A Practical Guide to Evil

I kept my arms open wide and my hands flat, as if I were holding open a bag, but all that lay in between my fingers was shadow.

Akua stood slightly ahead of me, dropping one book after another into the dark. Without a sound they disappeared into the hungry maws of my patronesses, the two of us clearing out row after row as quickly as we could. We’d gone for the restricted sections, the forbidden ones: there was no point in my taking books that’d be in every other great Praesi library. Those sections were all trapped and warded, but I was being guided by someone who knew those traps and wards intimately. We’d been at it less than half an hour, as Archer hunted for anyone we might have missed out in the stacks, but already I’d sent hundreds and hundreds of tomes into the embrace of Sve Noc. Akua almost reverently dropped into the dark what looked like the handwritten notes of someone called Olowe, emptying the last of the shelf, and we stopped.

I looked back at rows and rows of empty shelves behind us, what had once been a section on dimensional mechanics and the technicalities of making a Breach. Not a book left, same as we’d done with necromancy, curses, High Arcana conjuration, three sections on diabolism and a dozen more branches of sorcery. It would have been missing the point to say we’d taken a fortune in books, because what we’d stolen was essentially priceless. There was no replacing any of this for the Sahelians.

“That is the last of the sections I would consider essential,” Akua noted. “Unless you want to acquire more common tomes, we are finished.”

“That was it?” I asked, skeptical.

“My family has a personal library, naturally,” she dismissed. “And the most dangerous volumes will be down in the hidden vaults. Yet for the library, I would consider nothing else here irreplaceable.”

I supposed it would have been greedy to ask for a thousand priceless books instead of just a few hundred, I mused, not that it was stopping me. I folded my arms, left over right, and brought them to my chest as I slowly eased my grip on the Night and the darkness faded. The working hadn’t been all that strenuous to maintain, but it had taken concentration: I was glad it was done.

“I’ll take you word on it,” I replied.

If we’d had more time I would have considered emptying the entire place just to make a point, but we didn’t. I was, to be frank, surprised the Eyes hadn’t betrayed us yet. My bet was on there being another game at play here, one I hadn’t quite figured out yet. That tended to be a safe bet when the Intercessor was around. Regardless, we needed to get a move on if we wanted to clear out the artefact vaults as well before this all came down on our heads. We took the stairs down and I cursed every few steps the absence of my staff and the apparently deep and abiding hatred Praesi architects had for handrails. Seriously, would it kill whoever kept building these ridiculous places to throw up a few of those? Take out two of the fucking egg-sized rubies encrusted into one of the wall frescoes and you could pay for those to be done for the entire damned palace. Some of my thoughts came out as grumbling under my breath, I figured, since Akua looked highly amused and offered me her arm for the last few steps. I took it with ill-grace, looking away. I got cackled at for that immediately, Archer popping out from behind stacks with a grin.

“Aw, isn’t that cute,” Indrani grinned. “If we get to robbing the Tower, is it going to make you hold hands?”

She smelled faintly of blood, I noticed. I cocked an eyebrow at her and she threw me a sheathed short sword about my size.

“Lots of stragglers?” I asked, ignoring the jibe.

I drew the blade, testing the weight, and found it good enough. Not as good as something fitted for me, but it’d do. As I fitted the sheath at my belt, Indrani passed a blade at Akua who nodded thanks in return and got a smile for it.

“Five,” Archer replied, “but one of them was a mage. I had to get tricky.”

The edge of one of her sleeves was slightly singed, I found with closer study.

“Good work,” I simply said. “We’re hitting the hidden vaults now. You good to fight?”

“I was promised horrors, Foundling,” Indrani grinned. “Hells, why do you think I’m even here?”

Ugh, I bet that pun was even intentional. I truly did have terrible taste in women.

“I’d assumed because you were dared while drunk,” Akua drily replied.

“Hey,” Indrani replied, offended. “That only works like, a third of a time.”

I loudly coughed.

“Fine, maybe closer to half,” Archer conceded.

Immediately after she turned to Akua with a scowl, jabbing a finger at her.

“And don’t you dare cough too, Petty Poltergeist,” she growled. “Half is all I’ll go up to.”

“I would never dare,” Akua lied, smiling prettily.

It was in a better mood that the three of us moved out towards the back of the great library, where the returned once-heiress to Wolof told us that the easiest path into the hidden vaults lay. I’d expected some sort of archway full of damned souls or a corridor swarming with enchantment, but what our quick march there revealed was actually just a set of tall golden doors. Nicely sculpted, if a little heavy on the Wolof-and-particulary-the-Sahelians-are-the-best-look-at-all-these-fools-we-crushed slant. To my admitted bewilderment, Akua then simply grabbed one of the large iron rings on the doors and pulled one open. It revealed a short hallway of bare stone, leading to a steel grate.

