A Practical Guide to Evil

You couldn’t use the usual sort of table when entertaining dwarves, not unless you wanted to offend them by stacking cushions on a chair.

The First Prince was a graceful host and unlikely to be the first of her office to have received envoys of the Kingdom Under, so the neat little salon where we were seated did not make that elementary mistake. Over a floor of warm-coloured wood, thick and plush Arlesite rugs had been thrown for us to sit on. Even with my legs folded – I’d drunk a brew to take the edge off my bad leg – I wasn’t all that uncomfortable, and the low table we were both seated at was a work of art. Intricately carved and painted, it depicted the making of Creation as described in Proceran texts. The scenes spiralled inwards, ending in the moment where the Gods had taken their rest.

Unlike the people of the Principate, Callowans put no real stock in Arianna Galadon’s ‘Truths of the Shore’. Which she hadn’t even written herself, anyhow, as they were a collection of her teachings written down by her followers. Callow’s own House of Light was the oldest on Calernia the way most people saw it, with only the priests of Atalante having a legitimate claim otherwise, so my people tended to dismiss anything come out of Procer as empty posturing. I largely shared that opinion, even though many of Galadon’s teachings had been sensible, but for all that skepticism I would not deny that some of the hymns written down in the book were quite beautiful.

The painted depiction on the table did them justice, not that the two dwarves seated across from us seemed to care in the slightest.

I could tell because I’d met the pair of them before. The Herald of the Deeps remained the tallest of his kind I had ever met, at least an inch over five feet and bare of armour. He yet wore the same dark green – so deep it was nearly black – colour I had always seen him in, but his clothing had grown more elaborate. I could see five different layers to the folded cloth, one almost like a tunic at the bottom while the others crisscrossed over each other at different angles and cuts. I could not quite tell where it began or ended. His beard and eyes matched the cloth, unlike the braided dark hair, and looked like strands of green set in a craggy face whose skin was as hide. In the light of the day, his eyes were unsettling large.

It was the lack of iris, I thought, it made them look even larger than they were. Owl-like.

The lieutenant seated half a foot behind and to his left hadn’t changed in the slightest, though. The deed-seeker I knew as Balasi still had so many skulls hanging off him that I could hardly see the armour beneath them. Some taken, some earned, all trophies to raise his rank. His hair and beard were yet blond, though the elaborate thick tattoo – I’d once thought it face paint, but now saw otherwise – looked different in daylight. It depicted a Horned Lord’s head and fangs, the ink still black but looking iridescent when sunlight hit it at the right angle.

I’d learned they would be the envoys within half an hour of Cordelia learning it, this very morning, which had been long enough to share what little I knew about the pair before the talks were had. The Herald of the Deeps, whose name was Sargon, had been the leader of the dwarven expansion into Everdark in both a religious and military sense. He definitely had enough pull to talk for the entire Kingdom Under, since he had when striking a deal with Sve Noc through me, but there were limits to his influence. I’d long suspected he had volunteered to lead the Fourteenth Expansion in part to get away from internal enemies, heading out to the fringes where there’d be no rival.

Unfortunately for us, that was very little to go on. The politics of the Kingdom Under were not so much opaque as fucking invisible to the nations above. We heard of it when they were making war against other underground nations – though with the drow exodus, there were now none left – and they visibly kept an eye on affairs near dwarven gates, but no one had eyes below the ground. We didn’t even know if there was truly a King Under the Mountain, whether it was a ceremonial title or one of genuine authority. Even the span of their empire was mostly speculation, with only the wildest of guesses made at their total population.

What we did know was that the Kingdom Under fully mobilized would almost definitely win a war against even a fully united coalition of surface nations. When my father had once called it the only nation of Calernia that was more than a regional power, he’d not exaggerating. Even Triumphant had been satisfied by token gestures of submission and promises of tribute when she’d been conquering Calernia. When it came down to it, if we wanted to have a real shot at beating Keter we needed the dwarves. Their armies, yes, but even more importantly their supplies.

The only way it would be possible for an army the size of the one needed to take Keter to be fed was through their tunnels, and to be honest they were probably the only nation capable of moving that much food so quickly anyway. We wanted their soldiers badly, since they had creations up their sleeves that made goblin work look like children’s toys and the heaviest foot this continent had ever known, but the supplies were even more important. We could possibly win without the help of their armies. Without a deal for supplies, though, our only choice would be storming the walls of the Crown of the Dead repeatedly until our food ran out. Formalized suicide, in other words.

