A Practical Guide to Evil-Chapter 47Vol 7 : Hollow; Hallow

Trokel and Fania made for an odd pair.

The rylleh was wrinkled and wheezing, deceptively slow to the eye but moving with the measured grace of an old killer. The nisi was chubby-cheeked and painfully young, always offering up half-smiles of crooked teeth. It had been very honoured to be chosen as one of my scribes and told me often enough I could repeat the words back with the exact cadence in Crepuscular, accent and all. The dislike between them had been instant, though it was scholarly in nature and not personal. Trokel saw its duty as that of an apostle, squeezing out of my words and actions wisdom for all who partook in Night to follow. Fania was not interested in wisdom so much as stories, on the other hand, and did not write down near as much.

I’d grown, almost against my will, rather fond of their constant bickering. It made me a little homesick, but sometimes a touch of homesickness was good for the soul.

“They can’t really be called heretics,” Fania insisted, “as they do not deny the divinity of Sve Noc. They simply believe that Loc Ynan is the superior deity.”

“That is heresy,” Trokel informed it, glaring through rheumy silver eyes.

“Not until they’ve lost,” Fania lightly replied. “They have not yet been proved wrong.”

“You should have been used for mushroom-feed at birth,” Trokel muttered.

“I’m just waiting for you to keel over and die, Old One,” Fania grinned. “From nisi to rylleh in a breath, just imagine the songs.”

It was almost like I’d been trained to look fondly on a mouthy, playful soul pulling at the pigtails of an opiniated scholarly sort. Gods, I missed Indrani. She had a knack for pulling me out of my thoughts when I got stuck in them, making it all lighter. And Masego missed her too, because I couldn’t think of another reason he’d have brough a frankly terrible wooden sculpture of a duck to Serolen. But he had his work and I had mine, so we soldiered on. Now that the spell formula for the ritual had been created and the groundwork to use begun, we had gone on war footing: it was only a matter of time until strife erupted across the canals, and both sides were moving their forces in place.

Unfortunately for us, we had more than just Kurosiv and their schemes to worry about.

Ivah was seated when I entered the room it used as an office, holed up behind an elegant little Proceran bureau that was painted in bright enough colours that your average Alamans craftsman would have rather hanged themselves than be associated with it. Procerans tended to leave bold colours to banners and clothes, finding them rather gauche on furniture. I waved it down as it began to rise, scribes following behind and bowing almost as low as they did for me, but it insisted on getting up and holding out my chair for me. It had cushions, I noted with pleasure, and given the general drow disregard for those they’d likely been added just for me.

It was the little things, sometimes, but sadly we didn’t have time for idle chatting.

“You’ve got news, I’m told,” I said.

The Sisters had already given me vague impressions, but we were in agreement that unless they’d looked at something with their own eyes a report usually better served the purpose of keeping me informed.

“It is so, Losara Queen,” Ivah agreed. “From both the southern front and the realm of Procer.”

Ah, bad and worse.

“Start with Procer,” I said. “At least that one’s a disaster I’m used to.”

“Arans and Lange have fallen,” the Lord of Silent Steps said. “While Aisne buckles under the weight of the enemy, despite a worthy defence and reinforcements from Salia.”

And that was only a short respite. The moment the dead digested their gains and raised them as fresh armies, the heartlands would collapse. We’d been aware from the start that the siege of Keter would be as much a race against time as it was a fight against the Dead King himself.

“And the force that laid waste to Segovia?” I asked.

It was the army most worrying me, at the moment. It’d been bogged down by harassment at Segovian hands – they were apt sailors, as a people, and the Kingdom of the Dead was impotent at sea – but that was never going to last/

“It has burned a swath through Orense but ignored the south of that land,” Ivah said. “Now it marches east.”

Towards Aequitan, I saw after a moment to place the map of Procer in my head. We’d been afraid that the Dead King would just keep pushing south and hit Levant in an attempt to try forcing Dominion forces to return and defend their homes, but I was once more reminded that petty mortal politics were not something Neshamah cared for. Because I could see what he was actually doing, with the Principate’s span laid out in my mind, and it was a fundamentallu different way of thinking. That southern army wasn’t there to win ground, it was there to sweep the south clean of every city of more than ten thousand souls.

That was why he’d ignored the south of Orense, which was sparsely populated because of constant skirmishes with the Dominion.

I could see the trajectory in my mind’s eye. That army would go through Aequitan, then dip south for Valencis and resume east into Salamans. You’ll even ignore Tenerife at first, won’t you? It’ll be there for you to pick up when you move on the League. He’d just march the army north, afterwards, into densely populated Iserre, and by then two thirds of Procer would be undead. Neshamah didn’t think of this as war, not really, but though I’d already known that I had never felt it quite as keenly as when I saw traced out in my mind the extermination of Procer.

He was just getting rid of the vermin, sweeping the Principate clean of life before getting to Levant and the Free Cities.

“I took two generations of Callow and garbed them in steel, taking them to die on foreign fields,” I mildly said. “And still we’ll come out of this war the lucky ones. It’s easy to forget that, sometimes.”

I shook my head, clearing it of the dark thoughts. We were not yet done.

“And our front?” I asked Ivah.

The Lord of Silent Steps looked grim.

“There as well the Hidden Horror looms tall,” it told me. “General Radegast caught an army within a Gloom-shard last night and destroyed it to the last, but we lost General Radosa to a pair of demons on another field.”

Fuck, I thought. And the Hushed Dread had always been so good at getting out in time. At this point the Ten Generals was turning into a boast of a title: there were barely any left, and too many of those traitors for comfort.

