“The finest exercise of war is to interrupt the enemy’s plan. Therefore, the general without a plan is also without peer.”

– Isabella the Mad, Proceran general

“Archer,” Roland smiled. “It’s damned good to see you.”

Indrani flicked a glance at the ripped-up footbridge, large chunks of it either torched, cut or otherwise savaged beyond recognition.

“Same to you, Rogue,” she replied. “You’ve had an interesting day, by the looks of it.”

The rueful smile she got in answer to that was classic Roland, a touch of nonchalance facing the constant messes he seemed to get himself into. A tall, dark-skinned woman with those famous Wasteland golden eyes made her approach, skittish as a cat.

“Greetings, Archer,” the Blessed Artificer stiffly said. “I am-”

“I know who you are,” Indrani informed her.

She was not hostile in tone, even though the heroine seemed physically unable to help herself from picking fights with Masego whenever they were in the same room. Archer had no need to fight Hierophant’s battles for him. Besides, she’d made some inquiries and judged that Adanna of Smyrna would stay within acceptable bounds even if she got the upper hand – nothing permanent, nothing crippling. If nothing else, the Artificer would serve to make sure that Masego didn’t got too soft during his years away from the front.

“Pick up the Poet and bring him down,” Archer ordered them. “I want to ask him a few questions.”

“You have a healer?” Roland asked, sounding relieved.

Someone had done a nasty turn on his cheek – heated metal, by the charred and bloody looks of that wound – so she could see why he’d be. The Artificer was bleeding as well, but it looked mostly like shallow cuts. Both heroes were exhausted, though, maybe a quarter hour away from the sense of danger fading and the shakes settling in instead. The Rogue Sorcerer had a few potions to delay that further, she knew, but odds were Cocky would have better stuff below.

“I brought the Concocter,” Indrani said. “She’s down there, examining the body.”

“Only the one?” Roland probed, sounding surprised.

“It is the Black Queen’s,” the Blessed Artificer bluntly told her. “The fae said that she died and they cannot lie.”

“Knowingly,” Archer corrected. “They cannot lie knowingly. There’s a body down there, sure, but I’ve my doubts.”

If Indrani was right, though, it begged the question of where the Hells Catherine actually was. She wouldn’t have left Roland and the Artificer to face enemies outnumbered without a good reason, or even just disappeared at all for that matter. Indrani had been sent out to get answers and she’d yet to bring them back.

“There will be another prisoner,” Roland volunteered. “I crippled the Count of Green Apples and tossed him into the stacks on the western side of the first story.”

Archer let out a low whistle, genuinely impressed. Fae didn’t usually leg it when they’d come for a reason, as these clearly had, so if the Count hadn’t come back then crippled must be something of an understatement.

“I’ll pick him up, then,” Indrani said. “Can the two of you handle the Exalted Poet?”

The Blessed Artificer was already kneeling at the man’s side, she noted with approval, already getting down to work. Except the dark-skinned woman was grimacing in dismay, finger on the side of the traitor’s neck.

“He’s dead,” Adanna of Smyrna said. “He has no pulse.”

Archer blinked in surprise. She’d shot him in the throat, true, but she’d avoided the spine. She’d buy unconscious, she’d been banking on it really, but dead?

“Isn’t he a Levantine hero?” Indrani said.

“He was a Levantine poet, Archer,” Roland reminded her. “An occupation not habitually known for its physical fortitude.”

“It isn’t as if being born in the Dominion lends someone greater vitality,” the Blessed Artificer waspishly said. “Though to my passing knowledge of medicine, he appears to have died from choking on his blood.”

“Hells,” Archer cursed. “I wanted to interrogate him. How dead is he, would you say?”

“… averagely dead?” Adanna of Smyrna hazarded.

“Not fresh gone,” Roland noted. “If you’re thinking of fanning a last spark with tonics, I’d say that stallion has left the pen.”

Damn it, just when she finally had someone at hand who had those sorts of brews.

“Just toss him down, then,” Indrani sighed. “Can’t leave the body unattended, not with the number of potential necromancers in this place.”

“He’s a hero,” the Blessed Artificer bit out angrily. “We can’t just-”

“He was a traitor,” Archer flatly interrupted, “and now he’s a corpse. Carry him down in a tender embrace, if you feel like it, but I’ve no intention of lending an ear to your praise of a failed turncoat.”

