“From the example of the claimant Desolate we can learn this: no scheme is so perfect that it is invulnerable to the utter idiocy of an opponent.”

-Extract from an untitled historical commentary on the War of Thirteen Tyrants and One, by the Imperial Concubine Alaya of the Green Stretch

There was only the void to keep track of now, at least. Wings burst out of my back and with a swift beat had me spinning sideways: I caught Masego by the collar, though he kept wriggling uncomfortably. If this had been freefall back in Creation, the howl of the wind would have forced me to raise my voice. No such troubles plagued our descent into nothingness, a silver lining on a situation I knew to be bad but vaguely suspected was much, much worse.

“Can you get us out of here?” I asked, wings beating behind me to keep us aloft.

Diabolist was nothing more than a shade on my back, kept there by the fact I willed it so. Whatever weight she’d had earlier, it was gone now.

“There is no here,” Hierophant replied. “We are in between places that exist, within the contained entity that was the central chamber.”

“And can you get us out of that?” I hissed.

“It is an egg, Catherine,” he said. “We are within. If you want to leave…”

Crack the shell, I thought. Easier said than done: if that’d been on the table since the beginning, there would have been much less planning needed. Could’ve burst straight into the Skein’s lair, seized the wheels and assassinated Malicia. Of course, we had eventually burst into that lair. It hadn’t gone what one might call ‘well’, or to be honest anywhere near that neighbourhood. After the elven Revenant I’d thought that Neshamah’s guardians were dangerous yet not beyond our ability to handle. I’d just been roughly disabused of that notion. Even Masego picking up his second aspect had barely managed to get the situation under control long enough for the rat to screw us over again.

“Where do I hit?” I asked Hierophant.

The heart of our working relationship, laid bare.

“Anywhere,” he laughed.

I blew out a cold breath and allowed Winter to slither through my veins. Our exertions fighting the Skein had not tired it. It felt, if anything, even more eager than before. I was beginning to grasp the secret at the heart of the fae, slowly but surely: their power delighted in use, rewarded it. I’d inherited that without the tight constraints of a role in the colourful but uncompromising tapestry that had once governed the entire realm of faerie. Before the King of Winter hoodwinked me into killing and freeing him with the same sentence, anyway. Who knew what the face of Arcadia was, now that its ever-feuding courts had become one? I felt Akua’s not-eyed follow the shape of the power I was shaping, but she did not take part. She had not spoken a word since my last summons, I only now noticed.

“Diabolist?” I said.

“I am reaching the limit,” the shade murmured through tight lips.

I glanced back, the light of my translucent wings casting her scarlet eyes almost purple to my sight.

“Of what?” I asked.

“How much principle alienation I can take for you,” Diabolist said. “My thoughts already grow… stilted. Forced down unproductive paths.”

I blinked in surprise. Shit. It was true I’d been tossing around Winter like rarely before and my mind remained mostly my own, but I’d not… There’d been a lot of sweet talk about apotheosis, of late. Foolishly enough, I’d assumed that I’d somehow outgrown my old troubles. Not so, evidently. How had Akua even – ah, the chain. Had to be. This entire time, she’d been taking the plunge so I would remain mostly clear-headed. I could only admire her capacity to master her own thoughts in the face of Winter influence, if her limit was only now reached. My tongue burned with a half a dozen questions but they would have to wait for later. There were no physical markers for me to hit around here, so I didn’t bother with anything too precise. Ice and shadow, woven into a spike that spun and elongated into something closer to a massive javelin. I shaped it carefully, and only when I was satisfied with the flawlessness of the working did I let it loose. For a heartbeat, I hit nothing. The javelin kept moving through nothingness unimpeded, is momentum undaunted by the distance.

Then I hit a wall, or something close to it.

