“A ruler should always join regicide plots: is the finest possible teacher for a locksmith not a thief?”

– Dread Emperor Traitorous

I poured myself another finger of aragh, since it was quite evidently going to be one of those days.

“A bold claim,” I said, “but I am open to the notion.”

The Hunted Magician would, by my reckoning, have spent Gods only knew how many years pursued by a prince of the fae. Most likely through agents as there would have been… waves if a fae noble of that calibre came into Creation to collect a debt, but the old Courts of Arcadia had come by their reputation of always getting their due honestly. It would have been a constant ordeal of enemies hidden under glamour, pursuit that could not be shaken off by simple distance and terrifying visions both sleeping and waking. The occasional complaints I’d gotten about the man being cryptic, distrustful and generally unpleasant now had an explanation. Living in a world where there might be an enemy hidden behind any smiling face, with forced servitude as the consequence of making even a single mistake, had a way of making people paranoid to the bone.

The thing was that the kind of enemies I was up again did actually warrant that level of caution. The Dead King had been three steps ahead of the rest of the world this entire war, the Intercessor had been out of sight for an unsettling amount of time and that was setting aside the most dangerous enemy of all: simple, petty human nature. The trouble here would not be the paranoia itself but figuring out if the Hunted Magician’s paranoia was the right sort of paranoia.

“Two weeks ago, the Blessed Artificer received news that troubled her a great deal,” the Hunted Magician told me. “I know not what they were, but I do know that some of the other Chosen here began acting oddly around the same time.”

“And how would you know that?” I mildly asked.

“The Bitter Blacksmith was herself unchanged, and did not seem to notice any difference,” the Magician said.

I traced the rim of my cup with a finger.

“You misunderstand me,” I said, and perhaps on purpose, I did not speak out loud. “How do you know that the Blessed Artificer received such news?”

The man did not answer, his face turning into a pleasant mask that was just a little too sloppy to be believed. It didn’t reach the eyes, which to a Praesi would be counted as a beginner’s mistake. He did not trust me, which was fine, but that distrust was getting in the way of my finding answers and that was not acceptable. Using coercion here would only make things worse, I decided. Threats would serve to make me an enemy and that was not the role I wanted to play in this conversation. Another approach would be needed.

“I am observant,” the Hunted Magician replied.

“So you are,” I mused. “You must work closely with the Artificer?”

His eyes narrowed.

“On occasion,” he said.

“This is unrelated to the current conversation,” I elaborated. “I’m told she wishes to lodge a complaint under the Terms about some device being broken, and I would like some understanding of the technicalities involved coming from someone else than the plaintiff.”

A chance to exert influence, which I knew he’d want to take: one did not become the informal speaker for villains in the Arsenal by accident. It was ambition, and ambition was a familiar beast.

“It is not my field of speciality, but I do have some insights,” the Hunted Magician said.

“Do you know what it was meant to accomplish?” I said. “Or at least what it might have been based on?”

“The underlying principles had some similarity to an artefact displayed by the Repentant Magister last year,” the Magician said, “though I am unsure whether or not you’d be familiar with it.”

Underlying principles, huh. No, that could still be shop talk between colleagues.

“Made of the same materials?” I asked, pitching my voice in surprise.

The Proceran mage suppressed a smirk. That’s right, I thought, I’m just some uneducated mudfoot from Callow. Lord your knowledge of me, you know you want to. I’d bet rubies to piglets the man was highborn, and some of that stayed in the marrow even when you left the life behind.

“Light favours different materials than sorcery,” the Hunted Magician told me. “She chose them accordingly.”

“So you saw the device as it was being built,” I said.

The man went still as stone.

“Adjutant,” I mused. “Do remind me – can projects without official sanction be built in the official crafting rooms of the Workshop?”

“They cannot,” Hakram gravelled. “Though it is allowed in one’s private quarters, on their own time.”

A beat passed.

“So,” I smiled, “you’ve been sleeping with the Blessed Artificer.”

“I was simply visiting-”

“I would invite you,” I mildly said, “to consider very carefully whether or not you want to lie to me.”

The Haunted Magician’s mouth closed. Yeah, I’d thought as much.

