A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 7 44: Antecedents

I was too restless to sleep, after the council, and so I sought company instead.

Masego barely slept any more than I did, so it was at the… well, he’d probably call it a laboratory but it was really more a charnel yard that the Firstborn provided him. He was cutting open a rylleh’s skull with a silver knife when I entered, from the top of the head to the strange almost beak-like nose bone that drow had where humans had cartilage. While there were more bones there were less muscles on their species’ face compared to humans and they were placed differently. It was one of the reasons the drow were considered less expressive.

I dropped into a rough stone seat, watching him work. As a girl I’d found the sight gruesome, but these days I’d made enough corpses that their sight evoked little in me.

“Learned anything useful?”

Hierophant did not immediately answer, waiting until he’d finished cutting through the bone properly and revealed the black sausage-like brain under.

“Useful?” he mused. “I do not know. Yet certainly interesting.”

We tended to have somewhat different ideas about what that word meant, but what the Hells. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

“Like what?” I asked.

He looked surprised, eyeing me suspiciously.

“You do not usually express much interest in my dissections,” Masego said.

He sounded, I thought, a tad reproachful.

“It’s drow corpses and I am First Under the Night,” I shrugged. “You might say it’s in my wheelhouse.”

He mulled over that, then nodded in agreement.

“What do you know about the nature of the Gift?” he asked me.

I hummed.

“I read the Natura Virtutis by Warlock Shatha,” I said. “The ability to do magic has two components: one his physical, the body must be born with the talent, while the second is metaphysical and necessitates a soul.”

“Shatha’s work is incomplete, never explaining how the likes of devils and fae can use a form of sorcery,” Masego noted. “I would recommend you read Magister Cressida’s Theologos, which skillfully revises and completes the theory. Still, it serves as a base.”

He paused.

“The metaphysical aspect is the most essential of the two,” Masego said. “It is why Akua was able to practice magic after seizing a new body while it would be pointless of me to attempt the same: the Saint of Sword severed the part of my soul that interconnects with the physical, allowing the use of magic. Changing the body would mean nothing.”

“I’m following so far,” I said. “How does that lead to the Firstborn?”

He tapped the side of his knife on the open drow brains.

“There have been Firstborn mages in the past,” Masego said. “We know this as a fact. So why none since the creation of Night?”

I hummed. That was a pretty good question, actually.

“Did the Sisters kill the capacity?” I asked.

“It would be more apt to say that they replaced it,” Hierophant said. “As far as I can tell, the same part of the soul that was cut in me – that allows the use of magic – is used for the manipulation of Night.”

“Every drow uses Night, to some extent,” I pointed out. “They can’t all be capable of magic.”

He beamed at me.

“My wonder exact,” Masego said. “I can think of only two existing manner of creatures that can all use a manner of sorcery, fae and devils. Species whose sentience is a complex matter.”

Considering fae were living stories and devils grew more intelligent the older they got, on top of both having a sort of immortality, I could see his point. The Firstborn weren’t really like either.

“Every Firstborn is born with some Night, supposedly,” I mused. “It’s only those Mighty that have been alive since its creation that lived without it.”

And there were precious few of those. Not even all of the Ten Generals had been born before the fall of the Empire Ever Dark.

“That is because your patronesses have changed the souls of the drow,” Masego said, sounding impressed by the Crows for what might be the first time.

I felt their weight of their attention suddenly in the back of my mind, the two of them listening through my ears. Masego’s golden eye lingered on me, and I wondered if he could see them. I wouldn’t be surprised. Either way it didn’t stop him.

“It is very crude work,” Hierophant opined. “Metaphysically speaking, it is the equivalent of hammering a nail through the forehead to serve as a connection. In those born capable of magic – as one of he rylleh you provided me was – it appears to destroy that capacity.”

Komena felt irritated, I could tell because the emotion was strong, but underneath that cover I could sense that Andronike was worried. Gods. How many people in all their years had ever found this out? It couldn’t be many.

“In those born without it, however,” he continued, “it appears to serve as a prosthetic of sorts. An appendage that functions as the connection between soul and body they do not have.”

My eye narrowed.

“Let me guess,” I said. “That nail, it’s the piece of Night that every Firstborn is born with.”

