A Practical Guide to Evil

Chapter Book 7 ex9: Interlude: West II

They were losing the war one victory at a time, Hanno thought.

There’d not been a defeat in Hainaut since the great battle that’d destroyed the principality, and still its defenders were losing the land. Hanno among them. Undaunted by a string of defeats in the fields, the Dead King had begun attacking with renewed vigour and it was working. The trouble was that while Hanno’s army had been crushing the dead wherever they met, it could only be in one place. It could not both prevent the dead from reopening the tunnels at Malmedit and prevent them from breaking through at Juvelun, it could not both fight the army coming from Luciennerie out west and relive General Abigail from the latest siege at Lauzon’s Hollow.

Hanno’s army was spent and exhausted, ever victorious and ever smaller. And even worse was that they were no longer truly an effective shield. The Dead King had begun ignoring the defences in Hainaut and sending large flying constructs – named Pelicans, for their head resembled those of the birds – over the walls to disgorge warbands in Arans and Brabant, where they wreaked havoc before being slain. The Pelicans themselves avoided fighting, however, and though Antigone had brought down several with storms and lighting more kept coming. General Abigail believed that soon Keter would begin landing mages the same way to create disrupting forces by slaying and raising villages.

The Fox’s instincts were sharp enough that Hanno was not inclined to doubt them.

From what he heard, it was much the same to the west. Princess Rozala and her Named had pulled off a miracle just south of Peroulet but the defence line there had still failed for a time and it’d been costly to restore it. To the northwest, the Kingfisher Prince had smashed through every army on his way south to Brus while a sea of undeath nipped at his heels. Then to win his home some respite Frederic Goethal had turned back with half a dozen Named and his retinue to destroy a Crab, getting severely wounded. He would have gotten himself dead instead, had Otto Redcrown not ridden to his rescue and led their retreat through an avalanche. The love ballad about it was highly popular in camp.

Yet for all that the singing did the souls of soldiers good, it did not change the truth of things: the defences south of Cleves were teetering on the brink of collapse and those north of Brus would not hold when the tide came. Everywhere the war was being lost, and as was always the way when doom crept close men looked for someone to blame. The Army of Callow was the least harmful, simply insisting that if the Black Queen were there the dead would already be routed, but others were not so measured. The First Prince was cursed for weakness, Amadis Milenan men lost at the Battle of the Camps that might now turn the tide and the League of Free Cities for having made it all worse.

It was worse between Procerans. Lycaonese blamed feckless southerners, having lost half their princes and all their homes defending strangers they held in contempt, while Alamans cursed the Lycaonese for having drained their lands of men to defend the indefensible and Arlesites for being miserly in helping with the defence of the realm. As for the Arlesites, more and more they questioned their very presence in these parts. Why should they stand against nightmares when their own homes were yet untouched? Should they all die and leave their homeland undefended for when the storm came? Desertions would have been common if there was anywhere safer to flee to. Hanno had kept the army from coming anywhere near Neustal, knowing he’d lose hundreds to Julienne’s Highway overnight should he approach the fortress.

Hanno had been giving hope where he could, though not always in manners comfortable to him. Too many called him Lord White, and some of the rumours from further south… He had pushed down the discomfort, it was a small price to pay for keeping the armies from despair. The Lycaonese captains he had supported when the northerners had almost split over returning to their homelands had begun to look to him for orders, like the Brabantine levies, and even fantassins now sought his commands instead of Princess Beatrice Volignac’s – she whose very lands they were fighting in. There was a time where Hanno would have taken a step back, after realizing he now led what was effectively the second largest military force left in Procer, but no more.

The Truce and Terms had been forged under an understanding: he and Catherine would see to the affairs of Named while Cordelia Hasenbach saw to the affairs of state. It was never to be a perfect arrangement, not when Catherine Foundling was also an influential ruler in her own right, but there had been a balance. All contribute, all held up their part. Only now the First Prince no longer did. Reinforcements were no longer coming, the flow of soldiers and supplies tapering off. Salia was not holding up its part of the bargain, the promise that mortal law could see the war prosecuted without need for Named to step in. So what reason was there for Hanno to step back?

