“The Vales we held with valour

And swept clear the Wasaliti

But spring returns the enemy

As we grow old in armour.”

– Duncan Threefingers, Callowan poet

Catherine Foundling leaned back into her seat, neck yet bloody but her sharp smile unwavering. On her brow sat a crown, blackly won, and she wore a mantle made of many woes. Facing her, sprawled on her seat like a languid cat, the Wandering Bard shuffled a worn deck of cards. Trickster’s fingers danced, below light blue eyes and a smile that had seen many a kingdom turn to dust. At her side waited a badly-strung lute and before her a flask of silver lay open. Both women were smiling in that way people did, when sharpening knives behind their back.

“So, what are we drinking?” Catherine asked, flicking a glance at the flask.

The Wandering Bard, whose name was now Marguerite, chuckled and set down the cards. She took a delicate glass from the side and snatched her flask, pouring a finger for the other woman.

“Ashuran haralm,” the Bard replied, tone whimsical. “Some call it the very elixir of life.”

“Nice touch,” Catherine admitted. “But, as you might be aware, I have recently been stabbed.”

“I may have heard of this unfortunate happenstance,” the Bard said. “Do you mean to say you won’t be drinking after all?”

The Black Queen snorted.

“Crows no,” she said. “It means make it a double, my neck still hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”

“That’s the spirit,” the Wandering Bard grinned, and poured again.

The tanned queen picked up her glass, swirling the hard liquor within as if she were appreciating the bouquet of a fine wine instead of playing with shipborne rotgut.

“So cards, huh,” Catherine said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”

“I enjoy the underlying truths of the game,” the Bard demurred.

“Illuminate me, by all means,” the Black Queen invited, sipping at her drink.

Unlike the last time they’d shared it, she did not choke. Marguerite of Baillons deftly began shuffling the cards again, a smooth and soothing cut from hand to hand.

“Cards are unfair,” the Intercessor said. “Cards about luck and lies, and sometimes there’s simply no way to win.”

“That usually means you’re not playing the right game,” the Carrion’s Lord apprentice replied.

“Are you?” the Wandering Bard smiled.

Catherine drank, the liquor warming her guts.

“Hard to tell until the end,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

“How kind of you,” the Bard mused, the undertone skeptical, “to let me choose this uncontested.”

“Can’t win if there’s no game,” the Black Queen grinned, all teeth and malice.

“Can’t cheat without rules, is it?” the Wandering Bard smiled back, reaching for her flask. “Fair enough. Have you ever played Affray, Catherine?”

“That drunk’s game?” the dark-eyed queen said, brow rising.

The Intercessor cast a look at the now quarter empty glass in her hand, then raised her flask for a silent toast.

“It’s medicinal,” Catherine Foundling protested, meaning point taken.

“Back in the day it was used as peacemaking ritual, in the lands that became Lange and Salia,” the Bard confided as she shuffled. “It was your Queen of Blades that brought it east, after she went about the business of carving an empire across the Whitecaps.”

It was a simple enough game, one that could be played with any tarot deck’s Major Arcana. The first player would set down a card from their hand, opening an ‘affray’: players could set down cards one after another, with the cumulative value of the cards of any of the twenty one Major Arcana put down used to count who the winner of that affray was. To win an affray granted a player one point. The trick was that there could be up to five affrays – or more or less, depending on variants – on the table at any time, and a player could declare their loss and clear out the affray by conceding the point. For that concession they would gain the right to take back one of the cards they’d put down in said affray.

“Nowadays it’s a tavern game for people too drunk for more complicated ones,” Catherine snorted.

“The Langeni used clay tablets instead of cards,” the Bard told her. “Each of them standing for a life sworn to the resolution of the strife.”

“That’s just a battle without the steel,” the Black Queen said. “Nothing more or less.”

The Intercessor drank of her flask and did not disagree.

“While we’re having this pleasant little chat, one pal to another,” Catherine said. “I’ve got a question to ask you.”

“I delight in giving answers,” the Bard replied.