“More likely there is additional Night as well, gifted by Sve Noc through the nail so that its functionality is confirmed,” Masego said. “I imagine that when Night ‘fades’ after a death, it is returned to your patronesses through that very appendage – destroying itself in the process.”

He leaned forward over the corpse-covered table.

“Did I miss anything?” Hierophant coldly smiled, asking the goddesses lurking in my soul.

They went away, silent, and he chuckled.

“I didn’t think so,” Masego said.

I rolled my eye at him.

“Always glad to see you making friends,” I chided.

“I admire the inventiveness of their original work, do not misunderstand me,” he said. “It is their ramshackle attempt at apotheosis that offends. Unlike you, who stumbled to the result accidentally, they have no excuse for their sloppiness.”

Nice of him to excuse me, but I couldn’t actually argue with the way he’d put it so I did not risk sarcasm.

“It was a desperate decision made to save their people, Zeze,” I reminded him. “Not a master plan.”

“I will not laud a hollow doll as a god, Catherine,” Masego shrugged. “If they claimed themselves to be less I would keep silent, but so long as they claim divinity I will offer the very scorn that claim deserves.”

Yeah, I did not foresee a great friendship between Zeze and the Crows. A civil tongue was probably the best I could hope for, to be honest, so best to change the subject before they started listening in again.

“So, do you think Kurosiv made their own nails?” I asked.

That got his interest.

“I do not think they can,” Hierophant admitted.

“Huh,” I said. “How’s that?”

“The ‘miracle’ of Night that creates these nails, Catherine, is not something any of the Mighty could do,” he told me. “We came here, you might remember, for the original Night. The power that was bestowed onto Sve Noc by the Gods Below and makes up the heart of their godhead.”

“You think the nails are made of that,” I guessed.

He nodded.

“Kurosiv is bestowed and not bestower,” Masego said. “They cannot create nails because only the original Night can shape souls.”

“So they’re just usurping where the nails go,” I mused. “Taking over part of the spider web, so to speak.”

“You forget,” Hierophant said, “that the nails are part of Sve Noc. It is more accurate to say that Kurosiv is attempting to devour their godhead one piece at a time, that they might become a god in the place of the Sisters.”

I clenched my fingers. Like a tug of war that only ended when one side held all the rope and strangled the enemy with it.

“It’s to the death, then,” I said.

Masego looked at me, eye glimmering gold.

“Oh yes,” he smiled. “Very much to the death.”

Well, wouldn’t that make for sweet dreams.

I was up before dawn, breaking my fast when Cordelia was brought to me by an ispe of the Losara. My sigil had smoothly slid into the role of my attendants and escorts since my arrival, treating me as if I had never left, and it would be a lie to say that I did not enjoy it. The former First Prince sat across the low table, eyeing the spread of food laid out for us.

“Don’t eat the mushrooms,” I told her. “They make humans laugh uncontrollably whenever we drink water.”

The blonde princess looked appalled.

“You have a plate full of them,” Cordelia said.

“I can burn out the effect,” I said, “and they are tasty as Hells.”

I popped another one in my mouth, chewing on the savoury flesh. I could eat all sorts of terrible stuff again now that I could use my Name to burn out ‘poison’ again, it was pretty great. She stuck to the bread and what she probably assumed to be honey and not the blood of gem-eating snake crystallized and then melted into a brew. Tasted pretty similar, though, so might be best not to break it to her. We polished off our food and then got to business, Ivah arriving at the precise moment I needed of it. It bowed and sat at Cordelia’s side under her curious gaze.

“Ivah is my second among the Losara,” I said. “And it speaks fluent Chantant and Lower Miezan, as you know, so it’ll be your guide and translator. The highest Mighty usually speak a few human languages, but those historians you asked for won’t.”

It would also be her escort, since Cordelia was full of knowledge and eminently killable. Having the effective head of the Losara at her side would it clear she wasn’t to get her throat cut so some jawor could learn to speak Reitz.

“You have gathered them, then,” Cordelia said.

“I have,” I replied. “Though there’s no such thing as a Firstborn historian in the sense you mean. There are Mighty, though, who through Secrets or because of personal interests have gathered histories of their people both ancient and recent.”

