You had to make accommodations, if you wanted to get ahead in the army. You had to do distasteful things. Especially as a necromancer. Prassel was well aware that her entire discipline reeked of moral compromise. Ends that justified the means until you realised that you were so lost in the ghastly means that you couldn’t see the end of it any more. You had to make sacrifices for your career. Everyone did. Just some people more literally than others.
It didn’t hurt, having Maserley there to watch. But then he was technically head of a department, the senior demonist across two battalions. He was invited to all the best parties.
Professor-Invigilator Scaffesty, Old Eyeball to the soldiers of Landwards, was a silver-haired old man. He did indeed just have the one eyeball, with a leather patch moulded to the socket of the other to hide the gory details while making the absence quite plain. He had a very pale face that seemed to loom from the shadows of his dark uniform, even in good light. Like a predatory fish in deep water or a murderer in an alley. Not the most pleasant face, was Prassel’s general opinion. Even when he was giving her a promotion.
“Following the tragic death in combat of Sage-Archivist Stiverton, I am confirming you as officer in command of the Experimental Necromancy department here at Landwards,” Scaffesty said, ostensibly to her but really for the benefit of everyone else, since she was perfectly aware of what was going on. “As most here are aware, you are inheriting a bloody mess, frankly. What with how it all went. But I trust that you will rebuild and continue Stiverton’s work.”
“Yes, magister,” Prassel said, and in the quiet of her head added, Under no circumstances. Because there were limits, and just because she was a student of death didn’t mean she was game for the sort of squandering of resources that Stiverton had been about.
“Final confirmation will have to come from the Commission, but for now you’re elevated to Acting-Sage-Inquirer. Next order of business. I’m sure there are plenty of people waiting to congratulate you.”
They were in his command tent, big enough to hold everyone in Higher Orders. Every department and Company head. Hers had been the last in a series of repositionings and promotions. Mostly occasioned by battlefield losses, because the war wasn’t getting any less bloody the longer it ground on.
She stepped towards the back of the tent, and then out entirely, letting the sounds of the camp wash over her like a shower. Her hands were shaking very slightly and she tugged at the cuffs of her gloves to steady them.
“The way I hear it, a promotion was the last thing that Stiverton was recommending you for,” came Maserley’s voice from behind her. Of course he’d followed her out.
She looked up, her face carefully immobile. “Really?”
“Your failure to make use of resources, wasn’t it?” he jabbed. “Already looking around for your replacement. And suddenly he’s dead.”
“It’s war,” she said. “Most deaths are sudden.” No part of her face that wasn’t shuttered against him. “Did you actually have something to say, Maserley? Congratulations, perhaps? Don’t worry, I’m sure someone will recognise your own potential one of these days. Have you tried summoning more monsters? I’m sure it’ll help.”
Because he was going to crack her, if he kept on questioning, but go on the offensive and he always rose to it. His face darkened, and doubtless he’d have some mean-spirited retaliation later, when he’d had a chance to think of something. Except she didn’t even have the hospital for him to sabotage any more.
He stalked back inside, and she was about to just sit and clasp her hands together and fight against the shakes when another figure loomed over her. Loomed was the word: a good seven feet tall, with ashen skin and sunken, filmed-over eyes. A Loruthi face, twisted in death-agonies. A Pal uniform hastily stretched over it. She could see the bulge where a copper had been shoved into the splintered ribs. The vehicle that Festle had brought back from the most recent battle.
“Cohort-Monitor Festle,” she addressed the corpse. “Reporting for duty, are we?”
“I know what you did.” The voice slurred out of stiff lips.
Prassel felt a chill hand on her heart. But then, she was a necromancer. No new sensation there. “Well, it seems to be a day for accusations. What’s yours?”
He spoke low, just for the two of them. “He sent to me, as he died. He could always reach me. He made me.” And presumably there had been a living Cohort-Monitor Festle once, before Stiverton had got his hands on the man, but whatever was left now identified far more as a predatory spirit than a human being. “Two words, he said to me at the end. ‘Betrayed’, and your name.” He pushed closer and the sigils across her uniform crackled and spat, forcing him back a step.
“I’m sure,” said Prassel carefully, “that he would have gone on with, ‘will be your new superior officer and you should do everything she says.’ Such a shame he didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence.” And tried not to remember how it had been. A knife. Such a small thing. A knife to slit the belt of tablethi on Stiverton’s ridiculous robe so that, when the overloading coppers had discharged, she’d just ripped the garment off him. Left the old man defenceless before a hydra of angry, displaced ghosts. Each of them seizing on his body and limbs, fighting for control, forcing their expressions onto his features, their mannerisms into his hands. Beyond any tolerance of bone and sinew. And yet it had taken him so long to die.
“Cohort-Monitor Festle,” she said frankly, “I could unmake you in an eyeblink. That is not a threat, just a reminder that I’m a trained necromancer and you’re just an unnaturally preserved set of spiritual tensions stuffed into a bottle.” And, as he wrestled the face of his body into a scowl, “However. You should know that I will not simply be continuing the late Sage-Archivist’s work. I do not see a future in ghosts as siege ammunition. Wasteful, impractical and, as Stiverton’s death shows, eminently unsafe. What I do see a future in is you.”
Festle stared at her.
“Volunteers, Festle. Post-mortem volunteers. A campaign after death. Something a soldier can sign up to in advance, given the difficulties of securing deathbed consent. A new way to serve the cause of perfection, and achieve promotion, preferment and probably some sort of pension for families. I’m still working on the logistics. You’re proof of concept, Festle. You do good work. Because you want to. Not just because someone stuffed your screaming ghost into a copper and threw it at the enemy. And obviously, if we’re expanding The Deathless, we’ll need a rank structure, honours and credentials, as in life, so in death. How does Companion-Monitor sound to you? I have the authority.”
