“In declaring all that is not Good to be Evil, one surrenders the better part of the world to the Enemy.”

– Theodore Langman, Wizard of the West

The librarians were skulking about again.

Amadeus was going to have to kill a few before this was done and over with, he suspected, which would have been trouble if Dread Emperor Nefarious still took interest in anything but his seraglio and his grimoires. The Deep Library, as the misshapen people of this place called the true Imperial archives – those hidden deep beneath the Tower, where none without permission could enter – was purely the Emperor’s to oversee. It’d been that wat since it had grown from a tomb full of secrets to one of the greatest repositories of knowledge on Calernia, in the days where Dread Emperor Sorcerous had reigned and learning had flourished in Praes like never before. The Deep Library was as a small city, now, those that saw to its obscure labyrinthine stacks and records born and raised within the depths. Few had ever seen the light of day, and centuries of inbreeding and exposure to old sorceries had warped them in… unseemly ways. They wore the hoods by imperial decree, as some ancient Tyrant having been disgusted by their appearance. For all that they’d made clear their disapproval of a mere Duni like Amadeus being granted access to the stacks even if he’d come with a writ bearing Nefarious’ own seal. It’d been the Chancellor’s hand that’d pressed it down, truth be told, but the rats scuttling in these deeps had no way of knowing that.

“I can hear you,” the Black Knight calmly said. “Come into the light or be treated as a spy.”

The Chancellor no doubt had suborned a few eyes among this lot and tasked them with study of what it was he was studying, but he’d hardly be the only one. The old families of the Wasteland would have agents of their own, entire bloodlines of traitors cultivated over centuries whose practical worth was greater than that of a vault full of rubies. The ring of flickering lights cast by oil lanterns – mage lights would have been more efficient but they tended to go wild in these parts, affected by the ancient wards and magics – revealed the yellow-robed silhouette of a lesser librarian. To a guest bearing a seal, like Amadeus, they were to be ordered about as wished though it was customary to allow one of the greater librarians to see to it instead, expressing wishes to the greater so that they could send the lesser to carry them out. Of course, that would require one of the greater librarians to have remained in attendance of the Black Knight as was also customary instead of vanishing back into the dark maze. A distasteful parting shot had been made about getting mud on the scrolls, for which Amadeus had considered taking the woman’s tongue as a warning to the others. He’d decided against it, for now anyway. There were yet more ways in which the keepers of this place could hinder his research, which was too important to risk on what was hardly likely to be the last reference to his breeding he’d hear.

“This one has what was sought, Lord Black,” a mellifluous voice spoke from under the hood.

The Mtethwa spoken had an archaic bent to it, for those speaking it had been separated from other speakers for so long they’d not changed their manners along the same lines. The court address was properly done, though still unfamiliar to his ear: highborn had only begun using such courtesies with him since he’d slain the Heir and put a permanent end to their struggles.

“The Thalassinan records, yes?” he questioned.

“It is so, Lord,” the librarian agreed.

He gestured for the yellow-robed stranger to approach. Stuttering steps brought the tablets he’d sent for, and Amadeus allowed the librarian to set them on one of the rare corners of the reading hall he’d claimed that wasn’t covered. It looked like utter chaos, at first glance, piles of scrolls and manuscripts and stone inscriptions sprawling under ancient maps of Praes and eastern Callow. The divisions were not geographic, in truth, but chronological. Inconveniently enough, he’d had to spend longer finding the right time and place in histories to look for answers than actually finding the answers he sought. The seal that’d allowed him access to the Deep Library had been a reward claimed from the Chancellor, but it was not without bounds: he had only seven days and nights to seek his answers. He’d not slept more than two hours apiece in the last five days, and if Amadeus could have avoided that without measurably impairing his mind’s ability to retain details he would have done so. There was no telling when he would next have such an opportunity.

“If this one may speak, Lord,” the librarian said.

Black’s eyes flicked up in surprise. He’d expected them to leave as soon as the precise duties were discharged.