“Wait, is that it?” Indrani asked.

She sounded a little cheated.

“That’s got to be a trap, right?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

“Oh, it is,” Akua flatly agreed. “There is a secret entrance thirty feet to our left that would allow us to avoid the first two killing rooms, but it would require us to pass through the terror room – and without the proper protective amulets, that would be… unwise.”

“Terror room, you say?” Archer idly repeated, sounding dangerous interested.

Of course she would be.

“Magical terror,” Akua specified. “As close to the demonic emanation as my forebears could manage. Most people die of a stalling heart within the first ten heartbeats. No, the front path is best suited to our needs.”

I considered the stone hall for a moment, humming.

“Floor trap?” I guessed.

“Hand me a book,” Akua asked.

Snorting, I grabbed what looked like a primer on the classical elements – could have used you a few years back, buddy, I thought – and began to pass it to her before pausing and glancing at Archer.

“Don’t tell Zeze,” I said.

“I’d be counted as an accessory,” Indrani solemnly replied.

The book went to Akua’s hand as she rolled her eyes, tossing it carelessly into the hallway. I glimpsed iron spikes emerging from the walls before the golden door shut. Huh. Akua, looking somewhat aggravated, wrenched open the door again and I stood there to watch as the spiked walls slowly closed in on the middle of the room. Door probably couldn’t be opened from the inside, I decided. We stood for a while longer, waiting. Sometimes the walls quickly lurched forward for an inch or two, but most of the time they just… slowly advanced.

“Now that’s just asking for a hero to find a way out,” I sadly said.

“The mechanisms that make the walls move are deep in the stone,” Akua said, sounding a tad defensive. “They can’t be changed without load-bearing walls being knocked down.”

“How do we get through?” Indrani asked, more pragmatically.

The shade stepped into the hall fearlessly when the walls were near through, slipping around the edge of the right one and disappearing. A few heartbeats later there was a metallic wrenching sound, maybe a lever being pulled, and the walls stopped. They stayed extended, leaving a path maybe a foot wide between the iron spikes that led straight to the door in the back. You could have at least pushed the door to the left so it’d be covered when the wall advanced, you hacks, I silently thought. Akua slipped back around the edge of the wall, reappearing with a smile as she dusted herself off.

“And to cross that?” I asked, pointing at the steel grate.

“The Archer key,” the shade gracefully replied.

The Archer in question snorted, stepping forward – Akua flowed around her – and pushing to the end of our little narrow passage. One, two, three, four. On the fourth Name-assisted kick the steel grate toppled down, ripped right off the hinges. I cocked an eyebrow at Akua.

“It is enchanted against blades and lockpicks, not mules,” she shrugged.

“I heard that,” Indrani called out.

Swallowing a grin, I shimmied through and followed the shade over the fallen grate. It brought us to another stone hall, this one rather more ornate than the last. The walls were covered with mosaics in the Sahelians colours whose patterns felt… oddly fascinating – I wrenched away my eyes forcefully – and whose floor was checkered marble in black and white. At the end I saw an open stone doorway and what looked like curving stairs going down. The three of us were huddled in a small antechamber between the halls, and out of curiosity I looked up. Yeah, as I’d figured the stone archway here had small depression in the rocks.

“Stone door falls down here and over there,” I mused. “I’m calling… pit trap?”

“Oh,” Indrani gurgled. “That’s an old one. Is it the black or white tiles that make it work?”

“There are triggers under both,” Akua sighed. “And the floor itself is not trapped. Once the doors close, the mosaic shifts in some places and begins releasing alchemical gas.”

“What’s it do?” Archer asked,

“It was a forgetfulness mixture, when I left,” Akua noted. “Prevented memory recall longer than five heartbeats. It could be anything now, of course.”

“And we beat this how?” I asked.

It was too long for us to jump our way across, although maybe if I used Night…

“The stone doors open again once the monitoring enchantment senses that there is no longer gas in the air,” she said. “I know where the openings are, so Catherine and I simply need to block them until the trap begins to reset. We’ll have a window of four heartbeats to cross.”

“That’s very unsporting,” I approved.

She pointed out where in the mosaics – near what looked like a swirl of pale eyes – we’d need to act and then we moved out. The doors immediately fell down from the ceiling, blocking the paths out, but what followed what almost absurdly mundane. I did not use Night or a Name trick, simply jamming my thumb into the opening and then waiting for a while as the doors began to rise again. We ran, Indrani snickering the whole time, and made it to the stairs before the trap activated again. We went down slowly, catching our breath, and I cast a consternated look behind us.

