“I didn’t leave Wolof meaning to become Warlord,” Hakram said.

The pig on the spit between us crackled as the woodsmoke rose, sometimes veiling parts of his face. Light moved across his skin and steel in spots, the branches above swaying to let the sun pass at the whims of a lazy breeze. This felt, I thought, like a conversation best had at night. In a dimmer place, where the dark would smooth sharp edges and the stars would give only the kindest of lights. Not on a sunny afternoon, where I could read every slight expression. Where I risked learning things I would not be able to unlearn. But that was not what the roll of the dice had given me, and I knew I could not put this off even if part of me craved to.

In the back of my mind the coin was still spinning, and tonight Hanno of Arwad was making his move. It was sunlight or nothing, and nothing may cost more than just me.

“I didn’t think you did,” I replied. “I’m just not sure if that makes it better or worse.”

That he’d planned it and not told me, that would have gouged deep. But in a way that all our years together would be tossed away on, what, a fucking whim? My fingers clenched down on the spit until the knuckles turned white and I reminded myself that I wasn’t being fair. That I was just getting angry because it was easier that way. Anger was an old friend, and it was a lot more pleasant than feeling betrayed.

“I say it not to excuse but to make it clear that I was not deceiving you, before I left,” Hakram evenly said. “That it was not false.”

My hand twitched. I released the spit, stepping back and playing it off as if I were getting away from the smoke and heat.

“Just because you weren’t lying doesn’t mean it wasn’t false,” I harshly replied. “It just means you weren’t admitting things to yourself. And maybe that I wasn’t either.”

He watched me through the smoke, then his jaw tightened.

“Say it out loud,” Hakram gravelled. “It’s already stuck in your fangs, don’t choke on it.”

How like him to not even leave me my grievances to chew on.

“You wouldn’t have made this decision,” I said, “before the Arsenal.”

And there it was, the plain truth that I knew deep in my bones. I’d spent him too sorely that day, crossed a line, and it had changed things for good. Maybe he didn’t regret it, like he’d insisted since, but we’d both had a good look at what it actually meant for us to be as we had been. That there were costs, that it might get him killed. We’d seen in practice how someone giving unconditionally, trusting without reservation, would end. At least when the other half of it was me. He’d die, one piece at a time, until I’d spent every last limb of him.

“You didn’t listen then,” Hakram harshly said, “and you’re not listening now. It’s about what put me in the chair. It’s about how you treated me when I was in it.”

“Like I didn’t fucking want you to die?” I incredulously replied.

I’d have bitten back on that answer, before, been careful. Given ground because I was afraid to lose him. But he was good as lost anyway now, wasn’t he? He couldn’t just turn around and become the Adjutant again, call the whole Warlord thing a lark. So this time I didn’t bite my tongue.

“You lost an arm and a leg,” I said, “and you wanted me to just send you back into the melee like nothing happened. Like it was just… cosmetic.”

I spat in the fire.

“But it really did happen, Hakram,” I bit out. “And if I let you keep on pretending it hadn’t you were going to lose your head instead of a limb.”

“You lost trust in me,” he growled. “An aspect was withering like a sick plant because I put my soul in your hands and then you dropped it. Can you imagine what it felt like, to bind so much of yourself to someone else and then feel them turn away?”

The orc scoffed.

“You can’t,” Hakram said, flashing fangs. “Because you don’t do that, Catherine. When you’re afraid it’s going to end, you look away first so it ends on your terms. Like you did with Kilian.”

My stomach clenched. It had just enough truth to it to sting. The kind of barb only someone who knew me would know to throw.

“I’m not without fault,” I said. “Hells, I’m mostly faults. But you know what I did, Hakram?”

I gestured around us, at us.

“I fought for this,” I said. “You were unhappy and I tried to understand why. To fix it. So I don’t want to hear a sermon from the man whose idea of mending the gap was putting me to secret tests in the middle of the most brutal campaign of either our lives.”

