“And so, her tribe burned around her, Matron Creaker stood in the ashes and spoke thus: ‘Do you now think me cowed, Nihilis? I would have burned them myself, to be rid of you.’”

– Extract from Volume VI of the Official Imperial Chronicles

I had goblin troubles.

A third of them I saw coming, in that the Confederation of Grey Eyries had been bound to come scratching at my door so I might win them some concessions at the peace table after Ater fell. They had good reason to think I’d back them when it came down to it. Callow had played a role in the creation of the Confederation from the start: the Matrons had begun sounding me out for support as soon as it came out in the open that Malicia were at odds, even if it’d not come to anything for years. It had been under Vivienne’s regency and with Hakram’s backing that Callow had funnelled the Tribes coin and steel so they might arm themselves for a successful rebellion, then promptly recognize the newly founded nation. I’d maintained the policy since.

We’d not done it for free, of course. After the Night of Knives, weakening Malica without outright starting a war had been one of the leading goals of the Kingdom of Callow and accomplishing it like this had probably been the greatest diplomatic coup of my reign. The more immediate payoff, though, had been stocks of goods that only the Tribes could provide: goblin steel and munitions. The latter, in particular, had been necessary since the Army of Callow was still largely patterned on the Legions of Terror and their doctrine employed goblin munitions. The coin and steel we’d sent them had not been gifts, they’d been loans: the crown of Callow was to be repaid in goods.

It’d worked out more than decently, at first. The rebellion had taken the Tower by surprise and seized Foramen, taking control the imperial forges there and massacring the Banu – the noble line that’d ruled the High Seat. But then Malicia had gotten her affairs in order and sent Marshal Nim south with several legions, penning in the goblins choking out the convoys of goods they’d been sending us. We’d felt the lack of those starkly during the campaigns out west. Though in a decent position and dug-in, the Confederation had then been betrayed from the inside: Matron Wither of the High Ridge tribe, Pickler’s own mother, had allied with other tribes to take the city from the Confederation.

She’d done this so she could return to Malicia’s banner as the High Lady of Foramen, not only the first goblin nobility recognized by the Tower but the first High Seat in the history of the empire not to be human.

The situation down south had been a rough stalemate since. High Lady Wither was dug in behind her heavily warded walls and her initial trouble of riots in the streets had tapered off – due in part to the grain I’d traded her in exchange for goblin munitions at Scribe’s suggestion – but she couldn’t really venture far outside the city. The Confederation outnumbered her ten to one and the Grey Eyries were a hell to assault even for goblins, on top of another High Seat now eyeing up Foramen. High Lady Takisha had been considering reclaiming the city, it was said, to install a cadet branch of the Muraqib at its head. The Confederation was no better off, though.

The Tribes just didn’t have the kind of army that’d be needed to take a High Seat in any way except the brutal surprise strike they’d first taken Foramen through. So instead they’d gone raiding into the hinterlands of Foramen until those were turned into a barren wasteland where no one lived, then settled into a sullen stalemate with High Lady Wither. There were frequent skirmishes over convoys and caravans headed to the city, but neither side was really in a position to score a decisive blow on the other and it’d shown.

Given that the Confederation of the Grey Eyries had been perhaps not an ally but certainly a partner to Callow since its founding, it was a given that they’d reach out to me now that matters were coming to a head in Ater. It wasn’t like the Praesi were going to offer them a seat at the table, and the Matrons were canny old witches besides: from where they stood, the political considerations that’d led Vivienne to back their rebellion had not changed. It was still in Callow’s interests to weaken Praes and I still needed their goods for my armies, so when I received the Confederations’ delegation their leader spoke boldly after I got her into my tent.

“We would like for Foramen to be returned to the Confederation in the final settlement,” Matron Braider said. “Preferably along with Wither’s head in a box.”

Braider was young, my matron standards, which meant she was mostly wrinkled instead of entirely. Her eyes were a sharp orange and unblinking, her needle-like teeth tinted blue from the strange paste she kept chewing. Vivienne, seated by me, looked unimpressed.

“The Confederation has not contributed to this war,” she said, “save through irregular trade. You ask a high price for goods already paid for.”

“We don’t expect you to do it for free,” Matron Braider said. “I’ve been empowered by the Council of Matrons to offer terms. I believe you’ll find supporting us worthwhile.”

