A Practical Guide to Evil

“Thirty-seven: theft in the service of Above is not a sin. It is, however, still a crime. Be discreet.”

– “Two Hundred Heroic Axioms”, author unknown

“Shall we begin with the least contentious of the subjects to be broached?”

Her Most Serene Highness Cordelia Hasenbach, First Prince of Procer, Warden of the West and Protector of the Realms of Man, struck me as looking rather cautious right now. Wary of angering me? Might be, depending on what she considered to be the least contentious of the things we needed to talk about. It was always relative, when it came to stuff like this – the least murderous of three High Lords still usually had an unfortunate amount of murder under their belt. I took a long sip from my cup, letting the pleasant taste of my favourite wine linger against my palate.

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“There are, from the reports I have received about the incident at the Arsenal, two Damned who will need to face punishment,” the First Prince said. “Namely, the Concocter and the Hunted Magician.”

I smothered a grimace at the pun, which I would generously assume to have been unintentional.

“All other villains who were involved are dead,” I agreed.

So that was why she’d been cautious, huh. Dealing with villains was my legal responsibility, in the end. The Hunted Magician would stand trial before a tribunal, since he’d actively helped along an invasion of the Arsenal and the Arsenal was an interest of all the signatory states of the Grand Alliance, but the tribunal itself couldn’t actually sentence him to anything. Only I could, as his representative under the Terms. In theory, at least. In practice, if I outright ignored the recommendations given out by a tribunal that’d count the White Knight and representatives for both Procer and Levant, I’d be asking for a diplomatic shitstorm.

Hanno would be in the same situation when it came to the Red Axe. I’d have a seat on her tribunal as well, as both the representative for both Callow and Below’s lot, but I wouldn’t have the right to pass a sentence on her any more than the First Prince or whoever the Dominion ended up sending. There were good reasons for that. In my case, for example, if I had the authority to sentence heroes it’d lead to the rebellion of more than a few before the day was out. Hanno of Arwad was trusted as an adjudicator, and only him. Though while he had the same right to outright ignore anything the rest of the tribunal would say, when it came down to it he’d also have the same considerations as me to deal with.

Hasenbach was treading carefully here because, after pushing for the Red Axe to be tried by Procer and not under the Terms, she did not want me to mistake her asking about my current leanings on punishing my charges as an attempt on her part to keep usurping authority over the Terms.

“May I be blunt?” I asked.

Something like an amused flicker passed through those blue eyes.

“Have you not been?” the First Prince of Procer asked.

Well now, I thought, lips twitching. Get another few drinks into that one and she might actually be fun.

“I don’t think you’re trying to get your hands on the Terms,” I frankly said. “Only an idiot would try to make that many Named into a personal army, and even back when negotiating with you regularly drove me to screaming I did not believe you to be one. You don’t need to tread lightly for fear of offending me there. If I consider you to be overstepping I will say as much, but I am not looking to be offended.”

Blue eyes considered me, weighing the extent of my honesty in speaking, then she nodded.

“A lengthy trial for the Hunted Magician would be damaging,” Cordelia said. “And your intentions when it comes to the Concocter remain unclear. I would establish as soon as possible what you intend, so that the affair can be solved swiftly when it comes to deliberation.”

“You won’t be alone in that tribunal,” I pointed out. “And, now that I think of it, will it be you personally or a representative?”

“I might have nominated Princess Rozala if we could afford to pull her from the front, but as circumstances stand I will personally represent the Principate,” she said. “And while I will freely profess to be unable to account for the White Knight, Lord Yannu Marave’s interests are well known to me.”

Ah, so Juniper’s old foe from the Champion’s Blood was the one the Dominion has sent. Considering the Cleves front was supposed to be holding steady at the moment I supposed he was the natural pick. My own two Levantines might represent a significant bloc in the Dominion now that they were betrothed, but they were both still a little young for this sort of game. The Lord of Alava had a weightier reputation than either and probably better understood how to preserve the interests of Levant.

“What does Levant want out of this?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“To ensure punishment is dealt,” the First Prince said, “and to avoid, at all costs, even the shadow of a precedent that might force them to ennoble one of their Damned.”