So we needed the Kingdom Under and they knew it. The question that remained was, what would they ask in exchange for their help? That was the question on my mind and Hasenbach’s as the Herald set down the cup of Merovins golden wine he’d been served. There was exactly one vineyard in all the world where that wine was made, the same one where most of the ancient rulers of Salia was buried. The handful of bottles it made every year were worth a small castle each, and by custom only drunk by royalty.

I actually thought it tasted kind of sour, but it would have been impolitic to say as much.

“A rare drink,” the Herald of the Deeps said.

In Chantant. Mine had gotten good enough I was comfortable even in talks like this, and theirs was better than their Lower Miezan. It always startled me to remember that Chantant wasn’t the First Prince’s native tongue either. Lycaonese spoke Reitz. Mind you, as a princess she’d probably been taught the language as a child anyway. I’d been my own mistake to start picking up languages so late in my life.

“Bettered for the company it was poured in,” Cordelia Hasenbach replied with a distant but friendly smile.

I put my elbow on the table and rested my chin against my palm. Hopefully we’d stop with the courtesies soon, I felt like we were all more than ready. Balasi must have agreed.

“It is our understanding the Grand Alliance has been seeking to come to terms with us,” the Seeker of Deeds said.

“The Grand Alliance desires to negotiate several arrangements,” Cordelia smiling corrected, “regarding the war prosecuted against our common enemy, the Dead King.”

Balasi was unimpressed.

“We see little war,” he said, “and much retreat.”

“We’ve done a lot of dying, it’s true,” I said. “Tasteless of you to complain, Seeker Balasi, since it will have bought your people time to make your move below.”

The dwarf turned to match my eye, but I stared him down. My face was blank as a mask. After a moment his jaw tightened and he looked away.

“We have achieved much these last few years,” the Herald said. “Absent conflict in the Everdark, the Fifteenth Expansion began early and colonization has begun. After a thousand years of trials, the great encirclement is finally finished.”

I breathed in sharply.

“You’ve surrounded the Kingdom of the Dead entirely,” I said.

He looked pleased, green eyes wide.

“The fortresses still lack cities, but the circle was closed,” the Herald of the Deeps said. “Seven rings of stone and steel now contain the Dead King and his works.”

Fuck. That was bad news. Part of why the Kingdom Under had been selling us cheap weapons by the wagonload and keeping the Firstborn fed had been that we were useful to them: by drawing the Dead King’s armies to them, we allowed them to expand and fortify around him uncontested. Only my calculation had been that they’d not finish the encirclement this generation, not when their current expansion – the Fourteenth – was aimed at the Everdark. I’d badly miscalculated how capable they would be of taking advantage of Sve Noc ceding their old territories. And now, with their circle of rings of steel in stone standing, they were coming to speak to us again.

Having significantly less use for our continued survival.

“If I were to ask,” Cordelia mildly said, “when the last fortress was finally raised, I imagine it would be a recent day indeed.”

“Eight days,” Seeker Balasi said.

Yeah, the First Prince had seen it to. They’d put us off until they were sure their defensive position was solid underground, and now they were coming to talk when they had the upper hand. Hells, more than the upper hand. As far as they were concerned they had all the fucking hands, and they weren’t entirely wrong either.

“What a strange happenstance,” Cordelia said. “I must congratulate our ally on the swift completion of its defensive works.”

“All is possible in the service of the King Under the Mountain,” Balasi replied.

“Indeed?” she said. “How pleasing to hear, as we mean to discuss a bargain regarding the sale and movement of supplies.”

“You want us to feed your desperate offensive against the Crown of the Dead,” the Herald said, voice even. “Without coin to pay for it, even as your empire falls apart around you. A bold request. Some would call it insolent.”

“Nah,” I smiled, wide and without mirth. “Insolence would be offering meat to the butcher and then whining it got chopped, Herald. Surely that’s beneath everyone here.”

Cordelia’s shoulders tightened at my side, but she did not try to intervene. She trusted me to back off if I pushed too far.

“The efforts of the Grand Alliance in fighting our enemy are remembered,” the Herald finally said. “Yet much is demanded while little is offered.”