The terms she outlined afterwards were, to be honest, pretty tempting. Treaty obligation to provide a certain amount of munitions and goblin steel at a set price every year, right of recruitment in the Eyries for the Army of Callow, a mutual defence pact against Praes and a fixed take of the Confederation’s tax income pledged to building Cardinal until the city was deemed finished by a committee of Grand Alliance members. Vivienne wasn’t anywhere as tempted, but it was pretty obvious that it’d wasn’t her they’d tailored that offer for. Braider stayed long enough to answer questions and specify details before taking her leave, leaving me alone with my successor.

“The mutual defence pact isn’t a real concession,” Vivienne immediately said. “If they get Foramen they need one with us else they risk losing the city to Praes the moment it’s no longer riven by civil war.”

“So we milk them for something else,” I shrugged. “Force them to never sell more munitions to Praes than they sell us, maybe, or exempt Callowan merchants from some tariffs.”

After the wars, if the goblins held Foramen it would become the gateway to the Grey Eyries and all the ores in the mountains. Callow did not usually need to import steel or silver, but we did have a chronic lack of gold mines on top of a few other useful metals we had to get through Mercantis. Foramen would have great need of grain, given its poor lands and newfound hostility with most of Praes, so my subjects stood to make great profits there. Vivienne eyed me with some surprise.

“You’re really willing to make this bargain?” she asked.

“I’m willing to entertain it,” I corrected. “I’m not going to risk the peace I’m after for the fucking Matrons, Vivienne, but they’re good terms. If I have an opportunity I might as well take it.”

“I imagine whoever takes the Tower will have some issues with losing one of the empire’s largest cities,” the Princess pointed out.

“That’ll depend on the strength of their bargaining position, I imagine,” I said. “I’m not going to cram this deal down your throat, Viv – the defence pact would stay your problem long after I abdicate, for one – but we should at least seriously consider it.”

The second third of my goblin problems, though, I expected a great deal less. Within hours of Matron Braider being settled in a corner of our camp, one of the phalanges interrupted me halfway through supper. Our scouts had caught someone claiming to be an envoy and brought them into the camp quietly, but they refused to talk to anyone save me. I went with a chicken leg still in hand, gnawing at the meat even as I sat down across from a young goblin. Thirteen, fourteen at most. A woman, but that was only to be expected if she was an envoy. Couldn’t think of a lot of Matrons that’d entrust anything of importance to a mere male.

I glanced at the legionary behind her and nodded. The cloth over her head was ripped off, leaving a slightly dazed goblin of pale green skin with a frame large enough there was no doubt she was of a Matron line. I let her dark yellow eyes come back into a focus as I tore off all little more chicken. It was unpatriotic of me to admit it, but Praesi poultry was better than my own people’s. Probably because of some terrible blood magic a few hundred years ago, but you couldn’t argue with that tender flesh.

“So who would you be?” I asked.

“Trudger,” she replied. “And you’re the Black Queen.”

“That I am,” I replied, taking another bite. “What brings you to my camp, Trudger?”

“I have been sent as an envoy by my mother, High Lady Wither,” she said.

I blinked in surprise. Wait, this was Pickler’s sister? I didn’t even know – no, of course she had sisters. Most Matrons had a dozen children, so that the weak seeds might be weeded out. It didn’t really mean the same thing for them it would for humans. Few of them would have the same father, not that fatherhood was concept goblins put any stock in. Most of their kind would have found it obscene for a male to have a role in the raising of children, even if he’d sired the child in question.

“Pickler’s never mentioned you,” I noted.

“She wouldn’t, the bitch,” Trudger flatly said. “Why Mother is so fond of her when she took the first opportunity to flee is beyond me, but we’re not here to speak of thin blood. You were approached by the Council of Matrons, yes?”

Not much meat left on the leg, but I bit it off and swallowed.

“I’m always talking the Confederation,” I said. “We’re friendly enough.”

“They’ll have come begging for you to give them Foramen,” Trudger smiled. “I am here to deliver the better offer.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Had a little talk with your mother not two days ago,” I said. “She didn’t seem so eager to bargain then. What’s changed?”

“Malicia’s cause is dying,” Trudger frankly said. “The Warlock has been popular with the refugees for some time, but since the riots were drowned in blood many Aterans balk at supporting the empress. If she loses the capital, she has nothing left.”