“It may me presumptuous of this one to grasp at the intent of one of hallowed rank, yet it seems that it might be grain quantities in particular being sought,” the librarian delictely said.

“That is correct,” Amadeus said. “Under the tenure of Rector Cornelia Orbivia, to be specific.”

Which had been irritatingly difficult to find out with any degree of accuracy. The Miezans had famously put everything to writing and what remained of the records of their occupation was surprisingly extensive, but Praes had been one of the most distant overseas provinces of their empire. Which meant that, far from the stern gaze of their imperial rulers, the rectors overseeing Praes had been habitually corrupt and falsified the reports they sent to Mieza in order to better enrich themselves off imperial revenue. Cornelia Orbivia had been unusually corrupt even among rectors, to the extent that Amadeus had found himself reluctantly impressed by her gall. On the same year where Taghreb tribal record of the Banu Hiraq spoke of several large gold shafts being mined in the Grey Eyries, she’d had the gall to send envoys to Mieza requesting funding for the rebuilding of the Wasaliti levees that she otherwise ‘could not afford’. As a nice touch, she’d even mentioned that failing to repair those works would agitate the local savages. Amusing as that had been to find out, Rector Cornelia’s falsifications made it difficult to assess what the yield of fields under her rule had actually been. Which was unfortunate, for under her successor the Miezans had begun trading regularly with the Callowan chieftains of Summerholm and that influx of grain would throw off the numbers in a way Amadeus couldn’t really account for.

“The harbour records of Thalassina would only provide incomplete understanding, Lord,” the librarian said, “as they do not account for ships that were exempt from duties and inspections by Rector’s decree. This one presumed to send for the records of such exempted ships, if it pleases the hallowed one.”

“It does,” Black replied, eyes narrowing by the barest of fractions. “Yet are you implying that Rector Orbivia kept records of her own corruption?”

“Hallowed one, they are in fact from the array of charges brought against her by Imperatrix Iusta,” the librarian said. “Who later recalled Rector Orbivia and had her drawn and quartered after public trial.”

More than once, perusing Miezan histories, it had occurred to Amadeus that the Praesi apple had not fallen far from the tree.

“Those charges would be accurate, in your opinion?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

“This one recalls the Imperatrix was reputed for her preoccupation for justice,” the librarian said. “Yet the hallowed one need not take this one’s recollections as facts, for such is mentioned in the Annales Zosimia and the Sicorat Aheli.”

Amadeus’ brow rose. The famous historian Zosimia had been prone to embellishing when the truth of things proved insufficiently exciting for the audience, but as a rule they’d been faithful in relating what more reliable and unfortunately lost histories had believed to be the truth. The Sicorat, on the other hand, was not a Miezan history but a Baalite one. Amadeus’ passing knowledge of tradertalk had him suspecting the meaning of the title was something along the lines of ‘Foe-Tale’, which was an apt summation of the relations between the Hegemony and the Empire during their shared span of history. That rather added integrity to the source, in his eyes. Invectives from an enemy ever flowed freely, but praise? That was a rarer thing, and grudgingly given.

“Have the Annales Zosimia sent to me,” he ordered. “Do you have a translation of the Sicorat from I assume to be the original High Tyrian?”

“This one knows only of a highly revisionist reinterpretation of the work penned by High Lord Saman Muraqib during the reign of the Dread Empress Maleficent the Second,” the librarian replied. “It does contain several accurate translations of the Sicorat Aheli’s text, spread among High Lord Saman’s own writing.”

The Black Knight almost snorted. Considering the second Maleficent had clashed more than once with the Thalassocracy of Ashur in her day and that the islanders were the last remnants of Baalite rule on Calernia it was no great stretch to infer the nature of the Taghreb aristocrat’s commentary. The man would hardly be the first of the Wasteland’s highborn to rail at the Ashuran ‘perfidy’ in not allowing Praes to raise a fleet worth the name. He would not even be the first to frame Praes as the inheritor of Mieza and Ashur that of the Hegemony, poetically fated to war as their progenitors had been.