“That is what I need,” she nodded. “May I call on your war council for information as to the enemy’s situation across the river?”

I nodded, seeing no issue.

“Ivah will handle it,” I said. “Practically speaking, you can ask for pretty much anything you need.”

I offered her a sharp smile.

“One might say your work is divinely blessed.”

She looked rather torn at that. Sve Noc were horrors, hard to get around that, but it was useful to have gods in one’s corner.

“I look forward to working with you, then, Ivah of the Losara,” Cordelia said, offering it a nod.

“And I you,” Ivah replied, perhaps more politely than honestly.

Eh, it’d work out. Ivah would prefer to go wade in the blood of our enemies at my side, sure, but its skills were better employed elsewhere at the moment. Besides, if I was reading the Sisters right it would be good for it to have a history of working with Proceran royalty. My tenure as First Under the Night would end before long and my replacement would need to deal with humans whether they liked it or not. I took my leave from them, having something like an appointment to head to. It had been long since I last communed with my patronesses, and I’d yet to have a proper look at the temple where they roosted. N my way to the aerie, though, I came across an unexpected sight.

Akua was leaning against a windowsill in one of the high corridors overlooking the ramparts, hair loose and eyes distant. My limping gait was easy enough to recognize but she did not turn when I approach, eyes staying on the distant shapes of the great monuments the Sisters had stolen from their ruin of an empire to adorn their capital with. Not unlike, I thought, magpies making a nest. I came to stand by her, leaning on my staff instead of the stone.

“Copper for your thoughts?” I offered.

She did not answer immediately, tucking back an errant strand behind her ear. Her red riding dress was form-fitting, but I followed her gaze instead of letting mine linger. She did not seem in that kind of a mood in the slightest.

“I was thinking,” Akua said, “of Praes.”

I hummed.

“What of it?”

Her jaw tightened.

“I killed it, you know,” Akua said. “The Dread Empire. It might be your father that handed me the match, Catherine, but he couldn’t have done it in my place. It was my decision. I saw…”

She shook her head.

“Too much, I suppose,” Akua said. “Too much I could no longer ignore.”

I did not interject.

“And so I burned an empire I could have ruled,” the golden-eyed sorceress said.

I leaned against my staff of dead yew, letting it bear my weight and carefully not looking at her.

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

A long moment of silence.

“Yes,” she finally said.

My heart clenched. A golden gaze turned to me, darkly amused.

“There is no need for anguish, dearest,” Akua said. “You did not fail. It is not the throne I regret but what it might have meant.”

“And what’s that?” I warily asked.

“Making a difference,” she said. “I could have made things better, Catherine. Mended wounds.”

She shrugged.

“Here, at your side again, I am not that woman,” she said. “I trail in your wake. Not unpleasantly so, but when I remember those who looked at me with hope in their eyes it does not seem enough.”

I studied her, silently, from the corner of my eye. She looked at the horizon still.

“So what is it you want?” I asked, too casually.

She rose from the windowsill, all fluid grace, and offered me a lovely smile.

“I do not know,” Akua said. “But is it closer to the woman that struck the match than the one who stood silent in the war council last night.”

She left, brushing her hand against my arm as she passed, and I said nothing. I thought, standing there as she left, of that moment when you flip a coin. After it reaches the apex and begins to come down, just before it hits your palm.

Just before you know what face will come up.

I called Zombie to me instead of taking the stairs all the way to the summit of the temple-fortress.

It didn’t end up mattering, because before I could reach my patronesses they reached me. The touch of the Sisters against my mind was light, but the images they offered up burned bright: I was needed elsewhere. The enemy had come, and I pulled at Zombie’s reins as our destination changed. Yesterday, we’d won a victory at the Shrine of Tears and I’d personally slapped Kurosiv in the place. It looked like the Fate-Giver was a sore loser, because the Shrine was where it was picking a fight today. And while I’d been expecting Ishabog the Adversary, the opposition’s designated raider, to make an appearance what I got was altogether worse: Moren Bleakwomb had come out to play, and the Third General was in no mood for half-measures.