“Are you trying to bribe me?” Festle’s dead lips demanded.
“I’m trying to reward you,” Prassel said. “I have a good track record with unorthodox tools, as the hospital project showed. Well? How do you fancy becoming the new great weapon of the Palleseen advance, rather than just a sideshow?”
And apparently his bond with Stiverton wasn’t all that, because he made the head nod philosophically. And then there was a commotion from inside, and everyone who’d stepped away from the table was being called back.
*
A delegation had arrived. Nobody had quite seen the like before. Bracites from Magnelei, apparently. A dozen older men in skirts and open-fronted robes, all of thin and heavily ornamented fabrics. Five severe old women in complex, layered gowns that swept backwards like folded wings. Two score servants and attendants who were, thankfully, waiting outside the tent, or they’d have had to evict half of Higher Orders to fit them in. They had belts with jewelled buckles, and brightly coloured sashes decorated with linked chains of heraldic devices. Their leader was a big, bearded man with one arm.
Prassel took her place amongst the Sages, seeing Maserley, still back in the Fellows, shoot her a look of pure loathing. There was one ray of sunshine, anyway.
Scaffesty leaned forwards, chin resting on his knuckles. “Obviously we welcome our allies from Bracinta. Do I take it that you wish to join with us in removing the Loruthi yoke from your neck and freeing your nation from their malign influence?” Words said for form’s sake, and not exactly dripping with hope.
The one-armed man bowed in a way that didn’t seem particularly respectful. A murmur round the table suggested he was General Halseder, who’d been the chief military boy back before the coup and all the bloodshed.
What he actually said was all gibble-gabble to Prassel, because she didn’t speak a word of Bracite. Thankfully one of the old women had textbook Pel, as polite and urbane as you please.
“The nation of Bracinta,” she translated, “will be forever grateful for the assistance of our friends and allies from Palleseen in helping us through the troubled years since the Three Nights.”
There had, Prassel recalled, been a lot of claimants to the throne, and a lot of spare royal scions kicking about Magnelei. It had taken three nights for assassins of various factions and loyalties to work their way through them.
Halseder spoke again, and the woman explained, “Since that time, we are also grateful that your advisors have been present to assist us in governing our country in the absence of the heir to the throne.”
Scaffesty shifted, about to go through the rote of accepting all these plaudits, but Halseder wasn’t done, shunting his foreign words in to make sure nobody else got a hand on the tiller.
“We bring you joyous news,” the woman said. “The heir of the Hackle Throne has returned after all these years. Bracinta has a king once again.”
Utter silence descended.
“The young prince, Feder, is finally grown into a man,” the woman said, after letting the quiet creep in and make itself comfortable. “At last he is ready to take on his duties and obligations, and we welcome him. Tomorrow, he is crowned, and there shall be a feast. It is right and proper to invite our friends to such a feast. So that our friendship may prosper and grow in all the years to come.”
“Where the hell have you been keeping him?” Scaffesty exploded.
“We understand he has been educated in the ways of the world,” the woman explained blandly. “We look for you and your officers tomorrow, magister.”
*
When they had gone, everyone had something to say about it, mostly all at once. Scaffesty was forced to get his sword out and bang the hilt on the table for order.
“Obviously we can’t go,” said a Fellow-Monitor bluntly. “It’s ridiculous. They can’t just make someone their king.”
“I mean they can. It’s the sort of thing savages do, isn’t it?” someone put in.
“Wasn’t there an heir, though?” One of the older officers there, a Sage-Inquirer, scratched her head. “I recall something about that. The last of the line, spirited away for safekeeping, somesuch?”
Prassel felt the answer welling up inside her. Because she was a diligent officer and had read everyone’s records, and then pieced together those parts of the story that hadn’t actually been set out plainly. And harboured some suspicions.
She said nothing.
“We should go with three Companies and some artillery,” said one of the more hawkish officers. “Teach them their place.”
“And what do the Loruthi do, exactly, when we’re playing toy soldiers with the locals?” an Inquirer demanded acidly.
There was an awful silence.
“You don’t suppose,” someone suggested, “that they’ve sent people to the Loruthi as well, have they? To their command?”
“Of course they have,” Prassel said crisply. “Because otherwise they’d have been here handing us the keys to the city and begging us to keep them safe from our mutual enemy. This is them playing both sides. Obviously.” Revelling in the unaccustomed weight her new rank could lend to every word.
“Well then I suppose we have to go,” said the old Sage-Inquirer. “Imagine if we didn’t, but the Loruthi did. We have to go, and we have to make a good show of it. A better show than they do. We have to convince the Bracites they want to back us. Or at least stay out of it. It’s not like they’re a great military power, but they’re sitting on their hands right now. If they decided to throw in with the Loruthi, we’ll end up in the sea quickly enough against the two combined. And vice versa if they throw in with us. Sometimes it doesn’t take a heavy hand on the scales, if they’re finely balanced enough.”
Scaffesty stood, signalling that the debate phase of the meeting was over. “Well then,” he said. “Heads of department, dress uniforms. And make sure we bring a sizeable escort to the gates. Fellow-Invigilator Maserley, I want demons, flying if possible. Prassel, I want necromantic troops. I want to make sure we can defend ourselves if either the Bracites or the Loruthi try something. But more than that, if the Loruthi send their top people then I want enough of ours to carve through the city and cut the head off the snake, at which point the Bracites can take their pointy crown and shove it up their arse.”