“My palate might not be discerning enough to truly understand the depths of High Lord Saman’s wisdom,” Amadeus drily said. “His work shall rest, I think.”

“By your will, hallowed one,” the librarian said, bowing.

The Black Knight hummed and considered matters for long moment. Weighing risk, weighing dues.

“Your name?” he asked.

“This one is called Nafari, hallowed one,” the librarian replied.

“After arranging for the Annales,” Amadeus said, “I believe you will find your duties take you far from this part of the stacks. For some time, too.”

The hooded librarian stiffened.

“It will be so, hallowed one,” Nafari croaked out. “Manifold thanks from this unworthy one.”

Amadeus did not further acknowledge the exchange, unwilling to tip his hand too deeply. This one had been helpful, and polite. The slight risk could be taken as gratitude. It was forgot before long, for the promised records had arrived and so he returned to his calculations. To his surprise, though Rector Orbivia had smuggled out the wealth she’d stolen from imperial revenues at a rate of between five to eight ships a year, a significant part of that theft was grain. The quantities allowed him to add the last finishing touch to his estimates of grain yields, yet the detail remained in the back of his mind like a wiggling tick. Rector Orbivia had been nothing if not apt in extracting wealth from her office, Amadeus thought. Why, then would on a year where she had sent six ships sailing to Liceria would a full three of them have been filled with grain? The same hull filled with slaves, for example – orcs had been rare on the other side of the Tyrian Sea and wildly popular, fetching high prices on Miezan slave auctions – should have secured much greater profit. Had grain been easier to obtain, in those days? It was possible, for the Wasteland had not yet earned its name through Sinistra’s cataclysmic blunder. Yet agriculture had grown more sophisticated since those days, and the crops reaped relative to the amount of cultivated land had been numerically higher in those days.

Something was beginning to dawn on him, slowly, as he kept open his leather journal with his lower palm and marked in ink the numbers for Rector Orbivia’s tenure.

Yet it would have been absurd, when Praes held so many other ways for a Miezan rector to enrich themselves, unless he was missing a detail. The Annales Zosimia were brought to him, all seven volumes, by another yellow-robed librarian. This one did not speak nor linger, and Black dug throughout the fourth tome until he acceded to the parts concerning Imperatrix Iusta. It was easy enough to confirm Librarian Nafari’s words, namely that the Imperatrix seemed to have displayed a very real concern for justice even when it was politically inconvenient for her. Yet it was not those sentences in Old Miezan that caught his attention but instead slight details of military history. An attempt from the king of the Luxor, a Baalite ally, to seize the lesser city of Antisma on the coast of Caracisson. The last name was familiar, and referral to the Miezan history of the Bellum Stobogii shed some light over it: Caracisson was a rich stretch of coast in the Miezan province of Stobogia Minor. Which, along with its northern sister-province of Stobogia Major, were the Miezan empire’s traditional breadbasket due to their great fields and golden summers. Over the reign of Imperatrix Iusta, according to the Annales, no less than eight battles had been fought over the provinces against a variety of northern nomadic tribes and southern Baalite-backed petty kingdoms. Looking further back through previous reigns, the trend had begun at least four decades earlier.

And like that it fell into place, bitter as the epiphany was.

When Alaya arrived, she found him with a cup of wine in hand and a dark look on his face. His mood had turned sullen, now that he’d put the pieces together. Even wearing a cloak and drab vestments she was a vision, as if the lackluster clothes had been picked to make her beauty evident by contrast. There’d been a time where Amadeus had felt the first stirrings of interest in his friend, though the notion had been buried early and he missed it not. The thought that he might force a manner of affection onto Alaya that she could not reciprocate was viscerally repulsive to him, moreso for the nature of how she’d been brought to the Tower. That she’d been graceful in enduring her situation did not detract in the slightest from the atrocious nature of it. Alaya dropped onto the seat at his side without any of the put-on grace that might be expected of her higher in the Tower, wordlessly accepting the cup of wine he’d poured her and offered. She drew back her hood and Amadeus found his eyes lingering on her cheekbone. He’d learned to recognize the sight of mage-healing, and even the most exquisite of sorceries could not avoid flesh being made tender when it was knit anew. He said nothing, for he knew pity would burn her like acid. His friend drank a sip of the cup and made a spluttering grin against the rim.