“If payment is the trouble, then there is no trouble,” the First Prince said. “Though the Principate may lack the immediate means to pay and I cannot speak for our allies, we are willing to sign a treaty of repayment and even give you access to our books so that an agreeable number of years can be found.”

“That is-” Seeker Balasi began, but she cut him off.

“Which leads me to believe, Your Eminence, that it is not coin the Kingdom Under wants of us,” Cordelia Hasenbach continued, staring down the Herald.

It my turn to tense. I could feel the Herald of the Deeps through my Name. Only dimly, and I could not trace out the manner of stories that were his bread and butter, but what I could tell was that he leaned Above’s way. Not that I was certain I would have authority over him even if it were otherwise. His Name felt… strange to me, as if it was made of crystal instead of the usual starlight. Either way, even if he was one of Above’s that did not meant he was not dangerous. When the Fourteenth Expansion had been planned, the dwarves had thought they’d end up needing to kill Sve Noc.

And they’d sent the Herald of the Deeps without another Named, which meant they had thought he had a genuine shot at killing a pair of goddesses.

Power like that married to the dwarven contempt for other races was for an unpleasant interlocutor to deal with. The green-eyed dwarf studied the First Prince for a long moment, then snorted.

“It is so,” the Herald said.

This time when Balasi spoke up, Cordelia did not interrupt. There was no reason to, since she’d already made her point: the deed-seeker might be subordinate to the Herald, but she was not subordinate to me. She spoke for the Grand Alliance just as much as I did, if not more. Sargon did not seem convinced, but he’d seemingly not wanted to argue the point either.

“There are no guarantees that the attack on Keter will end in victory,” Balasi said. “Or that nations signing treaties now will survive the coming decades. A considerable expense would be undertaken on uncertain grounds. The Kingdom Under requires more practical and immediate payment.”

Whether they actually thought Procer would splinter even if we won or if they were just pushing I couldn’t be sure, but I honestly couldn’t argue with the uncertainty there. The Principate had lost massive amounts of farmlands and been depopulated in a way that’d shift around where its traditional centres of power had been. It might very well blow up even if we did beat the Dead King.

“And what might its nature be?” Cordelia calmly asked.

“Creusens,” Seeker Balasi said. “Holden. Penthes.”

I’d been a long time since someone had surprise me so utterly I could not even begin to think of an answer. They were serious, weren’t they? The Kingdom Under was asking for cities. Creusens, the capital of the principality of the same name out in western Procer. Penthes, to the very east of the League and already near a known dwarven gate. And Holden, the seat of the former barony of Holden. A city in Callow. My fucking city. After it sunk in, it was not surprise that held my tongue. It was the certainty that if I began if I opened my mouth, I would say things and it would only end when there were corpses on the floor.

“You require that we cede three cities,” the First Prince said with admirable calm. “One of which is, I might remind you, not from a nation signatory to the Grand Alliance or in our power to deliver.”

“Yes,” Balasi replied without batting an eye. “We will provide formal terms, but I can give you the essentials before then.”

“Please do,” Cordelia smiled, hate cold in her eyes.

“The cities and attendant lands will be ceded to Kingdom Under and annexed to the territory of the nobles ruling below them,” the deed-seeker said. “Their inhabitants may stay as sworn subjects or leave. There will be no restriction of goods coming in or out.”

My eye narrowed. It wasn’t even a loose protectorate like Refuge or a close relationship like with Mercantis they were aiming for. These were permanent footholds for them on the surface. It occurred to me, suddenly, that the Kingdom Under might be thinking further on than any of us. Should the Dead King be destroyed, would it not be the master of all the underground? It would take generations to settle it all, I thought, but in time they would. And when they did, where else was there to go but up? My fingers clenched.

“A straightforward affair,” the First Prince said. “We thank you for bringing the offer.”

Balasi looked like he might have wanted to stay and talk more, but the Herald’s eyes had found my own. Whatever he found there convinced him not to linger. They briskly made their goodbyes and were ushered out. It left the two of us seated together. My fingers closed around my cup of wine.

“Do you have any particular attachment to the cup?” I calmly asked.

She shook her head. I smashed it against the table, crushing crystal and spilling gold on the painted wood. I would have torn the fucking table apart too, but it wasn’t the furniture that was responsible for the rage in my belly.