“I don’t understand why your ancestors didn’t just layer a hundred wards,” I admitted. “This stuff can be beaten, a hundred different layers of protection changed every few years can’t.”

“We are in the Vaults, my darling,” Akua replied. “It is presumed that anyone who made it this far into the Empyrean Palace has the help of traitors within our own. Wards can be crossed in the snap of a finger, with the right helper. This? This cannot.”

I was about to object some more when she silenced me with a finger.

“These were the easiest of rooms, my heart,” she said. “Now that we are below, tricks such as I used will find little bite.”

Straight from the start we were faced with a crossroads, the paths going to the left and right. The left side, Akua explained, was where the other entrance above would have led to directly. The terror room.

“And where we’re headed?” I asked.

The hallway here had mosaics much like those above, dangerous to look at for too long, which I figured was actually pretty clever on the part of the builders. You couldn’t see the traps coming if you couldn’t risk looking at your surroundings for long. Wouldn’t want to be one of the poor fuckers in charge of cleaning this place, though. Maybe they had wards in place to prevent it getting dusty?

“Straight into the illusion room and the duelling room, then we may access the first vault,” Akua replied, leading us to another steel grate.

It required Archer’s tender attentions once more, but when forced off the hinges it did not fall into the room beyond it. Anchored by enchantments, our guide noted, and so we ‘opened’ the broken thing as if we’d used a key. Beyond was a hall that was entirely mosaic, that confounding little number we’d been walking through. Here it covered the floor and ceiling too, though, and led to another steel grate. I risked small glimpsed at the floor, finding pale eyes there like those that’d covered the gas exits above us, but I bit my lip. Something was wrong here, itching at me. I felt the presence of the Sisters fill me like cold water, Komena nudging my chin to look right instead of- the illusion broke and I let out a gasp.

“Fuck me,” I murmured. “The spell here makes you twist left and right for up and down.”

“Yes,” Akua said, sounding pleased. “And so draw the eye away from this…”

She shimmied in front of me, dipping her foot into what my mind still insisted was the right wall, and the mosaic vanished. Under it was a sharp drop and even sharper steel spikes. Ah, lovely.

“There’s a safe way through?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Akua replied. “Archer?”

I turned to look at Indrani, who had her eyes closed and was muttering under her breath. She opened her eyes once, quickly glancing at the floor and then closing them again. Twice more she did that, looking angrier and angrier, until on the third she drew back her sleeve and bit her forearm hard enough blood came out. She looked again, eyes hard, and only then offered me a wild grin.

“It’s fine, ladies,” Archer said. “I can See it now. Mind couldn’t get around trying to believe two things at the same time.”

It was useful now and then to be reminded of how fucking dangerous Indrani actually was. Akua had been raised here and I had goddesses helping me see through this. Her? It was Name and grit that got her through. And somehow, now that she’d seen through the spell, I suspected that no other one like it would ever fool her again. We crossed the floor like children holding hands in dark woods, moving across the complex back and forth pattern that Akua unerringly led us through until we’d reached the door on the other side. Solid copper, this one, and our guide opened it by ghosting a hand through the lock and picking it with her own ‘fingers’. It popped open, revealing another short antechamber leading into another hall.

This one, which she’d called the duelling room earlier, was little more than bare stone and mosaic walls save for the five longswords that’d been sheathed in stands of copper. It was a thick steel door that awaited us at the end of the hall, with no visible lock or pull.

“So we draw a sword and fight an opponent for each one we draw?” Indrani guessed.

“Not at all,” Akua laughed. “Pulling swords only makes parts of the floor fall away into spikes when the monster is unleashed. It is the touch of flesh on the door that begins the duel.”

“And how does the door open?” I asked.

“An enchanted key, which we do not have,” Akua said.

I glanced at the steel door in the back and Archer did the same.

“I’m not sure I can force my way through that with brute strength,” she admitted.

“We will not need to,” the shade said. “The swords are, naturally, all cursed.”

“Naturally,” I drily echoed.

“The second blade from the right should have a particularly nasty rotting curse on it that I believe will damage the door enough to reveal the lock, if pressed in the right place,” Akua said. “I should be able to pick said lock from there.”

“And you have no flesh to rot,” I mused. “All right, that’ll work. That leaves Indrani and I to handle whatever creature comes out. You have any notion of what it’ll be?”

“It used to be giant scorpion, but it should have died by now,” Akua noted. “It shouldn’t be too difficult an opponent, given the breakdown of relations with Aksum. That is where all the most… difficult creatures tend to come from.”