“Are we still losing ground?” I asked.

In other words, was the city itself at risk? Ivah equivocated with a wiggle of the palm, looking troubled.

“In truth, General Radegast has been going from victory to victory,” the Lord of Silent Steps said. “The dead come at us in hordes, relentless but blunt and disorganized. Though we cannot afford to pull back forces, the Guest reports that we have a decisive advantage and a counterattack might drive the enemy out of Serolen entirely.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. That canny undead fucker, I thought.

“You see it too,” I stated. “That’s why you’re not smiling.”

“I have suspicions,” Ivah admitted.

“Then let me lay them to rest,” I replied. “Radegast is being baited. The Dead King has been throwing his troops at us so sloppily because he doesn’t care about winning the battles. He’s keeping the First General stuck south so it cannot intervene here in Serolen.”

Because Serolen was how Neshamah handled the drow, not the battlefield. Even if the capital was lost, so long as Sve Noc survived they had the skills to make the snuffing out of the Firstborn a painful, drawn-out affair. Night was exceptionally well suited to irregular warfare, after all. No, the Hidden Horror wanted that messed settled cleanly instead of lingering: either Kurosiv ate their entire race or the infighting between lesser deities broke Night, turning those same reckless attacks into a sudden killing stroke. It was one thing for Radegast to defend with Night, but without it?

It would be sheer butchery, an instant rout.

“Spending the dead,” Ivah darkly said, “is ever the Dead King’s favoured trick.”

I grunted in agreement, but my attention was elsewhere. There was something off here, I thought. Instinct had been digging at me ever since we found that tower in the depths of the Relic Grove, but I’d never been able to name it more than restlessness. Unease. Now, though, I was beginning to feel out the shape of something. The Dead King had given out, in one form or another, what was perhaps his most precious secret: the ritual that’d made him. Sure, people who’d studied him or the Kabbalis Book of Darkness – or gone traipsing through Arcadian echoes, like we did – might be able to piece much of the work together, but Neshamah had given out the real thing. For what, a shot at settling the drow more quickly? It’d be a feather in his rotting cap to clean that up early, but that wasn’t how the Hidden Horror worked.

Above all things he was patient, and risking giving us a look at the very heart of his godhead wasn’t worth the trade. Neshamah always lessened the risks to himself, knowing that every personal loss was a permanent one.

“It’s not enough,” I murmured. “He paid too much, so he bought something I’m not seeing.”

“My queen?” Ivah asked.

I bit my lip.

“He’s tried to steal Night before,” I noted. “It could be as simple as that.”

How hard could it be, for him to ride Kurosiv’s mind as he had once ridden Masego’s?

“As in Hainaut,” Ivah slowly said, trying to follow the tidbits I was speaking out loud. “You believe he may one more seek to take the Night from Sve Noc?”

But why? Why do you even care about Night, Neshamah? At Hainaut, when Masego had ruined the Night to prevent the Dead King taking it – the Sisters hiding away the rest within Ivah, tying themselves to it in a manner that made the Lord of Silent Steps my natural successor – I’d believed that the Dead King had wanted the Night as ritual fodder. To get some ritual going. Only he’d proved in the aftermath of that battle that he didn’t need the power in the slightest, when he’d opened three Hellgates as retribution to Tariq’s sacrifice. So what was it about Night that he cared about?

I knew why I’d come to Serolen, but what did he want badly enough that-

“Oh, shit,” I croaked out.

Had the Hidden Horror really been that farsighted? As early as Hainaut, when the rest of us were still all stumbling in the dark?

“We are warred upon,” Ivah said, and it was not a question.

“I know what the Dead King wants,” I grimly said. “It’s the same thing I do, just for the opposite reason.”

I had come to Serolen so that me might break the Intercessor’s hold on Below’s stories, breathed life into them. And for that, Hierophant had told me I needed the true Night. I had come north to find a sword to slay the King of Death with and found him already here, looking for the same blade.

Not to wield it but to lock it away forever.

I rose to my feet, seat scraping against the stone and my staff of dead yew under my hand before I even thought to reach for it. Under the worried gaze of the three Firstborn I paced, my limp full of sudden nervous energy.

“No,” I told them, “this is good, actually. It was the missing piece. We know all the pieces in play now. There’s just more of them than we thought. Besides, t’s still Kurosiv’s game when it comes down to it.”

“Forever schemed against, we,” Ivah sighed, lips thinning.

“Could grow fat off enmity,” Trokel finished, looking approving.

It liked its classics, Trokel, and even I had learned a few parts of the Songs of Dust.

“Queen of Lost and Found,” Fania said, “may I ask for elucidation?”

I flicked it a one-eyed glance, baring a smile full of teeth.

“Do you know how to kill a god, Fania?” I asked.

The young drow stilled, then stiffly shook its head.

“You make another,” I muttered, fingers drumming against the side of my staff.

Yes, it would do. It had the right beats to it, I thought as I stared at Ivah, and a fitting pair of hands.

“Now we can win,” I told them. “And when we win, we take it all.”

Iva’s eyes narrowed.

“The counterattack,” it said.

I nodded approvingly.

“We get Night settled properly, focus our forces, and Radegast will have it right,” I said. “We can sweep the dead out of Serolen on the counterstroke, with forces to spare.”

Enough that I’d be able to take a Firstborn contingent with me to Keter for the siege, which would be a great help. No one did night warfare quite like the drow, and when fighting the dead sieges did not quiet down after dusk. Ivah looked pleased at the thought of such a resounding victory, but it had never been one to get too excited.