He would not hide behind a broken bargain when his duty was clear.

And so he had spoken with Antigone, who had spoken in turn with the only father she remembered. Which led him to a cool morning, standing with only her at his side as in the distance the sun rose and a brisk wind twisted around them. In the distance smoke rose in curtains, Keter’s armies ever making a hundred fresh devilries to unleash, but here on the hills the only thing to mar the green grass was soft dew. Greenery and water shivered both as the Witch of the Woods finished the last of her spell, clouds high above dispersing as if they’d been swatted through. A weight settled on the world, dew turning to mist as the grass began to twist and grow.

In the rising mists stood a giant out of the old stories. Bronze-skinned like others of his kind, but none of the Gigantes would ever dare to claim kinship with Kreios Maker-of-Riddles. It would have been absurd, in their eyes, as a fly claiming kinship to a hawk. The Titanomachy kept to no king, but that was only because it kept to something simpler: a god. There had been many, once, but now only one still lived. Crippled, left a shadow of himself. And yet Hanno knew without a doubt that even the spell-shadow now staring down at him could snuff his existence out with a thought. The ancient Titans, the founders of the Titanomachy, had done a great many arrogant things.

Calling themselves gods had not been one of them.

“Antigone.”

The voice was fond, thick with affection. Hanno’s comrade shifted, head dipping down and to the side to show both love and reverence. What had led Antigone to be raised by the Titan he did not know, much less what had convinced the ancient creature to teach her of the powers of the Gigantes, but their closeness had been evident from the first time he’d seen them. The Riddle-Maker had no such fondness for him, however, and the gaze was not so kind when turned to Hanno.

“White Knight.”

“Lord Titan,” Hanno replied, simply dipping his head.

Reverence but not love. Insincerity in the language of the Gigantes was seen as highly offensive. Worse than an insult, which at least was clearly conveyed.

“I am told you would make a request.”

He straightened.

“I would,” Hanno said. “This war, Lord Kreios, is one we are losing.”

“So it is.”

The indifference was plain to hear. The Riddle-Maker did not involve himself much in the affairs of his own descendants, much less these of humans. To that pale and patient gaze, they were like mayflies: come and gone in a moment. What did petty wars matter to the last of the Titans?

“It will not be like the others,” Hanno said. “The Intercessor has meddled. Should it be lost, there will be consequences.”

The Titan’s gaze was cold.

“To you.”

“You are wrong, Lord,” Hanno replied. “If this were a crusade, perhaps, but this war is not that. The east came as well, and now the south rises. The world stirs. This war will not be like the others.”

Consideration.

“The Young King no longer withholds strength.”

A concession.

“Your request?”

Hanno breathed in. Many a time he had thought of what he might say, of what words might sway an entity that had known more years he had known breaths. A hundred speeches he had crafted and discarded, only to admit the truth to himself: there were no words that would do it. Convince the Riddle-Maker should he not wish to be convinced. All he could do was ask and hope.

“Fight,” Hanno of Arwad said, and the word rang of power. “Stand with Calernia, with life and hope. Stand with us and fight.”

Silence.

“All things pass,” Kreios Maker-of-Riddles said. “You and he alike. Fate cannot be gainsaid or turned back: what must be will be.”

“Apathy?” Hanno replied. “Is that your answer, last of the Titans? Is that the wisdom your many years have to offer us?”

He glared, defiant.

“I see no wisdom in this,” he said. “Only weariness, and what worth is that? Who in this world is not weary, Riddle-Maker?”

“There is no word in any tongue your mind can comprehend,” the Titan said, “that would touch a sliver of what true weariness is. How could you? You grope at a speck of dust in the face of eternity and call it an end. You are not even a beginning, child. You are the dust of dust.”

“Then what holds you back?” Hanno challenged. “If none of it matters, if we are but dust, what stays your hand?”

The dark-skinned man raised his chin, glaring up at the shape in the mist.

“Retreat from the world all you like, it does not retreat from you,” Hanno said. “It will knock at your door, Maker-of-Riddles. It may be that you would weather our destruction, but would the Titanomachy?”

