A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 6 ex4: Interlude: Archer

“The kindest mirror is an old friend, the cruellest an old foe.”

– Callowan proverb

The smell was, impossibly, just the same as Archer remembered.

That sweet, high odour that came from too many different herbs being hung to dry for even a Named nose to be able to tell them apart. Deeper in, Indrani knew, the lingering potion fumes would add a lingering tang of sourness: it’d been near impossible to get rid of that even out in Refuge, where there was nothing but open air around the Concocter’s workshop, and a room of stone would fare no better. Gods, it was like she’d never left Refuge. It felt like any moment now Alexis might turn the corner, covered in twigs and dirt, eyes looking for the fight her mouth wouldn’t admit she was picking. Like John was just out of her sight, with those stupid bells and the tasteless tattoos he’d be so damned proud of, like Lysander would be getting a fire going for the fresh stag he’d caught with the latest beast he’d brought to heel. But there was no time for reminiscence, for memories fond and not. The smell had only come when the door was yanked open and the Concocter’s dour face was revealed.

“Archer,” the other woman said, general dourness turning into a proper frown. “What do you want?”

“That any way to talk to an old friend, Cocky?” Indrani smiled, all nice and toothy.

She hated being called that, always had, but then she’d refused to give out so much as a fake name to any of them. Even the Lady, who’d been amused enough at the novelty of being refused something she’d never pursued the matter. As children the other pupils had made a game of picking the Concocter a name and half a hundred must have been thrown around, few of them clever and all of them mean. She’d invited it, in much everyone else’s opinion: Cocky’s disposition was what a poet might call just fucking awful.

“Funny,” the Concocter thinly smiled, even as her purple eyes narrowed. “Stop wasting my time. What do you want, Archer?”

It was amusing to see the eyes were purple now. When Indrani had left Refuge they’d been bright yellow, and last time she’d been at the Arsenal they’d been an unnatural shade of green. The hair was still black – had been for a few years, though the more sober colours these days would never make up for that memorable month when they’d been thirteen and Cocky had thought she could pull off platinum blonde – but it was now straight instead of curly, and long enough to be pulled into a thick topknot behind her head. The colour of her skin she’d never tinkered with, a pleasant southern tan that could be from anywhere south of the Waning Woods, but where other women might paint rouge over their lips Cocky had simply turned her own the same shade of purple as her eyes. It was one of her more striking appearances, Indrani admitted, if far from one of her wildest.

“I’m here on behalf of the Black Queen,” Archer replied. “You fucked up, Cocky, and you were even sloppy enough to leave a trail. So now I’ve got questions and you’ve got answers.”

Indrani let her smile harden a bit.

“It’s up to you how polite my getting those is going to be,” Archer said.

“She’s no queen of mine,” Cocky said, rolling her eyes. “My terms were reached with the Grand Alliance. If you want to ask me questions, come back tomorrow after making an –”

Indrani kept it measured: a light jab in the throat had her choking, but it wouldn’t do lasting harm. The Concocter stumbled backwards and Archer elbowed the door aside, her old acquaintance tripping all over her grey robes as she tried to retreat. Wasn’t this familiar too? Indrani felt a surge of grim amusement pass through her. When she’d been young and fresh off bondage, fresh into the Lady’s care, she’d once done something much like this. Only instead she’d beaten the Concocter for the purpose of ransacking her stores of anything Indrani might fancy without any need to do something like trading.

Cocky had taken it when it happened, she didn’t have much of a choice, but then that same night Beastmaster and the Silver Huntress had jumped Indrani in her cot and savagely beaten her within an inch of her life before returning the goods to the Concocter. They’d got paid with manticore bait and sedative for Lysander and a full set of tailored physical supplement potions for Alexis, both of which were near impossible to get from anyone else.

The Lady had said not a word, no more than she had done when Indrani robbed the Concocter. The Ranger did not play favourites.

“You’ve got ties with smugglers,” Indrani said. “We’ve got proof, so you have not a damned thing to hide behind.”