“You see, I’ve had this song stuck in my head all day,” the orphan queen said. “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

“Sounds troubling,” the Intercessor said, glint of triumph in her eye. “But you are in luck, as I happen to be something of an authority when it comes to songs. Which one is it that haunts you?”

The Black Queen hummed the first few bars of ‘The Girl Who Climbed The Tower’ and saw the way the glint died, smiling at the sight.

“Ah,” Catherine Foundling said. “So there it is. Never you mind, Marguerite, I withdraw my question.”

They matched eyes in silence, a moment passing.

“Seven cards each,” the Wandering Bard said. “Draw on drop, five affrays.”

“I await your pleasure,” Catherine Foundling replied. “Hells, you can even open the game.”

“Your kindness is without bounds,” the Bard praised.

With light fingers she began to deal. One each, back and forth.

“Kindness?” the Black Queen said. “No. I’m just recognizing that you drew first blood, that’s all there is to it.”

The last card was hardly down that they both took up their hands. Each looked at their own, seeing how once more Creation had seen to the details, and with a flourish the Wandering Bard set down her first card and in the same gesture drew. What she revealed was a fair-haired woman subduing a lion, Strength. The older name for that card, and the truer one today, was Fortitude.

“The Mirror Knight,” the Intercessor said. “Lost and angry and feeling it all slip away from his grasp. He’ll take up the sword because it fixes all he despises about himself.”

A card was set down over it, without missing a beat: a crowned and dark-skinned man on a barren throne, the Emperor.

“The Adjutant,” the Black Queen said. “Faith with a cold eye, patience without hesitation. He will steer them all away from the rocks, because it is in his nature to mend what is broken.”

—

The Prince of Falling Leaves had lost patience, Christophe de Pavanie saw.

Hammering at the wards hadn’t borne fruit – the enchanted steel gates were still shut – so instead he had unleashed the fullness of his wrath on the stone around them. Some clever soul had seen to it this would be no solution, and even now that the cube of rock surrounded by water holding the Severance had been peeled open of protection by rot some invisible barrier still prevented the fae from entering the room. Yet the prince of the Fair Folk had grown darkly ruthless in his pursuit of entry, snatching up Arsenal armsmen and making puppets of them before throwing them across the unseen divide. The poor soldiers were slowly forcing open the enchanted doors from the inside, using their blades to pry them apart as they groaned in protest.

“Forward,” the Mirror Knight bellowed, sword high.

The Vagrant Spear whooped, quickening her pace as she claimed the vanguard. The royal fae’s gaggled of attendants were sent out by him and swept forth against the three Named, lords and ladies carved out of frenzied dreams and wielding powers outlandish, but the Mirror Knight and the Adjutant stood like tall stones as the tide washed around them. There could be no strategy to this, no cunning: it was only a parade of sneering faces and blades that Christophe must strike at, cutting when he could and forcing through their blows as if they were but summer rain. Yet his blade bit fae flesh too little, the Adjutant was tiring and Sidonia was still half-blind. The Vagrant Spear took the first wound, a deep slash across the face that added red to the savage paints on her face, but the orc was not far behind in having a barbed spear pierce into the side of his leg. On the sides, all the hallways leading to this godforsaken place, fae were pouring in. The wayfinders were returning, heeding the call of their lord and prince. Before long, Christophe of Pavanie knew, he would be standing alone surrounded by corpses.

Again. Too slow, too weak, too stupid, again.

“Cross the wards,” Hakram Deadhand roared.

None knew if they would be allowed through, for the Repentant Magister was not there to speak of it – and who was it that had sent her away? Christophe of Pavanie, once more the gravedigger of finer souls – but what choice did they have? The Adjutant was the first to reach where once stone had stood, before it frittered away into pebbles and dust, and after resisting for a heartbeat the wards let him through. Without hesitation the orc limped towards the enchanted soldiers, axe raised. Sidonia was halfway to safety, when some wild-looking fae ran her trough the side with a slender rapier of bone. Christophe swelled with anger, screaming, and tore his way through the Fair Folk to get to her side. The fae parted like mist wherever her struck, and though their strikes glanced off his sides and shield with barely any effort the Mirror Knight had never felt more impotent than in that moment.