She shot a look at Roland.

“Don’t linger,” she said. “That’s a nasty wound, best to get it seen to as soon as possible.”

Archer did not bother with goodbyes, instead leaving them to make their decision on their own as she headed for the stairs. Much as it rubbed her the wrong way not to remove her arrows from the corpses, given how precious they were, it would have to wait. After going one story down she made her way around the side of the Belfry and found the fae the Rogue Sorcerer had handled, brow rising when she saw one of the Fair Folk outright unconscious. She’d seen their like wounded and dead by the hundreds, but unconscious? That was much rarer. What had Roland done to screw with it that badly? Screw with him, it turned out as Archer got close, but when she turned over the body – a longknife in hand, just in case – she started at the face.

“I know you,” Archer muttered, brow creasing.

Whatshisname from the Battle of Dormer, wasn’t he? The fucker who’d kept throwing fire at her and nearly burned Vivienne to death when he caught her flatfooted. The Duke of Something Something. Green Trees, Green Yews – no, that was some other bastard Cat and Hakram had murdered while she’d been out in southern Callow with Zeze – oh, Green Orchards! So the last time she’d seen that face it’d been on a Duke of Summer, one who should be thoroughly dead by now. Cat had been in a black mood that night and people didn’t tend to walk those off. Much less turn up a few years later with a different name, yet here we were. That had implications, according to some of what she’d picked up lately.

Indrani had honestly paid only passing attention to this Quartered Season racket that Masego and Catherine had going on, doing her due diligence of going through everybody’s things more out of habit than genuine interest, but she’d picked up a thing or two. The principle, as she understood it, had come from a theory Zeze put forward after the Twilight Ways were born and he got rid of the petty god in the back of his head: that the Court of Arcadia Resplendent, the one born from the wedding of Summer and Winter, was an entirely new entity and not something flowing directly from either Winter or Summer.

There were a bunch of complicated explanation for why that was, best left for others to dig into, but the heart of it was a division being made between ‘power’ and ‘crowns’, the former being the good stuff and the latter the formal mantle. Masego believed that Arcadia was one crown and Twilight another. Which meant that regardless of where ‘power’ had been accrued – mostly Arcadia with Twilight and the Crows splitting the difference, the theory went – there were still two ‘crowns’ up for grabs. It didn’t matter if there wasn’t much ‘power’ left behind either, the way Masego put it, because it was still a functioning godhead. Dried up, sure, but functional.

What he and Cat meant to make of it had been straight out of that brand of outrageous that tended to spring up whenever they collaborated on something: vicious to the bone and too clever by half. Instead of making a giant sharper or even a fine arrow for their good pal Indrani, they’d decided to make a gift. So what did it mean, this old face with a new name? Someone else would have to figure it out, she supposed, because it was beyond her.

“Might as well bring you down,” Indrani mused, gazing down at the fae.

She was wary of waking up one of the fae and interrogating them without a warding specialist at hand, but Roland with a few potions in him might do in a pinch. There was a need for answers. She hoisted the fae over her shoulder, forcing her bow to the side, and finished the trek back at the bottom of the Belfry. Cocky was kneeling on the floor, silver knife in hand as she studied the insides of the dead body she’d been left with, and only vaguely gestured in greeting when Indrani dropped the unconscious count.

“So?” Archer probed.

The Concocter withdrew her hands, stripping them of some sort of gauzy transparent film they’d been coated in and throwing it aside. It melted a beat later, leaving behind only the filth and blood it’d soaked up.

“I was going to have to ask you if the Black Queen was misassigned, but it won’t be necessary,” Cocky bluntly said. “Whoever this boy was, he was not finished going through puberty.”

Indrani felt her shoulders loosen. She’d believed, she had. Believed that Cat wouldn’t go out like this, to a nobody and a few fae, that this plan had been of her own making and that meant she still had hands to play. But Archer also remembered the stillness of ice around her, the utter silence of creeping death, and shed known that sometimes there just wasn’t anything you could do. Sometimes the world got the last laugh, and all you could do was take it. But not today, she thought, breathing out. She wouldn’t be losing anyone today.

“Keep that between us,” Archer said. “You couldn’t identify the body.”