“Those fucking rats,” I coldly said. “I ought to have ripped their goddamned heads off.”

“For the better you did not,” Cordelia noted. “It would have taken them at least a sennight to replace the envoys.”

The petty act of destruction had brought just enough satisfaction that I mastered myself. I breathed in and out, pushing down the anger. It wouldn’t help me here.

“They can’t believe we’ll accept that,” I said. “That the League would accept that.”

“I imagine they believe we will refuse them at first,” the First Prince said. “And then we will lose another third of Procer as well as a few armies and return to them appropriately chastened. Time is on their side, Catherine. The longer the Dead King devours us, the longer they have to prepare their defences against him.”

“He’s also getting stronger,” I curtly pointed out.

“It does not matter,” Cordelia tiredly said. “They are calculating, accurately so, that we will bend to their terms long before Keter becomes beyond them. I imagine they will offer to send troops as well in exchange for a fourth city, either Bayeux or Vaccei.”

Eastern Procer, right up against the Whitecaps, or the northernmost city of Levant. A loose line across Calernia, allowing them to trade for what they wanted without any possibility of a common front to check them emerging between the powers of the surface. Fuck.

“I cannot accept that bargain,” I honestly told her.

There was a long moment of silence.

“We have not yet seen the full terms,” Cordelia finally said. “They have promised to provide them promptly and I see no reason to disbelieve them. Let us not speak of this blindly or in the throes of anger. We are meeting for tea tonight, it can be seen to then.”

I jerkily nodded. She wasn’t wrong that angry as I was there’d be no point in actually discussing anything. We parted ways soon after, and I had to put a spring to my limp.

I’d gotten a lunch invitation.

I got ambushed.

Didn’t almost get shot this time, it wasn’t the assassin kind of ambush, but I didn’t see it coming either and I should have. When I was invited to have my midday with Razin and Aquiline, I’d expected that a couple of their captains would be there but no more. We’d had similar enough meals on campaign, they bringing their officers and me mine, and I’d thought it a nice gesture of the lordlings to do the same even here in Salia. A sign of continued fondness even now that they were no longer under my direct command. Instead, just past Noon Bell, I found myself seated with the full roster of the ruling Blood and two Bestowed.

My ducklings I knew well enough by sight. Lord Razin Tanja of the Binder’s Blood, dark-haired and sharp-faced with the last touches of youth to his cast burning as he turned into the man he wanted to be. Lady Aquiline Osena of the Slayer’s Blood, every inch of skin painted in green and bronze as she moved with the grace of an exceptional killer. The other two I knew less, but of the pair it was Lord Yannu Marave of the Champion’s Blood I was more familiar with. Careful Yannu, they called that mountain of broad-shoulder muscles. At least in his forties, and his unnatural calm put truth to the sobriquet. Lady Itima Ifriqui of the Brigand’s Blood was the last, oldest and lean and whip-harsh. She and her sons were a cunning and vicious bunch.

That left only two. The Barrow Sword, Ishaq, who stood not much taller than me but much broader. His dark and well-groomed beard was as much a signature as the two streaks of ash-grey beneath the eyes that were his face paint or the ancient bronze scale he’d robbed from a barrow along with the sword that had seen him Named. And a woman I still hated like poison, for she had killed Captain: the Valiant Champion, Rafaella. Tanned skin, like all the others, and with a braid of brown hair going down her back. She had the face of someone who smiled often and easy, like Ishaq she was a picture of classic Alavan good looks: short, stocky and built like a brick wall.

The lordlings were the ones hosting, so they were the ones to greet me and offer hospitality – which was probably the only reason a fire was lit in the hall. Like the Taghreb equivalent, Levantine guest right was heavily bound to the symbolism of sharing a fire. The serious, formulaic greeting that Razin and Aquiline had offered petered out into silence as I kept standing and did not answer. Tension rose, then I sighed. I raised a finger, telling them to wait, and went fishing through the pocket of my cloak until I had my pipe in hand. I smoothly stuffed it, passing a palm over the wakeleaf to light it. I breathed in deep, the acrid smoke burning my lungs pleasurably, and blew out.

“All right,” I finally said. “Lay it on me.”

A moment of silence.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Aquiline tried.

I flicked a glance at the Valiant Champion.

“No.”