Sidonia had rammed a knife through the hollow of the fae’s chin, by the time he got there, even as the warrior twisted his grip and ran through her lung. The Mirror Knight smashed down the animal with his shield, fury boiling out, and dropped his blade to pick up the Vagrant Spear even as the fae swarmed him like flies. Step by step, keeping Sidonia safe under the shield, he retreated to the safety of the wards as the Fair Folk harassed him. It was onto wet stone he stood, a wounded friend clutched tight in his arms, and Gods forgive him but he had sent away their only healer. He would have wept of it, but what would weeping do? Sidonia could still make it through this, if the fae were scattered and help sought. But could he abandon the Severance for the sake of one soul, to its likely destruction?

No, he thought as he laid her down, he could not.

To the side, the Adjutant slew the third struggling soldier with a clean stroke through the neck but it had been a moment too late. The doors had been open, just a finger’s worth, and the crack the steel gave as it did had the ring of the inexorable to it.

—

“I didn’t think you’d send the Deadhand out with that valiant lot right from the start,” the Bard acknowledged. “You usually keep him in reserve for longer.”

“He was the only one who could do it,” Catherine shrugged. “Can you imagine if I’d sent Archer with them instead?”

The Intercessor chuckled.

“That would have been my affray before long, true enough,” she said. “He’s a steady sort, your man, I won’t argue that. But he can’t spin gold from straw, Catherine. The Mirror Knight has been left to fester for too long, the sickness sunk into the bones.”

“I’ll not speak to Christophe of Pavanie,” the Black Queen said. “He’s not one of mine, and I know him little. But I have put my faith in Hakram Deadhand many a time, when the day grew dark, and I was never once disappointed.”

“Your father’s daughter indeed,” the Wandering Bard said, and it was a compliment to neither. “I told him then and I’ll tell you now: love always fucks you over.”

“If you want the right to lecture me,” Catherine Foundling replied, unmoved, “win.”

As if prompted by the words, the Bard set down her second card. A black spire of stone piercing even the clouds, as pale lightning struck at it: the Tower.

“Ruin onto your Truce and Terms,” the Intercessor said. “The Red Axe slain in blind revenge, heroes and villains at each other’s throats beyond what can be mended.”

The other woman gave answer without batting an eye, her card dropped atop the other with insolent nonchalance. It showed a fair prince, riding a chariot pulled by horses both black and white: the Chariot.

“The Kingfisher Prince,” the Black Queen said. “Alamans iron forged in a Lycaonese forge, daring with duty holding the reins. Authority and trust, crowns earthly and not.”

Under her breath, barely noticing it, she hummed the tune to a familiar song that spoke of foxes and kings.

—

“It appears we’ve run into a spot of trouble, my friend,” Prince Frederic of Brus jovially said.

Soldiers crowded both ends of the hallway, perhaps sixty in whole? Not a small amount, considering the garrison of the Arsenal should not surpass three hundred in whole. By the looks of them it was a mix of bearded Levantines and the latest issue of the mold buried at the heart of Callow that kept churning out gruff, middle-aged soldiers with hard eyes. No Named or creatures, by the looks of it, but Frederic’s eyes were not so fine he would trust them without condition.

“Let me go,” the Red Axe grunted. “I’ll make it out on my own.”

Doubtful, considering she was currently bereft of the weapon that’d earned her the Choosing, but admittedly it sometimes paid to keep your coin on Chosen when the odds were long. Regardless it was simply out of question that he might let an unarmed, shoeless and manacled woman be captured by a band of soldiers. The sheer dishonour of such a thing would force him to abdicate, shorn his hair in contrition and never again enjoy a vintage more than a year old.

The Prince of Brus might even have to drink wine from Callow in penance, which was simply too horrid a fate to contemplate.

“No need for that,” Frederic assured her. “I do happen to have a smattering of royal blood in my veins, which comes in useful on occasion. I should be able to talk our way out of this.”

From the corner of his eye, he caught the sight of an approaching half-company of crossbowmen. It seemed to have been what thee surrounding soldiers were waiting for, as a moment later a captain in Dominion armour and paint hailed them.