What had been sheets of rain yesterday was now frozen solid, holes smashed through where the raiders attacked. Mighty Kasedan and its sigil had been assigned to hold the Shrine after we retook it, but I could feel not a single survivor of the Kasedan within. All the Firstborn that remained were of that Other Night, the one I could not read as deeply. Besides, I only had need of eyes to be able to tell there would be no survivors: a blizzard was howling behind the ice walls, the mark of Moren Bleakwomb letting loose. It was not the Losara that I led into battle, as it was no longer their role: they were oathkeepers and priests now, no longer warrior-Mighty.

Instead it was the Rumena at my back and the Tomb-maker itself at my side. Standing before one of the holes, I watched the blizzard and cocked my head.

“That’s stronger than I was led to expect,” I noted. “In sheer power, Bleakwomb’s a notch above even you.”

General Rumena did not disagree, which spoke volumes.

“Moren has grown in strength,” the Tomb-maker evenly said. “More than it should have. This was not taken from another Mighty. It was given.”

The scorn in the word was thick. The worthy rose, the worthy took: they were not handed gifts. So Kurosiv had begun to strengthen their lieutenant, huh. I supposed there was nothing keeping them bound to play by Sve Noc’s rules anymore.

“How does it compare to Radigast?” I asked.

“Close,” Rumena somberly said.

I let out a low whistle. Radigast the Guest, the First General, was powerful enough that even when it possessed the bodies of other Firstborn – the Secret that saw it earn its sobriquet – it could usually bat other Generals around. It and the Gloom-shards was pretty much the reason southern Serolen had yet to turn into a rout, since its sigil was spread out all over and so it could move from one battle to another in the bat of an eye. I rolled my shoulder.

“Well, Rumena,” I said, “let’s knock before we enter. It’s only polite.”

I pulled down my hood as the Tomb-maker took a wary step away from me, breathing in and sinking deep in the Night. Blackflame was nothing to sneer at, when you concentrated it, and I’d long learned that trick. I smashed the sheet of ice before us, the sea of black fire I slammed into it sublimating the frozen water and the gust of air making the blizzard within disperse for a moment. Near the gate, anyway. I flicked a glance at Rumena.

“Don’t dawdle,” I chided. “We’ve a traitor to discipline.”

I stepped into the howling winds, immediately feeling the cold eating at my flesh. Night flared in my veins, burning it away, but I was still reluctantly impressed. That’d been quick. A hundred eyes bloomed to replace my dead one, all buried in wind and snow, but I was feeling out the currents. There was an eye to the storm, a place without wind or frost. Moren and its sigil were there, not in this lethal storm. Behind me I felt Rumena’s presence burn in the Night, the ground moving as it raised out of solid stone a path for its sigil to take. Good, that took care of that. I could go straight for Bleakwomb.

It must have thought much the same, because even as I began weaving a bubble of Night against me – a sphere of stillness that would kill the winds – I felt the great presence in the Other Night move towards me. The winds picked up in strength, ice began to spread over the snow and reach for my boots.

“None of that,” I sharply said, smashing down the butt of my staff.

Tongues of fire shot out against the ground, revealing bare stone again, and I finished that bubble of stillness just in time for Moren to strike its first blow: high above us, I began to hear cracks.

“You fucking loon,” I said, half-admiring. “You’re bringing down the ceiling on us, aren’t you?”

Only it was worse than that. Wasting no time, I pulled at Night and filled my bubble of stillness with spinning winds – not as strong as Moren’s, but strong enough to turn aside anything falling on me. Only it’d not just been me that Bleakwomb was aiming at. When it’d brought down the ceiling, it’d filled a massive storm with hundreds of large pieces of stone. Rumena’s hall was ripped apart in moments and I cursed, ordering it to withdraw in the Night. This wasn’t a fight, it was a fucking rat trap – and this time we were the rats. The Tomb-maker balked. Its sigil should retreat, it agreed, but itself… We both paused when a dreamlike vision shivered through our minds.

Andronike’s hand, but the memory had been taken by Komena: a lookout from the Ysengral had just seen Mighty Ishabog and its sigil moving to cut our retreat.

“Go,” I snarled at Rumena through the Night. “Clear them out.”

