A Practical Guide to Evil

Indrani was carving away at the table when I found her, sprawled under it.

“I may have to call the guards,” I mused out loud, taking off my riding gloves, “there appears to be some kind of table goblin in my tent.”

I got a scoff in answer and she popped out her head long enough to roll her eyes at me.

“Please,” Archer replied. “I’m at least the height of two table goblins.”

She retreated under the table, steel rasping against wood as she shaved away at a detail, and when she spoke up again I could hear the goddamn grin in her voice.

“Unlike some,” she airily added.

“That’s treason, it is,” I gravely replied.

“This is why we call you Sanguinia behind your back, you know,” Indrani informed me.

“She was a visionary ahead of her time,” I defended.

Dread Empress Sanguinia II had outlawed being taller than her in the final – relatively more – despotic years of reign, which was a sensible enough decree. She’d also outlawed cats for some reason, which I honestly I could take or leave. I unclasped my sheath, set it on the table and leaned against it to dip under and at least have a look at her face. What I got instead was pulled by the collar followed by warm lips against mine, with a hungry little nip at the end that had me lingering for more. Must have stayed there a while, because I was still enjoying myself when someone cleared their throat behind me. I dipped back out, a little out of breath, and found Vivienne eyeing me impatiently.

“Vivs,” Indrani drawled, still under the table, “I know you want in on this real bad, but wait for your turn.”

The Princess’s blue-grey eyes considered me, then moved to Indrani’s half-visible body.

“I could do better,” Vivienne shrugged.

“Who’s she talking about?” ‘Drani asked from under the table.

“Both,” she replied in my stead, not hesitating for a moment.

“Hey,” I protested. “I got stabbed in Serolen and it still kind of stung less than that.”

“You should probably stop making plans that have a step where you get stabbed, you know,” Indrani advised me. “I’m no expert, but it does seem like a flaw in your plan-making process.”

“You can’t ask her that, Indrani,” Vivienne chided. “You know it’s what she always uses when she’s missing a step. Like, don’t know how to convince that princess?”

“Get stabbed,” Archer chortled, the filthy traitor. “Don’t know how to beat that hero?”

“Get stabbed,” Vivienne completed, meeting my eye with a look of smug satisfaction.

I glared back. We both knew Indrani was going to worry that joke like a fucking bone for at least a year now, which Vivienne had inflicted on me purely as her long price for forcing her to see what she’d walked in on.

“Why did I even miss you people?” I asked.

My eye narrowed.

“And it’s my goddamn tent you know,” I told Vivienne. “Don’t think I won’t find Arthur some nice noble boy and crown his ass instead, Dartwick.”

“I have no idea what you might be referring to,” the Princess smilingly lied. “I only came to inform you that we’ve talks to wrap up with Prince Otto at Evening Bell.”

I blinked in surprise.

“About…” I leadingly said.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“I didn’t think you’d get it done this quickly, given the circumstances,” I admitted. “Well done.”

“Do not overpraise me,” she demurred, lips quirking anyway. “Reitzenberg proved a remarkably straightforward man to deal with even before Prince Frederic joined his name to the venture.”

The Kingfisher Prince was in as well? No, of course he was. That’d always been the most admirable thing about Frederic Goethal: he always tried to do what he thought was right, whether or not it was convenient for everyone else. I’d cursed him for that at the Arsenal, when he’d refused to give Cordelia and I our easy way out of the situation with the Red Axe, but it wouldn’t do to forget that most of time it was a boon that the Prince of Brus went out of his way to be a good man.

“I’ll be there,” I said, then paused. “And get Pickler to come as well, would you?”

I was fixed with a steady look.

“As is she fond of telling me,” Vivienne said, “she is busy enough for five of her, which sadly Masego has not yet figured out how to make because as usual sorcery is useless.”

“Make her come anyway,” I said, and it was not a suggestion this time.