“I know the Rogue Sorcerer professionally,” Cocky pointed out. “He is aware I am not, in fact, a complete imbecile.”

Indrani swallowed the theatrical my Gods, how long have you been lying to him? that’d come to her tongue unbidden, an old habit not quite shed, and forced herself to focus.

“He’ll also know to keep his mouth shut,” Archer replied. “We understand each other.”

While the dark-haired Named had no idea why Cat wanted to pass herself off as dead, she didn’t feel all that inclined to spread knowledge of the trick around now that she’d figured it out. Presumably there were reasons for this, another round of deep games that Indrani had long given up trying to figure out. Archer could catch the scent a story when it was around, and she’d been taught how to avoid those that’d get her killed, but she just didn’t have the knack for that sort of thinking that Catherine did. It took a peculiar sort of madness, to master those arts, and not of a sort she envied.

“Did you get another prisoner upstairs?” the Concocter asked. “I have serums readied, if it is the case.”

“He, uh, died,” Indrani said.

A beat passed.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” Cocky said, and it wasn’t really a question.

“Let’s not get hung up on who did what,” Archer evaded. “Do you have something that would compel fae to speak?”

Her brow rose, and she now seemed interested.

“Magically compel, no,” the Concocter said. “But there are other ways. I have a substance than should be able to lull him into a pleasant trance and make him receptive to inquiries.”

“That’d do it,” Indrani approved. “They’re hard to break with pain, but they’re not immune to gentler methods. Thanks, Cocky.”

The purpled-eyed woman eyed her with something like wary surprise, as if expecting a barb to follow, and only nodded after a few moments had passed.

“I can wake him up now, if you’d like,” the Concocter said, gesturing at the prisoner.

“Best to wait for the Rogue Sorcerer for containment,” Archer replied.

As it happened it was not long before Roland and the Artificer were there, the two of them carrying the Exalted Poet’s corpse by the arms and legs. The arrow had been removed, but the wound was visible.

“Really, Indrani? An arrow to the throat?” Cocky murmured. “Quite the capture method.”

“He’s Dominion,” Archer defended, “they’re supposed to be hardy.”

“I’m sure that fact was a great comfort while he choked to death on his own blood,” the Concocter replied, sounding deeply amused.

Everyone was getting snippy, these days. The heroes set down the corpse without much ceremony – it was heavy and they were tired – before Roland straightened his coat and the Artificer wiped her hands clean on her apron.

“Rogue Sorcerer,” Cocky greeted the Proceran as she rose to her feet

She let a full moment pass.

“Artificer.”

Indrani, no stranger to the art of petty slights, had to smother a smile at the refinement of that particular bit of pettiness.

“Concocter,” the Blessed Artificer replied, tone flat.

“Let’s get that cheek healed up,” Archer cheerfully said. “Maybe something for the fatigue as well, unless Rogue’s been drinking?”

“I refrained,” Roland said. “I would be in your debt, Concocter, if you would oblige.”

That stroked Cocky’s fur the right way, as courtesies tended to, and she got to work without quibbling. It was quick work sewing up the cheek with needle and thread then applying the salve and having him drink the potion that back in Refuge they’d called the Pardon. It was red and thick, almost more molasses than liquid, and it smelled of death – which is was partly made of, Indrani suspected, or at least flesh – but within moments of drinking it Roland was looking better. The bleeding on his cheek ceased and the charred skin began to flake, though this wasn’t a miracle brew: skin did not grow back, and it’d take more than a drink to fix his carved cheek muscles.

The Artificer got seen to as well, if less comprehensively, with a small vial ending the bleeding in her cuts and an elongated pill for the pain. The heroine grimaced as she swallowed the latter, not without reason: Cocky didn’t coat hers in honey or extracts, unlike a lot of medicine-peddlers.

“Feeling up to a bit of a talk, Sorcerer?” Indrani asked.

“What about?” Roland asked.

“Not you and me,” she laughed, then pointed a boot at the unconscious fae. “I’ve questions for our friend here.”

“I can run containment, if you want,” the Rogue Sorcerer said, “but it should not be necessary. He should barely be more physically capable than a human, at the moment.”