“I like to operate by a simple rule, when it comes to keeping an eye on my Damned fellows,” I told him amicably. “Don’t make it my problem, and I won’t treat it like one.”

Looming behind me, a tower of muscles and fangs in burnt plate, Hakram stared the man down.

“Are you going to be a problem, Haunted Magician?” Adjutant growled.

“I came to lend aid,” the man protested.

Good, he was off-balance. Time to press.

“So aid me,” I smiled. “Have you been sleeping with the Bitter Blacksmith as well?”

He did not immediately answer, and I had to hide my utter surprise. Godsdamn, that’d been a shot in the dark since he’d specifically named her as well: I’d actually wanted him to deny it so I could twist it into a confirmation he was sleeping with the Artificer. The silence was as good as an admission, though. I cocked my head to the side, studying him carefully.

“I am impressed,” I said, and he smirked, “that you haven’t gotten your head caved in.”

Would you look at that, the smirk was gone. Probably helped that neither of those heroines were fighting Named, I mused, though that hardly made them shyly blushing maidens. Still if he’d tried to pull something like that with, say, the Painted Knife and the Vagrant Spear? There’d be a mistake-shaped corpse propped up in front of me instead of a living man.

“That makes you a useful source of information,” I mused.

That reassured him as it was meant to, though he tried to hide it. If I’d tried to assure him I held no ill intentions towards him he wouldn’t have bought it for a second, but from villain to another an open admission of usefulness was one of the most prized guarantees of safety.

“You said the Artificer was troubled,” I said, “and others began acting oddly. Expand on this.”

“She put an end to our trysts, irregular as they were,” the Hunted Magician admitted. “And I saw her speaking with the Repentant Magister frequently afterwards, when they have never been close.”

Shit, Nephele too? She’d not struck me as the scheming type when we last met, but a flirty acquaintance wasn’t exactly understanding in depth.

“And the oddness?” I asked.

“They’ve several times gone to the general archives, both together and separately,” the Magician said, “and the two times I spied on them it was the old assembly transcripts they were going through. Specifically, those of the monthly sessions.”

What were those for again? Roland had not long ago joked about bringing up my complaint about lack of railings in one, but they couldn’t be just a general venting of complaints. It’d be a waste of time to make the ten Named based at the Arsenal sit through these. Of course, asking would make me look like I’d missed what he was implying. Which I had, but he didn’t need to know that. Cowing people stopped working when they saw you stumble.

“Allocation of personnel and resources, general financing,” Hakram said. “Do you have a notion of what they were trying to piece together?”

Ah, Adjutant to the rescue. So, going scavenging through the records of what and who had been allocated to projects those two had been trying to figure out the nature of one they hadn’t been brought in on. There weren’t many of those, only three. As I recalled the Hunted Magician and the Sinister Physician – who was also one of mine – were working on a ‘plague’ that would affect undead, under the appellation of Late Regret. Roland and the Concocter were working on a brew that’d affect undead like holy water and could feasibly be produced in sufficient quantity to contaminate the northern lakes, called Sudden Abjuration. The last was actually under debate to be opened to all Named, an attempt by Blind Maker and the Repentant Magister to make an artefact that’d prevent the Dead King from actively possessing undead within a certain range.

Only the last of the three was showing promising results, though it was also the one whose success would be hardest to prove: Neshamah was clever enough to pretend it was working to take us by surprise after we’d come to rely on it. The Haunted Magician hesitated, and not because it was Adjutant who’d asked the question. It was well-known to everyone by now that when Hakram spoke it was with my voice.

“I believe,” he finally said, “that they were not interested in what was in the records so much as what was not.”

My face remained calm, because it was not the first time an ugly surprise had been sprung on me today. Hells, it wasn’t even the first time today. I reached for my cup of aragh and sipped. Shit. Was this about Quartered Seasons, then? Hierophant was the only Named on that and we’d kept it very, very quiet. Hasenbach knew the name and that it could yield a potential tool for deicide, but on the Dominion side the only one I’d told was Tariq since Levantine nobles had famously loose lips. I’d wanted the Pilgrim to be able to vouch someone from Levant had been told and picked him in particular because it’d put out any talk of dishonour the moment the Peregrine’s involvement was mentioned. It was even true that the funding and resources for Quartered Seasons wouldn’t be discussed in their little Named councils, since I’d made it clear to Masego that if need be the crown of Callow would fund it entirely on its own.