I’d not forgotten those evenings in Hainaut when I’d agonized over the bad plan to deal with the Clans he’d pushed for me to read. How many hours I’d wrestled over it, trying to find a saving grace, only to learn that it’d been a test the whole time. That he was finding out whether I’d take bad advice from him out of guilt. And I understood why he’d done that, I did.

It hadn’t made it any less hard to be on the other side of.

“You didn’t fight,” I harshly said. “You stood back to see if I would. And maybe you needed to see that I really would, that it did more to help than anything I said.”

I leaned forward, eye hard.

“But it also means I’m not going to take shit from you about turning away first, Hakram,” I said. “I still had both eyes back then, and you wouldn’t meet either.”

I was panting, my muscles clenched tight. Smoke wafted up, the crackling fat of the roasting pig. The thick green skin of his face was taut around his lips, like he was fighting the urge to growl and shout.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” Hakram finally said.

“Maybe we ought anyway,” I grunted.

Dark eyes mulled that over, with that usual careful thoroughness.

“Maybe we ought,” he acknowledged.

I hid my surprise, but he knew me well enough he caught it anyway.

“Even when we reconciled,” Hakram said, “it was half-done. The wound was bandaged but neither of us would speak of the sword.”

I rolled my shoulder, easing the muscle that had begun to cramp.

“And what sword is that?” I asked.

I knew better than to think he meant the Severance, though it was the blade that’d cut him.

“You and me,” he said. “The Woe. We let rot set in.”

I almost flinched back. There were precious few havens left in my life, places where I could feel safe and at rest, but the Woe were one. That I might get that stripped away from me now felt like too ruinous of a cost for this sunny little afternoon.

“It’s in your teeth,” I said, echoing him from earlier. “Get it out before you choke.”

His jaw clenched.

“I remember a night in Laure,” Hakram said, “when Vivienne almost died. Where it took a knife through my wrist to wake her up from the terrified decisions she was about to make.”

I’d never got the full story of what had happened in Laure from either of them. Hakram had called it an investment in the future, she’d called it a debt. What I knew was that when I’d returned from the Everdark they had been friends instead of foes and Hakram had lost a second hand.

“Part of it was my fault,” the orc said. “Mistakes I made. But the source of it is that you don’t take advice, Catherine”

I glared.

“Hell of a thing to say, coming from someone whose advice I took for years,” I bit out.

“You take it on lesser matters,” Hakram said. “Details. But when the crossroads come, it’s always a decision you make alone. By the time we’re all at the table talking, the choice is already made in your head. It’s dress-up.”

I tried to answer but he rode over my voice without hesitation.

“It was like that when we turned against the Tower after the Doom,” he said. “When we headed for Keter. When you decided to go to the Everdark. When you decided to make peace with the Grand Alliance.”

A pause.

“I’m sure it was the same when you decided to have Masego cut up the Intercessor to steal her power,” Hakram said. “Another decision that affected millions. Maybe you heard some people out, Catherine, let them move around a few pieces on the mosaic, but you make these calls alone. There is no question of you being swayed.”

My fingers tightened.

“Are we getting to a point?” I said.

“You made Vivienne your conscience,” Hakram said, “then like your actual conscience you browbeat and ignored her. I put some of the fear in the woman I saw that night in Laure, but not the most. What did you think was going to happen when you gave her a role only to immediately make it worthless?”

“I did not think that,” I hissed. “Because apparently I’m not perfect, Hakram, who fucking knew – except goddamn everybody!”

The more I spoke, the more furious I became.

“You drag up things that happened years ago and parade them up like they were acts of deliberate cruelty,” I said. “Like I don’t make mistakes. Of course I made fucking mistakes, and of all people you ought to know: you were standing to my right while I made most of them.”

I smiled thinly.

“Where was this cutting insight then?” I asked. “I don’t recall ever hearing it.”

I let out a scoff, stepping away from a curl of smoke.

“And maybe I don’t get swayed easy,” I said. “I’m hard-headed, that’s on me. But I don’t recall ever forbidding anyone to try. Did I ever close the door on any of those decisions, forbid someone to argue against them?”