She nodded. Good. I’d meant it, when in Serolen I’d told Cordelia I intended to repay every drop of my debt to the people that’d raised me up. And Pickler had been in that room, the first time I strayed from Black and Malicia’s plan to make something of my own. The first time I committed treason to their cause for fidelity to my own. She’d argued, she’d been afraid, but in the end she had sworn.

And I had not forgotten.

“I’ve got correspondence that could use your attention, if you have the time,” Vivienne said.

Barely two hours into camp and already I had a dozen duties pulling me in different directions. Serolen, for all the dangers there, had been strikingly less demanding in that regard. A reminder that I was not a figurehead or a symbol here, that I had made myself an integral part of the Grand Alliance and its policies.

“Can’t,” I replied. “Hanno suggested I have a look at something the Blessed Artificer has been cooking up.”

I’d had a look at it back in Salia and been impressed by the power of what she’d created, but when the Sword of Judgment called something ‘significantly dangerous’ we were dealing with another league. Adanna of Smyrna had been eager to tell me that Masego wasn’t the only one who improved his craft through conflict, and though I couldn’t think of an enemy she’d have fought in my absence that would kick her up a notch she had been in charge of guarding the Crown of Autumn.

“I’m not certain where she is,” Vivienne said, heading off my question before I asked it. “I’ll put the phalanges on finding out.”

I nodded in thanks, rolling my shoulder.

“Might go have a talk with the Mirror Knight first, then,” I said. “They can reach me there.”

That had been Hanno’s other suggestion, as it happened. Christophe de Pavanie had been chosen to be the Severance’s bearer, and though I didn’t believe for a moment that the sword we’d made out of Saint’s aspect would be enough to do in the Dead King there was no denying he’d play a key role in how we’d pull down Keter’s roof on his head. To have a look at him as the Warden, feel out the stories he was bound to, was only sensible.

“Won’t need to,” Indrani said, dragging herself out from under the table.

She set down her knife on the carved wood, but now that I had my first good look at her since returning my eye was looking beyond flesh. I went still, sharpening my focus. There’d been the faintest trace of the story before I left, but it had since set in stone. My Name pulsed in my veins as I followed the thread, trying to make out the timing but finding it too elusive to narrow down beyond ‘soon’. Still, there was no denying it: she’d be getting a visit. And following that chord I could get a glimpse at the knot to come, the makings of the fight, and that gave me a look at the people who’d be fighting. Some of which I’d not been sure would be involved. So you’ll come, after all, I thought with satisfaction.

Good. It meant I still had one card up my sleeve that not even Neshamah would see coming.

“Cat?” Indrani asked.

I shook my head.

“Looking at your Name,” I told her. “Nothing to worry about.”

She must already suspect, I thought, that though she was still the Archer she was now reaching for another Name entirely. Indrani shrugged.

“Sure,” she dismissed. “Like I was saying, I know where the Artificer is. She’s at the Bitter Blacksmith’s forge, out in the Proceran camp.”

“Huh,” I replied. “What for?”

“Making a sword with her,” Indrani said. “At least that’s the word around the camps.

I’d start there, then, I mused. Definitely not because I was putting off talking with the Mirror Knight as long as I could.

“Intriguing,” I mused. “I’ll have a look, then.”

“And don’t stay to drink after your talks for too long,” Archer instructed me.

I cocked an eyebrow.

“You’re putting Masego to work already, so you’ll be busy making it up to me,” Indrani informed me.

I knew that glimmer in her eyes well, and it usually heralded a good time. I cleared my throat.

“Seems only fair,” I conceded.

She leaned in to kiss me again, but I did notice that in the moment before that she shot a smug grin at Vivienne. Indrani, I could not help to notice before I got pleasantly distracted, still had a knack for coming out of a conversation the only winner and at everyone else’s expense.

Of the two Bitter Blacksmiths, I was understandably more familiar with the villain. I did know a few things, though, from reports and the short few conversations we’d had in person. Helmgard Bauerlein, elder of the estranged siblings, was not a mage. And unlike her brother she did not work enchantments into steel, or even Light for that matter. What she had was a supernatural knack for handling exotic materials, which was why of the two she’d been the one chosen to head to the Arsenal and work on the creation of the Severance. She’d also slept with the Hunted Magician while there, which while amusing gossip didn’t do much to tell me about the kind of woman she was.