But there’s only many so people within the Arsenal, and for some parts he would have needed helping hands, I thought. For drudgework and fetching records or even assembling mundane objects. Hells, just the use of limited ritual resources like high quality scrying tools or rare substances were trails that could be followed if you knew where to look – which Nephele would, since she was in on one of the quiet projects. The two heroines had been trying to figure out what had been used by figuring out what hadn’t been allocated in the actual sessions: resources and staff that mysteriously never made it to the discussion, unexplained holes in the budget. Even if they had managed to pull it all together it still wouldn’t be enough to actually know what Masego was trying to accomplish, but it might be enough to allow them to make a few educated guesses. Which as lot more dangerous than them actually knowing, in my opinion.

“Interesting,” I finally said, putting down my cup. “But it’s the killing of the Wicked Enchanter you mentioned when making claim of a plot.”

“There have been rising tensions for weeks,” the Hunted Magician said. “Incidents occur more and more frequently, and become graver – and then, in a fortress the size of the Arsenal, the Red Axe and the Wicked Enchanted simply happen to meet. Someone filled the cup, Black Queen, and then arranged for the drop that would make it run over.”

And the thing was, that made perfect sense to me. But then I was speaking to a man for who paranoia had been the path to survival for years and coming back from fighting on a front against the Hidden Horror for two straight years. I was inclined to believe him because I’d grown used to death hiding in every shadow, which meant my judgement was not unbiased. And if I tighten my grip too strongly around honest mistakes by heroes, I thought, I might just cause the incident I am trying to avoid. There were more than twenty Named in the Arsenal, if I – a villain, however respected I was in some quarters – acted like I was trying to cover up something then someone was going to do something stupid. And when the first stone in the avalanche came down, it’d be beyond my power to turn the tide back.

“That is speculation, not proof of anything,” I said.

The man’s face fell into a mask again, this time tying to hide his anger.

“But I mislike the shape and timing of this,” I conceded. “You were right to bring this to my attention. I’ll take the situation in hand personally.”

Anger was gone, a mix of relief and wariness in him instead. He must have been halfway decent at this at some point, I thought, since the reflexes were there. He was badly out of practice, though, and he’d learned some self-defeating habits since. Another detail adding an entry to the ‘highborn who fled from the consequences of his actions’ tally I was mentally keeping.

“Then I can only thank you for granting me this audience, Black Queen,” the Hunted Magician said, bowing in his seat.

I didn’t invite him to stay and share a drink, though it would have been good politics, as my mind was already considering what needed to be done and I was reluctant to let the pot keep boiling while I played courtesy games. Instead I rose to escort him out, then closed the door behind him and leaned against the wooden frame. Hakram poured himself a finger aragh in the cup the Magician had not used, then sat down on the edge of the sofa to sip at it.

“Two Named, if not more, were led to start digging around one of our most dangerous secrets,” I said. “Another two Named, between who conflict is good as certain, happened to run into each other here. And now the Mirror Knight was sent here to prevent a ‘murder’, when even with the fluidity of time in the Ways it’s near certain he was warned about the circumstances before they took place.”

I grit my teeth.

“Once is accident, twice is coincidence,” I began-

“Thrice is enemy action,” Hakram finished.

Except that, when it came to Named, coincidences were nothing of the sort. Which meant my enemy had drawn first blood and then struck again before I even realized I was in a fight, so I was in dire need of catching up. I limped back to low table and took my drink in hand, tossing the rest of it back in a single swallow.

“You have a plan,” Adjutant said.

“I have a step,” I corrected. “What I need is someone with utter disregard for other people’s privacy, an inveterate hunger for juicy gossip and a pathological need to screw with everyone until it’s clear what makes them tick.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler,” Hakram asked, “just to say Archer?”