I nodded.

“Can we use the other blades against the beastie?” Indrani asked.

“Alas, it is always bespelled to be protected when put away here,” Akua said.

It was typical of Praesi highborn, I thought, that though a great many of them were utterly and irremediably mad their madness somehow turned out to be in some ways sensible and organized. It was a through sort of lunacy, and all the more dangerous for the thoroughness being married to the absence of sense in most other ways. I unsheathed the blade at my hip, rolling my wrist to limber it and stretching my limbs carefully. Archer gave me an amused look but did the same, Akua patiently waiting for us to be done.

“Where’s it going to come from?” I asked.

The shade simply pointed upwards. Of course it was, I sighed. I looked at Archer, who nodded in approval.

“Get us started, Akua,” I said.

Smoothly she walked up the swords and pulled out her chosen one from the copper stand, darting away afterwards. There was no visible sign of the curse she’d mentioned on the sword, but I could smell the scent of power in the air. She’d not lied when she called the enchantment on that nasty. Three heartbeats passed before a floor panel of about nine feet by three shattered into neat pieces and revealed a spiked pit below even as the ceiling shifted above us. There were three birdlike screeches as a massive form – Gods, large as two oxen as least – dropped down from above between Indrani and I. Two thoughts came to me about at the same time. First off, Akua had been rather optimistic when she’d assumed that the giant scorpion had died of old age.

Second, this was not a noise a scorpion should be able to make.

“Why does this thing have faces on its back?” I asked.

“Better question,” Archer mused, “why are they all screaming?”

I ducked away from a lightning-quick strike of a stinger the size of my head, the massive scorpion trying to trample Indrani as it kept me away. She slid under it, laughing in glee as something in its belly began spitting out acid that she only narrowly avoided, and I chopped away at one of its bony legs to distract it. Bony was the right term for it, I found out, the bloody carapace was hard as bone. And that was just the leg, the body would be worse. That left the eyes to strike at or, urgh, the… faces. Which were still screaming, looking like damned souls sown into chitin and singing out their eternal torment. Hells, they actually might be. It turned its attention to me as Archer put distance between her and the tail, pincers twitching. I kept close to the wall, throwing myself to the side at the last moment when it struck and smiling at the screeches of pain it let out when the pincer hit solid stone.

“I am working the lock,” Akua calmly called out.

“Archer, let’s not fight the damn thing,” I screamed.

“Boo,” Indrani screamed back.

Her shout drew back its attention and it stabbed away at her repeatedly with the stinger, growing angrier as she kept dodging at the last moment, and I darted close to its face to make sure it had to keep its attention divided. The pincers came at me from both sides, but the anglers were predictable. Anger was making it sloppy. It grew even angrier a moment later, when Indrani finally baited it into a stinger strike at the angle for her to cut off the entire thing after she dodged. Even as it screeched I took the opportunity to land a few hacks at its eyes, black fluid dripping everywhere, and retreated as it began to attack blindly.

“Around the spikes,” I yelled at Indrani.

There was a narrow strip between the walls and the floor that’d dropped, and with the scorpion partly blinded now was the time to make us of it. I began to cross towards the latter half the hall, where Akua was kneeling before the door, and Archer did the same a moment later. With any luck the bloody thing would try to follow us and fall to its death. Halfway through I turned to have a glance and had a moment of triumph when I saw the monster was following us, but it was short-lived. The scorpion’s legs unfolded further with a wet wrenching side, and hoisted him up by pushing against both walls. Oh fuck me, I thought as it began to walk on the walls to catch up to us.

“Akua,” I screamed.

“I am nearly done,” she replied.

The tail Archer had cut was leaking black blood everywhere, but it could still serve as a whip. As I discovered when it snapped after me, forcing me to hop forward on my bad leg and nearly fall to my death.

“Akua,” I screamed.

“And done,” she replied.

I heard the door open with a click and threw myself on solid ground, landing in a painful. Archer was already there and she helped me up, dragging me as we broke into a run towards the open door. The monster was behind us, pincers lashing out as it landed on the solid stone with a clattering sound, but Indrani threw me through the doorway and I heard her stumbled through as I flopped on my belly. Akua slammed closed the door, not quite quickly enough to silence the screeches of rage from the monstrous scorpion. All three of us dropped to the floor for a while after that, catching our breath.

“So the scorpion might still be alive,” I solemnly told Akua.