Cocky, one hand clutching her throat, backpedalled deeper into her rooms. Where Masego’s were the amalgam of a workshop, library and bedchamber as conceived of by somehow who genuinely saw little difference between the three, these were openly a potioneer’s brewing room with a small nook to sleep in. Between the seven cauldrons, the several cabinets of ingredients and the lines crisscrossing the room with herbs hung on to dry, it was a miracle a writing desk could fit in there, much less the silk panes delimiting the space where Cocky’s bed and clothes trunk had been stashed. It was all real candles in here, as magelight might disrupt more delicate brewing, but enough strange humours had seeped into the wax and wick that half the flames seemed to burn in blue or green. Those flickering lights played against the Concocter’s face as she tried to reach for a vial of green liquid in a rack, though she froze before she withdrew it.

Indrani’s knife at her throat had seen to that.

“None of that, now,” Archer said. “I told Cat I could get answers out of you alive, I’ll look like a real tart if we have to call up your shade instead.”

She paused, meeting purple eyes.

“But the more you try your hand at this the more I’m feeling tartish, get me?”

Cocky scoffed.

“You haven’t asked a thing,” she said. “You’re just looking to hurt something, as usual.”

“Tell me about your smuggling friends,” Indrani said, taking back the blade.

“Did you think just because you shoved a few hundred people in a box they’d stop wanting things?” the Concocter snorted. “A few flake addicts from the guards were already looking to get their fix in quietly, a few strings were pulled and it got broader and organized. If your mistress had any sense, she’d look away and let it go. No one can live off only what’s brought in on inspected supply wagons.”

The thing was, Indrani tended to agree. Flake was pretty gentle, as far as alchemical drugs went, and the infamous side-effect of your skin flaking off in chunks when scratched only happened if you’d been taking it regularly for years. Otherwise it was just euphoria in a bottle, which might go a long way towards making daily patrols in this boring grey hell liveable. It was inevitable that people in the Arsenal would want, once in a while, to partake of a little something without it first coming across the desk of the likes of the First Prince of Procer in a list. It was healthy, even. Keeping your head down all your life, toeing the line to the letter, it killed something in your soul. On the other hand, she could see where Cat was coming from too: people were smuggling things into the dimensional fortress where all the god-killing weapons and the nasty frontline tricks were being made, and that meant risks.

The kind that you just didn’t take when it came to Ol’ Bones, unless you wanted a city or two to die screaming.

“And when did you get involved with them?” Archer asked.

“Well, Indrani, haven’t you become just the most devoted hunting hound I ever did see,” Cocky sneered “How does that work, anyway? Throw the Archer a fuck, she brings back a few corpses? I suppose even she can’t stomach you for long, if she has to pass you off to the H-”

The Concocter went still as the tip of the longknife hovered a mere hair’s breadth away from the surface of her left eye, afraid to even blink. Anger was good, anger was warmth in the blood and something like satisfaction when you finally butchered the thing that’d made it burn in you. But anger wasn’t going to get her those answers, so Archer made an effort to master it. It wasn’t true, she knew that, and it wasn’t like some words from a woman long a stranger would make her doubt it. But to have someone speak in such a vile way of ties that were so important to her almost felt like a sort of defilement.

“You don’t really need two of those to keep brewing,” Indrani said. “And you don’t need either of them to answer my questions. I wouldn’t forget that if I were you, Cocky. I certainly haven’t.”

“You wouldn’t,” the Concocter said.

Indrani smiled at her, the knife’s tip still as the grave.

“You know me better than that,” Archer simply said. “If I have to repeat my question, I’ll be taking something as recompense.”

“Maybe a year ago,” Cocky said. “I needed some ingredients that’d get me unwanted attention, they needed the kind of clout that comes from having a Named in your corner. We scratched each other’s back, that was it.”

It would have had to be something truly unpleasant, Indrani knew, for the Concocter to not have wanted to put it to ink in requisition form. There were very few lines the Grand Alliance was not willing to cross, these days. The desire to survive had lowered the standards of what people were willing to suffer to exist, or even enable. But Archer was not here for Cocky’s old tricks, she had greater prey to hunt.

“You introduced the Wicked Enchanter to them,” Indrani said. “Why?”