—

I’d meant for Indrani to come to us but apparently she was currently eating, not all that inclined to move and the attendant we’d sent to fetch her was afraid of her. Which, in all honesty, was probably smart of him. So instead I limped my way down to the meal hall with Hakram at my side, the two of us and our guide passing through corridors ghostly empty. The Alcazar, the part of the Arsenal meant to host important guests, was apparently connected to quite a few other sections by private halls not meant to be used by anyone else. It made sense, I supposed. If Cordelia Hasenbach needed to use the Mirage, she wouldn’t want half the scholars in this place to watch her every time she headed there. I learned from our chatty guide that Archer had ignored her own guest rooms in the Alcazar to bunk elsewhere – Masego’s quarters in the Belfry, at a guess – and that she’d never bothered to use the private eatery in there. She was eating the same commissary fare as everyone else, which I found odd given her appreciation for luxury.

It all made a great deal more sense when we entered a hall that could have seated four hundred and I saw she was the only person in it, sprawled lazily on a bench as she dipped pieces of bread in melted cheese and popped them into her mouth. Indrani did not need decadence to be brought to her, she brought decadence wherever she was.

“Did you make the kitchens cook this for you alone?” I called out. “I’d call it abuse of power, but honestly by your standards this is almost reasonable.”

Practically inhaling another dipped piece of bread, Indrani swung around and rose to her feet in a single fluid gesture. It would have been a lot more impressive if she didn’t have a string of melted cheese hanging off the corner of her mouth.

“Your Queenly Majesticness,” Archer solemnly bowed, smothering a grin, “your most humble servant hath returned. I now pray most faithfully that Your Great Regality will smile on-”

With great pleasure, I stopped leaning on my staff just long enough to smack her on the crown of the head – or would have, if she’d not twisted around and caught the yew before pulling. Before I could so much as insult her I was made to stumble, caught by the waist and led into a dip before she kissed me. If I put a hand behind her neck it was purely to hang on, not because I was trying to lean into it and feel a little more of her. She withdrew with a smug grin, leaving my lips pleasantly bruised.

“You smell like cheese,” I told her.

“You sound a little breathless,” she replied, the smugness deepening.

“From trying not to breathe it in,” I scorned, then parted from her with a step to the side.

“That aragh I got from you?” she asked, sounding interested.

I leaned forward and stole a piece of bread from her plate, dipping it and deftly popping it into my mouth. Huh, that really was quite good. Adjutant cleared his throat, reminding Archer that he was also there. The attendant had retired during my passing moment of distraction, though the more honest word for it might have been fled.

“I’m happy to see you too, big guy,” Indrani warmly said, clasping his arm. “But you’ve got too much teeth for a dip of your own, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”

“You’ve got too little to warrant a hint,” Hakram replied without missing a beat. “But it’s good to see you too, ‘Drani.”

Even as I laughed at the casual verbal backhand she’d received with a stunned oof, the tall orc picked her up in a hug as easily as if she were bag of turnips. She shrieked in laughter, her ‘surprised struggling’ somehow ending up with him being smacked on the side of the face quite a lot. She was put down on the long table little bird and tried to bat away my continuing pillaging of her meal – there was some Arlesite sausage there, the good stuff with the spices from the Free Cities, so I’d gleefully helped myself – only to be ignored by right of queenly prerogative.

“Did you come all the way here just to eat my food?” she complained.

“Callow pays for part of the food budget,” I said, chewing on a mouthful, “so in a sense it was really always my food.”

“It’s sad how power will go to the head of even the most sensible of women,” Archer sighed. “And you too, I guess, but-”

I threw a stripe of mustarded venison at her, though as expected she caught it. I’d been hungrier than I’d thought, I mused as I stole a stripe for myself. There was a sweet taste to the sauce as well that was delicious, and I let out a little noise of pleasure. In a sense the way I’d been when I’d still been Sovereign of Moonless Nights, requiring neither sleep nor food, had been better. It’d certainly been more efficient. But I still remembered the nights where it had all been like ashes in my mouth, when nothing but the hardest of liquors had tasted of anything at all, and I could only count my blessings that I was now rid of those times.

“Is no one going to offer me anything?” Hakam drily asked.

We ignored him, since it wasn’t that large a plate.

“We have something of a problem,” I told Indrani.

She nodded.

“I brought the killer in from the cold and didn’t keep close enough a watch on her, that’s on me,” Archer frankly said. “Mind you, the man had it coming if even half the stories I heard are true.”

