound: there was enough grief in the sound to drown a dozen men.

“There are some foes that cannot be won against, Catherine,” the Grey Pilgrim said. “All we can do is worry our hands to the bone and bury the dead, hoping we saved as many as we could have.”

This isn’t a plague, I thought. It’s not the banal malevolence of the world that killed them, Tariq. I brought them here. I led them to this place, so far from every home they ever knew, so they could die for strangers. For a greater good. And so they’d come, and so they’d fought, and so they’d died. In droves, scared and in pain. Some of their bodies, those we’d not been quick enough to burn, we would see again standing under the banners of Keter.

“I used to hate you a little,” I quietly said, “for that night in Callow. The one where you refused to help me as we stood at the crossroads of the things to come.”

The old man did not speak, but even with closed eyes I felt him bend as if under a great weight.

“But,” I continued, “I think I understand it better now, why the thought of sitting the Tattered Throne so terrified you.”

All hail Queen Catherine Foundling, they’d said as they put the crown on my head. First of Her Name, anointed Queen of Callow. I was a warlord on a queen’s seat, my boots still dusty from the road and my sword reeking of blood, but in that room where Fairfaxes and Albans had ruled they’d anointed me. And my people had followed me into horror ever since, unflinching. And my legend, my story – my lie – it was a young one. I had been a glimpse of spring after a long winter, and so more hopes than I deserved to bear had been set on my brow. Tariq Isbili’s legend was old, older than even this old man, and it was dyed in the bone of what it meant to be of the Dominion of Levant. My people had, in the years after the Folly, followed me into the dark without flinching.

Levant would have followed the Peregrine into anything at all, even if it shattered them to follow.

“Even your kindness bruises,” Tariq finally replied, after a long silence passed.

I inclined my head in concession, as he was not wrong.

“One day I’ll ask too much of them,” I said, my tone announcing the subject was at a close.

I was not certain what scared me more: that on that day they would refuse me at last, or that they wouldn’t. In a rough pang, I missed Vivienne. She would have understood, I thought. In a way that no one else could, not even the rest of the Woe.

“Or one day they’ll asks too much of you,” the Peregrine replied, tone strangely gentle.

We left it at that, the two of staying in silence in the grass, until at last I fell asleep.

I woke to a warm meal and mug of tea, Adjutant’s wheelchair wedged into the slope of the hill at my side and the Grey Pilgrim nowhere in sight. Hakram let me shake off the last dregs of sleep at my own pace, only beginning to speak once I’d dug into the porridge and warmed my bones with the herbal brew.

“General Zola has the casualty reports,” he said.

It was almost enough to put me off eating, but I’d found after a few mouthfuls that I was positively starving. I still set down the spoon, blowing at the steam coming off my tea.

“How bad?” I quietly asked.

“One thousand nine hundred and seventy four dead.”

He’d not cushioned the blow, which I appreciated. My fingers clenched around the mug, the too-warm ceramic burning my skin. I pushed through the pain. Almost two thousand dead. A fifth of the Second Army had died at Maillac’s Boot.

“Permanent wounded?”

“Seventy one,” Adjutant said. “Between Masego and the Peregrine there was little that could not be mended. Mind sicknesses, mostly, come from head wounds that themselves were healed.”

I breathed out, relieved. In this, at least, we had been exceptional. It was rarer than rubies for an army to be able to walk away with so many fatalities but so few casualties. I drank down tea, still digesting the scope of what we’d lost. It wasn’t the outright one third that just retreating through the gates without preliminaries would have cost us, and we’d certainly mauled the armies that’d assailed us badly – something that we wouldn’t have accomplished with a premature retreat – but a fifth of losses was not something to be shrugged off. The Second Army as it was right now, should it be made to fight the battle we’d just fought, might fold before the second wave even arrived.

As an independent force, it was now too dangerous to let it fight a peer army. It’d need to be paired with another set of troops, preferably one that could soak up most of the deaths for my soldiers. And we’ll have lost veteran officers, I thought. Sappers and mages and other specialists I can’t replace. The heart of the Army of Callow and its component armies remained the infantry trained in the Legion methods and those I could still recruit, but all the specialized troops that allowed the Army to maul superior forces were either difficult or outright impossible to replace. Like the goblin munitions that’d allowed me to seize so many victories from the jaws of defeat, they were slowly running out.

“We got bled deep,” I finally said.

“And made our foes pay high price for every drop,” Adjutant gravelled back. “Every corpse we put to final rest at the Boot is one that we won’t be facing at the capital.”