“First we must prevail here in Serolen,” my Lord of Silent Steps said. “I trust in your wiles, Losara Queen, but Kurosiv

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and we can’t afford to wait any longer. Neshamah’s a spendthrift in bones, but he’s not that wasteful. If the attacks stepped up, Kurosiv is nearly ready. We have to go on the offensive right now.”

Ivah blinked in surprise.

“Tonight?” it asked.

“It’s that or giving Kurosiv the first blow,” I replied, eye and tone distant. “I just need to figure out the where.”

Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel out the thread. The beasts in the pit, the kingdom of Night as the prize with scavengers looming in the shadows, and the story had sharpened. I’d figured out more, so I was seeing more. The pit was there, it wasn’t just an abstract anymore. But where? I cocked my head to the side, groping about. It was faint, but it had been decided. Somewhere in the heart of the city, but any fool off the street could have told me that. There was a veil preventing me from seeing more. Come on, I thought, gritting my teeth. I can feel the echo, there’s a tie to me. Something personal. I heard indistinct voices but ignored them, clawing at the veil with my will.

It was like swimming against the current, but I’d done that all my life and I wasn’t going to let it stop me now. The Beast leaned over my shoulder, huffing out a laugh like a hundred wails, and as I grinned I felt claws settling over my hand – we pulled down, together, and through the tears glimpsed at the truth.

Stone islets in a lake, nestled against a canal, all covered in sculptures and greenery that glowed in the night. Pleasure ships had sailed there once, passing by enchanted metalwork that sang when touched by the breeze. The Flowing Gardens, it was called, and I knew all this at a glance because I had been there before. I had shed blood there. We withdrew our hand, though not quite quick enough the backlash did not smash right into my face. The Beast was gone in an instant and I was drawn to the here and now by the painful sensation of tumbling on bare stone with a half-broken nose, bleeding from the face.

All three drow had risen in alarm, but as I turned with a groan I began to laugh through the trails of blood.

“That cheeky little shit of a would-be god,” I wheezed. “There, really?”

I gestured curtly for them to sit back down, pushing myself up.

“Losara Queen,” Ivah said. “Have you been attacked?”

“I tugged at fate’s tail,” I smiled, “and it didn’t like that in the slightest.”

It only looked more alarmed at that, which only went to prove Ivah of the Losara was no fool.

“It’s fine, Ivah,” I said. “I know what we need to do now. I know how we end this.”

I met its eyes with my own, grinning.

“We’re going back to Great Strycht, you and I,” I said. “Where we killed and made a god.”

And this time, I thought, we’d make it stick.

“The Flowing Gardens,” Ivah said, ever quick on the uptake.

“It’s where it all ends,” I said. “And I know how to get Kurosiv there tonight.”

“They will be wary,” my Lord of Silent Steps warned.

I chuckled.

“You ever fished, Ivah?” I asked.

“I have not,” it replied, looking suddenly reassured for some reason.

“I was born in a city by the Silver Lake,” I said, “and in those waters there’s a kind of fish called the Laure silverscale.”

“Named after the lake?” Ivah asked.

“And the shiny scales,” I drily replied. “See, the thing about the silverscale is that it’s got a touch of magic to it – eat the flesh not too cooked and it’ll grow back your hair even if you went bald. So a lot of old nobles want it, and since there’s not a lot of them even a single catch is worth a fortune.”

I limped back to my seat, wiped the blood off my face and slumped back down onto the cushions.

“Easy coin, you’d think, but there’s trouble,” I said. “That touch of magic also makes them smart. Wary as all Hells. They never take bait and they go deep the moment there’s a hint of a net.”

“So none are caught?” Ivah asked.

“Oh, we get them,” I said. “You just have to be patient. If you can’t catch them yourself, you let the tide do it for you. They love to nibble at water milfoil, so some clever Laure lad planted a lot near the shore and set a few stones in place before leaving.”

Milfoil only grew near Southpool, usually, but then the silverscale itself was believed not to be a native species. Callowan scholars had usually called them a divine blessing on the Fairfaxes since their appearance a few centuries back, but Praesi historians instead noted that they’d only appeared after a failed attempt to take Laure with an army of orcs with gills that’d ended with a lot of alchemy-filled corpses dumped into the Silver Lake.

“So the silverscales swim close, see there’s nothing waiting and have themselves a meal,” I continued. “And they stay, because there’s a lot of it and no one comes. Only when they’ve got full bellies and they try to leave, they find the tide’s come down and suddenly the rocks they swam over earlier are higher than the water.”

It was an old trick, that one, older than the kingdoms. It’d just fallen out of favour when nobles had started minding commoners mucking about their shorelines.

“And so the fisherman comes back and scoops them up,” I said, “because there’s nowhere left for them to go. It’s called a weir, and silverscales stopped falling for it but for a while it made our fishermen rich.”

“You mean to entrap Kurosiv,” Ivah said, meeting my gaze.

“They’re hungry,” I smiled. “So close to victory they can taste it. So we’re going to give them exactly what they want: they’re going to win.”

Until they didn’t, but by then it would be far, far too late.

“And Ivah?”

The Lord of Silent Steps met my eye, unflinching.

“Find a yew tree and take a long branch from it,” I said. “Bring it to me. And most importantly, do it with your own two hands.”

I sat on the stone bench, a long branch of yew across my lap and the knife that’d killed my father in my hand. I sat there, alone save for the divine, and carved as the ship drifted down the current.

“You once told me,” Andronike said, “that the yew is the tree of death.”

Her voice was like a hundred whispers woven, and she a ghost in the night. Her cloak was half a veil, trailing in a wind that wasn’t, and the ornate iron mask at her hip the last of long-buried evil. Her silver-blue eyes burned in the dark.