There was no argument this time. I turned my attention back to Moren Bleakwomb, whose gaze I could feel on me through the storms. I could see through its own works, I thought. So that was why even though it was far from a brawler it’d made it up to Third General: it always had the advantage of home territory, because it brought the territory with it. Unless I dispersed that blizzard I was fighting uphill and dispersing that thing would blow through most of my strength in the Night. Attrition and aggression with the same single Secret. We’d underestimated our opponent, I thought. Not expected that Kurosiv would empower its lieutenant.

I was not prepared to win this fight.

“Still,” I told the blizzard, “there’s appearances to maintain. You can’t just stroll in, wipe out a sigil and then stay put in a temple that used to be ours. That’d be bad for morale.”

I moved around my footing, placed a second hand on my staff and squared my shoulders. I smiled, Night flooding through my veins. Fighting Moren’s Secret would just exhaust me, so I did the very opposite. I attuned my Night to its own and fed the working, filled its belly to bursting until the winds howled so loudly that the scream shook the very walls and the pillars holding up the roof began to crack. Ropes snapped, painted shrines shattered and even the frozen waters were ripped out of the canals. I could feel Moren struggle to keep control of the over-mighty working.

“Yeah, you’re recent to that kind of power aren’t you?” I smiled. “You’re not real good at handling it yet, not after so many centuries of stagnating around the same strength.”

Then I’d added my own strength and that had made it significantly worse. I’d thought it would. I was no stranger to biting off more than I could chew, so I had a grip on the difficulties involved in your strength increasing so suddenly. The two of us stood in the storm, untouched, as the world broke around us. To my displeasure Moren had control enough to spare its own sigil, maintain the eye of calm, but that was all it could save. The Shrine of Tears broke, everything shattered and ripped apart until no two stones stood atop one another and the beautiful place I had seen yesterday was but a dream.

The winds died, leaving only a flat empty expanse of snow and a ring of rubble around us. I met the eyes of the silhouette across the field, Maren Bleakwomb’s staring back unblinking. A tall and skeletally thin drow, haggard in their stringy blue and green clothes – looking half-drowned – and covered in masses of round beads as if attempting to make up for the severity of its figure. I offered the traitor-general a mocking bow, gesturing at the nothingness around us.

“It’s all yours,” I said.

The Mighty did not answer. I limped away, feeling it gaze biting at my back.

We both knew this was not going to be our last fight.

It was nightfall by the time the borders were secure again and I’d spent most the day fighting.

But a day had been spent, and so I went to reap the harvest that had been sown. I found Cordelia Hasenbach in what had been someone’s bedchamber but was not covered in papers and tables, the blonde princess animatedly speaking with Ivah and the two dozen other Firstborn on the room as a dzulu of the Losara took notes on what looked like a great map. I squinted at it as I entered, finding mostly sigil names and red lines linking them to other names. The drow bowed as I entered, which I dismissed, and I turned towards Cordelia.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“I am pleased to see you as well, Your Majesty,” she mildly replied.

“I’m about six hours and nine hundred corpses past courtesies right now,” I tiredly replied. “What am I looking at, Hasenbach?”

“War,” Ivah replied in her stead, sounding enthused.

I took a longer look at the map, then scanned the papers. Most of it was poetry, records of duels between Mighty and the found of sig- oh, oh.

“Kurosiv’s entire philosophy is being hands off,” I slowly said. “It’s said multiple times that Sve Noc’s edict ending fighting between sigils under Keter breaks is a betrayal of the Tenets. So even if its sigils start attacking each other instead of us…”

“It will not intervene,” Cordelia said. “At least not immediately.”

“So you figured out which of those sigils hated each other in the Everdark,” I said. “The feuds and wars.”

“Of which there were many,” the princess drily said. “And to think I once believes Alamans quarrelsome.”

“The worthy take,” Ivah agreed.

“If they’re fighting each other instead of looking at us, we have a decent shot at getting to one of the towers,” I smiled. “That is a solution.”

Then I threw her a look.

“If you can get those sigils fighting,” I added. “How do you intend to do that?”

“Last night,” Cordelia said, “I inferred from context that though some of the greatest Mighty have abilities to detect intruders this is not perfect. That these ‘seers’ are concentrated around the towers.”

I narrowed my eye.