His face was calm, but I knew him. I could see the anger in the cast of it, in the careful way he moved – as if he were afraid that going too quickly would see him lose control of his temper.

“I don’t stick a course when someone shows me I’m wrong,” I challenged. “If I didn’t get convinced, it’s not because I’m some sort of fucking legendary mule: I simply didn’t get convinced.”

“Because we can’t,” Hakram said.

I glared at him, gesturing for him to get on with it.

“We cannot disagree with you, not past a certain line,” he said. “That is the unspoken law of the Woe. Crossing that line gets you cut off, left behind.”

“You’re the one who told me I should act like was in charge of the band, on our way to Keter,” I said. “And now you’re complaining that I did?”

He hesitated.

“Gods, to hear you talk I was poison in the blood,” I said. “Still am. And I’ll not deny there were times I stumbled, but Burning Hells – who is it that could live up to your idol of the Perfect Catherine?”

My stomach clenched.

“Not me,” I thickly said. “And you should have known better. I’ve never pretended to be more than what I am.”

And if that’d never been enough, then burn him.

“You did things right too,” Hakram gravelled. “That’s not…”

He looked angry.

“You pull people in,” he said. “And you take care of them, as much as you can, and they don’t want to leave. But you pull them into your wake, not at your side.”

“You had a place there,” I coldly replied. “You’re the one who walked away.”

So you could go play saviour, I bit down on adding.

“But I wasn’t at your side,” Hakram frustratedly said. “That’s what you refuse to see. I was under you.”

I glared.

“Just because-”

“Listen,” he growled. “Maybe you don’t want to admit you think that way, but you do. You can love us, but you could never be in love with any of us. The way you are with Akua Sahelian. Because, unlike her, we are not your equals.”

I rocked back, like he’d slapped me.

“This mad plan you built up around her laid it out plain,” Hakram said as he slowly rose to his feet. “Even when she was a powerless prisoner, you treated her as more of a peer than us.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed. “For even thinking that-”

“You would have killed her for any of us,” he said. “But that’s not the same thing. And I’m not going to be Scribe, Catherine, not even for you. I still remember what a single aspect withering was like. What the Carrion Lord did to her, after decades together…”

I’m not him, I wanted to scream. I would never have set you aside. He shook his head.

“No,” the Warlord said. “I learned her lesson. My own inheritance from a Calamity.”

And that more, than the rest, had rage burn in my blood.

“You goddamn coward,” I spat. “I scraped my hands raw trying to find ways we could stay together, ways to live with the changes, but what was any of it worth? I’m the one who can’t be fucking swayed, Hakram? Me?”

Smoke billowed, as if conjured by my rising tone.

“Who is it that ran away across half the Empire before making his choice?” I said. “Who is it that sat on all of this until he left instead of just telling me?”

I could have fought this, fixed it. If I’d known. But instead he’d held his peace and here we were: beyond taking any of it back. Too late.

“And what should I have done?” Hakram challenged. “Asked you to change who you are?”

“YES,” I shouted.

He stepped back at the vehemence of my voice.

“I would have done that, for you,” I cursed. “I gave you the right to ask.”

For the first time since we’d begun to talk, I saw him genuinely taken aback.

“It doesn’t have to…” he hesitantly tried. “I cannot be the Adjutant, but-”

The anger went out of me at the sight. Dead in a moment, like a fire stripped of air. It was beginning to sink in, at last, that this was finished. That the page had turned.

“You were supposed to be the one who stayed,” I tiredly said. “The one I’d journey on with. It’s dead, Hakram.”

And now they were all going to leave. Indrani to her horizons, Masego to his research, Vivienne to her kingdom and Hakram to his people. I would end this journey as I had begun it, that night my father had found me in the alley. Standing alone.

Silence hung. I was not the one to break it.

“They need me,” the Warlord quietly said.

“I needed you too,” I replied, knowing it was unfair. “And maybe it’s the right choice you made. The principled one, whatever that’s worth.”

I breathed out.

“But it was still a choice,” I said. “And those have prices.”