Catherine didn’t know Cocky the way Archer did, didn’t understand that for a stranger there really weren’t a lot of levers that could be used to move a woman like that. So Cat figured that the Bard had found an ally here, but Indrani didn’t. The Lady had raised all of them to know better than to make a deal with any entity you didn’t know how to kill.

“Because he seemed like a man who’d use the service,” Cocky said, rolling her eyes. “And he might have become useful when-”

The longknife flicked down, finely slicing through skin from below the eye to the bottom of the Concocter’s cheek. Blood began to bead before the point had returned to hover above the eye, and the other Named swallowed a moan of pain.

“Lie to me again and it’ll be the eye,” Archer coldly said. “We called up his shade, Cocky, and we dug into things. We know a lot more than you think.”

“Fine, it was a favour called in,” the Concocter hissed out. “Happy?”

Indrani’s face tightened in dismay. Had she really struck a deal with the Bard? Gods, one of the Lady’s own? They’d been taught better than that, than to let themselves be made pawns and pieces in the Game of the Gods.

“Whose favour?”

“You know who,” Cocky said. “The woman holding your leash might despise her, but half the heroes have a fond word to say.”

“The Wandering Bard,” Indrani quietly said.

“I heard the Peregrine has her back,” the Concocter smiled. “I expect he’ll speak for me as well, if you try to press this too far. Did you think you were the only one who could make friends in high places?”

Archer’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the longknife.

“You have no idea who you bargained with,” she tightly said. “Burning Hells, Cocky, what made you think you could bargain with a creature like that and end up ahead? We were both taught –”

The Concocter let out a burst of laughter, and Indrani had to pull back the blade or she would have pierced her eye.

“Oh, Ashen Gods,” Cocky said. “Years out of Refuge, even after taking up with another band of villains, you still clutch to your blanket like a child. That blade you point so proudly at me, it’s from the set she gave you isn’t it? And that scarf, taken from the man who owned you while she looked on with motherly fondness.”

“We all hid beneath her wing, before we could fly on our own,” Indrani said. “There is no shame to be had there.”

“There’s always shame in being a fool,” the Concocter said. “She wasn’t your mother, Indrani. She wasn’t any of our mothers, and she was barely even our teacher. She never gave a damn, even about you, and well all knew you were the favourite. The way you’ll shatter like cheap glass if you admit that is honestly the most pathetic thing about you.”

The urge was there to slice her again. Archer had sliced people for less, and she was being provoked her beyond what anyone could expect her to suffer without steel being bared. But Indrani had not come here to spill blood, she had come here for answers. And if she could not master herself long enough for get what she’d come from, if red heat and pride was all that she could bring forth, then she truly would be pathetic. Just a thug, fit for thug’s work and nothing else. And the truth was that while there might have been a time where that would have been enough, when taking and bearing the consequences and doing it again and again and again until she died would have satisfied her, it no longer was. She had a hearth now, a warm place by it, and sometimes that meant bending the neck for a bit. A thirteen the thought of this would have disgusted her to the bone, but she was older now. She had learned what the world was like, when you were alone.

Indrani had come to understand why it was the world had fewer wolves than dogs.

“Gasses were used on the librarians in the Miscellaneous Stacks,” Archer said. “They were rendered unconscious but not killed. Your work as well?”

Cocky was, for the first time, visibly taken aback.

“I, but – I didn’t use those,” the Concocter said. “They were a private commission from the Highest Assembly and the First Prince, a way to quell riots without deaths. But I only made a single batch, and it should be in the Repository awaiting shipment. I haven’t attacked anyone, Archer.”

She wasn’t lying, Indrani decided. Not because of any particular fondness for the Concocter, but because she very much doubted that Cocky had dragged the potions and set them off in the Stacks. She wouldn’t have the know-how for something that complex, much less the sneaking skills. Which meant there was at least one other traitor out there, acting knowingly on behalf of the Bard. And it’d been a traitor who’d known about a private commission being kept in the Repository, so most likely someone who worked in the Workshop and would have known about Cocky brewing something meant to ship out.

“I believe you,” Archer admitted. “And will speak to that, along with the rest.”