Like an arrow hitting stone my working did little more than leave a mark on the surface, but there was an unmistakable notch of damage on the surface of the nothingness in front of us. Winter’s span was a difficult thing to measure, for my mantle obeyed no rules but its own and sometimes not even that, but I had put much of myself into the javelin. Enough that, with Akua no longer serving as my filter, I could feel the creep of influence at the edge of my mind. Still indistinct whispers, for now. They would grow louder, I knew, until there was no difference between them and my own thoughts. Hammering through wasn’t going to work. I’d come out of here spouting monologues, if not worse, and I wouldn’t catch Malicia acting like the very same people she’d arranged the deaths of for decades over a nice cup of wine. I wasn’t ready to call this a wash yet, and embracing the fullness of Winter was more or less that.

“Hierophant, I need you to pry that open,” I said.

Masego frowned.

“Platform,” he said.

Reluctantly, I snatched another wisp of Winter and crafted one beneath him before dropping his collar. He landed on his feet, if not particularly gracefully, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. I could smell the sorcery on him. I always could, really, and given the amount of protective enchantments he layered on himself whenever we went into battle this should not be a surprise. But there was something different, this time. The magic was curving beneath his skin, deep into his body. My eyes narrowed and traced the shape of them with my mind, like a blind girl trying to see the face of another with my fingers. Some of that sorcery was going straight into his heart, keeping the blood pumping steadily. More was stiffening muscles, like those of his lower back. Keeping him standing up straight. And there were two little pinpricks, going into smaller glands above his kidneys. Forcing them to keep functioning, for whatever eldritch purpose. My studies of anatomy had largely been aimed towards killing or more recreational affairs, but I could recognize the sight of a man tinkering with his own body to keep it going when it was falling apart. He’d used powerful sorceries, today. Birthed an aspect, and used another. Back when I’d been the Squire and just that, even calling on a single such power would have wiped me out. A long overdue reminder that Masego, like the rest of the Woe, was still very much human. With all the messy, unpleasant parts that involved.

I kept my mouth shut anyway as he began to trace runes.

If I’d been a better friend, a better person, I might have taken the burden off his shoulders. Valiantly declared that we would find another way, that I’d take care of it somehow. But I was just me, and it was too late for last-hour gambits. I needed Malicia dead, and I needed it done soon. I’d have to trust that Masego would not irreparably hurt himself, and let him bleed for my objectives. Isn’t it funny? I thought. How the higher you rise, the more power comes into the shape of others suffering for you. I was not smiling. But what was the worth of that, if I still kept silent?

“I can turn a scuffmark into a hole,” Hierophant finally said. “That is, I’m afraid, the limit of what I can do. You will have to address the rest of the matter.”

I nodded.

“Do it,” I ordered.

He attacked the mark I’d left with what looked like twin thin needles of light, but to my senses felt more like a chisel and a hammer. One was heavier than the other, using the weaker one to pry open the wall. Masego’s breath quickened, and I felt some of the spells on his body weaken. Like Diabolist, he was nearing his limit. The Woe were powerful, for our age. More than we had any right to. But if we could not hurt our enemy badly in the initial stretch of the fight, as a group we had a tendency to begin slowly losing. Too many shortcuts. Too many advances with weak foundations. We had rushed to power, and it’d made us fragile. I dismissed the thought, and sharpened my will like a blade as Hierophant finished making that final breach. A small one, less than an inch wide. But I could feel Creation behind it, and an opening was all I’d needed. I called on my domain, the night-realm within, and before it could fall over us like a curtain I wove the smallest sliver through the breach. Gave us a path into Creation.

Night followed.

My wings died behind me as I tread soft snow, the starless sky above spreading out forever. Masego stumbled and shivered as he joined me, but I guided away the worst of the cold with a thought and offered him an arm to lean on. I’d already asked too much of him today. Akua did not appear: she’d always been there. I simply had not acknowledged her presence, or so it felt like. And it was not her fae guise she wore, either. In here, I looked upon the same Diabolist I had fought in Liesse. Tall and splendid, all aristocratic arrogance and careless disdain. In here, all we had done to hide her true face fell away. Unlike Hierophant, she was not burdened by the touch of my kingdom of moonless night. She looked up at the pitch-black firmament and smiled, as if I’d taken her to a tea shop with a charming decor instead of the last remaining hold of the Winter Court. She hummed quietly, lips quirking. I knew that song.