There was a moment of silence, then all three of us began laughing in spasms. The merriment passed, but it’d done us some good. Even better was that we were now going to get into our first vault of the night. The room we opened did not look like the fabulous gold-and-gem-laden treasury my imagination had conjured up. Disappointingly enough, the large vault looked more like an orderly storage house than anything else. The goods were interesting, at least. A dozen enchanted swords and twice as many armours, a bow made of dragonbone – which Indrani pawed lustfully at – and several banners whose cloth was woven with spells that inspired either valour or fear. There was also a saddle made of what I suspected to be human skin, which I almost hesitated to take. Well, the Sisters probably wouldn’t mind even if it was. It was minor artefacts aside from that, mostly enchanted jewelry and amulets.

“Prestige pieces,” Akua told me. “All were crafted by famous practitioners. It is a traditional way to reward a subordinate without overly empowering them.”

“Well,” I shrugged, “into the Night they go.”

It didn’t take long to clear it all out, Archer reluctantly parting with the bow when it was pointed out to her that she did not have arrows to go with it.

“Left now,” Akua said. “It will bring us to three adjoining vaults.”

Huh, that did sound rather tempting.

“What’s in the way?” I asked, and before she could answer I got my response.

It was, uh, remarkably straightforward.

“This is an acid pool,” Archer said, looking down at, well, that.

“So it is,” Akua cheerfully replied.

It was maybe three feet below the threshold we stood at, and there was no way to tell how deep it ran. The length of the hallway was at least thirty feet, which made it a laughable notion to try jumping.

“How do people usually get through it?” I asked.

“They bring a specially crafted silver bridge,” Akua smiled.

“With a mage around you could make a bridge across out of shields,” Indrani noted.

A heartbeat later, there was a little shiver across the room as a pulse of… something went through the air. I cocked an eyebrow at Akua.

“Raw magic,” she said. “It would disrupt any ongoing spell formula. Anyone trying to cross on a shield panel would…”

She glanced meaningfully at the gently simmering acid. Lovely.

“I’m pretty sure Night won’t be disrupted,” I frowned.

“My ancestors did not, in fact, plan for the human herald of drow goddesses to infiltrate their vaults and then use a largely unheard of and poorly understood power to make a bridge across their acid pool,” Akua confirmed, her tone holding the faintest note of sarcasm. “How short-sighted of them indeed.”

I coughed in embarrassment, then got to work. The wards over the palace were still making it hard to call on Night even though we were well past nightfall, and I found the magic pulse harder to deal with than I’d thought it would be. Had to do double layers to avoid a thinning, which made it take longer than I would have liked. It was with sweat beading the back of my neck that I brought us to the other side, where Archer promptly kicked her way through the steel grid. How had the godsdamned acid pool been the trickiest of these so far? It was a good thing the wards hadn’t been updated here in a while, I thought, because a few more layers of whatever made it hard to shape the Night might have managed to lock me out from using it in practice.

Akua stopped us before we could enter the traditional antechamber, dragging an ethereal foot over the floor. Headsman’s blades came out from both sides, cutting into nothing but thin air, and they began to withdraw. Well, that’d been bracing. They’d been building up the impression that the antechambers were safe this whole time, hadn’t they? Tricky fuckers. The hallway beyond was unlike any we’d seen before, which I did not take as a good sign. Every part of the walls, floor and ceiling was covered with angled mirrors, giving the impression that we were standing on the inside of a gem. The uncovered parts were the doors in and out, and somehow I suspected that was only a temporary state of affairs.

“Enchanted mirrors?” I asked.

“They induce nightmare-filled sleep if stared at,” Akua said, “but it is the doors to watch out for. They will shoot out burning rays of light, which then…”

“Reflect every which way,” Indrani finished, sounding a little impressed.

“The enchantments in the mirrors amplify the heat,” Akua said. “There is an upper limit, of course, but after seven reflections it would be enough to incinerate an ogre on contact.”

Given the kind of people these defences belonged to, I suspected it was not a figure of speech she’d used there.

“Night’s not great against fire,” I admitted. “So that’s a problem. How do we get through the door on the other end?”

It was a copper one and Akua had picked one of those earlier but I didn’t want to assume.

“I can get us through the lock there,” she said. “But not before at least a dozen spells have been shot out.”

“These rays, do they reflect off anything or just the mirrors?” Archer suddenly asked.

I breathed out in understanding and so did our guide.

“The side of a sword should work,” she replied.

Indrani shot me a smile, which I forced myself to return. I was getting closer to my Name, but the reflexes weren’t quite there yet. I began to draw Night into myself, murmuring prayers in Crepuscular. At the very least quickening my limbs ought to help. Our swords were bared a moment later and as I grimaced we darted forward. Before we’d even made it a foot forward mirrors moved to cover the entrance we’d left and three spells shot out from the polished copper door. Whooping with glee, Indrani casually batted one away while Akua and I instead prudently moved to the sides. She went straight for the door, even as it began spewing out a second volley, and I took up a position guarding her back.

