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I’d dismounted, eventually, mainly because my leg was starting to twinge again. A chair would be easier on it, though it was a great deal harder for me to glare down at people without a horse under me. My anger had cooled some after the initial remonstration, but it was far from gone – part of me was seething, and though I knew only part of the blame lay with the two women seated across from me they were not exempt from being called to account. Not when, to my knowledge, there was not a single part of this ill-considered western campaign that wasn’t a spectacular disaster in some way.

“For my defeats I offer no excuse,” Marshal Juniper said, tone rough.

This was the most cowed I’d ever seen her act, and with damned good reason. I trusted the supreme commander of my armies, even now. I did trust her judgement less than I would have a year ago, however. The thing was, what she had done – what Hakram and Vivienne had done with her – it couldn’t simply be settled with a calm word and a reminder to be careful. Not when my delaying my return from the Everdark for as little as a month might have seen the Army of Callow either slaughtered or ended as a fighting force. The Third lost, as it likely would have been without my intervention, meant the Fourth was alone and blind to the east. Add onto this that they’d been getting hammered by the mere vanguard of the Grand Alliance host before I arrived today? The decisions taken by my foremost commander had nearly led to the end of the armies she was commanding. For the political aspects of this howling mess I would not hold her to account, but the military ones? They were very much her purview.

“I’m not interested in your falling on your sword, Marshal,” I flatly said. “I’ve already spoken with Adjutant, so I have an understanding of the deployments made and the reasons for them. Splitting the columns was risky, but tactically sound. Before that, gating in between the Dominion forces was an equally sound manoeuvre. If, once more, risky.”

My voice hardened at the last word, and though she did not flinch she did stiffen. In all our years together, I’d never once before chewed out the Hellhound like this. We’d had disagreements, the most animated of them over Bonfire and later the conduct of the campaign in northern Callow, but they’d been only that. Disagreements. For the most part I’d allowed her the run of the Fifteenth and later the Army of Callow, usually only intervening for reasons that weren’t strictly military in nature. For all the oaths and the fact that I wore the crown, our relationship had been as close to one of equals as circumstances allowed. Right now, though? This was not Catherine talking to Juniper. This was the Black Queen speaking to the Marshal of Callow, and I reasons to be furious.

“A defeat, or several, is not something that needs excusing,” I said. “To expect a flawless record would be absurd, especially given the calibre of our opposition. But I am currently looking at a series of tactically solid steps that led towards the greatest strategic disaster of our tenure together, and that needs an explanation.”

I tapped my fingers against the table.

“Why is the Army of Callow fighting in Iserre, Marshal?” I asked.

“Your Majesty-”

Vivienne’s interruption once again had my temper flaring. I glanced at her, still finding the sight of her milkmaid’s braid surprising, and arched an eyebrow. The visible disconnect between the woman I’d left behind and the one I was looking at made it easier to rein in my irritation, though only by so much.

“Do you speak for Marshal Juniper now, Vivienne?” I calmly asked.

Her lips thinned.

“This campaign was not decided by her alone,” she said. “I also bear a responsibility.”

“You are not Marshal of Callow,” I said, calling on my thinning reserves of patience. “A graduate of the War College, a trained strategist or indeed a military officer at all. For the diplomatic aspects of this debacle, the main responsibility lies with you and Hakram. I am well aware of that. This is not the diplomatic aspect.”

My eyes flicked back to Juniper.

“Well?” I said. “Should Vivienne be a part of this conversation, Marshal?”

“No, Warlord,” Juniper replied, chin rising. “She should not.”

I dipped my head in approval. At the very least she was owning the fuckup instead of trying to spread around the responsibility, though whether that was out of persisting dislike for Vivienne or a personal sense of honour I couldn’t be sure. My silence was taken as the invitation to speak that it was.

“It was necessary to evacuate the Legions of Terror,” Juniper said.

I nodded in acknowledgement.

“They fought at the Vales,” I said. “A debt was owed. How did this translate to your finding sense in deploying forty thousand legionaries through magical means of ingress and egress in the single most Name-infested region of this continent?”

“I did not believe any force below twenty thousand would prove a sufficient deterrent,” the orc said. “I can’t speak to the politics involved, but the size of the force was meant to ensure no battle would actually take place even if heroes spurred armies to move in time.”

“Then why forty and not twenty?” I said, frowning.

“Because there was no telling when you would return,” Juniper admitted. “And that meant if the northern Principate broke, we might have to occupy the Principality of Arans to prevent the Dead King from holding one side of the northern passage into Callow.”