Aside from one with poor taste in lovers.

Pulling at her threads as I approached her smithy, I got a much closer look at the stories that drove the heart of her. Her chords were all intertwined with her brother’s, dozens of knots ahead where they’d end up killing each other but a short length away, and it all went back to a pair of moments. A teacher – parent also, maybe, but it was hard to tell – had given them a lesson that’d marked them. Something along the lines of ‘the smith makes the blade’, which they had understood very differently. Something they’d done had then led to the death of their teacher, which they bitterly blame each other for.

It’d hardened their differences into philosophies I could make out pretty clearly. Helmut Bauerlein, the brother, now made ‘blades only he could make’. His Name allowed him to craft superbly nuanced enchantments, sorcery-wrought steel like the Lycaonese had not seen in generations. Helmgard, instead, had learned that a smith could ‘make a blade out of anything’. Her path was pure mundane skill, her Name simply allowing her to make blades out of anything in Creation.

It had me curious as to why the Bitter Blacksmith would want or need the Blessed Artificer’s help in making a sword, though the first answer I got when I finally found the smithy had no relation to either woman. Outside the small stone house whose chimney was letting out column of white smoke, a young man was sitting around with all the awkward restlessness so common in those of that age. Arthur Foundling, lately the Knight Errant, was trying to look casual leaning against the wall when he very clearly felt like pacing. I hummed, limping in his direction, and looked deeper.

There was a chord here, binding him to someone inside the smithy. Or something, maybe. Wasn’t good enough at reading the differences to tell yet.

The Knight Errant straightened up out of his slouch the moment he noticed me, blue eyes widening in surprise. He had what almost looked like a spasm when he couldn’t seem to decide whether he should salute or bow, settling into a gesture that tried to be both and fell short of either.

“Arthur,” I greeted him. “Or should that be Sir Arthur, these days?”

“I have not been knighted as one of the Broken Bells,” the dark-haired boys seriously replied.

I almost snorted. It was true I’d never taken back my order to Brandon Talbot that nobody was to knight him, but you might say someone had gone above my head for that. Ugh, pun not intended.

“And Hanno’s not a lord,” I said. “Yet people went as far as calling him a prince, not so long ago.”

For that matter, I seriously doubted Hanno of Arwad had actually ever been formally knighted by anyone. Well, anyone mortal anyway. I wasn’t sure I wanted to recognize the Choir of Judgment’s ability to make knights, which made it all the more fortunate I had someone in my corner arguing the matter. As far as I knew, Anaxares the Diplomat was still up there making a racket. Gods bless the madman, at least as many as cursed him.

“I am not Hanno of Arwad,” the Knight Errant firmly said. “And I’ll not deny my Name, but neither will I claim a title I do not hold.”

I found myself smiling. What a brat, I thought, not entirely without fondness. I’d have to see about getting him knighted properly, then: we’d look like right fools if he went around having Knight in his Name with no mundane title matching it.

“I’m sure something must be in the works,” I replied, remaining vague.

I shot a glance at the closed door of the smithy, the faint sound of metal being hammered coming from the inside.

“I take it it’s your sword getting forged in there?” I asked.

He looked faintly embarrassed.

“I was gifted star metal by a friend for my transition from Squire and asked the Blacksmith to make a blade of it,” Arthur admitted. “It proved to be more difficult an undertaking than I’d expected.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Must be,” I said, “if the Blessed Artificer was pulled in for it.”

He nodded, seeming unsurprised I knew of that.

“They-”

He was interested by a shiver in the air and a flash of Light searing at the threshold under the door. Gods, I would have felt that even without my Name senses. The smoke billowing out the chimney turned even paler, as if ivory had been made into wisps and released towards the sky. And now I knew why Adanna of Smyrna was here.

“She’s heating the furnace with Light,” I stated.