I narrowly caught a ray that would have hit my chest, reflecting it upwards and then into a wildly careening trajectory. The trouble with all those fucking angled mirrors was that it was hard to guess what path the spell would take when it came back. Archer was still in the middle of the room, moving with a dancer’s grace as she reflected spells in what was too measured a way for it to be random. Eyes narrowed I tried to follow what she was doing, but only figured it out after the third volley of spells came out and two of the rays hit each other in midair, bursting into a ball of flame and smoke. Fucking Hells, was she actually making them hit each other? I could barely keep up with the ones actually coming for me.

That moment of inattention cost me, even my quickened limbs not quite quick enough when a ray I avoided was reflected right back into my shoulder from behind before I could blink. I managed to get it to clip the shoulder instead of bite into the muscle, at least, but I swallowed a scream as a parchment’s depth of my shoulder just turned to ash and the livery over it vanished. Fuck, that hurt. Akua came through for us moments later, the copper door opening, and I was quick to retreat behind it. Archer took her time joining us, twice more slapping away spells before slipping behind the door as I slammed it closed. Her eyes dipped to my shoulder, but like Akua she said nothing. I called on Night to kill the pain and we moved on to the vaults awaiting us.

The first vault looked very mundane, until you had a closer look. The neat piles of wood were all atrociously expensive sorts from the Waning Woods or beyond, the blocks of rock and the gems all gave off the scent of magic without being enchanted – which meant inherent sorcery – and the sealed copper boxes here were all filled with living plants I did not recognize. There was a single potion rack, with maybe sixty vials in whole, but my jaw dropped when I saw a whole half-dozen of them were as red and faintly glowing water.

“Are those actual healing potions?” I croaked.

“They are,” Akua said. “And not even the most precious of the lot. The bottom row is the elixir of long life. Drinking it adds at the very least forty years to one’s lifespan.”

I’d keep one of those for Vivienne, then. I shook my head, still in shock that I was looking at the little red potions that were said to be the closest thing to a panacea that alchemists had ever achieved. They were also said to require the blood of a dragon taken while it still lived to be brewed, which had seen them placed squarely in the realm of legends. The last Callowan ruler said to have drunk one was Elizabeth Alban. It was with petty glee that I cleared out the room into the Night, being careful not to break anything. We wasted no time hitting the second vault, which was significantly less worth smiling about.

Rooms full of demons tended to get that reaction out of me.

I saw the same three Weeping Snares the High Lord of Wolof had stood me off with and promptly stashed them away, to the reluctant acceptance of the Sisters, but they had significantly less qualms taking in the rows and rows of grimoires that Akua told me were contracts with devils. Two silver jigsaw puzzles that supposedly could give a glimpse into how to make a Great Breach when completed went into the Night as well, as well as a dozen more of what Akua called ‘insight’ artefacts, but when we came to a simple copper crown on a pedestal the Crows sent me a wave of wariness.

“Insipientia,” Akua reverently said.

My Old Miezan was rusty, but not that rusty.

“It’s a bound demon of Madness,” I said. “The same one your mother unleashed?”

“Yes,” she replied. “My family has held other demons, over the years, but never was there a binding quite so thorough or a demon quite so mastered as Insipientia has been. Centuries of foes have tried to free and turn it against us, ever to no avail.”

I reached out for it, but the Crows balked. There was something about the crown that spooked them, and I wasn’t one to gainsay the instincts of my patronesses when it came to demonic taint.

“It stays,” I said. “Vault’s clear, what’s in the third one?”

“Nothing, presumably,” Akua shrugged. “It is almost never used. It is the guest vault, and my family has rarely granted the honour of its use to anyone.”

“Hey, worth a look anyway,” Indrani drawled. “Maybe there’ll be loose change there we can toss into the Night.”

I rolled my eye but did not disagree. I wanted to be as through as possible when clearing the vaults. Akua informed us there were only two more left after this, and the paths began to grow complicated- we’d have to double back over the acid pool – when we forced open the warded door, revealing a sight that gave paused to all of us. In the bare stone room there was an altar and a sleeping body on it, but that wasn’t the part that gave us pause. It was the fact that we were looking at a perfect reproduction of Akua Sahelian when she’d died. A shift modestly covered the body, but I’d seen enough of Akua over the years to know that this was looking at a twin. One that was breathing. The shade, face unreadable, took a few hesitant steps and laid a hand on the body. After a moment she gasped.

“What is it?” I quietly asked.