It would be a cold day in Levant before I drank with that one. The lot of them was seated on the other side of the long table, and I drew back my chair with an eye to scraping the wood against the floor to make as much of that horrible noise as possible. Whatever their intentions might be, I’d make it clear that springing this on me by surprise was not putting me in the finest of moods. Dropping into the seat, deadwood staff leaning against the side, I leaned back and blew out a puff of smoke.

“Lords and ladies of the Blood,” I mildly said. “Ishaq. The rest. It appears this is a larger gathering than it’d been implied to me I would be showing up for. Should I have put on a crown?”

Lord Yannu shook his head.

“It is not as Queen of Callow that your presence was sought sought,” the Lord of Alava said.

They wouldn’t care about my being First Under the Night either, so that left only one hat. I rolled my shoulder and smiled. Night came to me, the power sluggish and slow in the day but never entirely beyond reach. The room cooled, its shadows deepened.

“Then standing courtesy for the Warden of the East,” I calmly told him. “Is ‘Your Excellency’.”

His eyes met mine, but I’d chided harder men than Careful Yannu. He conceded with a nod.

“Good,” I cheerfully said. “Now what can I do for you fine fellows?”

Eyes flicked to the left end of the table, where the Barrow Sword sat. Opposite of the Champion.

“I asked for your arbitration, Your Excellency,” Ishaq said. “The Dominion has agreed to entertain my demand for my deeds to be added to the Rolls, but I have some… concerns. As my representative under the Truce and Terms and a trusted mediator, you are uniquely suited to help.”

I cocked an eyebrow. The one on my dead eye, though sadly the people here were all too hardened to be moved by anything like that.

“It would be pointless for me to accept the role if all parties involved don’t agree I should hold it,” I said, an unspoken invitation.

“Malaga endorses your presence,” Razin said.

“So does Tartessos,” Aquiline dismissed, as if it had been a given.

My gaze moved to the right side of the table. Lord Yannu inclined his head.

“You have always dealt in good faith with us,” the Lord of Alava said. “Alava agrees.”

Itima Ifriqui, to his right, sucked at her teeth. The Brigand’s Blood were known for their viciousness and dislike of foreigners, though ironically enough Lady Itima was Cordelia’s closest ally in the Dominion. There was no love between us, though, and if a no was going to come it’d be from there.

“You carried the Peregrine back to us,” the Lady of Vaccei said. “Honour was earned. Vaccei agrees.”

And that left only one. Rafaella of Alava, the Valiant Champion. The woman holding the same Name as one of the legendary founders of the Dominion, what they called an inheritance in Bestowal – as opposed to the inheritance of Blood, which all here carried as descendants of those same heroes. The rare few who inherited both Blood and Bestowal were raised above all others by Levantines. Tariq had been the last, and of the greatest of the lines of the Blood too. The Valiant Champion was, in principle, Lady Rafaella yet I’d never heard the title granted to. I’d never heard of her being close to Yannu, the lord of that Blood, either and I could not recall ever seeing her wear face paint.

That did not speak to influence, I thought, but with Levantines you never knew.

“The White Knight should here be,” the Champion said.

Not a trace of a smile to be found on that face.

“That was not the question asked,” Lord Yannu said. “Answer, Lady Rafaella.”

The broad-faced woman grimaced.

“Not my placement to argue,” she said after a moment.

And that was that. Only she wasn’t exactly wrong, I thought. If I was here as representative for the villains, then it would be proper for Hanno to be here for the heroes. That he was not was… interesting. And worrying in some ways. Ishaq wouldn’t have the pull for that. I’d thrown him at the lordlings repeatedly during the Wasteland campaign, forcing them to work closely together and share dangers, but while relations there had definitely thawed there were limits. Asking to toss out the Sword of Judgement on his behalf would be crossing those, which meant it was coming from somewhere else. More interesting yet, wherever it had come from enough of the Blood had agreed that it’d actually happened.

We’d all missed some undercurrents in the Dominion.

“Then we are in agreement,” Razin said. “And the talks can begin.”

He offered me a nod, ceding control of the proceedings. If Procerans had done that I would have hesitated, but Dominion ways were refreshingly blunt. So long as I wasn’t too rude, I didn’t have to worry about fucking up some kind of obscure point of etiquette.

“Barrow Sword,” I said. “You made a demand of the Blood. State it fully and without deception.”