It was true, though I still felt like arguing. Instead I polished off the rest of my porridge, that eternal legionary’s fare. The tea was not far behind. Hakram’s continued silence did not go unnoticed. I glanced at him, finding his face hard to read, and frowned.

“So what is it that you decided to sit on until I got through my…” I trailed off, unsure how much time had passed and so what meal this was.

“Early breakfast,” he provided. “And it is not necessarily a problem, Catherine, though the situation will require careful handling.”

My frown deepened.

“Not army-related,” I decided, “or at least not principally. So this related to my other authority.”

High officer of the Grand Alliance, representative for the villains under the Truce and Terms.

“Someone came into a Name during the battle,” Hakram said.

Huh. I supposed it’d been brutal enough a grinder to provide that spark, given the right materials to work with.

“Brandon Talbot?” I guessed.

He stood at the alignment of a couple of stories, if you looked at it the right way. Old blood, valiant in battle, about as principled as a nobleman could be while still being a nobleman. Back in Callow there was still a lot of faith bound to what he represented, in certain parts. I’d not caught scent of anything forming there, but sometimes the final stretch of coming into a Name could be quite sudden.

“No,” Adjutant said. “Though from the Order of the Broken Bells. A young man who was unhorsed during the countercharge near the shallows and made it back to the ranks on foot after that flank retreated, gathering other survivors to him.”

Huh. Fair enough, I supposed. Crows knew it wasn’t always the old names that got the nod from Above or Below.

“What are we looking at?” I asked.

“Sixteen, from Laure. Raised at an orphanage before being recruited into the Order three years back,” Hakram said. “I’m still finding out which. His name is Arthur Foundling.”

I froze in surprise. Foundling. It’d been a long time since I’d last heard that surname tacked on to anyone but me. Yet I had no sole claim to it, as Creation had just deemed it right to remind me. An orphan, huh. I wasn’t sure whether that had me wistful or troubled. Then one last detail sunk in.

“Sixteen,” I slowly repeated. “That means he’s still…”

“A squire,” Adjutant gravelled. “The Squire, as of yesterday.”

I softly laughed, though there was little mirth to the sound. It seemed Above and Below had at last decided that I’d strayed far enough from the last Name I’d held that another had been allowed to fill those worn old boots. Fuck, I thought. A Squire. That complicated things. Not necessarily immediately, but certainly down the line. It wasn’t even directly relating to me: while I didn’t even know which way the boy was leaning at the moment, either way I had no intention of falling into the trap of offering more than cursory mentorship. Yet a squire, as Malicia had once told me, must one day become a knight. And my people, we liked our knights. Sang songs about them, told stories. Followed them into battle.

Sometimes we even put crowns on their heads.

Sixteen, I considered. Vivienne was older, but not by that much. If this Arthur Foundling became the figurehead or even the genuine leader of a force within the Kingdom of Callow, marriage to cement her place on the throne wouldn’t necessarily be impossible. I might be looking too far ahead, worrying about things that might never come to pass, but my succession was not something I intended to leave to chance. I clenched my fingers. If he became a threat… God forgive me, but I’d killed boys of sixteen before. It might not come to that, I reminded myself. Yet this stank of the Heavens staking their claim on my home again, and I did not like the shape of it at all.

“What did the phalanges dig up on him?” I asked.

“His past is a dead end, but we have people in the Order,” Hakram said. “Popular with the other squires, considered reckless by the knights. The knightess he squired under died at the Boot, and there’s been talk of him swearing the oaths to Brandon Talbot instead.”

“Not happening,” I flatly said.

I liked the grandmaster, but he’d also been part of the Regals – an ill-fated noble faction at my court – before I dismantled them. House Talbot had ruled Marchford as counts once, and had been distinguished among the upper tiers of the Callowan nobility for their wealth and ancient blood. Even stripped of lands and riches, Sir Brandon still had deep connections with parts of the kingdom’s nobility that’d never taken to my rule. And might object to my handpicked successor taking the throne after me, highborn or not.

“The chatter did not come from Talbot himself, who instead noted that being Named places him foremost under the authority of the Truce and Terms,” Hakram clarified.

Mhm. Admirably restrained of him, though I wasn’t sure if his hopes would truly toe that line. Talbot knew where my bottom line lay, though, and what the consequences of crossing it would be. That’d keep him in check for a while.

“Personal life?” I asked.

“He was involved with another squire, who died in the retreat,” Adjutant said. “The other boy was highborn – House Bickham, landed knights formerly sworn to Dormer. Poor and only nobility for a generation prior to the Conquest.”