Yeah, that sounded about right. Aside from the Grey Pilgrim, whose concerns tended to extend far from the borders of the Dominion, in my experience the Blood tended to hardly care about what went on beyond their borders. So long as their anger wasn’t actively courted, they were unlikely to take a stand.

“Neither should be an issue,” I said. “When it comes to the Hunted Magician, considering his cooperation with the Wandering Bard it’s a given that he loses the right to object to assignments for the remainder of the duration of the Terms.”

“Yet, given the nature of his talents, he would still be best employed at the Arsenal,” Cordelia skeptically noted.

Meaning it was an empty punishment, as far as she was concerned, since he wouldn’t be going anywhere or be losing anything.

“That’d be the basic consequence of dealing with an enemy, not the punishment,” I replied. “For that, I’m currently leaning towards a fine. Within the next three days we should have estimates of what the damages to the Arsenal will cost to repair. A fine of that amount will be given.”

I paused.

“Once for each signatory nation of the Grand Alliance,” I said. “In addition, he will personally have to repay the pensions any of our nations give to the families of soldiers who died during the attack.”

The First Prince’s brow rose, ever so slightly.

“That would be a considerable sum,” she said.

More than any man could repay in a lifetime, though admittedly the occasional villain got more than that. With a debt like that over his head the Magician was a lot more likely to leg it to the Free Cities after the war than stick around and repay it. I’d considered that, of course. The trick was in how it’d be paid back.

“It would be up to the nations to decide in what nature they might prefer that repayment,” I said. “The Kingdom of Callow, however, will accept it in artefact-crafting and enchanting work.”

Meaning Vivienne would have a fortune’s worth of labour from one of the finest mages on the continent to call on when her reign began, already paid for. The Rhenian princess considered me for a moment, remaining silent as her well-honed mind parsed out all the implications.

“While heavily in debt, to a sum total comparable to a prince’s treasury if not greater, the Magician will also have direct ties to the rulers of three great nations,” Cordelia quietly said. “In the world of the Accords, that would be the sort of protection one of the Damned might well kill for.”

It really was. So long as three crowns had a fortune’s worth of highly valuable and difficult labour left to extract out of the Hunted Magicians’ hide, none of them were likely to let the man get his head cut off by an overzealous hero or bar their door to him. I was still making the man a beggar for at least a decade, forcing him to largely live on the charity of the patrons he’d work for, so it wasn’t like I was letting him off easy. But it was the sort of punishment that would win me points with the cleverer among my kind and avoid alienating the Magician entirely.

“The Concocter deserves less punishment,” I said, “and I don’t intend to convene a tribunal over it. She’ll lose the right to refuse assignments, like the Magician, but aside from that I only intend to have her personally brew tailored potions for every lastingly wounded soldier in the Arsenal or the family of any deceased. The ingredients will, of course, come out of her pocket.”

A princely gift, in the sense that few aside from princes would otherwise be able to afford the Concocter brewing for them personally. I owed the woman a favour for having kept Hakram alive, so I intended to offer to quietly float her a loan from my own funds to pay for the ingredients. If it just so happened that I forgot to ask for interest or a fixed timeline for repayment, well, so be it. Hakram was worth a lot more to me than the coin, and it would have still been a bargain for a hundred times the price.

“A harsh price, given the paucity of her involvement,” Cordelia said, “but that will win you esteem from Lord Yannu. You foresee no complications there?”

“None,” I said.

“I had expected that I would have to push for harsher sentences,” the First Prince admitted. “In that I did you disservice, for you have struck an admirable balance between stern and sufferable.”

I snorted.

“I have weaknesses as a queen, glaring ones,” I said, “but I’ve been a warlord and leader of Named since I was seventeen. When it comes to that, you can expect a steady hand of me.”

It wasn’t the same, handing out a sentence as a queen and as the leader of a band. No ruler in the world had absolute authority, true enough, but it was an even more tenuous thing Named. Too loose a hand and they would run wild, too firm and they would leave. I’d believed my father to have been as a lord over the Calamities, when I’d been younger, and half-believed it a fault when I later grasped he was anything but. Being a representative under Terms had forced me to understand, though, how delicate a balancing act his leadership of that band had really been. I’d done this for many more Named than Black had ever led, but I’d also done it for scarcely two years and with literal Death knocking at the door up north. He, on the other hand, had kept the Calamities largely sane and safe for several decades even with few outside threats to keep them together.