“The Blade of Mercy volunteered for the work,” Arthur said, “but the Blacksmith says the quantity must be perfectly even throughout and only the Artificer’s artefacts can easily accomplish that for long enough.”

I let out a low whistle.

“That’s not the kind of star metal you can buy in markets,” I said. “I’ve seen blades made of the stuff before and they don’t need anywhere near that much work to be made.”

They were popular with nobles for their beauty and lightness relative to average steel, but there was nothing particularly special about them otherwise – just that the ore had fallen from the sky. Some old legends insisted they were a bane to devils and demons, but then there were old legends about like a hundred different materials doing that. In my experiences with their kind, the stabbing tended to be more than important than what you stabbed them with.

“It isn’t,” the Knight Errant confessed. “The Page says it was taken from the stars that fell over Hainaut, sold to him by a fantassin that near burned his hand off taking the stone.”

I went still.

“That,” I slowly said, “is one Hell of a gift.”

A piece of Tariq’s last act, the pilgrim’s star called down on the Enemy. My eye returned to the pale smoke drifting up. No wonder it had taken Light to be forged. When the Grey Pilgrim had cast it down, it had burned so bright in the sky it’d been blinding.

“It is,” Arthur quietly replied. “Gaetan is… perplexing.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“He’s an intolerable arse most of the time,” the Knight Errant elaborated at my unspoken prompting, “but sometimes he just has these surges of gallantry. He’ll take the lash for someone else or toss away riches like they’re nothing. It’d hard to square together.”

“The first time I met Archer, she sucker-punched me when I could barely walk and after she strutted about like she’d won a prize,” I drily told him. “There’s hardly anyone I trust more now, though.”

“I wish he was more like Lady Archer,” Arthur muttered, which was honestly one of the harshest things I’d heard said about someone in quite a while.

“The good doesn’t wash out the bad,” I told him. “No more than the bad washes out the good. It’s on you to decide what part matters most.”

He sighed.

“Jury’s still out,” the dark-haired boy decided. “But it really was a princely gift.”

“No lack of princes, on this side of the Whitecaps,” I easily replied.

That got a smile out of him, as digs at Procer tended to with my countrymen, but the amusement was soon gone and replaced by something more complex. Wariness, guilt? Something else, too.

“You’re sitting on something,” I noted.

He hesitated, though when I cocked an eyebrow he gave in.

“I thought you’d be angry,” the Errant Knight said.

“About?”

He squared his shoulders, and his courage along with it.

“In the Tower, I fought against your plot,” Arthur said. “The one to kill the Empress.”

There was an implicit accusation I didn’t even bother to deny. I had very much been after Malicia’s head that day. And though she was only Alaya these days, I’d not forgotten or forgiven the Night of Knives and all that came afterwards.

One day the time my father had bought her would run out, and I would come to collect.

“You weren’t brought in on the plan,” I said. “You disobeyed no orders by fighting it.”

“I would have anyway,” the hero said, sounding more like a boy confession than a defiant champion of Above.

I studied him, leaning on my staff of yew.

“I would have anyway,” Arthur repeated, “and so part of me feels like I should apologize.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“Did you think on the consequences, before you acted?”

He sharply nodded.

“Do you regret the decision you made?”

“I don’t,” the Knight Errant replied, and this time there was an ember of defiance.

“Then don’t apologize,” I said. “It’s a waste of words.”

I could no longer hear hammering from inside, even when I pricked my ear, only the hiss of vapour. Quenching the blade, were they? Nearly done. My eye found the boy’s.

“The first lesson my father ever taught me,” I said, “was a question.”

My fingers clenched around the haft of dead wood, thinking of the knife I still had strapped against my arm.

“Do you know,” I asked, “what sets apart people who have a Role from people who don’t?”

Arthur shook his head.

“Will,” I echoed. “The belief, deep down, that you know what’s right and that you’ll see it done.”

I met his eyes.

“Do you believe you’ve done the right thing, Arthur Foundling?”

His jaw clenched.