“Which has me curious why you’re talking to me instead of Akua Sahelian,” I said.

Trudger smiled thinly.

“I imagine you think very little of us,” she said. “My mother and the Matrons. That we’re all the same to you, Wasteland highborn made small and green.”

“That’s a leap on your part,” I said.

But the first part, at least, was true. How could I think much of a pack of old women who spent a thousand Robbers like coppers at a fair every year? I couldn’t fix everything in the world, I’d learned my limits, but there had been a time… I had not forgotten who I was clasping hands with, the nature of my ‘friends’.

“We’re hard, Black Queen, because the Eyries are a hard place,” Trudger said. “Because the Dread Empire is a harder place still. But that doesn’t mean we’re blind.”

Something burned in those yellow eyes that had me believing, for this moment at least, that she spoke from the heart.

“We know the difference between someone like the Carrion Lord and Abreha Mirembe,” Trudger said. “You have known tyrants, Black Queen, but how often have your people been subject to them? We have, and that history is a thousand years of blood-curling screams. You want to know why we’d rather not deal with Akua Sahelian?”

Trudger bared pale, sharp teeth.

“You have proved you keep your word,” the envoy said. “You proved, in Wolof, that you know restraint. And if we had half a chance, Black Queen, we’d kill every single Akua Sahelian in this fucking empire.”

I hummed, dropping the chicken bones into a stretch of shadow. Zombie liked to break them. I leaned back into my seat, then nodded.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s say you have me convinced you’re dealing in good faith. What does your mother want, and what does she offer?”

“We want to keep Foramen,” Trudger said, “and we want peace.”

It was a little more complicated than that, in practice. High Lady Wither intended on staying part of the Dread Empire of Praes and sitting on her High Seat, she just wanted me to make her problems go away. To broker a peace between her and the Confederation and to extract guarantees from the Tower she wouldn’t be put down the moment the Dread Empire was no longer preoccupied with civil war. I was on the fence as to whether these was harder to get done than what the Matrons had asked me: ceding territory was one thing, but Wither was asking me to end a goblin blood feud and meddle in the Tower’s authority over its own affairs. I pointed out the latter, but Trudger pointed out in reply that I’d already promised Abreha Mirembe to guarantee her title until the war on Keter was over so evidently I was willing to meddle. Which, much as I disliked admitting it, was a fair point.

“All right,” I said. “I know what you want. What makes it worth my while?”

If the Confederations’ offer had been tailored for me, then this one was tailored for Vivienne. Oh, Wither threw me a sop early on in the form of guaranteeing her High Seat would never interrupt the sale of munitions to Callow and would itself sell us goblin steel from the forges, but the rest was very much up her alley. A treaty guaranteeing Foramen would never send provide troops to make war on Callow so long as Wither’s line ruled it, goblin and Taghreb blacksmiths provided to help setting up royal forges in Callow and a secret treaty supporting Jacks operations in the Hungering Sands. The deal was arguably less risky than backing the annexation of a major Praesi city, too, which would appeal to Vivienne.

The last thing she wanted after the last decade was for Callow to be dragged into more wars.

I didn’t give Trudger an answer, nor did she expect me to. Neither did I release her back to her mother, instead stashing her away in my camp as far away as the delegation from the Confederation as I could. I asked Masego to set up wards to keep everyone out of her tent and tripled the guard around her, too, which was bound to be noticed by spies in my camp but couldn’t be helped. The last thing I needed was for Matron Braider or her cohorts to find out Wither’s daughter was my ‘guest’. I stopped by the stables to toss Zombie a few bones, which she crunched with relish, but when I returned to my tent to take care of my correspondence and read through reports I found someone waiting for me.

The last third of my goblin troubles I would not have seen coming in a hundred years, because Pickler had never before shown so much as an iota of interest in the fate of her people.

“Should I even ask how you know?” I said, limping open to my liquor cabinet and taking out a bottle of pear brandy.

I didn’t like the taste much, too sweet, but now and then I enjoyed having a drink of it. It was a way to remember a man I’d respected and detested but who’d died the same way he’d lived: trying to save others.

“I got it out of Masego,” Pickler said. “It was only a guess, but Mother was certain to send someone after the Matrons did.”