“False attacks,” I said. “You want us to paint raiders in other sigil’s colours and spill blood so the feuds start up again.”

“They are not so different as princes, these sigil-holders,” Cordelia quietly said. “And Malicia once taught me the truth of them: they want to fight. All they need is the means and an excuse.”

The latter of which we would provide. My gaze turned to Ivah.

“Lord of Silent Steps,” I said, “your opinion. Does this have the shape of victory to you?”

It mulled over its words before answering.

“There will be war,” Ivah said. “I know not how much, but that there will be war I believe.”

I slowly nodded.

“Then let’s do it,” I ordered.

By nightfall the following day, forty-seven sigils under Kurosiv were openly at war with one another and I’d had to refuse eight requests to add Cordelia Hasenbach to the Night.

She’d bought us our shot with her cleverness, now all that was left was to take it.

I was out of practice sneaking around without using Night.

Probably should start practicing that again. I’d never been so much as a shade of what Vivienne could do in her prime as a Thief, but for a Squire I’d been pretty decent at getting the drop on people. With the years and the bad leg, though, it’d become more practical to just veil myself and limp right past watchers. That wasn’t a possibility tonight: if someone as powerful in the Night as I was started using it on Kurosiv’s side of the canals, they were sure to notice. The Sisters had been pretty firm about that. An argument could be made that it might be best if I didn’t come along, but my answer had been blunt.

Akua and Masego could probably handle any Firstborn that were not one of the Ten Generals, but that was in a duel. If they got caught and swarmed by a dozen sigil-holders, they were good as dead: Zeze could only Wrest the power one person at a time and Akua’s magic was no Night-proof. Someone was going to have a trick that’d get through her shields, and she just couldn’t compete with the mobility that any Mighty worth their salt brought to the table. No, if this went bad – and in my experience, little jaunts like this tended to – they would need me to slap the opposition in the face hard enough it bought time for us to leg it.

Some people thought there was more to it, of course.

“I see you cannot suffer the thought of our going on an adventure without you, dearest,” Akua amusedly. “How charmingly transparent.”

Masego looked at her in surprise.

“I thought it was impolite to point out when she did that,” he said.

“Less so when it is done flirtatiously,” Akua informed him.

I saw unfoldingly nakedly on Masego’s face the struggle between the thought of being able to be ruder to be people and having to be flirtatious. He sighed, turning to look at me.

“Not worth it,” he said.

“Hey,” I weakly replied, unsure whether I ought to be offended or not.

It was not an entirely inauspicious beginning, considering that a great many of the Woe’s successes had been preceded by my so-called friends ragging on me. I supposed that, mathematically speaking, they would have to be.

The half of Serolen our side held was wound up tighter than a coiled spring, but so far the violence had been mostly contained to Kurosiv’s sigils with only a few raids attempted over the canals. They’d run into Mighty Ysengral’s prepared defences and been brutally slaughtered to the last, which had rather discouraged repeat attempts. Well, that and the baskets full of severed heads the Ysengral had catapulted back over the canal as a taunt. The Cradle of Steel’s sigil had knack for the unnecessarily vicious that never failed to amuse.

After speaking with Rumena, we’d picked the tower that had been raised inside the Relic Grove as the one to hit. It was in the northeast of Serolen, past two sigils that had a reputation as nasty customers – the bigger of the two, the Yeshala, had been the effective rulers of one of the Everdark’s cities before the exodus – and deep in a part of the city widely considered a death trap. The Relic Grove had taken a little too well to the surface, the way I heard it.

“The Rozhan tended to the Grove as their sacred duty once and now lend assistance to the cabal protecting the tower,” Rumena said, “but they have been drawn into the war between the Yeshala and the Orobog. Patrols will be thinned.”

Which would mean nothing if either Moren or Ishabog went prowling around looking for us, but we had a plan for that: Mighty Rumena was going raiding. In principle, the target was a camp near the Singing Rings where dzulu taken from us in raids were being kept penned up.

“How likely are you to draw both?” I asked.

Rumena hacked out a laugh.

“I ripped out Ishabog’s ear a sennight ago,” the Tomb-maker replied. “It will come for my head if the opportunity arises, I am sure of it, and Moren will act the moment I get too close to the tower in Rings.”