“Yes,” the Knight Errant replied.

“Never apologize for that,” I told him. “When all’s said and done, it’s the only thing you get to keep.”

And I hardly needed to look, to see the chord binding us. Not a teacher and an apprentice, but not entirely like it either. You could learn from people without being seconded to them. I’d learned from Tariq, as both a foe and a friend. I could do worse as a role to play than the Grey Pilgrim, only with more of the grey and less of the pilgrim. The moment hung between us, fragile, and when the door to the smithy creaked open it ended. I glanced at Helmgard Bauerleins’ surprised face and smiled.

“Blacksmith,” I said.

“Lady Warden,” she replied, her Alamans heavily accented. “This is a surprise.”

She looked wary. Wondering if I’d come to paw at her work, perhaps.

“I came looking for the Blessed Artificer,” I said. “Found a little more than that.”

“And finding’s half of your queenship, allegedly,” Adanna of Smyrna cut in, peeking out the door.

The golden eyes behind those spectacles were as startling as ever, that shade so rarely seen outside the Wasteland. The two women were heavily garbed in leather, as was only sensible in a forge.

“We are done, Arthur,” the Bitter Blacksmith said, addressing him directly. “Come have a look.”

She paused, hesitated.

“You as well, Your Excellency, if you wish,” she added.

Not exactly enthusiastic, I noted, but she was staying polite. I was curious enough to enter anyway. There was a strange scent in the air when I entered after Arthur, almost like incense, but I paid it little mind. As the three heroes crowded around the anvil where the blade had been placed I hung back, leaning against the wall, though for all my discretion I availed myself plenty of looking. It was, I’d admit, one of the most exquisite swords I had ever seen. It wasn’t finished yet, neither the guard nor the pommel mounted, but the simple length was strikingly beautiful already.

I’d never seen the like of that metal before: it seemed as if it’d been made of pale smoke, the turns of it fuming down the edge. When you looked at it from the corner of your eye, it gave the illusion that the smoke was still billowing. I knew better than to touch it, cooled or not, and so stayed back as the Errant Knight ran his finger down the length.

“It’s gorgeous,” Arthur quietly said, sounding choked up. “Thank you.”

The Bitter Blacksmith gently smiled, a strange sight on such a rough face.

“You brought me the materials,” Helmgard Bauerlein said. “All I gave you is time and skill, and for a hero I’ll always offer those freely.”

Somehow I doubted her brother would be quite so generous with Below’s champions, I silently noted. Or even that he’d sell them much of anything, when instead he could spend the rest of his life making legacy swords for wealthy nobles and charging them through the nose for it.

“It’s good work,” the Blesser Artificer said, almost grudging.

She paused.

“No, it’s a masterwork,” she continued, shaking her head. “That is no simple blade, Arthur. It will seek out deeds, and before it begins that journey it deserves a name.”

The invitation was clear, but Arthur hesitated. I could understand why: it was a choice that’d likely have consequences rippling out beyond his lifetime. At the heart of that blade, of this moment, I could feel a nascent story. Adanna had told it true: it was blade that would seek deeds.

“A sword like that,” the Knight Errant said, “we call it a legacy blade, back home. The kind you pass down a family line.”

The dark-haired boy smiled, more in sorrow than joy.

“Only I’m an orphan, see,” Arthur Foundling told them. “Just one from a house of a thousand foundlings, all of them my brothers and sisters. And this blade is to be ours, our legacy of foundlings, then it’s not mine to name.”

Blue eyes turned to me.

“There’s already a head to our house,” the orphan quietly said.

My throat caught. The face of both heroines grew cold as they looked at me, but I didn’t care for them at all. It was the other Foundling I looked at, and his gaze was unwavering. His decision had been made and he would not take it back. I pushed off the wall, Mantle of Woe whispering on the floor behind me as my staff rapped against the wood. Feeling the air thicken with Creation’s attention, I leaned over the blade and dared to touch it. It was nearly burning to touch, already no friend of mine, but it awaited a name nonetheless.