Archer’s brow rose. While she was damned curious about how he’d pulled that off – everyone and their sister knew Roland had sticky fingers when it came to tricks and artefacts, but there was quite a leap between that and hollowing out a Count of Autumn – that seemed like it might infringe on the nature of his aspects, and that… just wasn’t something you asked. It was fair game if heard, or fought, but asking someone to just hand out one of three words at the heart of them a different story.

“Keep an eye out anyway,” Indrani said. “Cocky, the fae’s all yours.”

“Joy,” the Concocter muttered, rolling her eyes.

Backtalk or not, it was with poorly veiled eagerness she knelt at the Count of Green Apples’ side and forced his mouth open. Odds were she didn’t often get to ply her trade on the likes of him, Archer mused. Her own eyes wandered a bit, coming to rest on the dead body that was not Catherine’s. Roland hadn’t asked, though she suspected that when they got a moment to talk without people to overhear he would, and evidently the Blessed Artificer still believed herself to be correct. Whose body was it? It couldn’t be the Fallen Monk’s, she thought, even though it was his knife that Cocky had taken out from the neck and laid down next to the body.

Wait, why was the knife there?

Indrani could recognize it on sight, she’d seen it make quite a few cuts. The Monk had always been sharp in a bad way, but she hadn’t thought that he would… Well, you couldn’t always see it coming. There were nights ahead of her where Archer would examine whether she ought to have seen that betrayal coming, but not now. Last blood had not been spilled. The knife was placed here so I could see it, Indrani decided. The rest of her band was here, but dispersed and unlikely to come here in the Belfry without reason. Cat must have left it there as a message. Not recrimination, that wasn’t her style. It’d been stuck in the corpse, though, so what was it that was important about the corpse?

Oh, Indrani thought, and put it together. You’re listening through it, aren’t you? You’re waiting for my report and for whatever we dig up here. Breathing out, Archer knelt by Cocky’s side even as the fae’s eyes fluttered open – glazed, unseeing – and Roland took position behind the Count of Green Apples.

“It’s working?” she asked the Concocter.

“It should,” Cocky said, finger forcing open an eye and looking at the dilation. “Try asking him a question.”

“Who are you?” Archer asked.

“I am the Count of Green Apples, of course,” the fae said, sounding surprised.

“Dreamlike state,” Cocky said, sounding satisfied. “It took hold properly.”

Indrani nodded her thanks, then took to interrogation.

“Who sent you here?”

“The Prince of Falling Leaves,” the fae said.

The Blessed Artificer flinched at the words, all eyes save the Count’s turning to her in surprise.

“Care to share?” Archer lightly said.

“The Hunted Magician,” Adanna of Smyrna replied. “He’s had dealings with that creature before.”

Fuck, Indrani thought. This better not end up being blamed on Cat because a villain had been the way in and not one of Above’s shiny helmets. Interesting that the Artificer would know that, though. She’d have to remember to look into it later.

“Why did you come to the Belfry in particular?” Archer asked.

“To destroy the works of the Hierophant,” the Count said. “And so settle half our debt.”

Indrani’s fingers clenched in triumph. That sounded like a proper scapegoat being set out for her, didn’t it?

“Who is the debt owed to?”

“The Wandering Bard.”

Cocky stiffened at her side, beginning to grasp the depths of how badly she’d miscalculated by making a bargain with the Intercessor. The Artificer looked mostly confused, Roland grim.

“Where did the prince go?” Indrani asked.

“To get his due,” the Count of Green Apples proudly said. “To break the sword.”

And there it was, Autumn’s plan laid out. The dark-haired killer rose to her feet, stretching as she did.

“Archer?” the Rogue Sorcerer tried.

“Knock him out and bind him,” Indrani ordered. “We’re got work to do.”

Now, Archer thought, how was she going to keep giving her report to a dead body subtle? Any notion of her guess there being wrong was put to rest, after all, by the way the corpse’s neck had slightly turned so it would be able to watch the interrogation.

—

Christophe de Pavanie took the blow without flinching, angling his shield so that it would slide to the side and giving answer with a slice of his sword. The fae drew back with a scream, having tasted of the Light running along the blade’s edge and found it to be a thing of pain, and in a flash of orange-red wings it withdrew. The creature fled down the hallway to the right, the faint squeeze against the hero’s ankle informing him glamour had been woven against him, but the Mirror Knight did not pursue. He halted his steps, for though Christophe himself was not tired in the slightest the same could not be said of all his companions.