“Talent is distributed blind to titles and breeding,” Cordelia said.

I’d take that for the backhanded compliment that it was. I doubted Hasenbach and I would ever see eye to eye on a lot of things – it’d be hard to, when she would always put Procer first and I Callow – but that’d not prevented a degree of respect from emerging as our working relationship grew less venomous. I would not soon forget how many of my soldiers had died in a war I’d not wanted to fight, or the burning anger of having peace refused again and again, but I had less unpleasant things to add to the tally now. She’d turned out too damn useful over the last two years for the old anger to be the only thing I associated with her now.

“Flattery,” I said. “Which tells me we’ve gotten to more contentious territory. Which poison will be your pick, Your Highness: the fool with the god-killing sword or the threefold nightmare of jurisdiction?”

The blonde Lycaonese sipped at her mead, the largest I’d yet seen her take. She’d be laughed out of a Callowan tavern as lightweight, I suspected, but then she didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to step into a tavern in the first place.

“I have concerns about the Mirror Knight, as Prince Frederic made known to you,” Cordelia said. “I understand that you have some of your own.”

Much as I would have enjoyed venting about Christophe de Pavanie, I wasn’t having a drink with Indrani. Petulance would get me nowhere, so it’d be best to keep this concise.

“The extent of my concerns will depend on his actions over the coming few days,” I said. “He has made demands wildly beyond his authority – a full pardon for the Red Axe – and that he’s made demands at all is alarming, but so far that’s only been words. So long as it doesn’t go further than that, I’m willing to let a lot of it be water under the bridge.”

The Mirror Knight had turned what would have been certain death for Hakram into something less immediately mortal, though if the Concocter hadn’t been on her way Adjutant would have died regardless. I owed him significantly less than I did the Concocter, but I owed him still. So I’d swallow my anger and let bygones be bygones, so long as he behaved. Hasenbach’s eyes went sharp.

“You do not believe he will necessarily defer to the White Knight,” the First Prince stated.

It was not a question and neither of us pretended otherwise.

“I’ve difficulty putting my finger on how messy that might get,” I admitted. “But if they disagree, the Mirror Knight will not simply capitulate.”

“A coup, even a soft one, would be unacceptable to the Principate,” Cordelia coolly said. “The Terms as signed do not have provisions for the White Knight to be replaced, save should he die.”

“The legalities won’t kill this,” I said. “Not with heroes, Hasenbach. Villains you can cow or bribe, but that won’t work with Above’s lot. They’ll hold to doing the right thing even when it’s an anchor around their neck – or everybody else’s, for that matter.”

She did not reply for a long moment and I bit my tongue. It’d come out just a little too caustic to have sounded entirely objective, which I regretted already. Anger would win me no points with this one, even if she decided it was justified anger.

“Would you be opposed to my intervening in the matter as First Prince?” she asked. “While this cannot be termed as an entirely Proceran issue, given those involved, it can not be denied that my subjects are at the heart of it.”

“If you can disarm him with words I’ll applaud,” I said. “But this could turn on you right quick. If you’re seen as interceding on my behalf that’ll taint you by association, and in a way that might not be reparable.”

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Mirror Knight would be her problem a lot longer than mine, assuming we all survived the war. He was a powerful Proceran hero with ties to a royal house, there’d be no disappearing into countryside obscurity for him.

“I will take your warning under consideration,” the First Prince mildly said.

Meaning that I was trying to teach a knight how to ride, but very politely implied. Fair enough.

“The Severance remains the most salient issue concerning him,” she continued.

My eyes narrowed.

“And what is Procer’s stance on that?” I asked.

“Given that it was forged with materials that the Kingdom of Callow provided on Arsenal grounds and as part of an Arsenal undertaking, the artefact is to be considered a war asset of the Grand Alliance,” the First Prince replied, the answer smooth and easy.

Practiced as well, no doubt. While Callow arguably had the best claim to the sword since I’d provided the initial material of it – though it shouldn’t be forgot it was an aspect ripped out of a woman at least in theory a Proceran subject – my interest in securing it for the kingdom after the war was lukewarm at best. The First Prince’s stance here was nuanced enough I wouldn’t outright be renouncing the claim I hardly cared about, just weakening it, but it came with the upside of having the Severance designated as a war asset of the Grand Alliance. That meant we could strip it and assign it wherever we wanted, so long as the three signatory nations weren’t stuck in an impasse.