“Aye,” he quietly said, “they do.”

His fangs clicked together.

“It doesn’t have to be the end of us,” Hakram said.

I felt my pulse quicken. That was it, I thought. The pus had been lanced, the ugliness dragged into the light of day so it might burn and turn to smoke. And still he offered a hand. Not quite in forgiveness, but at least in understanding. In willingness to keep on sharing a road. It would be the easiest thing in the world, I thought, to just take that offered hand and let it drag me into the current. I could see it in my mind’s eye, clear as day: we would sit and talk and eat and laugh. It would be not quite like old times, but it would have the sweetness of them. An old friendship changing shape. And I craved it down to the marrow of my bone, because I could barely remember who I’d even been before Hakram had come into my life. I just recalled a lot of fear and anger, fingers tight on the grip of my sword as I watched the world from behind a blade. I’d become who I was with him at my side.

The thought of losing that for good made me nauseous.

But he’d not been wrong, to talk of rot. Of things left unsaid and how they had come back to haunt us. And worst of all was that, if I held my tongue now, I would make him right when he’d said I did not think of them as equals. As people capable of handling he bitter sting of truth. How many times, I thought, can you build a tower on the same quicksand before it is called madness? Once had been too much already, I thought. There were only so many times I was willing to bleed myself dry. That left only one path forward, I knew that, and yet my mouth would not move. My arms were trembling. I bit the inside of my cheek until it burned. I’d called him a coward, was I going to be the one living up to the word?

I slowly straightened my back and met his gaze head on.

“In Ater,” I plainly said, “I made the choice to murder you.”

His face closed. He’d known that already, I thought, but it was another thing to hear it voiced out loud.

“I had a choice between your life, my father’s life, and what I thought would win us the war,” I said. “And you’d avoided me, cornered me until there was no middle way. Either I took up the knife or the Intercessor won.”

I smiled thinly.

“So I took up the knife,” I said.

I clenched my fingers, then unclenched them.

“I only ended up killing one of you that night,” I said. “But I made the choice anyway.”

His dark eyes were unblinking.

“I’m not saying this to be cruel,” I told him. “I’m saying this because you need to know that I still see that choice every time I look at your face.”

I almost turned away there but stubbornness saw me through.

“And I don’t regret it,” I quietly said. “I didn’t work as we thought it would, but it did work. And it might yet win us this war. So I don’t regret it, and I’d make the same choice again.”

I breathed out, slowly.

“And that’s how we got here, isn’t it?” I said. “Me making the choices. So I guess it’s your turn now.”

I looked away at last.

“I told you all I have to say,” I said. “Now it’s in your hands.”

I searched his face but saw no answers. I might as well have been looking at stone.

“You know where I am,” I said.

I limped out of the woods, leaving him behind with the roasting pig, and he did not stop me.

My mind felt restless for the rest of the afternoon, twisting this way and that. It was obvious enough Vivienne commented on it after we held council, though she was graceful enough not to ask how my conversation with Hakram had gone. I told her anyway.

“It’s in his hands now,” I said. “I don’t get to decide how it ends.”

She slowly nodded, visibly hesitating. She was curious but didn’t want to push too far. I almost flinched at the sight. We are not your equals, Hakram had said. Had he been right? I led the Woe, it’d been like that from the start, but I was not their queen. I’d always thought of it as a company, not a kingdom. And while they did things for me when I asked, they were not beholden. Only it hadn’t been anything as clear cut as my wearing a crown that he’d been talking about, had it?

“Vivienne,” I said, “did you ever…”

Blue-grey eyes watched me patiently as I trailed off and an uncomfortable silence took hold. I wasn’t sure why I’d started to speak. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to ask.

“Are we friends?” I artlessly asked.

She frowned.

“Gods,” she said. “It really did a number on you, didn’t it?”

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

Vivienne sighed.

“Of course we’re friends,” she said. “You’re one of the most important people in my life, Cat. In some ways the most. You can’t use you and Hakram as a measuring stick for everyone else.”

I leaned back into my seat.

“And why’s that?” I asked.