Lady Eliade was suffering the worst of it, by his reckoning. Between the wounded leg, the fresh break of her shoulder by one of the Lords of Dwindling Warmth and the exhaustion of continued spellcasting, she was reaching the end of what her body could take. She might be able to use a few more trinkets, but no more great spells. The Repentant Magister was not like the Witch of the Woods, a war mage meant for the killing fields. Her gifts were gentler in nature, for all her sordid past, and she grew exhausted significantly more quickly than her savage counterpart. Sidonia was helping her keep pace, the Vagrant Spear the only one among them confident she could react swiftly to ambush even one-handed. Frustratingly, Sidonia had also refused healing after looking directly at the Duchess of Red Sunset with an eye that was now a blackened ruin.

Christophe was not certain whether she was refusing because he’d been the one to suggest healing or because some fool Dominion code of honour forbade it, but neither answer would do anything to abate his anger over the matter.

Antoine was keeping pace for now, slightly behind and to the Mirror Knight’s left as was their habit, but he could recognize that his compatriot was quickly headed towards collapse as well. The Blade of Mercy’s nature was to prove dangerous beyond his years, as was only proper of a young man the Saint of Swords herself had once deemed ‘built for killing Damned’, but though his strength was explosive it was also short-lived. He’d used Kindle earlier, so by now he should be drawing on true Light and not the one contained within his aspect: the way Antoine heavily relied on Light and Choosing to move and react meant he was now headed faster towards collapse with every fight. He’d used up Flicker as an offensive strike, too, so he wouldn’t be able to use it as a life-saving trick. That fact would be weighing on him, a lingering distracting fear.

The man Antoine had used the boon to protect was near spent as well, Christophe suspected, though the Adjutant hid it better than most. The orc had to have called on at least two aspects when tangling with the Fair Folk in that last melee, and he was slower on his feet now if you knew what to look for: the Adjutant was simply tall enough that even slowed his stride was quicker than most humans’. That was ill news, as the Mirror Knight was aware that Hakram Deadhand had not been a stranger to their successes thus far. The orc could not be called silvertongued, he did not have the… cunning mien for that, but he had a calming and orderly way about him. Christophe, who half the time seemed to infuriate when he meant compliment and praise when he meant to insult, could only envy that.

He even envied the man’s Name, he would admit to himself. Though like him the Adjutant had been blessed with endurance, unlike him the orc was just as deadly on the attack. It was an impious thought, to envy one of the Damned, and half-heartedly Christophe chided himself for it. A lot of what he’d believed to be truth in the beautiful shade of the lakeside of orchards of Pavanie had not taken well to the harsher glare of the world beyond them.

Of the Maddened Keeper he thought little, knowing from Cleves that she hardly ever tired – it was as if her body resisted any change at all, be it good or bad. Christophe also knew that she was no comrade in the shield wall, no sister-in-arms. She would come and go as she wished, and though she did the work of Above in swallowing whole the evils that she did the manner in which she bound those within her made her not unlike the carrier of a sickness: there was nothing that the Keeper kept within her that was not a mere finger’s touch away from Creation. Had she not been in the city when he gathered Chosen to head out to the Arsenal and end the plot revealed to him, he likely would not have sought her out. Yet she’d been invaluable in navigating the Twilight Ways and finding a path into the Arsenal that would not take them months and months to travel. In some ways he sympathized with the Keeper: her Choosing, like his, had made her into someone to use instead of someone to honour.

“Keep your guard up,” the Mirror Knight said. “We should be nearing the Severance.”

“It might have been broken by the time we arrive,” Antoine said, tone bleak.

“They would not still be ambushing us if that were the case,” Adjutant said, his voice rough as stone.

A far cry from that eerie, beautiful tune he’d sung in some Praesi tongue as the fae stormed around them.

“They must be buying time for the prince to break through the wards,” the Repentant Magister said. “Those were put up by the finest mages in the Arsenal, they won’t fall easily.”

Obvious. That had been obvious, so why hadn’t he seen it? All these blessings, but what were they really worth in his hands? The Dames had chosen him, back home, but he’d wandered a long way from that home. Would they choose him again, he wondered?