“You are surrounded and were caught red-handed helping a prisoner escape,” the Dominion warrior said. “Surrender now or be served the sword.”

Whoever it was who’d arranged this, Frederic thought, had been careful. There was not a single Proceran soldier here, someone who might have trusted or deferred to a prince of the blood – on the contrary, trying such a thing with this lot was a lot more likely to have them using those crossbows. The Callowans in particular still remembered being at war with the Principate and were a famously touchy lot when it came to foreigners. Not without reason, but in the current circumstances that was rather unfortunate.

At least it smoothed away any notion he might have developed of this being a betrayal by the Black Queen. Cordelia had told him once that Queen Catherine had a fondness for soldiers and the common folk, sometimes at the expense of those of higher births, which given the First Prince’s diplomatic tendencies likely meant that the Black Queen would bake an entire pie out of dukes to feed an urchin child from the street without batting an eye. She was not the kind of woman who would sacrifice her own countrymen, her own soldiers, to carry out so petty a scheme.

Like as not, Frederic mused, this was part of the trap. A Proceran prince, the sole Chosen among them, slaughtering Callowan soldiers to help a killer escape justice – even if Queen Catherine came out in his support, which would be… delicate, the mere appearances of this would have the Army of Callow brought to a boil. Someone, Frederic Goethal thought, was trying to sow dissension within the Grand Alliance at a time where unity was one of the few things standing between them an annihilation.

Someone was going to have to die, evidently.

“I understand that you have a duty,” the Kingfisher Prince called out. “Yet so do I, and I have reason to believe that this woman’s life is in danger. That is why I sprung her from her cell.”

“I don’t care if you’ve got duty or if you’ve got the clap, princeling,” the Dominion captain said. “Drop your sword and kneel, now.”

“I will do this, on my honour,” the Prince of Brus replied, “if you can assure me that I will be placed in the same cell as the Red Axe, and that my sword will be returned to me when I am in that cell.”

It was possible that Frederic would be able to fight his way through this, though far from certain – Dominion foot was hardy and sharpened by years of raiding, while the Callowans were veterans from half a dozen ludicrously brutal wars – but it would be a slaughter. Against such numbers, it would be vanity to attempt anything but his utmost. That meant killing blows, and the full might of his Choosing behind him.

“I must not have been clear,” the Dominion captain shouted, “this isn’t a negotiation, princeling. But it’s your last warning, though, so drop that fucking sword.”

If it came to a fight, Frederic Goethal thought, in a very real sense he had already lost. What did he have he could bargain with, here? Should he simply surrender, and from a visible and reassuring position of weakness try to make his case then?

“You shouldn’t have come,” the Red Axe whispered. “It’ll make it all worse. Just step back and act strange, I’ll say I used my Bestowal to make you do it.”

“I do not believe I could ever come to enjoy Dormer reds,” Frederic confessed, “so I shall have to decline.”

“Hold,” another voice called out. “What’s this all about, then?”

It was a Callowan lieutenant who’d spoken out, a stout orc with a scarred face and a wary look about him.

“Stay out of this, Inger,” the Dominion captain said. “You are outranked.”

Ah, how embarrassing – about her, the prince silently corrected.

“Outrank my ass, Hassar,” the orc growled. “I’m not shooting a fucking war hero without at least asking why first.”

That, the Kingfisher Prince decided, sounded like a way to turn this around.

—

“Agnes continues to hold a grudge, I see,” the Wandering Bard said. “She really ought to know better than to meddle by now. It never helps.”

“It’s a tired old game, this one,” Catherine Foundling said. “This pretence that you know better, that you are the natural mistress of all our fates and we do offence by pulling our own strings. I’d oppose you for that alone, even if you were all you try to pass for.”

“You oppose me because there is no part of you that can tolerate being used instead of user,” the Intercessor replied. “Everything else you add atop of that is a justification attempting to be just.”

“Have you ever been beaten twice in the same century before?” the Black Queen mused. “Gods, twice in the same decade? The Tyrant of the Augur, and maybe now a third headed your way. It has to sting, that your grip is growing loose after all these years.”

