Catherine sacrificed people more easily than she once had, and it did not eat away at her so much afterwards. But that’d been before the Everdark, before the war on Keter and the dark choices it had demanded of them all. There had been a time where her friend would have executed someone guilty of something like the Battle of the Spiders without a second thought. Would Catherine have intervened, if she knew? Vivienne was not sure, and the thought worried at her. Young enough he’d not thought to ask the right question. The dark-haired squire looked guiltily relieved and Vivienne was again reminded of how young he was. Did the Black Queen know her teacher was going do to this? Did she allow him to consign thousands of innocents to death for some mad plan? The Princess met his eyes squarely. Ravaged by devils and demons and monsters of all stripes. Vivienne kept her eyes from glancing at the broken districts they had left behind her. “Did she know, Your Grace?” the Squire asked. That expressive face flickered through hesitation, then the steel of determination. Vivienne preferred knowing where she stood with him: the heroes that were most controlled, like the Pilgrim and the White Knight, tended to be dangerous and unpredictable. The young man had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed. “The Carrion Lord is a monster,” the Squire cursed. The pattern of three between him and the Black Knight was a tool that would be very precisely used so the day could be brought to the right ending.
Catherine had been adamant that he come with her even though Vivienne would have much preferred Indrani as an escort, but the Princess understood why. They had come invited, but most her soldiers were Callowan: no one here put much stock in the Tower’s word.Īrthur Foundling grimaced at her answer, soft-hearted boy that he still was. Wind picked up suddenly in the distance, making strands of some sort of iridescent cloth spin under the sunlight, and half her men reached for their swords. Not that many would dare make demands of the force the Princess was leading into Ater: only twenty knights of the Order of the Stolen Crown rode with her, but a cohort of legionaries from the once-Thirteenth marched behind them. They would make good time, she thought, as their party had yet to even be hailed as it passed through the ash-strewn streets of the city. It was not yet dusk, but on the horizon the sun was dipping low.
“Assuming there are any left, after the spiders,” Vivienne drily said. Someonewas going to pay for the Battle of the Spiders, but the part worrying Vivienne Dartwick was that she wasn’t sure who. Like all leashed monsters, it would shake its way loose eventually. The stalemate in eastern Ater behind the horde of orcs that’d seized the city and the noble armies that’d entered it illegally kept the people behind closed doors, afraid of another battle erupting, but it wouldn’t last. There had been no riots since the end of the battle, no mob had taken to the streets as the Legions moved to clear out the last of the giant spiders and seal the openings, but the anger and fear hung in the air like poison. The Empress in the City, they called her. Reports had come overnight from the Princess’ agents that it was Malicia that was being blamed for the spiders themselves, seen as some kind of desperate attempt to destroy the capital’s current favourite: Lady Akua Sahelian. Not when everyone had a cousin or a daughter or a husband who’d seen the household troops of the great nobles retreat to their barricades in good order and leave the rest of the city to burn. The High Seats had massacred thousands to contain the spiders, and while there were many who’d argued much worse would have happened if they hadn’t the opinion was not popular. But underneath that fear, Vivienne thought, there was anger. Ater was huddling in its houses, averting its eyes even as the last ashes of the Battle of the Spiders began to cool. Here there was no joy, the Princess thought. In Liesse the people had been happy in a bittersweet way, for though the rebellion named after their city had died within its walls the people had been spared a dark fate at the hands of a horde of devils. Vivienne had last seen a city so injured in the wake of First Liesse, as she ghosted through the fallen city avoiding the Fifteenth’s goblin hunters, but the tone of the streets was different here. Sitting on the edge of a rooftop, looking down at the long stairs of stone, the Wandering Bard began to tune her lute. – Queen Eleanor Fairfax, founder of the Fairfax dynasty If it breaks your back, there is only one soul to blame.” “Fate is a stone made up of your every deed and hung around your neck.
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