“I will not recount to you,” I said, “what I scheme. What would be the point? I hide nothing, and you see much.”

“What you ask,” Komena said, “goes beyond faith.”

Ah, the ring of iron and screams. The spray of blood in the air, full-throated wrath. Steel mail from neck to knee, a sheathless sword at her hip that gleamed blue. Every time I beheld her from the corner of my eye her dark face became a long-fanged skull, gone when my gaze returned.

“Faith, huh,” I mused, whittling away at the yew. “Funny thing. Chase it and you’ll never find it, have it and you might not even know.”

A god on my right, and god on my left. Neither behind me. Not yet.

“Before Kurosiv was known as the All-Knowing, it bore another name,” Andronike said. “It was called the Leech.”

“They will drink the blood of us to their fill,” Komena darkly said, the chorus of rage echoing. “This I do not doubt. It is their nature.”

“So let them drink,” I said.

“We cannot,” Andronike harshly replied, voice like a lie ruining a life.

“You know you’re not truly gods,” I said, almost gently. “Not anymore. Too much was ruined. It used to be I heard the echoes in your words because of who you were. Now, though?”

The knife that’d killed my father – that I would see red, forever red, no matter how clean the steel – shaved off another sliver, down to the point. I did not look at them, or need to. They were in me, had been since they made me their herald. It was a tie difficult to explain, one perhaps only Ivah would be able to understand. It had, that night in Hainaut, borne their weight for an hour. Such a thing left marks that never entirely faded.

“You’re putting it on, aren’t you?” I asked. “It’s an effort.”

That was what they’d been hiding from me. Why it was Ivah that’d been sent to tell me the failures, why they’d sent me to negotiate with Kurosiv’s sigils blind to avoid admitting to another. Ruin and rebellion had hollowed them out, and their godhead was breaking apart. Night itself was, like when I’d reached for it at the bottom of the tower only to find nothing. No wonder Hierophant had been so scornful of their apotheosis.

“It is still us,” Komena said, voice tired. “No matter how lessened, Catherine Foundling, it is still us.”

I might have thought that an empty boast, a claim that even now they were still divine in every way that mattered, but for the tone. The exhaustion of it. No, she meant something else entirely: it’s all that’s left of us, and I fear to lose it.

“It is not fear,” Andronike bit out. “It is concern. You scheme recklessness.”

“That is,” I replied, “my nature.”

“Where is your eloquence now, Queen of Lost and Found?” Komena harshly laughed. “Your silver tongue has yet to appear.”

I breathed out, looking at the darkened sky.

“Do you ever think,” I asked, “about that night down in the depths? About the choices we made.”

Silence.

“Do you regret it?”

My question reverberated across the water, like a mockery of itself.

“No,” Andronike said. “I do not regret naming you First Under the Night.”

“In this,” Komena softly said, “we are yet content.”

“I’m glad,” I admitted. “We’re not…”

I trailed off, the words hard to find.

“You can’t be friends with your own gods, I suppose,” I crookedly smiled. “But I remember what I saw of you, before I gave up my crown. How you became who you are. And I still see much of myself in you.”

Some of the best and some the worst.

“It’s not unlike faith,” I said. “Because you gave me a gift, that night, that was greater than power.”

I thought of that moment in shadowed room, Cordelia and Hanno standing before me. The choice, always the choice.

“You taught me to lose,” I said. “And that might be the most valuable thing anyone ever taught me.”

The blade paused on the length of yew.

“So please,” I quietly said, “let me return that gift to you.”

I felt them meet each other’s gaze over my head. I did not look, for it was not a moment meant for my eye.

“Heart of my heart,” Komena gently said.

“Even now?” Andronike asked, more fragile than I had ever heard her.

“It began with us,” her sister said, “it ends the same.”

I carved away at the yew, wrist snapping, and left them at it until they fell silent. Only then did they turn to me, leaning over my shoulders. We looked, the three of us, down at what I had made: a spear, a killing point made of death’s own wood brought to me by Ivah’s hands.

They both stood behind me, now, and no more need be said of it.

“Let’s make it,” I murmured. “A night worth singing about, you and I.”

Their fingers dug into my shoulders, feeling like talons, and my dead eye bloomed anew. Power poured into me, a sea made to fit into a woman’s shape, and I saw the Night. All of it. They rode me as the Dead King had once ridden Masego’s mind, all of their power at our hands.

Sve Noc whispered, and all across Serolen spears were raised. War, they had ordered.

And we sat on the ship, watching, as violence spread like ink in the water. Our sigils had been waiting, and so had Kurosiv’s. The Ysengral smashed through the defences on the riverside, pushing through, but they were drowned in bodies until even the steel walls they had brought were overtaken by the mounds of the dead. To the south our attack was stopped cold, caught in a clever trap and butchered, before Kurosiv’s warriors crossed the water to kill and burn. The heart of the city was an orgy of death, the fighting in the maze of ancient wonders so tumultuous that sigils no longer recognized allies from enemies.

We were losing, and all over the city towers of obsidian gleamed. We were losing, and Kurosiv was glutting on our defeat.

So much death, so quickly. The air was shivering with it, Night wafting up like smoke. And as the hour passed, another and another and another, we sat on the slow ship and watched blood trail across stone millennia old. Until Ysengral’s beleaguered offensive, forced to a halt, suddenly punched through. The warriors ran for the tower they had been sent after, the reason they had been told they must do or die, and though they ran into entrenched resistance they were still gaining. Loc Ynan after all, had recalled its Traitor Generals.