Parts of it, anyway.

“The second is the longest, they said

You will walk under the restless dead

The hanged all crooning from the gallows –

To join them and rest in the shadows.”

Her voice was soft, and the pitch of the tune perfect.

“Diabolist,” I sharply said.

She turned to me, still smiling.

“Come, dearest heart,” Akua said, eyes alight with savage glee. “Let us speak to the Empress of succession.”

My fingers clenched. I still remembered the conversation she’d had with Thief, not so long ago. She’d thrown the argument, as Vivienne had suspected, but the girl who’d once been Heiress never spoke with a single purpose to her words. Had she known I was a wake and listening, even then? Maybe. Or perhaps she was addressing that inscrutable audience that always listened, the unseen hand of fate that always sought to curb us to its purpose. She wanted me to be Empress. She wanted, perhaps, to be my Chancellor. And she thought Malicia’s death would be the birth of that story. Damnably, she might be right. I hoped, against my better judgement, that is was the flesh simulacrum of the Empress that awaited us. I was already in too many knife-fights with fate to pick yet another.

“Follow,” I said, and tugged Masego along.

I left no trace on the snow, and neither did Akua. She had become a creature of this place, by hook and crook. It was Hierophant, sagging and increasingly drenched in cold sweat, that needed the help. I propped him up until the itch in the back of my head had grown too much to ignore. I could feel it, the… depression in this place. As if the supports beneath my domain were uneven and it had sagged. I closed my eyes and withdrew it all. A sea unleashed, slowly siphoned back into my too-small frame, until the touch of the sun was on my face and my eyes fluttered open. We were back in the Threefold Reflection, at last. Green light fell down over us like a shower from a sun pit towering high above, kept functional through all hours of the day by a cunning set of mirrors. This was a salon, by the looks of it, with long resting couches and low tables filling most the place. There were half a dozen doors out of the room, likely meant for servants more than the guests.

“The palace still seems… whole,” I said.

“I would assume the three layers to be completely separate now,” Akua replied. “This felt like Creation to you, yes? Likely this the the original Threefold Reflection that was built before the dimensional overlay was set.”

“So no more shunting,” I said. “Good news. Much as I hate to ask, what plan are we on now?”

Diabolist laughed.

“I’m afraid there is none left,” she said. “None that I can remember, at least. This particular sequence of events was entirely unforeseen.”

Shoddy planning, that. Given how frequently we fucked it all up, not counting that as an option was just bad form on our part.

“You two are done fighting for the day,” I finally said.

“I am still conscious,” Masego muttered.

“Takes a little more than that to be qualified for a throw down with the Empress’ finest,” I replied

Assuming we even found them.

“Diabolist, I’m going to find us a way out,” I said. “Try to find the others and prepare for the worst.”

“I would be of use to you, when facing Malicia,” the shade replied.

“You should be more careful about what songs you sing,” I replied flatly.

Masego’s glass eyes moved from one of us to the other, his face bemused.

“What songs?” he asked.

I met Akua’s now-scarlet eyes and found a thread of amusement in there. That song… The Girl Who Climbed The Tower, Black had called it. There were still many things about it I didn’t understand. I’d first heard Robber humming it, but when I’d eventually asked him about it years later he’d admitted he recalled singing an entirely different song. It was not for everyone’s ears, it seemed.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, then glanced up.