I grunted, not entirely convinced but knowing it was our best shot. The Relic Grove wasn’t the easiest target by a long shot, we’d been careful not to be too easy to predict in case someone on the other side figured us out, but I disliked plans that relied too much on enemy error. But we’re not exactly swimming in other courses, are we? The civil war that Cordelia had effectively started in Kurosiv’s camp would not last forever: the leech might preach that it let its sigils do as they wished, but they would definitely step in if the fighting lasted too long. They couldn’t afford to erode their military strength by too much, not with the balance of power in Serolen so narrow.

“Try to get the other ear,” I told Rumena. “I want a matching set for my hat when we’ll have talks with their lot.”

It blinked, then let out a startled bark of laughter.

“Your will be done, First Under the Night,” the Tomb-maker replied.

Funny how it only ever called me that when I was telling it to do violence, wasn’t it? Firstborn, what could you do. The timing was carefully arranged so that the three of us got to the canal before Rumena’s raid began, looking over the placid waters at the low hills where the Yeshala had lain their line of defence. Most drow disdained fortifications – which I could understand, given what most Mighty could do to a set of field fortifications in the span of a breath – but the Yeshala Sigil had made an effort, perhaps spurred on by the example of the Ysengral on our side of the canal.

There was a rough spiked wooden palisade set atop a low earthen wall at the bottom of the hills, maybe ten feet away from their end of the canal, and a dozen raised stones reaching higher than the spikes dotting the length of the fortification. Mighty were perched atop the stones, keeping watch on the sigil guarding our shore, and they would be the first obstacle in our way. Akua, standing by my side, had her eyes on the enemy sentinels.

“Strength?” she asked.

“Pravnat,” I said. “Maybe one jawor? Hard to tell without them pulling on Night.”

Pravnat were just promising ispe, the lowest of the Mighty, and jawor squarely a middle rank among that same distinguished number. I would have expected at least one rylleh around to keep an eye on things, but there was none I could see or sense. Either the Yeshala had committed to the hilt to their war with the Orobog, or the sigil’s defence strategy considered these watchers an expendable alarm. Given the usual callousness of Firstborn strategists, it really could go either way.

“Favourable terms,” Akua murmured.

I nodded, silently appreciating she’d refrained from calling it luck. Two villains and the Doom of Liesse talking about getting lucky was just asking for fate to rap our knuckles.

“Hierophant,” I said, “get us started.”

Masego nodded, wresting away the magic in the trinkets he’d taken to carrying everywhere since losing his magic. We’d found that his doing that was harder to sense for Mighty than a mage casting the traditional way, since it was a manipulation of already extant power instead of something forming, so it would be him that wove the enchantment around us. He murmured for some time in the mage tongue, Summer-lit eye sweeping over our forms from under the cloth, and after he snapped his wrist I felt a sensation like warm mist sweep up from my toes to the crown of my head.

“Ibrahim’s Mirror,” Akua murmured. “Your appreciation for the classics never fails to charm, Hierophant.”

“It’s a fine spell,” Masego told her. “Even Father couldn’t find a way to improve the formula.”

The conversation was a little surreal to hear, considering that I could now no longer see either of the people speaking. It wasn’t true invisibility, which was rare and exceedingly difficult to maintain, but instead a sort of reactive illusion forming a cone around each of us. Ibrahim’s Mirror effectively made everything in the cone ‘transparent’, the enchantment reproducing the sight almost perfectly. The were two weakness: one was a slight shimmer, like light on a mirror, whenever the cone first enveloped an outside object. The other was that anyone standing inside the cone was unaffected by the illusion. I cleared my throat.

“Let’s get a move on,” I said. “We only have so long before General Rumena strikes.”

Crossing the canal itself was not particularly difficult. At this time of the day the water was shallow, barely more than waist-high, as a series of lock chambers upstream directed the overflow to channels feeding cisterns in Serolen’s central districts. Water did not register as an object to Ibrahim’s Mirror, so it was unseen that we got to the opposite shore. Akua climbed first, staying close so we would remain visible to each other, then helped up Masego and myself. We were careful to move quickly towards the earthen wall, dripping water on earth instead of stone as much as possible, where it would not remain noticeable.