She looked at me for a long time.

“He’s first person you ever really trusted, isn’t he?” Vivienne quietly asked.

My fingers clenched. I did not answer.

“Maybe the only person you ever trusted, at least that deeply,” she said. “It always cuts deeper when it’s closer to home, Catherine.”

“He said things,” I admitted, “that I’m not sure are wrong.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Vivienne said. “The one blind spot he’s had as long as I’ve known him is his relationship with you.”

Maybe you’re right, I thought, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I shook myself. The coin was still spinning. There were greater concerns to speak of.

“I don’t like that we’re not sure what the First Prince is planning,” I said, changing the subject.

Vivienne tactfully went along with it.

“I think she knows she loses if she does nothing so she’s rolling the dice,” the Princess said. “It explains why the Jacks have seen her reach out to princes. She’ll be going to the hero council in force, with her backing there to impress.”

I wasn’t sure how much having the princes behind her would impress heroes, but having the armies those few represented supporting her might sway some. Enough to beat Hanno on his own stage?

“I don’t think that’s enough for her to win,” I said. “Or even tie. And that begs the question that we’ve avoided voicing out loud so far.”

Vivienne grimaced.

“What does the First Prince do if she sees she’s lost?” she asked.

I had a great deal of respect for Cordelia Hasenbach, but I was not blind to her occasional bouts of ruthlessness. On the contrary, they were part of why I respected her. The problem was what that ruthlessness might lead her to do, if she thought Hanno was about to become Warden of the West and doom us all. I liked to think that the Lycaonese princess would be careful of avoiding doing anything that might destroy our chances at taking Keter, but she was desperate. Cornered. That was not when people made their finest decisions, claimants especially. I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“I can’t just show up and tell them to play nice,” I said. “I almost want to, Viv, but it’d be too direct an intervention. I’d get a rap on the knuckles from Above for sure and my lot isn’t in any position to ensure that love tap doesn’t disintegrate my entire arm.”

“It might be out of our hands, Catherine,” Vivienne said. “I know you don’t like the thought, and to be honest I don’t either, but-”

“-it might be a situation where acting has worse consequences than not acting,” I completed. “Yeah, the thought’s occurred.”

We talked a while longer after that, but there were only so many words to say. My problem was that the two of them had moved quicker than I thought but I couldn’t actually do anything about it. And I’d yet to reconcile with Hanno, which as Indrani had pointed out might turn to be a problem if he became Warden of the West tonight. And I’m not sure I liked the idea of going after Keter with unfulfilled oaths. Seemed like the kind of mistake Neshamah would use to bury me. We sent out spies and feelers and tried to get a grasp on what was happening as I struggled to find a way out of the mess, but I couldn’t find one. The well of ideas was dry and my mind was… slow, today.

By the time the sun began to dip the tension in my shoulders had metamorphosed into a knot of dread in my stomach. I’d not felt this powerless in a while and it was never a feeling I’d enjoyed. Which was, naturally, when Akua chose that moment to reappear. I’d not seen her in two days. She came and went as she wished, and I had no call on her hours. She might be one of my advisors once more, but I knew better than to try to ask too much of her. It might just give her the reason to leave I suspected she was still looking for.

The balcony where I’d been wracking my brain overlooked a small statuary garden where servants had already lit lanterns, though I’d come out her more for the fresh air than the view. Akua drifted in through the room behind me with the same gliding grace she’d had as a shade, bringing with her two glasses of wine. She pressed one into my hand and came to lean against the stone railing, sipping at her own. No jewelry, I saw. Not that she needed any: even in the simple red and gold gown she wore, Akua Sahelian had the presence of a queen.

“It promises to be a beautiful night,” she said.

I sipped at the wine. Red and full-mouthed, a little too bitter for me. From Cantal, maybe? There were so many damned wines in Procer that I could spend a lifetime learning and still miss a few.

“I can’t afford to savour it,” I said. “There’s trouble in the distance.”

“I heard,” Akua languidly replied. “The Sword and the Princess rushing their conclusion, is it?”