I could roll the dice with trying to find a way out of the pyramid on foot, but that carried risks. There might still be traps, even without the wheels being a factor. This would do. Window was probably warded, but then I still had the traditional Foundling skeleton key of punching things really hard. Wisps of Winter coalesced behind me, translucent wings coming into being, and I shot up quick as an arrow. My fist smashed into the green glass with my full weight behind it, but I let out a yelp when it bounced off harmlessly and I hit the damned thing like a bird hitting a window. Godsdamnit. Down below, I heard Masego cough out a pained laugh. The glass was set in that pale stone I recognized from outside, with discreet carved runes connecting them. Fine, I could work with that. Wings batting behind me unconsciously, I formed my fingers into a wedge and struck at the stone. I’d aimed well beneath the runes, so I ripped my way through without too much trouble. After that it was just a matter of digging around the boundaries, until I tossed down a stone-encircled glass pane and flew up through the opening. I landed under the noon sun of Keter, while in the distance the plume of smoke from the fires we’d set began to disperse. They’d put out the fires, then.

Look down into the pit, I saw the other two awaiting me. Akua could make her own way up, but Masego would need a little help. Another sliver of Winter had a thick rope of shadow slithering down the pit. Hierophant eyed it sceptically, until an exertion of my will had it tying around his waist. I dragged him up, hoist by hoist, careful not to go too quickly and smash him into the walls. My fingers closed around the back of his neck, and with all the gentleness I could manage I took him out and put him down. Gods, it was like trying not to hurt a baby bird. People were so fragile. The three of us stood under true Creation sunlight for the first time in too long, Akua and I pristine but Masego the picture of exhaustion. He’d lost weight, but there was quite a bit of difference between shedding the pounds – unhealthy as his manner of doing it had been – and being in good shape. We were maybe halfway up the southern slope of the pyramid, facing the Garden of Crowns and the edge of the Silent Palace. The gardens and colonnades below showed no sign of Malicia, but then I’d not expected that to be so easy.

“We have an escape route in case this all blows up in our face,” I half-stated, half-asked.

My eyes were on Akua, making it clear who was meant to answer.

“That is correct,” she replied. “Though it was expected that true disaster would force is to flee through Arcadia.”

“Then fall back there,” I said. “The others will know the way?”

“By now, all their memory blocks should have ended,” she replied.

Good enough, given that I couldn’t afford going around fetching everyone. Adjutant I might be able to find, but who the Hells knew where Archer was? Thief was the last out in the wilds, and to be honest there was no chance of me finding her in the city if she didn’t want to be found.

“Be safe, you two,” I said, and grimaced immediately.

I was painfully aware that the words being spoken in Keter made them even more a platitude than usual. There was no safety here, only the Dead King’s whimsical sufferance.

“That seems unlikely,” Masego noted. “But I shall attempt it nonetheless.”

I squeezed his shoulder before sending him off. It would be slow work for him to descend the pyramid’s slope, but hardly impossible. Diabolist could handle herself, and the steady look I gave her before she left made it clear she was supposed to ease his exhaustion as much as possible. All that was left now was to somehow find Malicia, crush her defences and taker her life. All without breaching the unspoken rules the Dead King had set about what would constitute breaking his hospitality. I doubted Neshamah would truly mind a spot of murder even in his personal backyard, but that wasn’t how this worked: I had to maintain a certain level of deniability. Which wasn’t looking great, considering the closest thing I had to a plan at the moment was ‘murder in broad daylight’. The Skein and the Spellblade should no longer be a part of this, at least. The Revenants would remain stuck in their little kingdoms. That left the Empress’ own personal guard.

The Sentinels hardly scared me, at the end of the day. Well-trained or not, they were only soldiers. But there was a more than decent chance she’d have Wasteland mages with her, and that was a different story entirely. I’d killed more than a few of those, over the last few years, but that’d been before I’d become… this. Wards mattered to me a lot more than they used to, and I wasn’t meeting a cluster of casters in the middle of a chaotic battlefield: these sorcerers would likely have been told everything the Empress knew about what I could and couldn’t do, including vulnerabilities. Black had made a career out of killing enemies much stronger than him with careful planning and preparation. I did not intend to end up on the wrong side of his teachings. Power clapped in the distance, a quick spike followed by smaller workings. I cocked my head. Northern slope of the pyramid, maybe a little further. A trap? Maybe. Or a distraction. But I couldn’t afford not to look, could I?

With gritted teeth, I set out for my little talk with the Dread Empress of Praes.