“Gods, that tastes truly awful,” Alaya said. “From the Green Stretch?”

“Where else could they make such a horror?” he grinned back.

It’d been worth suffering the rest of that bottle just for the smile, he thought. She drank again, deeper this time.

“It might as well be vinegar with a handful of grapes left to stew inside,” Alaya said, sounding fascinated. “This might be the single worst wine I’ve drunk, Maddie.”

“Only the finest of the worst for you, Allie,” he toasted.

She quietly laughed, the way she had back home when she was truly amused and not simply putting on merriment for the patrons at her father’s inn. They both drank, and he let her take the reins of the conversation without qualms.

“Dare I ask what had you glaring balefully at parchment when I arrived?” she asked.

His jaw tightened, until he mastered himself.

“I believe,” Amadeus of the Green Stretch said, “I’ve grasped how the Wasteland was made.”

She straightened in her seat, fingers tightening against the cup.

“I expect,” she said, “your answer runs deeper than Sinistra’s famously ruinous attempt to steal the weather of Callow.”

He dipped his head in agreement and she breathed out.

“Tell me,” Alaya ordered. “All of it.”

She held no office, wielded little influence and bore no Name while, Duni or not, he was still the Black Knight of Praes. Yet it did not occur to him that this could be anything but an order, or that it could be disobeyed.

“I began studying it because Sinistra’s ritual was, in essence, our first great national act of lunacy,” Amadeus said. “Before her, we had a hundred and twenty years of relative success: the Grey Eyries annexed, and though Summerholm did not fall its Counts were near enough to vassals of the Tower. We backed them against Alban attempts to bring them into their realm them twice, Alaya! Why would Sinistra, then, risk such a ritual? Was she simply mad, consumed by the urge to wield her sorcery?”

“Was she?” Alaya asked.

“Last year,” Amadeus said, “Wekesa, Sabah and I broke into one of the lesser spell repositories of the Warlock. While Apprentice had his design on volumes writing of wards, my own interest was in a rumour: namely that old failed rituals were kept there and used as tools of teaching for the Warlock’s pupils.”

“And you found the ritual Sinistra tried to use there,” she murmured.

“I did,” he agreed. “And Wekesa believes it sound in principle, though wildly ambitious and with laughably little margin for error. If heroes had not interrupted it, the sorcery could have functioned as intended.”

“She could be a talented mage and mad nonetheless,” Alaya said. “We’ve certainly precedent enough for that.”

Not, he knew, because she was arguing against him. It was the way they spoke, the two of them, presenting the opposing view so that weakness in argument and knowledge could be made evident. Iron sharpens iron, highborn might have said, though she was anything but a foe.

“Agreed,” he said. “On the other hand, if the ritual was well-formed then it had to be tailored to the realities of where it was meant to affect. That implies…”

“There was an observable phenomenon on Creation she was reacting to,” Alaya said. “Was the land souring?”

“I wondered the same,” he smiled. “And early Imperial records to make increasingly frequent mentions of famines and food shortages from the moment of the Declaration onwards. Yet considering that there were little changes to agricultural practices after the end of the Miezan occupation, the source of that issue had to be older.”

“Explaining why you’ve a pond of books in Old Miezan spread over this hall,” she drily said.

His lips quirked, but the mirth left him soon enough.

“It was Rector Cornelia Orbivia who led me to the answers,” Amadeus said. “The last of the Miezan rectors before trade with Callow was established. She was spectacularly corrupt, you see, yet somehow found it profitable to sail ships full of grain back Liceria.”

“Meaning,” Alaya said, “that even compared to the wealth of the more traditional resources offered by Praes grain still remained a worthy investment.”

He felt a rush of affection, heady and sudden, for this woman to whom he’d never really had to explain his thoughts. Who he could speak a word to and have a page understood. If it was not love, then what was this to be called?