The Wicked Enchanter had been, from what I beginning to grasp, broadly disliked and held in disgust. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out exactly why, though likely unpleasant, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. He’d been a villain even other villains were lukewarm about, one the heroes would be able to hold up as the kind of monster deserving the headman’s block instead of the protection of the Truce. That was a problem, since it meant this wasn’t just a thorny little mess to arbitrate: it was a knife someone had aimed at the Truce and the Terms themselves.

If the Red Axe was killed over this, I suspected the heroes would riot. If the Red Axe wasn’t killed over this, I knew sure as I knew my own breath that the villains would riot. And on top of that, just adding more more disastrous insult to the injury one of the heroes I’d find it most difficult to beat into humility without killing him, the Mirror Knight, had just blown in with supporters and no warning to meddle. If it even looked like I was lenient on the Red Axe, the perception among the villains I spoke for would be that I’d been leaned on by one of the luminaries of the other side and given ground.

I’d look weak and Below’s champions did not follow weakness, much less obey it.

“We’re in a fight, ‘Drani,” I murmured. “And it’s starting to look like we showed up to it already bleeding. I’m going to need you.”

Archer’s hazelnut eyes turned serious as she leaned forward.

“You have me,” she said. “Are the heroes taking a swing?”

“I don’t know yet,” I grimly replied. “But we’re in a story, Archer, make no mistake. And it’s one meant to cut us deep.”

And it might just be my imagination, I thought, the habit of seeing a grinning skull in every dark corner… but I can almost the smell the cheap booze in the air, hear the mocking tune from the badly strung lute. I took the pretty silver knife on the side of Archer’s plate, idly flipping it through my knuckles as I stepped back from the table.

“There are now,” I said, “twenty-three Named within these walls.”

That we knew of. Certainty was a necessity for Named, if you wanted to ever be more than a middling swordhand in the middle of nowhere, but this early and when the game afoot was still shrouded it would be a mistake to believe we knew everything about the board there was to be known.

“The Arsenal usually counts five heroes, three villains and two Named of unclear allegiance,” Hakram said.

I took to tapping the flat of the silver blade against the side of my fist, thoughtful.

“The Concocter’s one of ours,” Archer said. “She keeps it quiet but the things that end up in her cauldrons aren’t always the sort the Heavens would approve of, if you catch my drift.”

Charming. Five to four, then, and with the Doddering Sage being the only uncertain – though more because his bouts of lucidity were rare than because of any reluctance to pick a side, as I understood it. That was still ten Named who stayed in the Arsenal on a more or less permanent basis, and most of them would have ways to communicate with the outside world beyond those the Grand Alliance had made available to them.

“You’ve got four,” I said, eyes turning to Archer.

“Half and half,” she cheerfully said.

And she’d brought in the Red Axe as well, who was now being held in a cell. Then another five Named after that: the Mirror Knight and his close friend the Blade of Mercy, the seemingly cautious Exalted Poet and the ambiguous Maddened Keeper, and last of all the gallant but decidedly dangerous Kingfisher Prince. Throwing in Adjutant and more generously my own nascent Name brought us at twenty-three. Twelve heroes, nine villains and two whose nature was not so clear-cut. Enough that the villains would feel outnumbered, and dangerously so since one of them had just been killed. Yet the heroes would feel pressured as well, given the quality of the opposition: four of the Woe were here, and our reputation was a weighty thing. The two poor bastards in between would be seen as potentially decisive in any clash, and so worth forcing the allegiance of – either to get rid of liabilities before blades came out or to secure a nasty surprise to spring on the opposition when they did.

It was a murderous brew someone was pressing to the lips of the entire Truce and Terms, and all it’d take was for one fool to be scared enough to drink.

“The Arsenal regulars are the thread that should be quickest to unwind,” Adjutant said. “Someone set the Repentant Magister and the Blessed Artificer after a secret – it may truly be Quartered Seasons, it may be something else. But they were contacted, and that is a concrete thing.”

There were five under Above in these Arsenal ‘regulars’: Roland, the Blind Maker, the Repentant Magister, the Blessed Artificer and the Bitter Blacksmith. The Hunted Magician had implied that his ‘close study’ of the Blacksmith had revealed no change in mood around the time the Magister and the Artificer began digging, so she was not a likely suspect. I closed my eyes to think.