The offensive on our side of the canal faltered, what had seemed like a promised victory faltering, as a great ice storm bloomed in the heart of the Flowing Gardens. We saw its birth, the scream that reached up to the sky, for our ship had sailed slowly but with purpose. The slender wooden prow touched the shore and I rose, shadows trailing behind me like a procession of shades. It had been a ship like a knife, a single piece of black wood exquisitely carved, and it had brought me to my destination without need for haste or steering.

I took a limping step on the islet of stone, before me a great blizzard and frost creeping across every part the Flowing Garden. I leaned on my staff, my other hand holding the spear of yew, and on the edge of the white death I found Ivah of the Losara waiting, my two scribes at its side. Tall and thin, hair long and pale, but it was the mark on its face that drew the eye: silver on purple, a tree bearing the fruit of two circles incomplete. Losara, it meant. Lost and found. The first of the Firstborn to have sworn to me, the first to have seen something worth taking in my words.

But do I really know you, even now? The Lord of Silent Steps was as the Firstborn themselves, cast in exile in a new world, and I had to wonder – had the drow changed, or only their circumstances? Who are you, Ivah of the Losara, when all the noise falls away?

“A nice night, isn’t it?” I idly asked.

Ivah bowed low.

“Losara Queen,” the Lord of Silent Steps murmured, then bowed even lower. “Sve Noc.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“I have need of you, Ivah of the Losara,” I said.

“I serve,” it solemnly replied.

I held out the spear of yew, end first.

“Take it,” I said.

It did.

“You’ll know,” I murmured, “when to use it. Until then…”

I smiled.

“Be my shadow,” I asked, “one more time.”

Ivah softly laughed.

“Always, Lately Queen,” it swore.

And I took a limping step forward, then other, until I had passed the Lord of Silent Steps and it was swallowed by the procession of shades. The two scribes watched me with the sort of religious awe that was, deep down, at least half fear.

“Moren Bleakwomb stands within the storm,” Trokel said. “Are you to fight it, First Under the Night?”

I shrugged, nonchalant. There was a lot worse than Moren at the heart of that blizzard.

“I’m just going to ask a question,” I said.

“A riddle?” Fania asked.

“Oh, nothing so convoluted,” I mused. “The simplest thing in the world, really.”

One step at a time, I reached the edge of the storm. The cold, Gods, the cold. It was sinking into me already, like apathy eating away at my insides. Whispering about how easy it would be to lie down and die, to finally rest.

“Already tried that,” I told the storm. “Fate dragged its feet.”

Komena laughed in my ear, sounding delighted. My back straightened and I looked ahead into the blizzard, seeing nothing but somehow knowing that Moren was looking back.

“All you who hear me,” I said, meaning every word, “are you worthy?”

Sa vrede. The words rang out even in the storm, but no reply came. They were waiting, biding their time. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“If you’ll not give your answer,” I said, pulling down my hood, “I’ll have to come and take it.”

I stepped into the storm, batted about by the howling winds before I could so much as blink my eye, but a hand held my shoulder and kept me anchored to the ground,

“Let us,” Andronike said, “not stumble at so late an hour.”

One step after another, fighting against the headwind. It was coming for me, frosting even the Mantle of Woe, but the weight of my victories was not so easily toppled. The storm raged, ate at my warmth and my mind, but my soul burned like a black flame. It would take more than this to stop me. And so Kurosiv sent out more, footsteps soundless on the snow and a hunter’s eye. Ishabog the Adversary tread the blizzard as easily as fish would swim water, untouched and unhindered, and came at me from behind. It was an exquisite blow, I saw through Andronike’s eyes, the perfect amalgamation of the strength of a Might and centuries of skill.

The obsidian tip of the spear stopped a hair’s breadth before it could touch the back of my neck, caught by a hand.

“Too slow, Ishabog,” the Tomb-maker said, shaking its head. “Always a little too slow. You never learn.”

“Rumena,” I said, voice echoing with Komena’s.

“I listen, Sve Noc,” the old drow said.

“Make an example.”

Ishabog struggled to draw back the obsidian spear, but the Tomb-maker held it in place. It laughed, the stone under the snow beginning to shift under out feet.

“I obey,” the Tomb-maker replied, and then glanced at me. “Losara?”

I glanced in acknowledgement.

“When you find the Leech,” Rumena said, “tell it this from me: this makes eight.”

The Sisters thrummed with vicious amusement, so I accepted the trust with a nod.

“Arrogance,” Ishabog spat.

“True,” Rumena said. “Why else would anyone believe they can kill me?”

A scream of fury was its answer, but as the ground rumbled and Night flared I left the Mighty behind. The blizzard barred my path, no longer a blind thing but instead a living malice, and I found my steps slowing. Moren Bleakwomb was narrowing its power, strengthening it where I stood. Stone shattered, the air bit at my throat and my hair threaded with ice. Even the flame of Night burning beneath my skin felt the touch of that. I stopped.

“Enough,” I said, and raised my arm.

Fingers extended, I reached for the wind and felt it filter through my fingers. Only it was something deeper I was looking for, and the thousand eyes I bloomed in the Night I found it. Threads of power, threads of Night, pulling at the strings of this city-breaking calamity.

“It’s just a Secret, Moren,” I said, and my fingers closed around a thread. “And no matter how bleak your storm, my hand can Silence it.”

I was the fucking Warden, who did it think it was? My blood sang and like a sickness in the blood my aspect seeped into the thread of power, tainting it. From string to string it moved, until it had contaminated the entire maelstrom, and I bared my teeth as Andronike’s gentle fingers on my chin turned me to face an unseen silhouette behind curtains of white. I drew back my hand and slowly, mockingly, snapped my fingers.