“She has magic,” Akua said. “No mind or memories that I can feel, but the Gift is there.”

Ah, I thought, and the pieces fell into place. The guest vault, huh. So this was the work of the sole person in Praes who might feasibly make this request of Sargon: Dread Empress Malicia, First of Her Name. There’d never been any need for me to lay out bait, I now understood. Malicia had always intended to take it. She was in need of a Warlock and of someone who had a good handle of me and my plans, so she intended to secure both in a single stroke. And there was the deeper game here, the one I was beginning to glimpse. The Intercessor, who had outed us in the fortress but not gotten us captured. The Bard had made sure that Sargon would cover the treasury and the granaries, figuring out one step of me that it would leave me only one place to go.

That the Intercessor too had wanted Akua to be in this room, at this moment, sent a shiver of dread up my spine. Did she know something I did not? Had I made a mistake? Or did I, for once, better understand the nature of the woman we were dealing with than either my opponents? My fingers clenched, then unclenched. None of us would know the answer to that until the very last moment, I suspected. Besides, now that we had seen what we were meant to the Eyes – the dull throb of magic filled the air, a ward being tripped. There you go, I thought, as troubles as I was vindicated. And still I couldn’t shake the impression that I was missing something. That I was still underestimating my opponents somehow.

“We need to get out,” I said. “They know we’re here.”

“Fuck,” Indrani cursed. “Think we should grab the…”

She hesitated. I glanced at Akua.

“No,” she decisively said. “It will be a trap of some sort.”

I nodded.

“We’re still using the way out in the Empyrean Hall,” I said. “Can you lead us there quick?”

“Very much so,” Akua replied. “There is a hall that leads there directly.”

I didn’t bother closing the door behind us as we filed out. We took a left at the end of the hall where the vaults were, which brought us to another large hallway where aside from the mosaics the sole decoration was a tomb of stone.

“That doesn’t look good,” Archer muttered.

“There is no need to worry,” Akua snorted. “For this, I will require neither of you.”

Taking her at her word we followed her in, and predictably enough the tomb’s lid began to open. A strikingly good-looking man in bronze armour began to rise out, smiling eagerly, but the shade met his eyes and straightened her back.

“I am Akua Sahelian,” she said.

The man froze. His eyes were blank, I noticed only then. And I had yet to see him breathe. Undead of some sort? I glimpsed a slender sword in the tomb with him, already half-drawn.

“No,” the man hissed in Mthethwa. “Not after-”

“I am of the blood of Subira,” Akua said, tone flat. “By the ancient compact, I bid you to return to your sleep and grant us passage.”

“Insolent child,” the man bit out, “how dare you-”

And yet, for all his complaining, his limbs were moving. He lay back down into the tomb, and even as he cursed Akua profusely he closed the lid over himself. There was a moment of silence, then Archer cleared her throat.

“So, uh, what was that exactly?”

“Dread Emperor Revenant was not the first Soninke to attempt to rule forever,” Akua replied with a smile. “Merely the most successful. And some of my ancestors had an… interesting sense of humour.”

Well, didn’t that sound ominous. Still, I counted our blessings and followed our guide as we left. The door wasn’t even locked from outside, meant to keep people out instead of in, and we hurried through only occasionally trapped sets of stairs until we emerged above in what looked like a large marble hallway. Above us I caught sight of something staggeringly beautiful: the night sky in all its glory. It wasn’t like the lesser version of the Vaults, this was the real one – the very wonder this palace was named after. I could almost feel the wind looking at the ceiling here, see the clouds move and even the occasional bird fly. It was one of the most magnificent works of magic I’d ever seen.

“We are close to the passage,” Akua said, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Let us hurry.”

Yet even with her navigating for us, this part of the palace had been on high alert. It was mere moments before we came across a servant, who screamed out in alarm at the sight of our swords, and soldiers were on our heels in moments. Arrows and spells streaked behind us as we ran, clattering against tall marble columns and setting tapestries aflame. How many were there? At least sixty, I thought. Archer took an arrow in the arm but she ripped it away without batting an eye, cursing as she did, and twice streaks of flame went through Akua. She came back… weaker each time she reformed afterwards. Tired in away I’d never before seen her be as a shade.

We remained narrowly ahead of our opponents, until we reached the statue of Subira Sahelian that was the mark of one of the eleven secret passages into Wolof. Akua pushed the crown the man held in his hand and the statue began to move, revealing a narrow set of stairs, and we wasted no time heading down. The soldiers were close. The statue moved back behind us, though, which ought to slow them down some. The oppressive weight of a new set of wards washed over me the moment I got onto the stairs but I grit my teeth and quickened my pace. We’d planned to leave through here from the start, though initially it would have been after we robbed the treasury instead of the vaults. See, like all of the eleven secret passages into Wolof this one was a trap.