Ishaq’s face was calm, but his eyes kept flicking to the others. It was telling. He doesn’t know how this ends, I thought.

“I ask for my deeds to be added to the Rolls,” the Barrow Sword said. “For my honour to be seen as honour in the eyes of others.”

Except it wasn’t that simple, of course. Sure in theory all he was asking for was to be recognized, but in practice he was asking the Dominion to make him a noble. Not a high-ranking one, more a landed knight than a duke or even a baron, but still very much a noble still. And, there was the pinch, while openly keeping faith to Below. There wasn’t a way for him to be on the Rolls and not a noble without the Majilis, the ruling council of Levant, to change the laws of the land. And there was not a way to change those without violating the Liesse Accords, which forbade nations going after villains simply for being villains.

“When this matter was last brought to me, in Hainaut, it was decided that a record of the Barrow Sword’s deeds in Hainaut would be sent to the Blood for consideration,” I said. “Was this done and was it read?”

Nods all around. Good.

“Now,” I said, “before we continue, I require classification. In the absence of a Holy Seljun, are the people in this room – the four sitting members of the Majilis – able to settle this matter lawfully?”

“They are,” Aquiline said. “There may be challenge-duels, but our decision will be as law.”

“Good,” I said. “Then we can continue. The Barrow Sword’s request has been aired. Which of you would answer it?”

Some glances were traded, then Lord Yannu spoke up.

“Worthy deeds were done, this is not denied,” the Lord of Alava said. “Lord Razin and Lady Aquiline speak to yet more honour being earned out east.”

Ah, so that very blunt ploy had paid off.

“Yet it remains that you do not keep to the Ashen Gods,” he said, “and no man or woman was ever added to the Rolls who kept to the darkness.”

I cleared my throat.

“On what basis would you deny him addition to the Rolls, if he has done worthy deeds?” I asked.

That would be where this conversation would make or break, because the Liesse Accords only gave so much give there. If they dug in their heels and said worship of Below was the problem, then this was going to get nasty. Yannu glanced to his left, passing the torch.

“To be Blood is to be more than simply Bestowed,” Aquiline said, straight-backed.

I knew that look on her face, I thought. She meant every word of this.

“It is a burden and a blessing, a duty to the Dominion,” the Lady of Tartessos. “Through the Founders we inherited the charge of protecting Levant from all that would see it destroyed, and though lesser lines have since sprung they too took up that duty.”

A very idealistic way of looking at it, I thought. Mostly Levantine Named stabbed each other, went adventuring in the Brocelian and sometimes joined bands of five wandering the greater continent. When a villain became very famous some of them might try to go and claim their head, as a few had tried with my father after the Conquest, but that was not frequent. Aquiline, though, put a lot of stock in both blood and Blood. She was known as being pretty cutthroat in Levantine politics and supposedly had once almost gotten Razin killed, but that didn’t meant she wasn’t an idealist in some ways. On the contrary, it meant she was the most dangerous kind: the one with a fucking sword.

Ishaq was visibly itching to talk and the other side had been doing so for a while, so I gesture towards him.

“I have warred in the defence of all Calernia, and done so ably,” he said. “What is this, if not protecting Levant?”

It was Razin who spoke up this time, a good sign for the Barrow Sword. Razin was a lot more sentimental than his fiancée, he kept strongly to friendship when it was given. Aquiline was colder, but that wasn’t always the right choice. Razin was better at making allies for a reason.

“This question was asked of us, of the Majilis,” Lord Razin Tanja said, “and we had no answer. In shunning the Ashen Gods, did you become less a son of Levant? We cannot know your heart, and so cannot speak to that. There is only you deeds to behold, and they speak in favour.”

I cocked my head to the side. It sounded like they were going to agree to add him to the Rolls, but they weren’t actually going to do that. It would be a deeply unpopular decision back home and they’d need to allow the same of every villain who came after Ishaq. People who were likely to be a lot less reasonable and controlled than the Barrow Sword was. So what was the workaround?

“There is a lack,” Razin said. “Yet it lies not in you, Barrow Sword. It lies in those whose lesser deeds filled pages in the Rolls without ever living up to the charge they inherited. We have lessened what we are for not asking more of those who would stand high among us.”