Something like surprise, and perhaps even gratitude, flickered across Cocky’s face. Indrani, without wasting a moment, flipped her grip and struck her right in the fucking face with her longknife’s handle. The Concocter’s nose broke with a beautiful crunch, cartilage smashed and blood spraying. Archer’s loosened her grip, after, and flicked her wrist as if she was shaking her knuckles.

“Consider that a reminder,” Indrani said, “of lessons you should not have forgot.”

And with that their business was done, she mused. If there was need for the location of the Repository crates raided for the gas receptacles, someone could be sent for ask. Besides, it was quite possible that the Concocter herself did not know. The other woman had reeled back from the blow, shouting in pain and holding her broken nose, but after her fingers came away red she turned to Indrani with cold eyes. Cocky smiled, that one nasty little number she only pulled out when she had something cutting to spit out in someone’s ear.

“And there she is,” the purple-eyed woman said. “Our old friend Indrani, bare of the pretences. It’s a relief to see you acting without those airs you’ve been putting on. Still looking to just make someone bleed and then hiding behind another’s cloak when consequences come.”

That stung, more than it should have after the years that’d passed since she left Refuge.

“I’m not the one who’s hiding behind the Terms,” Indrani replied. “Or you’d be bleeding from a lot deeper in for some of the things you’ve said tonight, Cocky.”

“Whatever happened to rules only mattering to other people, Archer?” the Concocter slyly said. “I thought you were going to be freed, unfettered. Nothing but you and the horizon, right?”

“Which of us is supposed to be clutching the Lady like a blanket again?” Indrani jeered. “Did it wound your precious little pride when she left, Cocky? Did it bite to realize that even with all your little potions and secrets in the end you just weren’t that special?”

“Even now you’re licking her boots,” the Concocter said, tone disgusted.

“I always knew what she was,” Indrani replied. “Who she was. She told us from the start. It’s your own delusions that scraped you raw.”

“Knew what she was?” Cocky shouted. “You sanctimonious bitch, you signed up with the first outfit that took you in. We stayed, Indrani, we stayed and she left. All these years with her, for her, and almost without a word she just left. Because we were pets to her, Archer, not people. And when you find something more interesting to do, pets get left behind.”

“Whining,” Indrani replied, contemptuous. “The pathetic whining of someone who was unwilling to stand on their feet and find their way outside the shelter of the Lady’s shadow. You were given years as a pupil, teachings half the continent would lose a hand for, and now you complain because she was not willing to hold your hand until you breathed your last.”

The Concocter snorted.

“Look at you, talking proudly like you didn’t just trade one mistress for another,” she mocked. “You think it makes you someone, that some girl with a crown found you fit to kill for her? You’re still fetching errands for one of your betters, now you just have some fancy seal behind you instead of Ranger’s reputation.”

There was anger there, Indrani found, but any fool could have found that. The old hate was familiar too, in its own way, but it was the unfamiliar glint that caught Archer by surprise. Envy. And just like that, it fell into place.

“It burns you, doesn’t it?” Archer said. “That I’m actually happy now.”

The Concocter hadn’t even flinched this hard when she’d broken the woman’s nose.

“I wonder if they’d look at you the same, your Woe, if I told them what you’re really like,” Cocky said.

“They know,” Indrani replied. “They’ve known from the start, and they love me anyway. That’s the part that really burns you, isn’t it?”

“You were vile to us,” the Concocter snarled. “To everyone, any time you could get away with it. You taunted and bruised and bled us for sport, and now you’re the Black Queen’s enforcer?”

“We were all like that, Cocky,” Indrani said. “And I don’t miss it, but the lessons of those days kept me alive through worse ones.”

“I still remember that night you forced Alexis into that sack full of beetles and tied it up,” the purple-eyed villainess said. “Gods, the way she screamed. And the Lady just said-”

“That’s one way to cure a fear,” Indrani softly finished.

Casually, she’d said it. Almost amused. There’d been a time where Archer had admired that, thought that callousness was something to be cultivated instead of exactly what it claimed to be: callouses. Roughness born of use, the easiest thing in the world to accrue.

“No wonder she still wants to kill you,” Cocky said. “One look at you with your Hierophant and your little queen and she will draw a fucking blade, Archer.”