I grimaced, both at the generous heaping of grief that Fate had seen fit to offer Arthur Foundling and an inconvenient detail just revealed.

“Do we know if he keeps to only men?” I asked.

“Unsure,” Hakram admitted.

“Find out,” I ordered. “It would close some doors.”

Like the possibility of Vivienne wedding him, should it come to that. Dynastic marriages along those lines had happened before, but they had poor reputations for a reason and issue would be, well, an issue.

“Vivienne,” Adjutant slowly said, seeing right through me. “That’s putting the cart two towns ahead of the horse, I’d argue.”

“We’re far from a situation where it would even be considered,” I agreed, “but I want all angles accounted for.”

He nodded. I sighed, stretching my arms.

“I’ll have to take his measure in person as well,” I said. “And speaking of measure.”

I glanced at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“General Zola has proved competent in discharging her duties, though not exceptional,” Adjutant said. “Some minor mistakes, all of them swiftly corrected.”

“She’s been in command for less than a day and got promoted halfway through a battle after her predecessor got assassinated,” I flatly said. “She’ll settle into the rank, Hakram.”

“I’m not impugning her abilities,” the orc calmly replied. “I’m trying to temper your expectations, Catherine. She promises to be a solid commander with a good grasp on logistics, but she will not be Hune. She’ll be another Bagram, not the kind of rare talents we picked up early in our career.”

My fingers clenched. Hune’s reputation was not as widespread as Juniper’s – the Marshal of Callow had been the face of the military under my reign, and been visibly tied to my campaigns since the first days of the Fifteenth – but it could not be denied she had been highly talented. It had not been without reason she’d been the second highest officer in the Army of Callow. I jerkily nodded.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “And I do have a curiosity, actually.”

I tapped my temple lightly instead of asking the question outright. That Zola Osei had Soninke highborn eyes – more amber than golden, but then the gold was relatively rare – had not escaped my notice.

“Sister of the current Lord Osei, sworn to High Lord Dakarai of Nok,” Hakram said. “Not an old line, but they’ve been in favour for some time and married well. She was on the losing side of the succession conflict after her father died, and she enrolled in the Legions to avoid assassin blades. Used to be General Afolabi’s supply tribune, it was us that promoted her to legate.”

The last part didn’t particularly surprise me, all things told. One of the great enticements we’d had for the officers of the legions we absorbed after Akua’s Folly was that the Army of Callow was so starved for veteran hands that any officer that went over was nearly guaranteed to go up at least a rank. The Legions of Terror in the decade leading to the Uncivil Wars had been relatively slow to promote, too, so the temptation had been even stronger.

“Dakarai is Sepulchral’s main supporter, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that tie,” I said. “She might not be in a position to cause us trouble, at the moment, but that doesn’t mean her alliance won’t try to get hooks into the Army of Callow.”

While I was broadly inclined to back Sepulchral over Malicia, I had no illusions about the kind of viper I was dealing with. I’d known Abreha Mirembe when she was still merely High Lady of Aksum, and back then she’d already been shockingly coldblooded even by Praesi standards. Having an eye on the Tower would not improve her character in the slightest.

“It will be looked into,” Adjutant said. “We inherited the work the Eyes put in her, but I will get in touch with Scribe when feasible to see if she might have additional insights.”

“Good,” I said, groaning as I dragged myself up.

My rest had been, as always, all too short. I stilled, though, when I caught sight of Hakram’s face. I liked to think I knew him the way few people did – he was, even now, perhaps the person I was closest to in all of Creation – and I’d certainly gotten better at reading him over the years. Earlier he’d delayed giving me news on purpose, but now his silence was different. He was, I thought, hesitating.

“There’s something else,” I said.

“It is not news,” Hakram said. “Not like the others.”

I slowly nodded.

“And yet?”

He licked his chops, still uncertain.

“Masego says that the leg prosthetic has taken well,” Hakram said. “He still requires a few days of observation, but he is considering accelerating the timetable for further cuttings.”

“The hip,” I said.

“I could walk,” he said. “By the time we get to Hainaut. Not well, not quickly, and only with crutches but…”

“You could walk,” I finished with a soft smile.

He nodded, almost as if at a loss for words.

“I just wanted you to know,” Adjutant said.

We took our time going down the hill, between his wheelchair and my limp, but I found the silence between us lighter than it had been in some time.

I needed to take exactly one look at Arthur Foundling to know he was going to be a hero.