I had been given the right, or perhaps the burden.

I looked at the metal like smoke and thought of that night far to the south, when an old man had given everything up as a prayer to a better tomorrow. I’d not loved Tariq Fleetfoot, but I had come to respect in him a way I respected very few people. And now this piece of the star he called down to save us all, the Pilgrim’s Star he had put out of the sky, had come to be forged into a blade. There could only be, I thought, one name for this.

“Peregrine,” I quietly said. “Its name is Peregrine.”

Creation sighed, as if letting out a breath it’d held in, and all the weight that had been pressing down on us faded. I withdrew my fingers before they could be burned, somehow knowing it was about to bite. I found the faces of the three of them hard to read, but it did not matter. I was done here, and Adanna felt as much.

“You asked for me, Warden?” she said.

“Hanno tells me I should have a look at your work,” I said.

She nodded, visibly pleased.

“I will show you to my workshop, then,” Adanna said.

I nodded my goodbye to the Blacksmith, who returned it, and only slowed on my way out when I passed by Arthur – who was still staring at the sword, fascinated.

“Tariq Fleetfoot spent his life trying to make a better world,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “If you’re going to wield a piece of his light, then do him proud.”

Withdrawing my hand, I stepped out of the warm smithy and left silence behind me.

The Blessed Artificer’s workshop was cramped and overfull, like she’d crammed two wagons’ worth of goods in a single stall. There were two dozen different lengths of wood I could hardly tell apart, stones ranging from pebbles to emeralds and enough tools to arm three generations of masons and carpenters. Maybe the only place in there that didn’t look like it was waiting on the excuse of a stiff wind to fall on me was the large carving table in the middle, which by the looks of the dirty plates and half-full glasses was also where Adanna ate most days.

She tried to put those away discreetly, and in an act of mercy I pretended not to notice.

What lay on that table, though, commanded my attention and refused to release it. It recognized the bare bones of the artefact, because I’d once seen in Salia: a wooden pillar half a foot wide and seven long, crisscrossed by rods of copper. The carvings on the surface had been sanded off, replaced instead by twisting sequences of glyphs that burned my eye to look at, and something… more had been added. Inside, maybe? I limped closer to the pillar, ignoring the discomfort of standing so near something that gave off Light like it was some kind of preachy handmade sun, and had a look at the bottom.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. There was a copper sheath, but it did not cover the sight of the bottom of a stone sculpture that’d been inserted inside the pillar. She must have hollowed it out, carefully enough she didn’t touch the copper rods all the while, and even more carefully inserted the sculpture. I tried to grasp the nature of that sculpture with my Name’s senses, but immediately stepped back with a hiss of pain.

“Fucking Hells,” I quietly said.

“It has been improved, as you can see,” the Blessed Artificer smugly said.

“Improved?” I disbelievingly replied. “That thing is a…”

I grimaced.

“Well, not quite a godhead but a passing imitation at least,” I said. “But no, that’s not what you were actually trying to make is it?”

I paused, golden eyes familiar and yet not fixed on me.

“You made an angel,” I said. “A one-heartbeat angel.”

It’d last only for that heartbeat and then be spent, but that was about the strength I could feel in that thing. Ad considering it was giving me a headache to feel it out I wasn’t even sure whether or I was going too low.

“Not an inapt way to put it,” Adanna mused. “Though I have been calling it the Ram.”

My eye narrowed.

“You want to knock down Keter’s gates with it.”

“That is my very intent,” she smiled, baring pale teeth.

“Can you make more?”

She looked away.

“It was a moment on inspiration,” the Artificer admitted. “I have not been able to enter the right mindset since.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. She could call that inspiration if she wanted, but I knew better. Above’s putting a finger on the scales. And part of me was relieved, for Gods – Above and Below – knew we could use the help, but it wasn’t that simple. Looking at the Ram I was not thinking of the breach in Keter’s walls it might become, but instead asking a bleaker question.

How bad was it going to get, for the Heavens to start helping before we’d even begun?