“Stobogia Minor and Major, the breadbaskets of Mieza, were under pressure from Baalite allies and displaced tribes to the north,” Amadeus said. “The worth of grain would have risen accordingly.”

“More than that,” Alaya murmured. “It became a strategic resource. The city of Mieza was famously populous and the heart of their empire in every way. Grain could buy the love of the hungry, bind them to causes. And even for the less ambitious, it would have been prized. A ship filled with rubies and gold ingots would attract attention: an army could be raised with such a prize, or offices and officers bought. To an Imperator, it would have smacked of rebellion in the making. Grain would not attract near as much attention, if sold discretely, yet still turn great profit.”

She paused, turning dark eyes to him.

“And this was when, in the Miezan span?” she asked.

“Between the First and Second Licerian War,” Amadeus said.

“The practice won’t have ended at all, after,” Alaya said. “After the Second much of their empire fractured and governors raised their own private armies to try to claim the throne and fight the encroaching Hegemony. I expect that with the collapse of the usual grain markets, Praesi harvests kept ambitious armies fed on campaign more than once.”

He’d not considered that, truth be told, for his interest had been in the consequences here and not across the Tyrian Sea. Yet every sentence she’d spoken only confirmed what he’d suspected.

“So now you understand what drove the madness,” he said.

“Madness?” she asked.

He set aside his cup and leaned forward, snatching the leather-bound journal where the ink he’d put down had long gone dry. He opened it at the correct page and passed it to her.

“Grain exports from the province of Praes,” she acknowledged. “I take it the sharp rise is when trade with Callow begins?”

“It is,” Amadeus agreed. “No move to the fourth page of the journal.”

She moved.

“Comparative yields for fields now and under the Miezans,” she noted. “Higher in those days, yet the land might have been more fertile then. Less ravaged.”

“Ninth page,” he said.

There she would find the compared yields of eastern Callowan fields compared to those of northern Praes under the Miezans. Alaya’s eyes narrowed.

“This implies,” she slowly said, “that the lands now called the Wasteland were significantly more fertile than Callow’s own fields as of…”

She trailed off, glancing at him.

“Seventy years ago,” Amadeus said. “The most recent instance an Imperial agent had a look at the ledgers of the Count of Summerholm. The numbers to the side are for, respectively, one hundred and three years ago and two hundred and fourteen years ago.”

“Largely the same,” Alaya said. “Which means it is not a lone oddity. Yet it should not be possible – no, it isn’t possible. Not naturally.”

“Field rituals,” Amadeus softly agreed. “They used sorcery to increase the crop yields beyond what nature allowed, year after year, because grain was more useful to them than gold and we were too far for their enemies to strike at us. And so, like a body healed again and again by sorcery without care to its natural functions…”

“The land began to rot from the inside,” she completed.

“Dread Empress Sinistra might have been mad,” Amadeus acknowledged, “and have significantly worsened the situation, but she was not the cause of it. Her ritual was a desperate attempt to turn back the death throes of what became the Wasteland.”

Her jaw tightened.

“We still practice field rituals, Amadeus,” she said.

“Trismegistan magic, not Petronian,” the Black Knight replied. “And they are meant to ensure the land can be cultivated at all, not to offer unnaturally great bounty. Wekesa assures me the grounds are exhausted but not damaged by the rituals. For all his other flaws, Dread Emperor Sorcerous was a brilliant mage.”

Eyes bright, almost excited though nothing had been revealed since doom and the source of it, Alaya drank of her cup again.

“So you’ve found answers,” she said. “What do you mean to use them for?”

“To make this empire,” the Black Knight said, “into more than a covenant of the hungry.”

“An ambitious enterprise,” Alaya commented, eyes veiled.

“It is,” Amadeus of the Green Stretch said, holding her gaze. “It’d take at least two to see it through, at a guess.”

Something flickered across her face, then, that he could not put a word to. It stayed there, for a time, until her chin rose and her eyes blazed with something utterly implacable.

“So it will,” Alaya said, and it rang like an oath.