“So we find them in their rooms and make them spit out a name,” Indrani mused.

“As it happens, the Blessed Artificer has already requested an audience to lodge a complaint under the Terms,” Adjutant gravelled, pleased.

Something about that had me begin tapping the side of the blade against my knuckles, the coolness of the silver against my skin grounding me.

“It’s bullshit,” Indrani flatly said. “She was pushing Zeze, not the other way around. I don’t think she meant to actually blind him – she looked surprised by how harsh his reaction was – but she was definitely trying something.”

“What he means is that we should now consider ourselves watched at all times,” I said without opening my eyes, “and that an audience she requested is a reason to meet in private with her not even the heroes can grumble about.”

As it happens, Hakram had said. That was what had raised my hackles. It’d happened and it’d happened in a fight where coincidence was nothing more the flimsiest of the lies at play. A story had been offered up to us: Adjutant, Archer and the Black Queen met with the Blessed Artificer. It was the only the first step, though, the air of the tune. Through guile and reason those three would reveal the machinations hidden in the shadows of the Arsenal, to prevent madness from seizing the halls and keep the peace. It was a pretty story, true, and for more than a few Named it’d be a serviceable horse to ride. For us, though? I was a warlord, a killer and maker of pacts. Adjutant was my right hand and guardian, Archer was my blade and my eyes. It was a good horse but one for which we’d make poor riders, which made it a shit horse in every way that mattered. After all, no matter how good the horse if an ass was riding it’d still lose the race. We’d been offered that hook so we might bite it and be reeled in to our defeat.

Another angle was required here. The villains? There were four among them that were Arsenal regulars: Masego, the Hunted Magician, the Sinister Physician and, if Indrani was correct, the Concocter. I was inclined to believe her, given that they’d known each other back in Refuge when they’d been pupils of the Lady of the Lake. But no, it was still the same story from a different angle. We’d shake the tree until truths came tumbling out, and they would. I was not so naïve as to assume that if some plot was afoot there would not be at least one of mine involved. The Hunted Magician himself was not exempt from the suspicion for having brought this to me in the first place, for though I doubted he had the skill or know-how to hook me onto a losing story that did not mean he was not the tool of someone who was. Trouble was, we only had so much to go on here and following any of those threads would take us back to the end I was trying to avoid it.

“It’s a shit horse,” I muttered. “But it’s the only one we’ve got, isn’t it?”

Ah, but that was my mistake. I was trying to win according to the rules when I should be trying to win despite them. If you were forced to run a race you could only lose, then the only way to win was to cheat. I opened my eyes and found both Hakram and Indrani were watching me in silence. Waiting, knowing from experience that if I’d emerged from inside my head it was with an idea.

“This is a story,” I repeated, and smiled.

I twirled the knife across my knuckles, enjoying the blur of silver and movement that danced according to my will.

“And we might not know how it goes, not exactly, but we know the shape of it,” I mused.

We three curious souls would learn things from our first step that only caused more questions, struggle and search and perhaps even tangle with a mysterious or misguided opponent. It’d go downhill from there, though, but when it all seemed like it was going to fall apart we’d get a moment of revelation from an unlikely source that flipped it all upside down and allowed us to turn it around at the last moment. We wouldn’t, of course, because we were not the heroes of his story. I was likely to be executing the Red Axe before long, so it’d be like a chicken trying to fly in a sparrow’s tracks if I tried to act like I had the right to that sort of providence.

“The thing about providence, though, is that once you understand how it works you can predict it,” I told them with a smile. “It can’t do something out of nothing, and it uses the most appropriate tool for the job.”

And of the ten Arsenal regulars, who was it that was the best fit for a revelation at the edge of disaster? I caught the knife and flicked it down, smiling when it bit into the table with a satisfyingly sharp thunk.

“We’re going to speak to the Doddering Sage,” I said. “To see if going backwards from the revelation allows us to quicken the pace.”

Disaster was on the horizon, I thought, I was in over my head and even the trusted companions at my side might not be enough to get us through this unscathed. And still, as I hummed the first few notes to the old rebel song The Fox In the Woods, I found myself smiling.

Gods, but it was good to be home.