The Stairway, I thought. Which should currently be defended by the army of Duchess Kegan, but only from the Callowan end of the pass. Considering the Principality of Hainaut was all that stood between the armies of the dead and Arans, her worry wasn’t unfounded.

“Adjutant didn’t mention this,” I said.

“The situation was still theoretical,” the Hellhound said. “We’d have a gap of at least two months between leaving Callow by Arcadia and arriving in Iserre, possibly more, which effectively killed our capacity to occupy Arans in time if the front in Hainaut broke. Committing twenty thousand soldiers – two divisions – and the Wild Hunt was splitting the forces in a manner that made it impossible to exert our strength correctly.”

I breathed out, forced myself to consider the logic in what she was saying.

“Even if you sent the two remaining divisions north before leaving, they’d arrive late and be dependent on Duchess Kegan’s army to manage occupation of Arans,” I finally said. “Which, without me at the helm, she might not be inclined to give. On the other hand, having the full four divisions with the Hunt meant if the strike proved necessary you could march in force immediately and entrust the Deoraithe with the supply line from the other side.”

“That was my reasoning,” Juniper agreed.

“And Adjutant was not informed of your theory because?”

“Because he had nothing to contribute to the planning,” the Hellhound bluntly said. “And I wanted the plans ready for implementation if things went to shit after he and the Lady-Regent tried to make a truce with Procer.”

I let a few heartbeats pass to see if she had anything to add, but she did not.

“General Hune,” I said without turning. “Anything to add?”

“Two months before our departure for Iserre, the general staffs for all four divisions were assigned a tactical exercise called Citadel,” the ogre evenly said. “While no direct mention of Procer or Arans was made, it involved rapidly occupying a foreign territory with limited forces. Priority was placed on fortifying it against an outside assault even while occupation took place.”

Essentially confirming Juniper hadn’t woven this entire Arans thing out of thin air, though I’d not been all that inclined to believe that in the first place.

“Noted,” I said.

I drummed my fingers against the tabletop, resisting the urge to hum. This was still a massive fuckup, I thought, but at least Juniper had actual reasons for having brought the Army of Callow this far out. Were they sufficient, in my eyes? I wasn’t sure, to be honest, and I shouldn’t be passing judgement on that until I had all the information at my disposal instead of a simple debrief. The Hellhound’s actions as still almost ended the Kingdom of Callow as a military power for at least a decade, and she’d proved to be imprudent repeatedly. On the other hand, every risk she’d taken was at least calculated and overall dictated by what could only be called a desperate fucking times.

“Marshal Juniper, in your own opinion where exactly was the blunder made?” I finally asked.

“When I ordered the army to gate in between the two Dominion forces,” she replied without missing a beat. “To be sound, that manoeuvre depended on certain access to gates when leaving. It was a blunder to assume that would be the case.”

She wasn’t changing her stance as to the necessity of fielding the four divisions of the army, I noted, which meant the Hellhound still believed it’d been the right call given what she’d known at the time. On the other hand, she wasn’t trying to excuse herself by saying it would have been impossible to anticipate the gates would start going wild when they did, or that scrying would be made impossible by something still unknown.

“And do you believe Adjutant the Lady-Regent interfered with how you would have planned this campaign otherwise?” I asked.

She mulled over that, for a moment.

“No more than you would have, Warlord,” Juniper said.

Fair enough, I thought.

“You’re not stripped from command,” I finally sighed. “As of now, General Hune is confirmed as the senior among the generals in the Army of Callow.”

A warning, essentially, that if she blundered this badly again then the ogre would be handed the marshal’s baton.

“When the situation in Iserre is resolved,” I continued, “a tribunal of senior officers will be convened to assess whether or not the decisions you took in this campaign warrant charges of incompetence or reckless use of authority. Their verdict will decide whether or not you are demoted back to general.”

“Understood,” the Marshal of Callow rasped.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll be perfectly clear: I have no intention of being involved with this tribunal beyond ordering it convened. This is not personal, Juniper. This isn’t happening because I am angry with an old friend, or appalled by what your decisions almost led to. But if the Army of Callow is ever to be more than just my personal warband, then its members need to be accountable for what they do.”

She nodded, but her face was unreadable. I did not know whether or not she believed me.

“None of this can hold until it’s been confirmed you’re actually Catherine Foundling,” Vivienne said, face resolutely set.

She hadn’t reached for a knife, and idly I wondered if she still carried any. Probably. Losing her Name did not mean she’d lost her skills, simply that there wasn’t quite as much weight behind them.

“Yes,” I said, smile turning hard. “Let’s talk about that.”

My fingers clenched.