“All things pass,” the Riddle-Maker simply said.

Hanno scornfully laughed.

“It may be that you are worse than the elves,” he said. “Even they, in the face of oblivion, can muster more than a shrug.”

That, at last, earned a reaction.

“If you knew the truth of your insult, you would swallow your tongue,” the Titan said. “What the Dawning King schemes is abomination. Parcelling godhead into children, forcing a spring rightfully denied.”

“And this shines kindness on you?” Hanno coldly said. “What a prize to claim, that your apathy is less a curse on Calernia than abomination.”

“Your fight means nothing,” the Titan said.

“He’s right,” Antigone said.

Silence. Surprise.

“Antigone?”

“We don’t deserve saving,” the Witch of the Woods said. “It’s still true, what you told me when I was a child: we are petty creatures, humans. Most of us are not worth the saving.”

The last of the Titans watched the woman he had raised, wearing her face of painted clay, and said nothing.

“But it’s not about us,” Antigone said. “It’s about you.”

She moved her head to the side, titled it back. Grief, question.

“You stand at the crossroads again,” Antigone said. “Do you want to be the seven or the one?”

Hanno’s eyes narrowed. He had known that pattern to be older than most suspected, but whatever ancient lore she was speaking of was beyond even the reach of Recall. The Riddle-Maker’s pale eyes stayed on the woman he’d raised, silence stretching, and suddenly the pressure vanished. The mist dispersed and the wind began to blow again. The spell-shadow of Kreios was gone.

“Will he come?” Hanno asked.

Antigone’s shoulders were tense. I don’t know, she signed. Hanno of Arwad ruefully smiled, looking up at the sky. This morning the answer had been a no, he thought.

It was a small step forward, but still a step.

It was Lyonis that had done it, Cordelia decided.

On the great map at the heart of the Vogue Archive, the grey of death had spread. Bremen and Neustria were both lost to the dead and already the norther border of Brus was being tested. Once the generals of the Dead King had found paths through the swamps, once the thousands of Lycaonese slain were armed and assembled into battalions, the push into Brus would begin and the death knell of Procer would ring. And yet those news had not resonated strongly, down south – only Lycaonese principalities had fallen and Cordelia’s homeland was barely considered part of the Principate in some parts.

It was when the dead had smashed through the last few strongholds in Cleves and toppled the hastily raised defences in northern Lyonis that the panic had begun to spread. Princess Rozala had done the impossible – won three battles in three days with the same army across a breadth of sixty miles – and broken the enemy offensive before restoring the defences, but some had still slipped through. For the first time since the war had begun, bands of undead had made into Lyonis. One had even made it as far south as the border of Salia before being ridden down.

Despite Cordelia’s best efforts to maintain the calm, planting rumours it’d been bandits instead, panic had spread like a disease in every direction. The people of the Principate were being confronted with the fallibility of the realm they’d been under all their lives, the thought finally occurring that this wasn’t simply another crisis: Procer would be annihilated if it lost and it was undeniably losing the war.

Riots had been only to be expected. In Salia at least Cordelia had been able to put down largely without blood using the alchemical compound the Concocter had sold the Assembly the recipe to. Elsewhere the rioting had been put down violently if it had been put down at all. Entire swaths of Iserre were now in revolt against both Cordelia and their own prince while the ports of eastern Creusens had seized grain barges meant for further north before beginning to turn away all ships. That was not the worst of it, of course. This very morning her spymaster Louis de Sartrons had brought news of a smaller but more personal grief.

Princess Francesca, her friend and ally of almost a decade, was dead. Her palace had been swarmed by a mob of rioters and disaffected soldiers, who’d dragged the sixty-four years old princess into the streets and splattered her head with a rock before displaying her on a pole. It had happened, Cordelia was told, because Francesca had refused to consider what her distant cousin and successor proclaimed within the hour: Tenerife was seceding from the Principate of Procer. Envoys were being sent, Louis had told her, to Empress Basilia of Aenia and the League of Free Cities. Tenerife was leaving a sinking boat in favour of the protection that might be offered by a rising one.