I nodded.

“And I’m sure the Bard has her fingers in it too,” I grunted. “Not put there recently, I don’t think she can do much except mute Below’s stories right now, but this has her scent all over it.”

“The spoiled liquor stench is rather distinctive,” Akua noted.

I snorted, but the amusement passed quickly.

“I’m no sure what I can do,” I admitted.

“It is their choice to hurry the confrontation,” Akua said. “A mistake I would expect of Hasenbach, but less so of the Sword of Judgement. He should know that power left to ripen is all the fuller for it.”

“They both think the other will fuck it up,” I sighed. “So they’re pushing hard. And I’m starting to think this one is just a loss.”

Golden eyes turned to me, curious.

“I think I might be able to nudge it one way or another,” I said. “I have just the right leverage for it. So what’s left is picking whoever I think is the better candidate.”

“Yet you consider that a defeat,” Akua said.

“Because the Bard gets what she wants,” I replied. “We lose something. The Warden of the West is weaker, maybe it screws us against Keter down the line. Why the Intercessor would want that I can only guess, but I hate giving it to her anyway.”

“I have come to believe,” Akua murmured, “that the Intercessor’s designs are best grasped by who she chooses to move.”

I flicked her an interested glance.

“You were only moved against when you became a threat,” the golden-eyed sorceress said. “So you can safely be considered to be inconsequential to her actual plan. As far as I can see, her actions cluster around three souls: Kairos Theodosian, Hanno of Arwad and Cordelia Hasenbach.”

One dead, two now claimants and at odds.

“So you think this conflict is larger,” I said.

“I am not yet sure,” Akua gracefully shrugged. “But ultimately it is irrelevant.”

“There’s a bold take,” I drily said. “How’s that?”

“Because,” Akua calmly said, “this is beneath you.”

I raised my glass.

“Evidently not,” I said, “else I wouldn’t be here.”

“This… fatalism,” she said. “The pretence that you are bound to let your enemy’s scheme succeed. It is beneath you.”

“I can’t intervene, Akua,” I bit out. “If I could-”

“So find another way,” Akua said. “Has that not been your favourite trick since the very beginning?”

She waved amusedly.

“Cornered is when you are most dangerous, dearest,” she said. “When they have you surrounded by dead ends. The pit has always been, Catherine, where you shine.”

I looked away.

“Well’s run dry,” I said, oddly ashamed. “I have nothing.”

“I don’t believe that’s true.”

Irritated, I turned to glare but was caught by a soft smile instead.

“You have been burned,” Akua said. “And now you hesitate. Discard this.”

She circled the rim of her glass with a finger.

“Let the fear fall away and you will find an answer,” Akua said. “You always do.”

I breathed out shallowly.

“Why are you helping?”

I’d been the one, I realized, to ask the question. Golden eyes studied me.

“Do you know,” Akua asked me, “the difference between a knot and a noose?”

“There isn’t,” I said. “A noose is a knot.”

“Only,” she smilingly said, “if there is a corpse.”

I blinked in confusion. I was missing something here, a kernel that would allow me to understand.

“I will choose what it is I do,” Akua said. “Not you. Not her. Not my mother’s shade. Me.”

She leaned in closer, and warm lips were pressed against the side of my neck. I shivered.

“Now go, Catherine,” she said. “Go out there and win.”

She left and took the warmth she had brought with her. I stayed out there on the balcony, alone with my silence. Thinking for the Gods only knew how long.

Huh.

Maybe I did have an idea, after all.

Three hours later the sky opened as the wind howled around me. High Lady Abreha had been accommodating when I’d decided to use one of the assets brought from Ater early, not even asking why. As the clouds parted and light danced across the sky, I sat on the throne atop the great tower as it began crashing towards the ground north of the capital. The air screamed around us and the night crackled with thunder, sorcery lashing out around us in great flares. It wasn’t quite a flying fortress, those would come with the second wave, but the sight of this cutting across the night sky certainly ought to catch people’s attention.

And when had heroes ever been able to resist poking at a beehive?