Book 3 Chapter 67: Middle Eight

"Change, my friend, is the admission that one falls short of perfection. A plebeian sort of doubt, best reserved for rulers who don't make their enemies eat their own hands."

- Dread Emperor Revenant

I'd picked my battlefield to stack the game as much in my favour as she had in hers when I'd engaged in the throne room. Much as it irritated me to admit it, there was no real chance my little fire snare would actually kill Diabolist: it was a death trap I hadn't seen through to the end. Even between villains, there was only one way that kind of play could end. That was fine, since the point hadn't been to put her down. Gods, I wish it could be that easy. What I'd accomplished was put the hurt on her before putting the torch to whatever nasty surprises she'd prepared just for me. It'd always been made abundantly clear to me that taking a swing at a well prepared mage was a Bad Idea, and I'd venture that warning counted twice as much if the mage in question was Named. Here, though? We were on my chosen grounds. And when the time came to make that choice, I'd picked somewhere I had spilled blood before: the Fields of Wend. I honestly couldn't think of a better place to kill Akua than a mile-wide stretch of shifting and uneven glaciers in the heart of what had once been Winter.

I'd come out on the edge of the glacier the fae called the Wending Heart, the tallest of them all and topped by a perfectly round platform, and moved away swiftly. Had I mouthed off at the Duke of Violent Squalls here once? It felt like I had. Admittedly when it came to assumptions about my diplomatic proceedings 'gave insult' tended to be the right bet. The only downside I could figure was that there might be fae interested in out little scrap who came calling, but even when it came to that I had the advantage. I was still a titled Duchess, and earlier Akua had been throwing around Summer flame. Exactly how it had all come together after the wedding between the King and Queen of Arcadia was still a mystery to me, but I assumed using what could only be violently stolen power wouldn't exactly please that crowd. And, unlike me, she had no oath from the royals to guarantee her safety. This was as much as I'd be able to tilt the balance my way before it came to a head, short of having the Woe at my back.

I left the fairy gate wide open. Getting Diabolist here was half the point of this in the first place, and besides I wasn't going to bet on my being better at manipulating that power than her if I tried to close it and she tried to keep it open. Call me sentimental, but if hubris had to get me killed I'd at least require a kind not quite so blatant. Akua strolled through indifferently, casting a look of mild curiosity around her.

"Ah, Catherine," she laughed throatily. "Your particular mixture of cleverness and ignorance never ceases to injure, does it?"

I studied her carefully. She was moving too slowly. Taking in her surroundings but not really assessing them the way she had earlier - she wasn't finding good space to stand or noting places to avoid. That meant her attention was elsewhere. I sharpened my senses, but all I could hear was the loud rumble of glaciers smashing into each other. If there were fae, I thought, I should be able to at least make out the edges of their presence. What was she looking for, then? Whatever it was, I suspected letting her have it would lead to no good. With a twist of will, I closed the gate.

"Claim," Diabolist said, tone casual, and ownership of it was ripped from me.

All that remained was a hole in the air too small to even crawl through, but she'd just thrown away an aspect on taking it. I swallowed a breath. It looked like I had a problem on my hands: Akua never did anything without at least three reasons. I let Winter flood my veins and found it still answered unhindered to my will. Then what - no, that was the wrong way to go about this. I was getting sucked into her tempo, and the moment that happened I was done for. It was nearly always better to disrupt than to respond. I charged forward. The sooner I got the both of us off this platform the better.

"The courtesy is late in the giving," Akua said, "but must be afforded nonetheless."

I got within three feet of her before the entire Heart spun, and that threw me off my stride long enough for a streak of darkness to strike at my chest and send me sliding back. The tendril of black remained around Diabolist, coiled like a loyal and eager snake. How the fuck had she done that? The spinning, not the pale imitation of my teacher's trick. This was a fae place of power, she should have no sway here.

"Thank you, Catherine Foundling, for the valuable lessons you taught me in Liesse," Diabolist said.

I wasted no breath on a reply, but my blood ran cold. This was an echo to words I'd spoke to her at the Blessed Isle, once, and to Barika Unonti right before I put a crossbow bolt into her eye. Not something to be lightly spoken. Akua was beginning a monologue, though, and that was my chance. I was warier in my approach the second time. I tested her defences with a flick of my blade and when the tendril of darkness struck out I bent under it and stepped behind her guard. My blade whistled as I carved through her throat but fuck, I'd lost the tempo and she was one step ahead of me - all I cut was a shade, an illusion, and Akua shivered back into sight at the opposite edge of the Heart. I pivoted without hesitation and returned on the offensive.

"On that night where you broke my bones," the dark-skinned woman said. "The two of us began a conversation about power that went unfinished. Shall we resume it?"

I breathed out and sought calm. Splashing around like a fool trying to catch a fish barehanded wasn't going to get my anywhere. Method was how I turned this around. First, finding out if what I saw was real. I touched Winter, the howling desolation made even thicker here in the very place where I had earned my mantle, and ice formed around Diabolist's feet. She did not even spare it a glance before it began melting, but it was confirmation. I moved then, quick as wink.