The Intercessor laughed.

“How very badly you want me to be your enemy,” she said, as if awed. “To be malicious, out to get you. As if I was not simply snuffing out fires before they swallowed too much, no small number lit by your hand.”

“You feed on agency, Intercessor,” the Black Queen said, tone cold. “You are a parasite sucking the blood out of all you touch. Whatever you might once have been, that is what you are now: mad as any Tyrant, callously make use of all the world to fight your war on Keter.”

“Yours is a rout, Catherine,” the Intercessor said. “I watched, for two years. I waited. And what do you have to show for it? You teased out a few of his tricks and buried a kingdom’s worth of dead as the price. You are out of your league. You are failing.”

“You lie as easily as you breathe,” the Black Queen replied. “These plans have been years in the making, you did not wait a whit. You simply cannot tolerate that this war can be fought in any way but with your hand at the helm.”

“Where are the devils, Catherine?” the Intercessor said. “Where are the hosts that darken the skies, and the demons he has kept leashed for centuries? Where are the rituals that poison the land and the sorceries never before seen? I’ll tell you the truth of it.”

She leaned forward, eyes hooded.

“Your alliance is not great enough a threat to warrant the use of any of those,” the Intercessor said. “You do not worry him.”

“You must know, deep down, that the truth of you is unpalatable to any who grasp it,” the Black Queen said, hard-eyed. “Why else would you remain half-hidden, pulling strings instead of serving as an advisor to the greats of this age? You talk about the Dead King, again and again, as if the horror of him in any way excuses what you are.”

“As is your habit, you talk of-”

“Gods, have I had enough of that,” the orphan girl snarled. “This insistence that we don’t understand while you don’t explain, that we are ignorant when you do not teach, that we are blind when you keep us in the dark. You are not somehow beyond us, you leech. You’re not too important, too big to be judged – not when you spend our lives like coppers. Being old and hard to kill does no exempt you from consequence, and even if it’s the last thing I do I will carve the truth of that into your fucking skull.”

“How many times I’ve been in this seat, the subject of that same indignation spoken through a different tongue,” the Intercessor said. “And do you know how it comes to happen, that I am lectured again?”

She smiled mirthlessly.

“Because I do what is necessary anyway,” the Wandering Bard said.

“You might be fighting a monster,” the Black Queen said, “but what of it? The rest of us are, after all, fighting two.”

The other woman softly laughed.

“A leech and a scavenger,” the Wandering Bard mused. “My, but what a pair we make. So, my friend, from one bottom-feeder to another – shall we settle the order of precedence among the base and hungry?”

A card was put down on the table, smoothly but without gentleness. Grey-clad and tanned, bearing a lantern and a staff: the Hermit.

“Fear and treason, conspiracy,” the Intercessor said. “Your fishing rod of crowns untouched but the fisherman drowned by the tide anyway. The Hierophant, slain.”

It was carefully, almost delicately, that a card was placed over the last. Two figures crowned with roses and holding hands, a radiant sun above them: the Lovers.

“Archer,” Catherine Foundling said, her voice clear as a frozen pond, fury gone cold. “Love like greed and feet unrelenting – Gods have mercy on whoever you sent after him, because she will make them into meat.”

—

It had taken Indrani longer to figure that she needed to go after Masego than to figure out where he actually would be.

Cat had been no help at all, disappearing from the corpse the moment she heard what there’d been to say, but eventually Archer had pieced it all together. She’d gone to the Belfry because she figured Catherine would be there, and she’d been right, but that’d been true for a reason: Cat had come here to keep Autumn’s grubby little hands off of the stuff in Masego’s quarters. This debt business the fae talked about, it was about breaking the most promising stuff in the Arsenal – the Bard, for some no doubt godawful reason, must have wanted it gone. Except the fae that’d gone for Quartered Seasons had gotten slaughtered wholesale, and presumably two traitors had died in the failure as well: the Poet and the Monk, both gone. It seemed like a right mess for the Bard’s side, but who the fuck ever knew with that one? She was all twists and turns and nipping at her own tail.