We were between two ‘watchtowers’, neither of the Mighty perched atop the raised stones seeming to have noticed our crossing. Now, though, came the tricky part. There was no way for us to climb the palisade atop the earthen wall quietly enough drow senses wouldn’t hear us, which meant we’d have to get inventive. So we huddled close, cones overlapping, while Akua knelt by the bottom of the wall. She laid an elegant hand on the packed earth and began to murmur, trailing off into silence after repeating the same incantation ever more quietly the third time. Even standing behind her, I could barely feel the spell magic she used.

It was barely more than a spark, the same petty curse used again and again. The spell was a Wolofite creation, meant to soften an inch of someone’s scalp so it was easier to rip out their hair. Fortunately, it could also be used to soften earth. Akua withdrew her hand after a moment, then began to dig. It was like digging into a garden’s black earth, not an effort in the slightest, and she stopped after hitting hard earth again while Masego and I scattered the earth about. It took six instances before we had a path, then another three until it was widened enough we could crawl and wiggle our way through.

We hurried up the hills as I kept an eye on the Yashala sentinels, who seemed blessedly unaware of what had gone on under their nose. It wouldn’t last forever, sadly. One of them would find the hole or notice the irregularities in the earth and then an alarm would be sounded. Hopefully, though, we’d be past the territory of the Yahsala Sigil by then. Let them arm up and go on war footing all they wanted, we weren’t going back by their territory anyway. Under the cover of a copse of trees we stopped, patting ourselves free of the clinging earth, and huddled close to negate the cones.

“Everyone fine?” I murmured.

Nods. We’d agreed to speak as little as possible.

“Then we take the Soaring Stairs,” I spoke with a grimace. “Let’s go.”

Alas, they were the fastest way through. They weren’t difficult to find, though as in many parts of Serolen I found the sudden transition from thick woods to monument a little jarring. Slowly sloping stone stairs two wagons wide began at the end of a beaten dirt path leading to the canal, rising for what had to be the better part of a mile. Beginning at the bottom, steps had been painted in vivid colours over which Crepuscular glyphs were inscribed in pure white. Each was the name of a Mighty that had attempted to reproduce the famous deed for which the monument was named: begin at the top of the stairs as an ispe and slay enough foes by the time you’d reached to bottom to have become a rylleh. The Cabal of the Soaring Stairs had gathered ispe by the thousands every ten years to attempt it in some sort of grisly ritual festival, but as far as I knew none had ever succeeded after the first.

They were an exquisite sight, cutting through a few more hills and then the beginning of an inhabited district with houses and temples and makeshift streets, but they were also fucking stairs. Near deserted at this time of the day, at least, but since I couldn’t use Night to dull the pain I had to rely on the herbs I’d taken earlier. They were working for now, but I already feared what the trip back would feel like when their effect went away. The three of us moved in silence, hurrying as much as we could. Masego was less than athletic and I limped, so admittedly we were not the fastest infiltrators Calernia had ever seen.

On both sides of us the territory of the Yashala was splayed out, the serpentine streets slithering around knots of houses and towers. Firstborn liked to cluster houses together, build them to have common roofs. It felt more like the roof of a cavern that way, and less like the sky of the Burning Lands where they had come. It made for strange streets, knots of houses and shops and temples popping up like mushroom patches as trees grew through everything and paths winded around in every direction. I let my gaze wander a bit, but not too much. We were not here to sightsee.

“Catherine,” Masego murmured, just loud enough for me to hear, “we have a problem.”

I paused halfway through a step.

“I’m listening,” I said. “What-”

Behind us Night flared, streaks of light touching the sky. It was coming from near the canal. An alarm, sent up by the Mighty.

“That,” Masego said, coming close enough I could see him point ahead.

I looked up at the top of the Soaring Stairs, where a warband was massing. A few dzulu, taking the front, even began sweeping down the stairs. Fuck. They’d found us out too early.

“Change of plans,” I said.

“Indeed?” Akua murmured.

“Follow me,” I said.

And I leapt down into the streets to the side, the two of them following after a beat. I swallowed as scream as my bad leg throbbed, then adjusted my cloak on my shoulders.

It looked like we’d be doing this the hard way.