I gestured towards the brandy, and to my surprise she nodded. I poured her a cup as well before dropping down in my favourite seat. My Sapper-General drank of her brandy, letting out a happy noise at the taste.

“Better than what you usually drink,” she said.

“An acquired taste,” I said, speaking as much of the man as the liquor.

Pickler didn’t bother to ply me with small talk, which I appreciated. It would have been horrifying unlike her, and honestly made me lose some respect for her character.

“What did they want?” Pickler asked.

“The Matrons want Foramen back,” I said. “Your mother wants to keep Foramen. The rest is gilding.”

She laughed, but it was a barren sound. Without mirth.

“Of course it’s about Foramen,” she said. “Why would they care about anything but the prize?”

I sipped at my drink, swallowing quick to the sweetness would not linger.

“She sent your sister Trudger,” I said.

“Our youngest,” Pickler said, sounding surprised. “She must have killed either Salter or Folder to be trusted with this.”

A pause.

“Didn’t think she had it in her.”

“She didn’t think much of you either,” I noted. “Not exactly close, I take it?”

“I spared Salter when I had her on the ropes,” she replied. “She took that personally since the two are enemies – they were raised by matron-attendants that hate each other.”

“You never told me how you left the Eyries,” I said.

She drank deep, then set down the empty cup with a sigh. She cocked her head at me and I gallantly filled it up again.

“In age, I was the fourth out of nine,” Pickler said, then grimaced. “It’s not that age matters, Catherine – we don’t pick leaders for it – but it lets you make allies for longer. It’s an advantage. I was one of those raised by my mother, since two of my elder sisters had already been given to matron-attendants. She was…”

A moment of hesitation.

“She was proud that I was food at things,” she said. “Saw I had a talent with forces and maths, got three retired sappers to teach me. But she also wanted me to be other things, things I couldn’t be.”

“So you left,” I said.

“The College was a way out,” Pickler said. “They all wanted me to go, my sisters, because I’d have no allies even if I returned. Mother thought differently, said that there was worth in learning there and the allies that could be made. But I wasn’t one of the greenskin slots for the College, Catherine. My tribe paid so I wouldn’t be sworn to service. I was supposed to come back afterwards.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said.

“So am I,” she snorted. “Gobbler, leaving the Legions to go back? Madness. Mother figured out I wouldn’t during my second year, when I stopped answering her letters, but she couldn’t stop paying without losing face. She tried to get people to pressure me, but that’s how I got to know Nauk. He thought I was getting picked on by other companies so he brawled through three of them and the mages they’d bribed to help.”

They’d been in the same company for two years at that point, I thought, but I wasn’t surprised they hadn’t known each other well. There were a hundred people in every company and it was common practice for fresher recruits to be spread out so no tenth would ever be too green.

“He was a romantic,” I smiled. “As much as an orc can be.”

“He was good,” Pickler quietly said, “in a way that few of us are. I still grieve that. I’m glad you spoke for him at Sarcella, Catherine. I just wish we’d let him rest years earlier instead of dragging him back as that… thing.”

I grimaced but did not disagree. Wekesa the Warlock had done what he could, but Summer flame wielded by one of its great nobles was no petty thing. There had not been much left of him to salvage.

“I thought it could be fixed,” I said. “I thought a lot of things could be fixed, back in those days.”

“Some still can be.”

I leaned back into my seat, sipping at the last of my drink.

“I can’t answer unless you ask, Pickler,” I said.

She shook with something that might have been laughter, had there been amusement in it.

“I don’t have anything to offer you, Catherine,” she said. “I am not a High Lady or the Council of Matrons. The gold I have you have paid me, and my allies are your allies. I couldn’t threaten to leave if refused even if I wanted to – where I would I go? The Army of Callow is my home.”

“It doesn’t always have to be hard coin and favours, Pickler,” I quietly told her. “We can talk.”

“Talk doesn’t move the needle with you,” Pickler said, and before I could reply raised her hand. “It’s not scorn I speak. You are a queen, Catherine. You cannot act like other women.”

“And yet,” I said, “I’d like to hear you out anyway.”

She drank of her cup, squared her shoulders.