The principality of Orense had followed suit within the week, deposing its distant prince still fighting under Princess Rozala and installing his youngest daughter in his stead, a thirteen-year-old girl who signed whatever the rebel leaders put in front of her to avoid having her throat cut and her ten-year-old brother shoved into the seat instead. Those were the open rebellions, but there were those more discreet.

Cordelia’s steadfast ally Prince Renato of Salamans had regretfully informed her he would no longer be able to send food and men north. If he did, he would lose this throne within the month. Prince Salazar of Valencis had done the same thing but less honestly, speaking instead of ‘unforeseen delays’ in sending both. Cordelia’s authority strengthened the further north one went, it could be said, but even there it was thinning. Orne, Cantal and Creusens now refused refugees at their borders no matter what was ordered. The only principalities that still obeyed Cordelia were those who felt the Dead King looming over them and even that rule was not ironclad.

Panic was making men do foolish things. Prince Ariel of Arans, spooked by the growing incursions of the dead into his lands, was trying to approach Callow for protection again – and willing to go under Laure for it, should that be the price. Cordelia was more amused than offended, knowing that neither Queen Catherine nor Princess Vivienne would be remotely interested and that Duchess Kegan, the regent in the capital, was of the opinion that everything east of the Parish should be left to burn. Worse than that was the talk in Brabant, where civil unrest had been placated only by the ruling princess abdicating and promising the offer the crown to the man the people saw as their salvation: Hanno of Arwad, the White Knight.

Cordelia’s agents had told her when the Brabant levies had begun to call the man ‘Lord White’ but, now that the sentiment was spreading through their homeland, she was facing the very real prospect of Prince White. The First Prince was not sure she had the votes to prevent confirmation of such a title by the Highest Assembly if the matter came before them. It was a sign of the times. Salia’s authority was weakening and now a hundred petty kings were emerging from the cracks on a once-great realm. And yet what could she do? So very little, when it came down to it, but that was no excuse for inaction and apathy.

Cordelia Hasenbach would not stand before the Heavens having known idle hands while the Principate of Procer burned down around her.

And today she would be laying eyes on one of the ways she might yet stem the tide. The weapon had been moved out of Aisne, which was now too close to for her tastes, and brought to Salia itself. Outside the city proper, requiring an hour’s ride there and back, but Cordelia would make the time to look at the angel’s corpse with her own eyes regardless. The test done in Aisne had made it necessary: if the First Prince was to use such a weapon, she would first gaze upon it. It was the last of what was owed. The man she’d chosen to oversee the matter awaited her at the edge of the grounds, mounted as well, as Cordelia allowed herself a genuine smile: even in these circumstances, it was a pleasure to see Simon de Gorgeault again.

“Your Most Serene Highness,” the older man said.

“Simon,” she warmly replied.

She had not forgotten his actions during Balthazar’s attempted coup, or his loyal service since as her Lord Inquisitor. He’d put down the title to serve here instead, but it had taken little urging. They both knew that spending time curtailing the House of Light now be much like closing the blinds on a home aflame. Besides, she had needed someone she could trust to handle this. He led her through the small houses where the priests and soldiers lived and to the temple that had been chosen to host the corpse. Larger than such a temple out in the countryside should be, for it hosted the tomb of some distant Merovins, but not a structure of great beauty: it was all worn pale stone and tall angular ceilings.

Once windows of tainted glass would have added some charm, but over the years some had been broken and replaced by simple green glass. Yet the temple was large enough and it was placed far from prying eyes, which was what had been required.

“I would advise that you gather yourself before entering, Your Highness,” Simon said after they dismounted. “It is… an experience.”

Cordelia silently nodded, eyes going down to her palm. She could faintly feel the burn of laurels against it, a pale echo of the searing pain she had felt the night she caught the coin of the Sword of Judgement. Simon de Gorgeault led the way into the temple, guards closing the gates behind them, and silence washed over Cordelia. It was as if the air had turned to water, and though she gulped down breaths she found her heart going wild. Simon’s cheeks were flushed but he seemed otherwise unaffected, perhaps from practice. Cordelia eventually gathered her bearings, smoothing down her dress and proceeding further into the temple.