The storm died.

The winds were snuffed out, the power gone, and a sudden and terrible silence fell over the Flowing Gardens. All around us, as far as the eye could see, snow began to fall with almost sacrilegious gentleness. The softest of powders, and through that tender rain I met the silver eyes of Moren Bleakwomb. I took a step forward and the tall, haggard scarecrow of a Mighty stared at me, something like terror in its eyes. Another step and it flinched. A third and it backed away. A fourth and it reached for the Night, only to spasm and let out a scream. Every drop of power was gone, vanished like smoke.

Kurosiv was cutting their losses, unwilling to let me harvest their strongest Mighty.

I limped through the carpet of snow, boots crunching, as Moren spasmed violently on the ground. It only ceased when I was mere feet away and wormed around to stare at me with abject fear. Legs still shaking, it began to crawl away. The butt of my staff touched the middle of its back, and it went still as a stone. I leaned forward, Komena demanding death in my ear.

“Do you really think,” I quietly said, “there’s anywhere in the world that would be far enough?”

“Finish it, cattle,” Moren rasped back.

I caught it by its bedraggled hair, dragging it until it was looking up at the falling snow. Its breath caught it its throat at the sight.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yes,” it rasped, voice raw with a grief too ancient for me to understand.

And as the eerie beauty filled the eyes still, I killed Moren Bleakwomb. That was the most mercy I had it in me to offer the ancient drow. Neck broken, it dropped into the carpet of white it had sown and I turned away. The dead would keep. Before us, at the heart of the storm I had silenced, a would-be god awaited my coming. It would not do to keep them waiting, and so I answered the invitation hanging in the air. Limping through the trails of pale falling from the sky, I reached a small islet upon which a throne had been raised. Whatever else might have adorned the stone was gone, ripped away, leaving only the sight of Kurosiv the All-Knowing, they who called themselves Loc Ynan, to greet us.

I reached for the pocket sown inside my cloak, frosted fingers closing around my pipe, and found a packet of wakeleaf as Andronike sniggered against my neck. Under the unblinking gaze of the monster that would devour their entire race, I stuffed my dragonbone pipe and lit it with a pass of my palm. I breathed in deep, venting the acrid smoke through my nose, and let out a little sigh of pleasure. Why be mortal, if not for the little pleasures?

“I have to say,” I mused, “all stuff aside, I’ve gotta give it to you that you look like a proper fucking villain.”

The All-Knowing was taller and larger than any Firstborn I had ever seen, and for all that the impression was of slenderness for the good proportions their limbs were easily thick as two of mine and their neck a forest of black veins. They wore a tunic of sculpted obsidian from neck to thigh, with pauldrons shaped like dragons biting down on mouthful of emeralds, and their ribs had been traced in molten gold – dripping down as if it’d been paint. Their legs were covered in slender trousers of dark cloth, covered by greaves of bone and gold whose emerald settings had been carved into the likeness of a hundred eyes.

Yet none of it was as striking as the face, which the darkest I had ever seen of any drow and set with pure silver eyes. The sigil of the Kurosiv, two straight vertical lines and above them a crescent moon facing upwards, had been set in molten gold instead of facepaint. The lines begun under the eyes, the moon above black brows. Their dark hair, long and smooth and gathered into a long braid down their, ended wrapped around an egg-sized emerald. Across its lap a single-edged sword of obsidian waited unsheathed, a wicked shard without even a guard.

“Catherine Foundling,” Kurosiv All-Knowing replied, their Lower Miezan in a pleasant Laure drawl. “You come to me bearing gifts in my moment of triumph.”

I breathed in deep and spewed out a stream of smoke.

“Is that,” I calmly said, “what you think this is?”

“I have waited so very long,” Kurosiv gently said, “to take from the failures riding your shoulder. More years than a creature of your kind could hope to understand.”

“Hey, just for me,” I drawled, “could you maybe say that this is all going just as you planned?”

“None of that, Warden,” Kurosiv smiled, revealing sharp filed teeth. “I was warned about you. No games, not now. I even set out Moren for you to use your aspect on.”

I know, I thought. That’s what the entire point of that raid on the Shrine of Tears was, isn’t it? It’s not like the victory really won you anything. You just put Moren in my way so I’d fixate on it as my opponent.

“Damn,” I grinned, spitting out smoke that wreathed my face. “You got me.”

“I get everything, Catherine,” Kurosiv said. “That is my fate.”

And in a heartbeat, they struck. A sea of Night came down on my head, an eternity of power turned into some mutable, ever-shifting horror – a million tricks stolen from a million corpses, all of them jaws snapping down at me. I breathed in, smoke filling my lungs, and we struck back. Millennia of desperate deals in the dark, every scrap of knowledge and power the Sisters had gathered in their desperate bid for salvation and ascension. The sea against the sea, enormities colliding.

My bad leg throbbed. That was when it began going badly.

I coughed out smoke, struggling to stay up, and as my knee began to bend Komena’s arm slipped under my armpit to hold me up. Kurosiv laughed, still seated on their throne.

“Even now, you might have won,” Loc Ynan said in Crepuscular. “I recognize this. Though half-hearted, you are yet mighty. But you always make this mistake, the two of you.”

Their eyes burned silver. My knee buckled and Andronike had to slip under my arm to keep me standing.

“You invest yourselves,” Loc Ynan continued. “You lessen yourselves. And in the end, where does that bring you?”

The sea came down and I hit the floor, the Sisters coming down with me.