Ah, I fondly thought. I underestimated you, Razin Tanja. Not just you but your fellows as well. I thought you lot would either bend or break, but you found a way out of it that gives him his dues without breaking what you are.

“No longer will the Rolls be open to all of the Blood, all who are Bestowed,” Razin said. “Only to the worthy, those who prove willing to take up the charge that raises us above others.”

“You would make access to the Rolls conditional,” I said. “Am I to understand this would be for all of both Blood and Bestowed?”

“It is so,” Lord Yannu calmly replied. “It was once the duty of the Isbili to keep the Rolls, but the Isbili are ash. It is the duty of the Majilis now, and so this is our decree: all who would enter the Rolls are to stand before the Majilis and ask for a duty to discharge for the good of all Levant. Only when that duty is fulfilled will one be added to the Rolls.”

The four of them and their descendants were going to send all those hotheaded killers, Named and not, to go on glorious adventures. And those that returned, that proved worthy and capable of protecting the Dominion’s interests, those few would get to be nobles. They’d not lowered the bar to become one of them, they’d raised it for everyone. Including their own families, so Ishaq had no leg to stand on if he wanted to object. Sure the children from the great families could inherit rule of their territory without being added to the Rolls, the matters weren’t legally bound, but if the choice of succession was between someone in those and someone who wasn’t?

Yeah, that decision would make itself for most Levantines.

“Do you propose to set such a duty for the Barrow Sword now?” I asked.

“We do,” Aquiline said. “And request your arbitration in doing so, that the charge might be fairly chosen.”

Meaning they didn’t want to get accused of asking something impossible of him so he’d get killed and they wouldn’t have to add him to the Rolls. Fair enough. There was one detail here that might come back to haunt them though.

“You set a precedent in doing so,” I warned them. “Those who follow in my wake, bearing my Name, might claim the same right of arbitration I was granted today.”

Meaning someone unlikely to be a Levantine might get a say in their affairs, which they were unlikely to like. None of the Blood seemed particularly eager at that, but Ishaq wanted a word.

“I believe in the good faith of all here,” he said, “but I won’t extend that trust to all those who’ll come after you. The Warden spoke it like a warning, but I say it is instead a promise: should those who come in my wake be cheated, they will have someone to appeal to.”

Ah, cleverly done. If the Warden of the East could be appealed to, it implied I wasn’t in the room when the duties were given. Which, to be fair, I would not want to be and my successors were likely to feel the same. Levante wasn’t where I wanted to spend the rest of my days. No, instead villains would be able to complain to me if they thought the Majilis were being unreasonable. Which was fair, and difficult for the Blood to argue with. They discussed among themselves, but I was given a reluctant agreement. Which took us to the last part of it. Itima Ifriqui broke her silence to offer the first duty that might get the Barrow Sword onto the Rolls.

“Avenge the Grey Pilgrim,” the Lady of Vaccei said. “Slay the Dead King.”

I almost rolled my eye.

“That sets too high a standard for those who come after him,” I said. “Who could match such a deed? It is not reasonable.”

The older woman didn’t look entirely displeased, though. I wondered what it was she’d actually been after. Was she softening me up for another ask, or had she just tried her luck at making it pretty much impossible for anyone to ever be added to the Rolls again? Razin suggested killing a Revenant, but it was considered too easy by the others. Aquiline instead suggested that one of the Scourge be slain, and that resonated with the others. It was, Yannu noted, not dissimilar to asking the slaying of a champion from a nation the Dominion was at war with. Honestly I thought it was a little costly, and unlikely to be matched by most who’d follow Ishaq, but he pulled me close.

“I would agree to the terms,” he murmured.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Could lower them, I think,” I told him.

“I am to be the first, Black Queen,” Ishaq smiled, showing teeth. “The honour I earn must be beyond question. I break the path for those who come after.”

I studied him, making sure he was certain, and when I was satisfied I drew back. It’d do.

“These are good terms,” I said. “I have no objection to them.”

Good humour all around, save for the Valiant Champion who had been seated at the right end of the table and not spoken a word all this time.

“Though I am pleased with what was done here,” I idly said, “is there a particular reason the matter had to be brought to me this way?”

Rafaella laughed, a harsh bark.

“Fool,” the Champion said. “You help them, you be part of it. Now you have to make Hanno and Grand Alliance accept it for them.”

Shit, I thought. I always hated it, when someone I despised was right.

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