"There are weaknesses to my ways," the villain acknowledged. "Repeated conflict with you has made this clear. But you seem under the impression that means they are without worth. A dangerous assumption."

I expected the blow to come the moment I was within a foot of coming in striking range, and she did not disappoint. I only caught sight of the thin transparent wedges that cut silently through the air by sharpening my eyes, and though that allowed me to avoid them it also cost me. A ball of dazzling lights formed in front of my face and erupted instantly, searing a dozen colours into my vision. I struck blindly at where she'd been but my sword bounced off something solid and something else caught my ankle and tossed me away. Even as I fell on back in the ice and rolled, I grit my teeth. She was toying with me. She could have done some real damage right then, if she'd been so inclined.

"I've told you this before: a Name is not a mere tool," Akua said. "It has meaning. It is the choosing of a side, of a Role. To borrow its power while denying the Role is to willingly cripple yourself."

Even as I considered a different angle of attack, a part of me wondered if this might be the wrong way to go about it. She'd never had such an easy time handling me before, which smelled of a pattern or trick I didn't know. Talking so much should have seen me put a sword in her throat by now. Unless it's not the right moment, I frowned. Was Creation, even here, putting a finger on the scales until it had received proper theatrics? It wouldn't need to do much, I thought. Not even weaken me. Just make Diabolist a little luckier, nudge her instincts a little. Keep her dice rolling sixes and her hand full of trumps.

"Ah," Akua said. "You begin to understand. You are only half a villain. It is not your fault, my dear. You were taught incorrectly by a man who believes power derives from methodology, from philosophy."

Should I let her keep her talking? If I got stubborn about striking a blow when it was all set against me, I might make a hard mistake and take a wound that would prevent me from actually taking advantage of the opening. If there was an opening at all, which was already an assumption. If she got to finish her speech, though, I suspected I was fucked.

"Power," Diabolist said. "That is our philosophy. The only philosophy. The rest we craft in the wake of seizing, in a vain attempt to justify what was never just - for justice is as much an invention as the rest, a trinket built by the hands of men."

"It's an empty world you peddle," I told her. "That's why you get stabbed at the end, Akua. No one wants to live in it but you."

"Shall I tell you a secret, Catherine?" she smiled. "The true altar before which every man and woman in the Empire kneels is not dedicated to the Gods Below. It is the Tower, that nameless god that wears ever-changing faces anointed in the blood of the last. The Empress is dead, so the Empress rules."

"Backstabbing isn't a fucking virtue, Diabolist," I bit out. "It's why Praes fails all the time. Why even with all its power it lost to Callow again and again for over a millennium."

"Not a virtue, no," she said. "A liturgy, worship sincerer than any pact made in the dark through ancient prayers."

"See, there's no point in having a conversation with you," I said. "Because you're not being impartial about this, it's your religion. And your religion is godsdamned poison. Even when given a real functioning alternative, you'd rather throw a tangible victory away than consider you might have been wrong."

"Ah," Diabolist smiled. "But am I?"

"It always comes back to the same thing with you, doesn't it?" I grimly said. "Until the very moment someone put a knife in you, you'll pretend just the fact you're breathing means you're right. And it's not just you. Malicia was wrong. There should have been a fucking culling, after the civil war. You can't negotiate with people who see negotiation as a sin."

"You mistake me," Akua said. "I ask if you truly believe I am wrong? You stand before me bearing a mantle won through theft and murder, the old sacraments of our kind. Having assembled a host that would follow you against the Empress, having seduced into your service talents slighted by the old order. Protest all you like, the path you tread is old and well-worn."

"I'm not you," I hissed.

"No," Diabolist agreed. "You lack that purity of purpose, dulled by those who should have sharpened you. I will cure you of this, Catherine."

"I used to think there was the remains of a person in you," I said. "Something left of the child that was beaten into becoming this. But there isn't, is there? You can't even understand what affection is anymore."

I could not let myself be drawn too deeply into this. Slowly, quietly, I gathered power to myself. It would all ride on that single opening. If I managed to overpower her then, I could turn this into the kind of brawl she was utterly unfit to fight.

"Why so shy?" Akua laughed. "Use the word you truly meant. Love. And that is where they robbed you, Catherine. It is the leash they use to keep you in line. And so you stand before me a Squire instead of a Knight, expecting to win when you have no weight. What story carries you in this place? What Squire could possibly stand where you do?"

"I'm a little more than that," I said, and that was my one chance.

I struck. Every speck of power I'd managed to draw in, a deafening clap sounding as I filled the world with ice. Half the Heart was made a jagged thing of frost and I already I was moving. Merciless Gods, I thought as the ice shivered, she can't possibly- The strength of Winter sagged, the ice broke and along the lines I had struck thin ropes of sorcery came back to me. I struggled against them but they were like draining ditches, the power flooding through them and going nowhere. The bindings began to tighten and there was only one way out of this.

"Break," I said.