“There it is,” Loc Ynan almost lovingly said. “On your knees.”

My hand went for my sword as I rose, but they were quicker. The point of the obsidian blade went through my breastplate and came out my back, the impalement a wave of horrid pain. I let out a wet gasp as Loc Ynan’s hand took my shoulder from behind, holding me up.

“Before they called me All-Knowing,” the god whispered, “they called me the Leech. And oh, how I have hungered.”

Night began to pour out of us and into them. Trickles, at first, then rivers. The Sisters fought it and my clouded mind struggled to turn this around, take from Loc Ynan instead, but my feeble attempts were batted away contemptuously. Drop after drop, the Night came to Loc Ynan, and all over the city towers came alive. It was not only Sve Noc’s power coming home, but ever scrap of it the Firstborn had ever held. And it was inevitable, what would happen then. I could already feel the malicious god savouring the sight. The Sisters were Night, they had left all else behind. They no longer had bodies.

And so they died, one drop at a time.

Komena leaned close to me, fingers digging into my arm as if she were afraid to let go. She went first. Andronike’s anguish rippled out and she let out a wail of grief, but she never finished it. The god’s face split into an impossible broad smile.

“The worthy rise,” Loc Ynan said. “Is that not our rule?”

They laughed. All that was left was ripping out the nails, the last of the meal, and it was all over.

“And so, at last, the Firstborn have made a god.”

Blood flecking my lips, I leaned forward into the embrace until my lips were by their ear.

“Mistake,” I whispered.

And on the other side of the canals, our towers came alive.

The god went still.

“No,” they said.

The flow shifted. The rivers that had fed the apotheosis emptied it.

“No,” Loc Ynan snarled. “You insignificant-”

Night gathered, and I could see where. I could follow the threads. An elegant, dark-skinned hand raised its palm up as an orb of darkness gathered atop it. Akua Sahelian, golden eyes smiling, stole the godhead piece by piece. Loc Ynan tried to move, but my hands were tight around them. The sword in my guts kept them close, and we stood there with trembling limbs. What was a god without a godhead? Nothing much, we both knew, and as Night drifted out of our grasp we both fell to our knees. Together, intertwined in my blood.

They were coming. Not only Akua, but Masego as well. I could feel it.

“They couldn’t fix it,” I told Kurosiv as they let out laboured breaths against my neck. “The Night. They couldn’t because their godhead was broken from the start. Even feeding it Winter was just filling a broken barrel.”

“It was never power meant for sharing,” Kurosiv rasped. “How could you not see that? A single god perfect and eternal, not a million failed ones.”

“Do you know how to kill a god, Kurosiv?” I smiled.

They pushed me away and I tumbled into the snow, groaning in pain. I was, once more, dying. But so was Kurosiv, I saw plain as I finally glimpsed their body. It looked ravaged, like it’s been hollowed out from the inside. Skin hung loose and the melted gold fell of in flecks, they were drenched in sweat and their breath came and went.

“You fail,” Kurosiv laughed. “You still fail, Queen of Lost and Found. You cannot hold the power forever, I can feel it fighting. How long – an hymn, an hourglass? And when it leaves it can only go to me. There is no one else left.”

“Ah,” I smiled, blood bubbling up my throat. “That’s not – ah – that’s not exactly true.”

Neither of us heard it coming. Why would we? Not without reason had it been named the Lord of Silent Steps. Ivah of the Losara, thrown out of my shadow when Night was taken from me, padded silently across the snow. The would-be god’s gaze took in the purple-and-silver paint and flinched, only to stutter down to the size of the spear of yew Ivah held and go utterly still.

“Kurosiv,” I gurgled. “Hey, Kurosiv.”

They flicked a glance my way.

“The Tomb-maker tells you that makes eight,” I grinned, all teeth and blood.

They went ashen with rage, but a flicker of movement caught their gaze as Ivah moved – the thrust was perfect, smooth in that way it only ever really was in stories. And the would-be god died, their heart’s blood dyeing the length of spear of yew, and as I continued to bleed out I watched Ivah. Watched it kneel, reach at the cooling corpse and draw out the faintest whisper of darkness. The Lord of Silent Steps was a drow, and it had killed.

It held Night, the first of a godhead yet to be.

It held the Night and stood there, knowing it could snatch divinity itself.

So who are you, Ivah of the Losara, when all the noise falls away? I had wondered that, in my silence, but there was a question I had asked of it. All you who hear me, I’d called out before entering the storm, are you worthy? And Ivah had heard me, dwelling deep in my shadow. But words were just words, and what could they matter when apotheosis was at hand? It was tempted, I could tell. It was the desire of all Mighty, deep down, to become the deity they had served. Silver-blue eyes found mine. My blood was pounding in my ears, drowning everything out, but I still heard every word.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Ivah replied.

And it raised its hand above its head, holding up the wisp of Night to the sky, and offered the oldest and deepest prayer of the Firstborn.

“Chno Sve Noc,” Ivah of the Losara whispered.

A ripple. Faint, but it was there. The Lord of Silent Steps had borne Night once, borne the weight of gods on its shoulder. It was tied to them still. And in that wisp of Night held up to the starry, snowy sky I glimpsed sisters. Hello, old friends, I thought, but my vision was swimming. Darkness was not far away. It was kept at bay, though, by long fingers taking up my cheek.

“Oh, Catherine,” a voice soft as silk murmured. “Have you ever won a single thing without bleeding yourself for it?”