If she bent her neck now, Indrani thought, there might yet be something to repair here. Because they’d all hated each other at times, the Concocter was right about that, but it’d also been more complicated than that. Because it’d been them and then everyone else, and that wasn’t a place you could live in for years without loving the people you shared it with. There had been warm lights shared along with the dark places. But Indrani would have to apologize. To express regret. To lie. Because the truth of it was that Archer didn’t particularly regret who she’d been at thirteen. She’d make no excuses for that girl either, but Indrani could look that past in the eye without feeling all that ashamed.

Sometimes she figured that Catherine believed her to be, when they talked of Refuge. But Hells, Cat had always taken them as better people than they were. Sometimes Indrani felt a little bit of shame over that, not being the better person her friend thought she was, but those claws never dug deep. Mostly because Archer actually liked who she was, for the most part. She was comfortable with it, she’d grown comfortable with it. And that meant if the things she cared about changed in ways she might never have imaged they would when she’d been a girl, it didn’t trouble her. Indrani believed in doing what she wanted, most of all, and sometimes that could be a little more complicated than just enjoying what was happening at hand.

“Refuge is dead,” Archer said, “bury it, Cocky, and move on. I have.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” the Concocter laughed, and it was a bleak sound. “You think it’s about your having found a good backer or a bedmate, or even just a place in the world. That we hate the way you thrive.”

“Isn’t it?” Indrani asked.

“It’s the way you laugh with them, Indrani,” Cocky quietly said. “The way there’s no prick to the barbs. Because you love them and they love you.”

Hand whipping around she viciously threw down a rack of empty vials, glass shattering over the floor, and there was a hate on her face that was like pondwater gone still and festering.

“We would have loved you too, if you’d let us,” the Concocter said. “If you’d given us what you give them. But you never did. What is it that makes them so much better, Archer, so much more deserving?”

“I never had to fight them,” Indrani honestly said.

They’d never been competition, the way the others had been in Refuge. There’d been jostling, growing pains, but never anything with bite to it. It’d been a hearth opened to her, not other wolves to fight for the same scraps.

“That’s the thing, Archer,” the Concocter tiredly said. “You never had to fight us either.”

That, more than any other thing she had heard that night, gave Indrani pause. It had the unpleasant ring of truth to it. The other woman drew in on herself, bloody and somehow looking exhausted.

“Go,” she said. “I have to brew myself something to fix the nose and I’ve seen enough of you for two lifetimes.”

Indrani replied with a jerky nod, wiping her blade clean on her coat before sheathing it and abruptly turning. It felt like fleeing when she left the room, no matter how much she told herself otherwise. The door closed shut behind her and Archer let out a shallow breath. She, too, felt oddly exhausted. Leaning against the wall for a bit, she wondered if would truly leave it all at that. There were more pressing things to see to, and she needed to find Cat and pass along the answers, but somehow she thought that if she left now that conversation would be over for good. Could she live with that? Did she want to? Lips twisting, she raised a hesitant hand towards the handle.

The Arsenal shivered.

Indrani’s hair rose up all over her body, the sensation of coming danger acute, and the hand went down. There was never enough time, was there? It was something you had to learn to live with, the give and take of how you were willing to spend yourself. The door was slammed open and Cocky peered out, some sort of dark poultice shining on her cheek. She caught sight of Archer a moment later.

“What was that?” she asked.

The Arsenal shivered again, like door being pounded on.

“Trouble come a ‘knocking,” Indrani drawled.

She cocked her head to the side, studying the other villainess.

“What?” the Concocter said, sounding irritated.

“You’re going to end up on a lot of powerful people’s shit list your role in this, Cat not the least of them,” Archer said.

“And?” Cocky replied, unimpressed by the prediction.

“How would you like to get a head start,” Indrani said, “on earning your way out of those?”

They locked gazes, hazelnut to purple, and a long moment passed. The Concocter dipped her head the slightest bit.

“I still have a field bag,” Cocky said. “Give me a moment to grab it.”

It wasn’t much, Indrani thought. Barely anything at all. But it was something, and if she’d learned anything since she’d stumbled across the two most important people of her life in Marchford all those years ago, it was this: people who didn’t plant seeds never got to grow trees.