Somehow he doubted it.

“We push on with all haste,” the Mirror Knight grimly said. “We cannot allow a weapon that might be able to take the Dead King’s head to be broken.”

No life here was worth that price. That blade might save hundreds of thousands of lives, millions. Some of the Named would balk at what he’d said, or perhaps how bluntly he’d said, but it was the truth nonetheless. What was one Chosen, in the face of that many innocents? Or even all five of them, and the Damned one too. It might rub them raw, to hear it starkly said, but it was Christophe’s people who were dying in droves holding the fronts. It was his countrymen who’d been forced to flee their homes and now sickened and despaired in great refugee camps, who gave up harvest and coin to keep Calernia from Keter’s reaching grasp. So often he’d had to watch his people beggar themselves with gratitude as the foreign armies that’d come to lend their aid, and the sight of it sickened him.

Whose lands was it that were burning, bleeding, trod upon by the dead? The Principate had been made into the shield of the rest of the continent, just like he’d been made the shield for the rest of the Chosen: they were both expected to keeping taking the hits and keep their mouth shut, as if it were an honour. No, the Mirror Knight would spend every life here without hesitating a beat if it meant saving the innocent. There was more to being Chosen than Light and tricks: it was a burden as well as a privilege. Too often only the privilege was remembered.

“We don’t all have your… stamina,” the Vagrant Spear said, tone faintly mocking.

Or was it lurid? He itched to answer but took hold of himself. Now was not the time for this.

“Then some of us will pull ahead, and the others will have to catch up,” Christophe said. “I do not like splitting our numbers, but it must be done. We will draw the attention of the fae as we advance, which will flush out ambushes.”

“Unless they slip behind with the intent to strike at the laggards,” the Repentant Magister pointed out.

“You are free to retreat, if that is your wish,” the Mirror Knight replied. “I expect they will not follow.”

“Perhaps,” Antoine hesitantly said, “Lady Eliade could seek reinforcements?”

“That would be wise,” Christophe agreed, cursing himself for not having thought of such a delicate way to send her away.

Must he always give insult? It had not been meant as one even if it sounded like an accusation.

“Vagrant Spear, Adjutant, Keeper, with me,” the Mirror Knight said.

“Christophe?” Antoine said, blinking in utter surprise.

“You’re nearing the end of your rope,” he replied. “I can’t take you into the thick of it. Besides, someone needs to see to Lady Eliade’s protection.”

“I am still fit to fight,” Antoine insisted. “I promise you-”

Anger flared.

“Don’t promise me anything,” Christophe forced out, “just do as I say.”

The stricken look on the younger man’s face had him regretting his tone immediately, but did the Blade not realize what he was doing by arguing with him in front of the others? How could they heed his orders when his own second contradicted him? The Vagrant Spear, uninterested, instead cast an uneasy look at the woman she’d been supporting for some time now.

“Nephele-” she said.

“Go,” the Repentant Magister said. “I am sure the Blade of Mercy will see grandly to my safety. We will make haste and return with help.”

“The Forlorn Paladin won’t be far,” Sidonia said. “He’s an odd duck, but steady. He’ll listen.”

“I’m sure,” the sorcerers smiled. “Shall we, Antoine?”

The Blade of Mercy cast him a look and Christophe nodded jerkily, hoping his eyes could carry the apology he could not allow himself to speak before this company.

“It would be my pleasure, Lady Eliade,” the Blade of Mercy stiffly replied.

The Adjutant was watching them all, face unreadable, but the orc said nothing. Christophe did not know whether he should be disappointed or grateful for that.

“Form up,” the Mirror Knight said. “We must move quickly.”

They would kill the Prince of Falling Leaves, he swore it. And if none of their blades could do it…

Christophe of Pavanie would do what he must.

—

She was not surprised to find herself awaited.

Deftly, the other woman began to shuffle a deck of cards and cocked a sardonic eyebrow.

“You took your time,” she said.

Slowly, careful not to aggravate her injury, she lowered herself into the seat across the table before replying.

“I had some catching up to do,” Catherine Foundling replied, making herself comfortable. “But I’m about ready to begin. You?”

“Just about,” the Intercessor smiled, and began to deal out the cards.