The boy was almost offensively heroic in appearance, like some higher power had taken the mould of ‘young hero’ straight of out Callowan culture and poured materials into it. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, with an angular face and strong shoulders, I could already see he was going to grow into a handsome man. He knelt before me after being ushered into the tent, sheathed sword scraping at the ground from the haste of his movement. With a touch of amusement, I saw his jaw twitch from a suppressed wince. Still, after a moment of taking him in I decided he looked… gaunt. Tired. Grieving. He’d lost a mentor and a lover the same say, Adjutant had told me. Under the composure, I suspected there laid a roiling ball of pain and anger.

“Rise,” I said.

The young man did, this time careful not to drag his sheath on the ground. He looked unsure, jaw locked tight. He had, I realized in a moment of bone-deep sympathy, likely not been taught the etiquette involved in a royal audience.

“Which orphanage raised you?” I casually asked.

He started in surprise.

“Er,” Arthur Foundling got out, “It was Queen Mary’s Home for Errant Boys, Your Majesty.”

I laughed out in disbelief.

“Wait, you’re from Queenie’s?” I said. “They try to make all their wards into scribes and priests. Gods, do they still have that crabby old sister? I can’t remember her name-“

“Sister Jessica’s still alive, as far as I know,” the squire said, in the tone of someone trying very hard not to speak ill of the clergy. “She, uh, did not approve of my joining the Order.”

I wondered how he’d react if I told him that said Sister Jessica had once rapped me on the knuckles thrice with a stick for having thrown a snowball in her face. I’d actually been aiming at this little shit who’d kicked in the wall of our fort three streets up, but I’d missed him and she’d opened the door just then. She’d had a pretty sharp hand for an old lady, it’d stung for several days. Hells, she must be pushing seventy by now.

“Our matron at the House would have sent me to the cathedral for remedial moral education if she’d known I wanted to go to the War College,” I drily told him.

I’d never found out who it was at my orphanage that was the spy – honestly, knowing Black there’d probably been several – for the Empire, but it’d not been her. My orphanage had been founded and founded by Praes, but the matron herself had not answered directly to any Praesi. The dark-haired boy looked at me hungrily at my words, like he was drowning and I’d just tossed him a rope.

“It’s true, then?” Arthur Foundling said. “Your Majesty. That you came from Tit – from the House for Tragically Orphaned Girls?”

“You can call it Tittering House,” I snorted. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

The boy’s orphanage down the street – not Queenie’s, which was in another quarter entirely, but the Laure Shelter for Forsaken Boys – had coined the nickname, warranting the reprisal of theirs being called Flaccid Shelter.

“You really did,” the boy said, tone almost awed. “I mean, the stories said, but they say so many things…”

Fuck, I thought. I’d known, on parchment, that there would be similarities. That they might pull on my heartstrings some. Yet I’d honestly believed it’d be easy to ignore, to set aside. Instead I was looking at a boy who might grow up into a threat to the legacy I meant to leave behind and seeing a shade of myself at sixteen, all bruised knuckles and fresh out of the orphanage gates.

“It’s true,” I said. “But it’s not me we’re here to talk about.”

His face locked up tight. I wondered, idly, if that was what I’d looked like when Black was talking to me back in the day. Always straddling hopeful and afraid, guarding my own thoughts so fiercely I might as well have worn them on my sleeves.

“I know about the Truce and Terms, Your Majesty,” Arthur Foundling said.

“No,” I bluntly replied. “You just think you do. Unless I’m very mistaken, you’re leaning the way of the Heavens-“

“I’m not a heretic,” the boy said, sounding miffed.

“- which means you’re going to be in an inconvenient situation,” I finished, cocking an eyebrow at the interruption.

His face blanked again, but he did not apologize. I could appreciate a spine, so long as he understood when he was overstepping.

“As a heroic Named, you representative under the Terms will be the White Knight,” I said.

He did not well hide his surprise. I got where he was coming from, of course. A Callowan hero grown in the wilds would not have considered themselves bound to me save perhaps in enmity, but this one had been a squire in my own knightly order for three years. He wouldn’t be seeing this in terms of hero and villain – I was both his queen and an older Named, in his eyes I would have been the natural authority. Perhaps not one entirely trusted or obeyed, but undeniably an authority.

“You’re the Queen of Callow, though, Your Majesty,” he hesitantly said.

“Yes, and unless you intend to renounce your oaths as a knight of the Order of Broken Bells-” I paused there, and he empathically shook his head, “then I still remain your commander. Hence the inconveniences. For now the troubles are minor, but once we rejoin with our sister host I will have to speak with the White Knight about this.”