“They’re plagues,” Pickler of the High Ride tribe said. “Both of them. The Matrons just want a hidden kingdom in the mountains with Foramen as a trade city and no imperial leash. The shit they’ll get up to in the Eyries, Catherine, would make a devil shiver.”

“The way I hear it, it’s already no handful of roses,” I said.

“You don’t get let in on the real secrets unless you’re a Matron,” Pickler said, “but I… know things. The Tribes hold back on projects out of fear the Empire will notice and intervene. Wipe them out, even. Even now there’s a lot of Matrons who think munitions should never have been revealed. And the Council is made up of monsters, but my mother’s worse.”

“She likes knives and backs,” I conceded.

“She’s a Matron,” Pickler shrugged, as if that settled it. “But she thinks differently, Catherine. She wants to be the queen of our kind or ensure one of her daughters will be. It’s why she wants Foramen: it’s the lifeline of the Tribes. The ways my people are rich, ore and goods, they’re not worth anything if they can’t be sold to someone. So long as she has Foramen, she has them in the palm of her hand. And to get her way she wouldn’t mind starving half our people to death from behind the walls of her city.”

“I deal with terrible people all the time,” I admitted. “I even backed Helike to prominence in the Free Cities because it’d put down Malicia’s allies.”

“They are tyrants, Catherine,” Pickler said. “Leeches who drink the lifeblood of goblinkind to maintain their power and influence. And I know it is not like me to speak of them, of all they do, but I…”

She swallowed.

“I owe it,” she said. “To him. Because he was right, when you spoke to us in Marchford. When I balked at your banner rising against the Tower.”

Pickler met my eyes, the pale yellow unblinking.

“They kill us for sport.”

She bared her teeth.

“Robber spoke true when he said they’ve gotten soft,” Pickler said. “Look at them, darkening your doorsteps with deals they would have once sneered at. They’ve spent so many of us they can’t even get their own dirty work done anymore. They ate each other’s tails until there was nothing left but open maws and anger.”

“I can’t topple them, Pickler,” I said. “Not without a war I can’t afford to fight.”

“You don’t need to,” my Sapper-General said. “They did it to themselves. Do you think my people are happy they’re being used like this? The Matrons, my mother, they only own us so long as there’s nowhere else to go. And that’s something you can change.”

I blinked at her in surprise.

“You allowed the Snake Eater tribe into Callow,” Pickler said. “Let more in. Let us build without Matrons to hollow us out, without Preservers to open our throats the moment we reveal of ourselves. And they will come, I promise you that. Already the Legions and the Army are a home to flee to, but if you open Callow? Entire tribes will leave their tyrant behind.”

“If I grant lands to tribes, I’ll have a rebellion on my hand,” I frankly told her.

“Don’t,” Pickler fervently said. “Don’t let us forge another closed kingdom within the kingdom. Let us into your cities, your countryside, your wilderness. Let us be part of something that does not want to eat us.”

I flinched away from the intensity of her gaze.

“They’ll hate you for it, the Matrons,” she said. “For showing them they don’t own what it means to be a goblin, that just buried every other way and called it guidance. And I know it’s not what you want, not what Vivienne wants, that you have to think in kingdoms and favours and hard coin.”

She finished her drink, set it down.

“But we’ve stood behind you, Catherine,” Pickler said. “Not them, us. From the start, we’ve been with you. Sappers and soldiers and scouts, we’ve bled for you. And I won’t say it’s owed, because my people don’t believe in debt, but I need you to understand that I loved Robber – more than I thought, more than I knew – but there are fifty thousand like him the Eyries that never managed to flee. That are stuck and lost and will never see the light of day, know what the sun and the stars look like or even feel the wind on their face. Not unless you offer your hand to them.”

She left her chair, stood before me.

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” she said. “Nothing to bargain with. All I can say is please-”

I pushed back my chair, half-risen even as my leg ached, but I was not quick enough to stop her getting on her knees.

“- help us,” Pickler said. “Save us from ourselves, from each other.”

“I-” I choked out, at a loss for words.

“I think you might just be the only powerful person in the world who cares, Catherine,” she quietly said. “And I know you’re a queen, that you can’t afford to bend, but still I ask.”

She smiled, heartbreakingly.

“Please,” Pickler asked. “If not you, then who?”

I closed my eyes, almost short of breath. The stars were there, out in the black, but they felt… distant. Fading.

I had goblin troubles.