Indrani wasn’t surprised the Arsenal’s wards eventually broke, even though Cocky expressed her disbelief what must have been a least three different times. It didn’t matter how tall the walls were or how thick the gates when there were traitors behind both. The breach had taken place in a set of hallways between the Belfry and the Workshop, so the two of them had been close, but by the time they got there the battle had moved on. An utterly smashed workshop that’d once belonged to the Blind Maker now boasted mostly broken wood and corpses, though fresh guards had come in since what must have been the first slaughter. Archer found an officer and got asking question, Cocky lingering behind her and not bothering to offer potions to the few wounded still around. Indrani approved.

The brews she carried that’d help were expensive, and best kept for more urgent situations.

“We were crushed, Lady Archer,” the Levantine captain in charge told her. “We would have all been slain if the Mirror Knight and his allies did not intervene.”

“Who did the crushing?” Indrani asked.

“Fae,” the captain said. “They were not many, less than thirty, but their power… it was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

If the Courts ever remembered the Dominion of Levant’s existence it was no doubt to even more promptly forget about it, so that didn’t mean much. There was no point in asking the mustachioed man if it was a princess or a count they were dealing with, it wasn’t like the fairies went around announcing their titles to human rank and file.

“Mirror Boy and his band drew them away?” Indrani pressed.

“Some but not all,” the captain said. “A band left the rest, heading for Belfry. And there are some among my men who say it was not the Mirror Knight that had the fae moving.”

“Meaning?” Archer frowned.

“They might have been looking for someone, and that is why they let themselves be drawn towards the Repository,” the captain said. “But it was battle, Lady Archer, and that makes for poor recall and wild truths.”

“Thank you, captain,” Indrani muttered, and the man saluted.

Cocky leaned in closer.

“The Repository is where they’ve been stashing that sword,” she quietly said.

“Adjutant’s with Looking Glass and his buddies,” Indrani replied. “He’ll keep them pointed at the enemy, and the enemy out of the good stuff. We’re headed for the Belfry.”

The Concocter’s brow rose.

“Worried about your,” and there she hesitated, “… lover?”

“Partner,” Archer said. “No, he can look after himself just fine. But he keeps some nifty stuff in his rooms, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fae headed that way.”

“We’ll be too late to do much, considering the fae left some time ago,” Cocky pointed out.

“We’re late as first line of defence, sure,” Indrani shrugged. “But we’re headed out as reinforcements, and for that we’re just fine.”

Because a running battle against fae in the middle of the Belfry had trouble written all over it, which mean Cat would be drawn there like a moth to the flame. Probably half drunk and halfway through a terrible plan that’d somehow end up working, Indrani fondly thought, or at least close enough to working that she could pretend it’d achieved what she’d meant it to. They set out quickly, because fashionably later got results but actual late was just being sloppy. The gates into the great tower of the Belfry were wide open, but wariness wasn’t why Indrani’s steps stuttered. The very stone of the floor had been charred, almost turned to glass in that distinctive way that blackflame did. But this was too much, she thought, and not wielded well. Even just the shape of the burn…

She strode forward, heedless of the possibility of ambush and even the sound of fighting far above. The Night had, by the marks on the floor and the slight inclined of melted stone, billowed outwards in an explosion. But at the centre of where that explosion had begun, Archer could see a charred corpse with a knife stuck in its neck. She knew that blade, had seen it used before. No, Indrani told herself. It can’t be her. She wouldn’t have died from a knife. Cat might not be able to pull the regeneration tricks the drow could, or even heal with Night, but she could have kept herself from bleeding out long enough to kill the Fallen Monk and gotten to a healer. Indrani chose to ignore the treacherous whisper in the back of her mind about Night being able to hurt Catherine, when she did not properly control it.

“Cocky,” Archer said, voice steady. “I need you to have a look at that corpse.”

The other woman grimaced.

“Archer, that’s probably…”

“If it is, I want to know for sure,” Archer said. “Cut the body if you have to.”

The Concocter slowly nodded.

“And you?”

Indrani reached for the bow on her back, fingers itching for an arrow, and looked up at the spire where the sounds of a fight were echoing from.

“I’m going to make someone bleed,” the Archer said, and her voice rang of steel.