My eyes narrowed and I studied the boy.

“You have intentions,” I said.

The Squire paled, his limbs stilled, but he did not deny it. He would not have come into a Name if there had not been something burning in his belly, and we both knew it.

“I thought I knew where my life was headed,” he bitterly said. “And now Sir Alexis is dead and…”

His lips thinned and he held his tongue.

“You’ve been looked into,” I gently said. “We know about your lover.”

“I had hoped to keep that grief my own,” Arthur Foundling said.

And for a moment, as his face grew solemn, I glimpsed the make of a Knight in him. The potential was there. Whether it made him a boon or a danger, though had yet to be decided.

“That possibility went up in smoke,” I honestly said, “the moment when you became the Squire. You have eyes on you now, Arthur Foundling. Your actions will have repercussions.”

“I just wanted to be a knight,” he tiredly replied. “To bring back the banners that the Praesi buried and you left in their grave, Your Majesty.”

Now was not the time, I thought, to have a conversation about the difficulties inherent to assembling a large mounted force – particularly one made up largely of lesser nobility whose allegiance to me would vary between shaky and nominal – in the Callow I’d come to rule after the Doom of Liesse. Maybe one day, if the boy was destined to be anything but a man on a horse very good at righteously killing people, but not today. I was all the more wary of teaching him the way Black had once taught me because I rather wanted to. I remembered what it was like, standing in those shoes and feeling both more capable and more lost than you’d ever been before.

Part of me itched to pass those lessons on the way they had been passed to me, and that was a dangerous thing.

“I left them there for a reason,” I said, “but that is a conversation for another day.”

I drummed my fingers against the side of my staff thoughtfully. Best to carefully control the amount of time I spent around this one.

“Adjutant will go over the details of the Truce and Terms with you,” I said, “so that you may fully understand your rights and responsibilities. Until then, you remain a squire in the Order of Broken Bells.”

He pressed his fist against his heart in acknowledgement.

“You won’t be swearing squire oaths to another knight until I have, at the very least conferred with the White Knight over the matter,” I added. “Your position is already too complicated for my tastes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he acknowledged.

“Good,” I said. “Then you are dismissed, Arthur Foundling.”

He bowed, but after straightening hesitated instead of leaving. I cocked an eyebrow again.

“The stories,” the boy said, “they say you used to be the Squire as well.”

“I was,” I agreed, cocking my head to the side.

“So you had them too,” Arthur said. “The dreams, I mean.”

Huh. Name dreams already.

“I had dreams,” I said, “but likely not the same as you.”

Although, Hells, I’d been the last Squire hadn’t I? Was he going to get Name dreams from my years bearing the Name? I was still alive, but Black had been as well when I’d gotten glimpses of his life. Unless he was going to get dreams from a Squire that’d been headed Above’s way, and I’d only gotten my father’s career in my sleep because he’d been the last Squire headed into a Name sworn to Below. I didn’t actually have an answer to that. Crows, it would have been effectively impossible to get answers about this a few years ago: heroes and villains hadn’t exactly sat down for pleasant chats about the nature of Names, back before the Truce and Terms.

They still didn’t, honestly compelled me to admit, but at least the thought was no longer so glaringly absurd.

“So you didn’t dream about the sword, then?” the Squire asked.

“Which sword?”

“The broken one,” he hesitantly said. “The pieces are in far places, but always deep below water.”

I kept my face calm, though I felt a surge of both fury and indignation. Fucking Hashmallim, I cursed. Fucking Choir of Contrition and their grubby meddling hands. I’d snapped the Penitent’s Blade in dozens of pieces and scattered some of them them as far as the Tyrian Sea, I wasn’t going to let that damned sword get reforged. Someone wielding it anew had my death written all over it. I was going to have to talk to Hierophant about the practicalities of expressing my displeasure there.

“I knew that sword before it was snapped,” I said. “It is best left scattered, Arthur Foundling, lest you want Contrition to sink its hooks into your soul.”

He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but my warning hadn’t gone into deaf ears either: the young squire had looked distinctly unenthused at the notion of being bound to angels. This time he took his leave for good, leaving me to lean against my desk with a conflicted look on my face. The Squire seemed like a good kid, honestly. A little rough around the edges, but it was nothing he couldn’t grow into.

I hoped I wasn’t going to have kill him, before this was all over.

On the first day the Second Army rested. On the second it marched, and on the fifth we found the other column.

From there, I knew, there was only one place to go: the capital, where it would all be won or lost.