I choked on my answer, blood thick in my throat, but I felt lips press against my burning forehead and magic shivered through me. I was not… When had someone taken the sword out of me? Akua helped me up, the softness of her lips burning even more harshly than the fever, and I spewed out blood and bile onto the snow. I felt weak, I thought as I hacked out another gob of blood. Good enough to stand, but not much more than that. She passed me my staff to lean on, but stayed there for me to lean on. Neither of us spoke a word of it.

Masego stood before Ivah, before the wisp of Night, and in his hands he held the stolen godhead.

“This time,” Hierophant said, “we do it properly.”

The towers burned in the distance, obsidian melting, and the Hierophant made a god. Days of glyph-carving disappeared into smoke in a heartbeat, Masego guiding the Night through the ritual Akua had made, and as the Night fed into that first wisp it grew. Grew until my patronesses stood before me once, more decked in cloak and armour, but there was more to it than that. The simple weight of their presence was crushing, Ivah falling to its knees until Andronike affectionately raised it up. But there was… The two Sisters suddenly turned to look at Masego, whose face had gone blank, and then at Akua.

Hierophant was looking at her like he’d never seen her before. She was smiling.

“You did something,” I croaked.

“So I did,” Akua murmured. “I made a decision. A nudge, righting a wrong left to fester.”

She paused, meeting my gaze.

“What now, Catherine?”

Am I a prisoner on a longer leash, those golden eyes for the second time, or am I what you say I am? I breathed out shallowly. I’d made the decision already, I realized. I’d made it years ago.

“Then I trust your judgement,” I said.

Was it grief I saw in there, or love? Or perhaps what I was most afraid of – that, when it came to the two of us, there might not be much of a difference between the two. I looked away. The question burned, but this was not the hour for it.

“It is done,” Andronike said, sounding almost disbelieving. “It is truly done. We are returned.”

I left Akua’s warmth behind, limping forward leaning on my staff.

“All will be Night,” I said.

“Aye,” Komena said, smiling a hard smile. “And so now we turn to the paying of debts.”

They’d gotten Night back, all of it. And they had a proper godhead to bring it to bear. So they did, Creation groaning at the weight of their will.

The Intercessor dropped into the snow like a wriggling worm.

I knew that face. It was the one she’d worn in Praes, Yara of Nowhere. And cursing, gasping, the Wandering Bard twisted around until she was on her back – and saw me cast aside my staff, limping towards her.

“You idiot,” the Intercessor screamed. “You fucking idiots.”

She backed away but I followed, slowing only to bend down and take up what she had left behind.

“Don’t you get it?” Yara of Nowhere shouted, eyes wild. “He’s going to kill you all. If you do this, you give the game to him and he’s going to-”

I swung, and the lute shattered against her jaw with the most satisfying sound I had ever heard. Strings went flying and she yelped, so I fucking did it again. I hit her until her face was bloody and the lute broken beyond repair, kneeling down in the snow as she moaned in pain.

“You’re not even taking my place,” the Intercessor spat. “All this, and you’re not even taking my place.”

“You took my father, Yara,” I said calmly, almost conversationally. “Did it with my own hand. So I’m going to take every single thing from you, except what you most want to give me.”

I drove my hand into her chest, through the flesh, and reached deeper. It had taken an artefact, last time, but I was further down along the path now. I was the Warden. With a hoarse shout that came as much out of her lips as mine, I ripped my hand clear of her. I left no wound behind, not even rustled clothes, but in my hand I held a sword. Above had been a book, but Below?

I held in my hand the sword that was the stories of Below and smiled down ad the Intercessor.

“Run, Yara,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you at the end of the road.”

I struck down, but the sword cleaved only snow. Panting out my breath, I rose to my feet. The Wandering Bard was gone. It was over.

Or so he wanted us to think.

I turned towards Kurosiv’s corpse.

“Did you think,” I said, “that I’d forgotten about you?”

Silence.

“Come now, Neshamah,” I said. “Do you really think I’m going to fall for that? I know exactly why you’re here.”

Kurosiv’s body jerked upright, still impaled through the heart. Their eyes had gone red.

“You have grown, Catherine,” the Dead King spoke through the corpse’s mouth.

I limped forward, sword in hand, but almost stumbled. Masego caught me on one side, Akua the other, and together we went.

“You haven’t,” I replied. “I saw you coming, Neshamah. You came for the stories because you’re afraid of what we might do with them.”

“Too little,” the Dead King said, “and too late. That is what you hold in your hand. You have grown, Catherine, but you have not grown enough.”

I laughed in his face.

“You were hoping to wait until dawn and steal the Night like a thief,” I said. “Going through Kurosiv, who’s the foundation.”

Or wait longer, if Kurosiv won. Death would see the Night pass to him and he had all the time in the world to wait for it.

“You failed, Neshamah,” I said. “Tonight, you lose.”

Another step forward.

“There will be no peace,” I told the Dead King. “There will be no truce – only the shiver before the blade claims your neck. You will fight and you will rage and you will weep, but in the end there can only ever be one end to this.”

And I stepped back, because this was for another to end. When my gaze turned to Masego, however, I froze. Hierophant, I saw as he pushed up the cloth, had his eye back. One was still of glass but the other was flesh and blood, the same brown I’d once known him to have. He leaned forward, smiling.

“We come for you, King of Death,” Hierophant finished, relishing every word.

He snapped down his wrist, speaking a single word, and hellflame devoured Kurosiv’s corpse whole. And so I saw the second miracle that Akua had stolen away from the godhead, along with the eye. True Night could change souls, it was how the nails had been made. And Hierophant had lost sorcery because the Saint had severed the part of his soul that connected his body to the power, allowing him to wield it. Akua had healed his soul.

Masego had his magic back.