“I’m amenable to those terms,” I said.

She was just a tad too slow in suppressing her surprise. The eyes gave it away. Hadn’t expected me to give my inch quite so swiftly, huh? If there’d been a Named back home that was a good fit for the sword I might have fought harder, but there simply wasn’t one.

“Then we are in agreement,” Cordelia faintly smiled. “I expect that Lord Yannu will be of a like mind, as it happens.”

I snorted. Yeah, I’d heard that Mirror Knight wasn’t all that popular with the Levantines. They were a touchy lot, especially when it came to their history with the Principate, and Christophe de Pavanie had been cursed with the twin disadvantages of being Proceran and prone to giving offence.

“The little I heard of the White Knight was in partial agreement to this,” I noted. “Though he mentioned that he considers the Mirror Knight the best fit for the sword when it is assigned.”

“It would be doing a disservice to the other Chosen to refrain from even considering their candidature,” the blue-eyed princess diplomatically replied.

Meaning she really wasn’t eager to leave it with good ol’ Christophe. Music to my ears. I supposed from her perspective it’d be handing both a powerful weapon and a powerful symbol to hero already tied to a rival power within her borders, something that was bound to come back to bite her down the line. Mind you, the damned thing was a sword meant to be used so it couldn’t all be about the politics.

“Come the time to assault Keter, if he’s truly the best pick then I’ll swallow my tongue and do what needs to be done,” I admitted. “Until then I’d prefer him nowhere near that blade.”

“Establishing the precedent that the Grand Alliance can strip and assign the sword is more important than the hands holding it at the moment,” the First Prince said. “Though I will not deny that removing it as a symbol will be helpful considering he appears to be, as you have said, trying to arrange a pardon for the Red Axe.”

And so we finally got to the thorniest of the knots.

“I imagine your stance on that won’t have changed since it was conveyed to me,” I said.

Meaning that she wanted the Red Axe tried under Proceran law for the attempted regicide of Frederic Goethal, regardless of any other claim there might be on the heroine’s life.

“In essence it has not,” Cordelia calmly said. “I am sure that, as a ruler yourself, you can understand the difficulty in being unable to hold a trial over the attempted assassination of one of my princes. An attempt that took place before more than half a hundred witnesses, no less.”

“Her slaying of the Wicked Enchanter was done in front of more than twice that,” I pointed out.

Which wasn’t the issue, I knew even as I quibbled on the detail. Her issue was that the First Prince of Procer was finding herself unable to punish or even imprison someone who’d tried to kill a sitting member of the Highest Assembly, which must admittedly be infuriating.

“I do not deny that her breach of Terms also deserves punishment,” she said. “Simply that her actions against the Principate take precedence.”

“We can’t try a corpse,” I frankly said. “Which is what her actions would fetch, though I’m not sure what manner of execution follows attempted regicide in Brus.”

“Boiled alive in oil,” the First Prince replied without batting an eye.

Grisly, but hardly any worse than the drawing and quartering it would earn in Callow – and even that bloody practice was well shy of the ancient atrocity known as red hangings I preferred not to think too much about.

“Charming,” I drily said. “Might hinder the process of questioning some, if you ask me, though on the upside at least it’ll be a quick trial.”

“If I were to concede that a trial could be held under the Terms before the sentence to the Principate’s own was applied, would that remedy your objection?” the blonde princess asked.

That was already a better look for the whole affair, but it was also strictly that: a look. In substance, we’d still be establishing the jurisdiction of Proceran law over the Named serving under the Terms.

“What kind of a trial would you be holding, exactly?” I asked, frowning. “I’m familiar with Salienta’s Graces, but I recall there’s some sort of exception for matters of treason that explains why your people have two kinds of magistrates.”

“Treason, heresy and royal dues fall under the authority of the crowns and not the rights of the people of Procer,” Hasenbach clarified. “Given the unfeasibility of princes personally seeing to such judgements over their entire holdings, royal magistrates might be appointed to do so in their stead. In this particular case, however, Prince Frederic would be entitled by royal prerogative to render judgement himself.”