The bottom line of it, though, was that it’d been a pretty shit plan to send a bunch of fae after what was probably one of the single most warded rooms in the entire Arsenal. Indrani figured that even if the Artificer hadn’t bottled up the fairies near the bottom of the Belfry they would have been stuck hammering at that door for at least an hour, if not more. Fae were infamously shit at dealing with thresholds, and while Olowe’s Theorem suggested that a bastard realm like the Arsenal would only have weaker versions of creational laws like those weak didn’t mean absent. For a supposed weaver of wiles like the Wandering Bard, it was a lackluster effort. It’d tied up a lot of Named, though. And when Indrani had considered Quartered Seasons with a cold eye, thinking about how she would have scuppered that ship, the answer had been pretty obvious: Hierophant.

The material stuff could be built up again, but if Masego was dead that project was dead in the water. It was his theories, his rituals, his methods from beginning to start. Even if his notes got passed to someone else, it was doubtful they’d be able to keep going. There just weren’t that many mages with that kind of talent in Calernia. So, that must have been the play then: striking loud at the front gate, then slipping through the back to slide the knife. Zeze wasn’t helpless, but he wasn’t exactly invincible either. More worryingly he had some pretty dangerous weaknesses, for someone who knew where to look.

After that it’d just been a matter of figuring out where he was, since he obviously wasn’t in his rooms. Archer had almost smacked herself in the back of the head when she’d realized she was making this a lot more complicated than it needed to be: the outer wards of the Arsenal had been broken through by Autumn, and Hierophant had been one of the mages to set those foundations down. He wouldn’t be holed up or spoiling for a fight right now, he’d be fixing those wards and making sure that the entire Arsenal didn’t start splitting in pieces between multiple layers of the Pattern. Which, uh, would be… unpleasant to anyone happening to be in one of those pieces when they split. Archer didn’t need four Named to watch Masego’s back, though, and there’d be other fires to put out. So she sent Roland and Cocky where she figured they’d be most useful, and went on with only the Blessed Artificer at her side.

Adanna of Smyrna was exhausted, grumpy and running out of Light baubles to use but she have did one very important thing to contribute: she was one of the few keyed into the wards that surrounded the Chancel, the part of the Arsenal where the central warding array was.

They cut in through the Alcazar’s tunnels, since they were deserted and a shortcut, and got through the first checkpoint smoothly enough. It’d been stripped of guards, which boded ill but might well have a mundane explanation given that the Arsenal was currently under attack. The two of them passed by the restricted stacks, Indrani feeling the hum of those heavy wards against her skin, and then the large room called the Mirage. Yet before they arrived at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second of three checkpoints protecting the central array, Archer caught a familiar scent in the air. Blood. Somewhere close to here someone had spilled blood, and recently. She raised a hand, signaling for the Blessed Artificer to halt. The other woman did, after a beat.

“We’re not alone,” Archer murmured. “Assume an enemy, blood was spilled.”

“Do you think the Hierophant is wounded?” the Blessed Artificer whispered back.

“There’d be a lot more holes in the everything, if someone stuck him,” Indrani decided. “But it might be where the guards are gone.”

She gestured for the Blessed Artificer to follow her, quiet as she could, and they withdrew some. The smell had been coming from the near the Arsenal treasury offices, Indrani figured, so it was worth a look.

Archer caught the reflection of magelights on steel just before the blade slid between her ribs.

—

Catherine Foundling drained her glass dry and learned forward. Hands hidden beneath a cloak laden with many victories, eyes cold, she cracked her neck the saw way she had back when she’d still fought for silvers in the Pit.

“I’d say it’s about time to get started in earnest, isn’t it?” the Black Queen said, smiling the smile of a woman who’d ransacked a shatranj board before coming there.

Hands carelessly plucking at the strings of the badly-strung lute on her lap the Wandering Bard hummed, fingers too deft for the clumsy sounds they brought and eyes looking at places that were not in this room.

“I couldn’t agree more,” the Intercessor said, smiling the smile of someone whose sleeves were filled with half a dozen decks of cards.