There must have been rooms and halls she walked through, but she could barely see any of them. The slipped through her mind as if it were oily fingers. All that the First Prince recalled was movement, and then she stood before it. The weapon. The ealamal. It felt like the bones of a grand creature, curving along the ceiling, but there was nothing natural in this: wings of burnished copper spread wide, touching… something. A spine, Cordelia’s mind insisted, but it was not of bone. Her eyes shied away from it and what she could glimpse seemed like stone sometimes, though impossibly small compared to the burning wings of copper, and yet at others it seemed like translucent spike of swirling colours. Her eyes watered from trying to look at it.

“Only priests capable of wielding Light can look directly at it, Your Highness,” Simon said.

“The wings seem as though they might be simply copper, but the… spine,” Cordelia quietly said. “That is not of Creation.”

“You have not looked long as the wings, then,” Simon said. “That is for the best. I have known shallower seas.”

Cordelia shivered.

“But it worked, when used?” she asked.

“It is as an amplifier for Light, and something more too,” Simon agreed. “It carries something of the Choir of Judgement within itself and spreads it wherever it goes. It would incinerate undead and devils it touches, certainly, but beyond that the matter grows complicated.”

“It did not kill anyone who could use Light,” Cordelia said.

“But it killed soldiers as well as the criminals, Your Highness,” Simon said. “Not all of them, but many. Should a wave of such power pass over Procer, hundreds of thousands will almost certainly die.”

Judgement was strict and not inclined to mercy when doling out punishment. The weapon, when used, seemed to mimic the harsh attentions of that Choir. And people were only people, with all the frailties and wickedness that implied. Should the weapon be used on a large scale, many thousands would be slain. But not all of the Principate, Cordelia thought. Many, too many, but not all. And even should Catherine’s worst predictions come true and the Intercessor seek to influence such a weapon – which should not be possible, with Judgement silenced by the Hierarch’s spirit – to spread over all of Calernia, it would not represent annihilation. Some would survive. It would be a monstrous order to give and a horrifying outcome, the First Prince would not pretend otherwise.

It would still be preferable to letting the Dead King kill every living thing on the continent.

“Have it prepared for use,” Cordelia rasped out.

The former head of the Holy Society stiffened.

“I have misgivings, Your Highness,” Simon said. “I understand your instinct: it will take months of priests pouring Light to make of the corpse something that would give the Dead King pause. Yet such power, when gathered, has a way of demanding use.”

“In five months, the Principate will collapse,” the First Prince of Procer said.

The older man paused.

“We have too many refugees, Simon, and not enough fields,” she said. “I have been staving off the end by buying every scrap of grain I can borrow and beg, but the point of no return has come and gone. We have too many refugees and not enough fields, we are no longer sustainable.”

“Can Keter not be toppled?” the older man asked.

“Undead will be at the gates of Salia by the time our armies encamp below the walls of the Crown of the Dead,” Cordelia said. “I expect by then the south will have effectively seceded anyhow. I have ensured our armies will have supplies to carry on that last strike, but I can do no more than that.”

“Can the Chosen not turn the tide?” Simon asked, almost plaintively.

“The Chosen,” Cordelia hissed, “are the backbone of our defeat. How much time did we spend wrestling them into order as again and again they threatened the foundations of the alliances keeping us alive? The Damned might be a pack of rapacious killers, but they never gave us half the trouble the Chosen of the Heavens did. The Red Axe, the Mirror Knight, even the White Knight himself.”

She clenched her fists.

“I was promised that the Named would be seen to, but in this only the Black Queen kept her word,” Cordelia Hasenbach harshly said. “The White Knight failed utterly in this, and I will not now rely on him when the fate of every living soul in Calernia rests in the balance.”

She stared down Simon of Gorgeault.

“Have it prepared for us,” the First Prince repeated, and this time the ring of an order was unmistakeable.

The laurels burned against her palm, but Cordelia did not flinch. She would do what she must so keep the west in the war until the last moment. And should it stumble, should it fail?

She would, again, do what she must.