Which would actually play out decently with villains, I thought. It’d be a heroic mess cleaned up by a heroic blade. I’d have to posture a bit and agitate in the Wicked Enchanter’s name, but the Kingfisher Prince beheading the Red Axe would settle this halfway agreeably for everyone. Which made it all the more galling that he wasn’t going to be doing that. That lovely thing he did with his hips wasn’t anywhere near enough to excuse the headaches he was causing me.

“Yet he won’t,” I grunted, not hiding my displeasure. “So where does it go from there?”

“A formal trial by the Highest Assembly,” Cordelia said. “Which I will admit would have… uses in settling other troubles.”

It took me a moment to put the pieces together, as I was not used to putting myself in the shoes of the First Prince. Ah, she could use this whole affair to turn the screws on Prince Gaspard Langevin. The man would be fraying his ties to the Mirror Knight if he voted to have the Red Axe killed, since the hero wanted her pardoned, but it’d still be better than the alternative. Should he vote for acquittal after all, or even a lesser punishment, he’d be fraying ties to every single prince and princess of Procer. No one, after all, was denying that the Red Axe had tried to kill Frederic. Considering how popular the Prince of Brus was in the north, actually, even if simply ended up abstaining he’d be damaging his reputation a great deal in the region.

I could admire the cleverness of it, and I was pleased Hasenbach was taking the Langevin problem seriously, but the nature of my own objections to this mess had not changed either.

“I understand why you want your trial, I really do,” I admitted. “In your place, I’d be pushing for the same thing.”

“Yet you are not in my place,” the blue-eyed woman said, smiling thinly.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m speaking as the representative for Below’s champions. And Procer simply isn’t trusted enough for them to be comfortable with it having the authority to hang them.”

Hasenbach actually tended to be held in high esteem by the more intellectual of my lot, as a ruler whose knack for legal manoeuvring and diplomacy had led to remarkable achievements involving relatively little warfare, but not even the most admiring would want the Highest Assembly to have so much as a speck of authority over them. Even the other side of the fence, Hanno’s crowd, was unlikely to have a much better opinion of such a measure. Heroes tended to see laws and crowns as obstructive, when they weren’t the ones behind them, and Procer’s rulers still had spectacularly bad reputation abroad for the most part.

“That reluctance is not unearned,” Cordelia said, “yet it, too, must have limits. Minor crimes such as theft and assault I will not balk at leaving to the Terms, in the same way that an army in the field is subject to military justice and not that of a prince. Yet I cannot allow attempted regicide on Proceran soil without having it face Proceran justice. It would undermine the peace of the entire realm, establishing for all to see that Chosen and Damned live under different laws than the rest.”

And that would go over significantly worse in the Principate than it would back home, where centuries of Good Kings and Wizards of the West had associated Names with authority, or even Praes – where being in a realm of your own, untouchable by your lessers, was half the draw of being Named in the first place. In Procer the people had an expectation that the law would apply to even rulers, if perhaps not quite as comprehensively, so the Red Axe slipping the net would be sure to cause resentment. It was still better than the alternative, in my opinion.

“They do live under different laws, until the war is over,” I bluntly said. “They’re called the Terms. They are unfair, set apart their members from everyone else and even offer amnesty to monsters, but they are also what has allowed us to muster more than seventy Named to the defence of Procer. There’s a price to bringing in that kind of help, especially given the lack of trust between most parties involved. Going back on the nature of the Terms now will cause desertions. ‘You will be under the protection of the Terms’ does not have quite the same ring to it when ‘unless it becomes politically inconvenient’ gets added.”

Heroes would at least take infringement there better than villains, who’d see this as Procer preparing the grounds for purges following the fall of Keter, but I suspected that tolerance would not survive for long. The Dominion heroes who’d not immediately balk at being subject to Proceran law – something the founders of Levant had actively warred against! – would sour on it the moment it put them in a situation where they had to willingly take punishment by a prince. The contingent from the Free Cities wouldn’t be quite as incensed, but they were likely to band together for protection and it would all go to the Hells if the rulers of Procer started courting native heroes to bring into their personal orbit.