The narrow stairs flared out into a larger platform where we all paused, and hastily I took out our last two water breathing potions. Indrani idly took two steps down the platform as I did, to trigger what we all knew was coming: moments after her foot touched the lower stairs water began pouring from the ceiling. It was a flood corridor, see. Either the pressure of the flood or drowning would take care of anyone who came through here. Except, of course, if they had prepared potions for this very eventuality. It’d never been an option to come back by the aqueduct again: we would have needed to swim uphill and against the current, and break through the enchanted barriers there again without the evanescent powder to do the work for us.

“Bottoms up,” Indrani said as I gave her a vial.

We toasted and knocked down the drinks. I breathed in, limbering my shoulders for the coming swim. Sooner or later the guards would come down the stairs and try to snatch us with spells even if proper pursuit was impossible, we needed to get a head start. We waited a few heartbeats. And then, hideously, nothing happened at all. The potion did nothing.

“Cat,” Indrani slowly said, but I did not answer.

Instead I closed my eyes. And there it was, the missing piece. Malicia had wanted Akua to see that body down in the Vaults, it was why the Eyes – who had no doubt reported to her body in the city the moment they’d been sure I could no longer kill them for it – had waited so long to pull the alarm. But it’d not made sense to me that she would then simply… let us go. Much as I despised the empress, she was one of the cleverest people I’d ever met. Malicia had been fine letting us go, I now realized, because she’d known we weren’t going anywhere. The return vials of water breathing potion had been sabotaged before we ever left.

Had she gotten to the Concocter? No, I thought, she shouldn’t have the leverage for that. Mostly likely just spies that’d had access to the vials at someone point before they got to my hands. A few foreign reagents would have been enough to fuck up a brew this complicated. And it didn’t matter how it’d been done, I forced myself to acknowledge, just that it had. The Intercessor knew from the start, I put together as my stomach dropped. It was Malicia’s plan, and Malicia is Named. So the old monster had just come in at the right time and the right place to nudge us so her favoured outcome came about. My fingers clenched.

Figuring out my enemies was useful, but what I needed right now was a way out.

“Akua,” I said. “When we came out the reservoirs, you dried us. Do you think you could keep a bubble of air around our heads as we swim?”

There was a long moment of silence, then she shook her head.

“I do not think I am strong enough for two,” the shade admitted. “Not after the spells I was struck by, and perhaps not even at my best. Around one of you, if I meld closely, and even then it will be difficult.”

So Akua and one of us could still make it out. Not quickly, though, I thought. Which meant the person staying behind would have to keep the soldiers off their back for a while. Could I work around this with Night, steal air to bring with me? I murmured a prayer, reaching for the power, but though I felt the Crows reach out to me our fingers… missed. The wards were too heavy here, I realized. Night wouldn’t get me out of this.

“You can’t use Night, can you?” Indrani said, eyes sharp.

I shook my head.

“That settles it,” Archer said. “It’s got to be me. Your Name’s not there yet. I’ll keep them off long enough and you can trade back for me later.”

I breathed out, looking for calm. Forcing it.

“Yeah,” I said.

She slowly nodded, then turned to ask Akua something, and without missing a beat I struck the side of her head. She was quick, and strong, but I was both too and she’d not been expecting it. I caught her in my arms before she could collapse, golden eyes following me all the while.

“They can’t kill me,” I said. “Malicia knows she’d be risking handing the Dead King a victory if she did.”

There was simply no one else that could keep the Firstborn bound to the Grand Alliance and Callow in the war the way I could. Vivienne could maybe talk our soldiers around, but the drow? No, Malicia wasn’t after my life here. She wanted me in her grasp.

I intended to make her rue that notion to her dying day.

Above us the statue began moving, and I handed Archer to Akua. The shade took our friend, coming so close to me for a moment it would have been the easiest thing in the world to steal a kiss from my lips, but she refrained. Shouts from above. There was no more time, and if I was going to make it out of captivity I needed… something. A plan, a workaround. And it came to me, in a flash, as above the first arrow was fired loosely in our direction.

“Takisha Muraqib,” I hissed. “Make the offer for it. And the rest Sepulchral.”

Her hand touched mine, impossibly warm, and she nodded.

“I will,” Akua Sahelian swore.

Moments later she was in the water, bringing Archer with her, as spells began to light up the hall and I turned towards the enemy. Well, Night or not I had a sword and a long history of stabbing people with those.

Time to see how long I could buy them.