The ropes shattered, and in that very moment I felt Akua smile as she strode through shards of ice.

"Finally," she said. "Bind."

I'd felt something like this before, mere feet away from where I now stood, and the irony of it was cloying. Alone of all the things in the world, I was trapped in amber. Sweat slowly trickled down my cheek, leaving a salty trail behind, and even as the first drop fell with a soft sound on my armour I felt Winter go still. Not all of it. Around me the glaciers still creaked and broke in their ceaseless dance, but the mantle I had claimed from the Duke of Violent Squall sat like an obedient dog who did not even dare to breathe. No, more than that. Warlock had warned me, that I was not entirely human anymore. The fae title had been woven into my Name, its domain becoming an aspect, and so when Diabolist bound Winter she bound my Name as well. I felt my mind scrabbling against a wall of glass, reaching desperately for my last aspect - which even if unsuited would do something, anything - but there was no purchase. I no longer ruled my Name, my mantle or even my own body. I was appalled, then, at the arrogance I'd had in trying to kill this woman with the very instrument she could use to crush me. Akua slowly circled around me, her long dark hair made shining by melted frost.

"It would have been a fight," she said. "If you were not merely dwelling in the penumbra of villainy instead of embracing your better nature. A Black Knight anointed the last of Winter would have been... difficult to call to heel. I would have preferred it, nonetheless. They cheated the both of us our true iron."

Instead all she'd had to to was talk, and bait out my only aspect that might feasibly break her hold. For all that Diabolist had pretended to be absorbed in her words, she'd had me dancing to her tune since the moment she stepped into Arcadia. Akua's hand strayed to my face and she wiped away the sweat almost tenderly. It felt like a violation, however fleeting the touch, and one made even worse by the pretence of warmth.

"You will never like me," she told me. "But you will learn to love me, eventually. We will do great things, you and I. As we were always meant to."

She smiled, like a young girl sharing a secret with another in the dark.

"It is petty, but I am glad you have Deoraithe blood. Even if only in part," she confided. "They are a greater kind than the rest of Callowans. Nearly Praesi in their settling of grudges."

I was not a person in her eyes, I realized. Just cattle to be inspected for good teeth and lustrous coat. I'd ceased being someone to her, if I'd ever been, the moment she decided she had a use for me. Her hand withdrew from my face, instead adjusting my cloak around my neck.

"The throne room would have seen you lose as well," she mused. "But here? Oh, the mistake that was. Diabolist, dearest. Strange vistas such as these are not foreign to me. You took us to a place of usurpation and murder, and though you have learned of those ways you are yet young to that learning and came late to it besides."

Her lips quirked and she stepped away.

"You will already be thinking of ways to cross me," she said. "So let me disabuse you of that possibility."

I should have been, I thought. But I was stuck in a quagmire of my own horror, beginning to realize how badly I'd fucked up and how it might destroy everything. Even if Black somehow got me out of this, I knew what the price to that would be. There were no longer good outcomes to this. This fight was a disaster there would be no recovering from. Entire legions shattered on the eve of a great war, an entire city of Callowans lost and made to serve beyond death, and beyond all that someone was going to have to die over this. Me or Black, or - and the possibility was one that for all my previous confidence I could no longer deny - I might just lose. Completely, utterly, beyond denial. It only takes once to change everything, Diabolist had said earlier. I'd crawled from victory to victory these last few years, leaving burning wrecks behind me but still coming out ahead. There'd been nights where I wondered if some of those could be called victories at all, but now that I met the eyes of an actual defeat I knew the answer. I had my skin crawling, the crystal-clear understanding of exactly how fragile all I'd built was. How one bad day would be all it took to unmake it entirely.

"You will kill the Black Knight with your own hands, and in doing so become my second," Akua said, bringing me back to there and then. "Because there is no going back from that, you see. The Calamities will hunt you regardless of whether or not your own will guided the blow. The Empress, given the choice of keeping them or you, will choose them. And so your only salvation will lie in my service."

Would she? Would Malicia really? If it meant losing the Woe maybe not but then she might nor really be losing them. Hakram would stay by my side, but Masego had been raised with Black as an uncle and Archer's teacher was his lover. Where their loyalties would lie I couldn't be sure. Thief might bail before it ever came to that, she had a history of doing it. And if one side had both Hierophant and Warlock on it, and Scribe as well? The Empress couldn't afford not to choose it, not if she was facing a rebellion from Diabolist. Spies and powerful mages would be what she needed most of all in the days to come, if Black died.

"That was always your side's conceit," Diabolist fondly said. "Thinking that being clever and quick enough, you could have the power without paying the price."

The dark-skinned woman inclined her head and without my prompting my hand rose, tearing open a portal back into Liesse. Not, I grasped, blindly aiming. Going through Arcadia was like threading a needle. And in owning both the place where the needle had first passed and the place where it would come out, Diabolist had been able to control exactly where that fairy gate would lead.

"There's always a price, Catherine," Akua chided me.

She went through the portal, and I followed. Behind it Black awaited.