“I am no stranger to the tyranny of convenience, Catherine Foundling,” Cordelia Hasenbach quietly said, “but that blade has ever cut both ways. You fear desertions? I fear riots. You fear the collapse of the fronts? I fear the collapse of everything behind them.”

“Armies won’t be enough to breach the walls of Keter, Cordelia Hasenbach,” I quietly replied. “You’ll need Named, bands of five that can triumph against impossible odds and the finest killers on Calernia to bring an end to the Dead King himself. Don’t throw away your chance of winning the war from fear of having already lost it.”

I matched her gaze, unflinching. She was not wrong, I thought, not really. But then neither was I. And behind the tension of the present I glimpsed something deeper. The legacy that this golden-haired daughter of the north wanted to leave behind, a nation of laws and trade and peace that would at last thrive without attempting to devour all it beheld. Its edges would scrape against those of my own craved-for legacy, if we were not careful. I wanted order forced onto the old war, the first war, the war that had begun the moment Creation did: Above and Below, the spinning coin of the divine wager. It was rules for those unearthly champions of black and white I wanted to set down, rules that went beyond borders and thrones, but my finest intentions would have to share the world with those same thrones they sought to surpass.

I did not hate what it was that Cordelia Hasenbach wanted to build, but I would not strip bare my own dream to gild hers.

“It has been some time,” the First Prince eventually said, “since I have last been quite so thoroughly refused.”

She’d not expected me to fold, tonight, but neither had she expected that I’d not be moved even an inch. I was not surprised, considering the boon she’d offered me if I saw things her way: accepting the Liesse Accords as they now stood, without further contest. It was something I would have paid dearly for, and might still. Yet in the end I was no more willing to weaken the foundation of the Accords before they were even signed than she had been willing to let the Choir of Judgement cast down a sentence on the very floor of the Highest Assembly.

“It gives me no pleasure to rebuff you,” I honestly said. “But there are some days, some choices, where the only thing to be had is your pick of the shade of bleakness ahead.”

The First Prince of Procer drank deep of her cup, her calm face like a too-small mask that exhaustion was peeking around the edges of. She saw, I thought as she turned her gaze to me, something to match that on my own face. The sum of too many half-nights, too many hard choices, too many victories that felt like defeats and defeats that felt like wounds. Sometimes it felt like I was sharp only because the world had whittled away everything but the sharpness. Rueful, she half-raised her cup towards me and I returned the gesture. We drank, for what else was there to do? The glasses were lowered all too soon.

“Is it easier,” Cordelia softly asked, “when you are not born to it?”

Born to the crown, to the sword, to power. I looked down into my cup at the pale wine still remaining. I thought of the friends I’d buried, of the decisions that still sometimes haunted me in the dark of night. There were more of either than I wanted there to be.

“No,” I faintly replied. “Not unless you are an even harder woman than I thought.”

The silence lingered for long moment between us, not entirely comfortable but neither unpleasant. I looked up at the painted ceiling, letting out a long breath.

“But if not us, then who?” I asked, a smile quirking my lips.

I lowered my head to find her studying me quite closely, face grown serious.

“You might yet be my enemy, I think,” the First Prince said.

It was true, so I did not deny it. In the end there was peace and then there was peace. It was not yet decided which of these we would have when the dust settled from Keter’s fall.

“And still I find it easier to trust you than many I would call allies,” Cordelia continued. “What a strange thing that is.”

I almost laughed, for I knew exactly what she meant. Even if the day came where we were allies without doom having marched north to cement the pact, I’d consider her just as much of an opponent. A rival, perhaps, in the strangest of ways. The sky was not so large that there would be enough room for the full span of both our ambitions, and neither of us was above jostling.

“I imagine that on some nights,” I half-smiled, “when we were girls, without ever knowing it we looked up at the same stars from different lands.”

She inclined her head by the smallest of measures, and we left it at that.

Yet there was a whisper in my ear as the silence fell, pleased yet indistinct. Like a curl of smoke. And for the barest of moments I felt a warm breath against the back of my neck. A trick of the light had deepened the darkness in the corners of the hall and I fancied, just for that fleeting moment, that I glimpsed the silhouette of a great beast cast there from the shadows.

Ah, I thought, smiling a secret smile. Are you back, old friend?

My Name did not answer.

Not yet.