“What the Hells were the two of you thinking?” I hissed out. “A pair of lines, fifteen mages? All of this led by General Hune, who is well-known to be aloof from me? Did you even pause to consider what it looked like?”

I glanced at the ogre in question, inclining my head to convey no offence was meant. She replied with the same, visibly unaffected. It was, after all, nothing but the truth.

“Precautions had to be taken,” Vivienne said, though she winced. “You’ve agreed on those in the past, Your Majesty.”

“If I’d actually been a puppet what would have happened?” I harshly asked her. “I would have splattered them across the ground, accused the two of you a fomenting a coup and I’d have your head on pikes within the hour. What could fifteen legion mages have done, Vivienne? Unless you’ve recruited practitioners capable of High Arcana in the last year, little more than scream before they died.”

“They were chosen for their capacity to check on your identity,” Juniper said. “A ritual-”

“Could have been done in private, away from the eyes of the troops,” I spoke through gritted teeth. “If I was willing to cooperate – and I will be, once this fucking conversation is over – then there was no need to play out what looked like an arrest. If I wasn’t, if I was an impostor or a puppet, exactly what difference would forty soldiers have made?”

There was a long moment of silence in the tent.

“I was aware you had no head or liking for politics when I named you Marshal, Juniper,” I said. “This, though? You should have grasped this without need for explanation. What would have happened, even if I’d been taken away without fighting and not reappeared? How many legionaries would have believed I was an impostor, after seeing me turn away the Proceran horse?”

I paused, forcing myself to breathe out and calm.

“We’re not eighteen anymore,” I said. “There’s no one to clean up our mistakes for us. You’re the highest ranked military officer in the kingdom, when you don’t consider the ramifications of your orders there are consequences.”

I turned to the other reckless gambler, almost at a loss for words.

“As for you, Vivienne, do I even need to say anything?” I tiredly said.

She looked away. That was answer enough.

“Marshal Juniper, General Hune,” I sighed. “You may resume your duties. Within the hour the hills to the west will be occupied by the Third Army, while the Fourth and fifty thousand drow auxiliaries move to the northwest to pressure the Grand Alliance’s army.”

Assuming Hakram had understood me correctly, whoever held command of the enemy army was going to have a hard choice to make. Either they’d allow an enemy force with numerical superiority and two entrenched positions – this camp and the hills General Abigail was marching on – to begin encircling them before the battle continued, or they’d have to withdraw further north and surrender any advantage they’d gained today. My bet was on the enemy retreating, given that they had reinforcements following behind us, but if Princess Rozala and the Dominion commander wanted to get into a slugging match even after my warning then the Army of Callow and the Legions needed to be readied for the fight. Juniper nodded, and rose to offer a salute. Hune settled for a nod, which given the respective sizes of herself and the pavilion was probably for the best.

“Marshal?” I called out as she began heading out.

“Ma’am?” Juniper gravelled.

“Have the appropriate mages prepare the ritual,” I said. “Discretely. Leave an officer outside this tent to guide me there when I’ve finished.”

“Understood,” the Marshal of Callow said, and left without another word.

I wondered, with a pang, if what had been said here today had just ended one of the last few friendships I had. If a relationship it’d taken years to build had just been put to the torch and we would be returning to the distant formality of the first months of the Fifteenth. Perhaps not, I thought. Orcs tended to handle reprimands like these better than humans, and she’d not named me her warlord lightly. But something would change, I knew, and it might not ever entirely return to the way it used to be. And Juniper, of the two I had chewed out, was likely to take this the best. Akua’s words about the conflict between the needs of the queen and the woman lingered at the edge of my thoughts, but they were too bitter for me to be willing to acknowledge them.

“I suppose now is to be my turn,” Vivienne Dartwick said. “Was it a kindness or a bad omen, that you dismissed the others first?”

I finally allowed myself a good look at her. What had once been short dark hair was now elaborately put together in a milkmaid braid that circle twice atop her bangs, reminiscent of a summer fair crown. The blue-grey eyes had not changed, I thought, but something about the cast of her face had. She seemed… older. Like she had grown in the year I’d seen her. The old leathers had been traded in for a long-sleeved pale blouse, conservative in cut but still baring most of her shoulders. It led into high-waist wine red skirts, though beneath I’d earlier glimpsed more practical leggings and boots. An engraved silver ring on her hand was the only visible adornment she’d bothered with, save for the royal seal of Callow I’d earlier ordered her to set down. Vivienne hadn’t grown any more beautiful, since we’d last seen each other – she was still barely taller than I, and of rather similar frame. But there was something subtly matured about the way she carried herself. My eyes flicked to the seal still on the table, and for a moment I regretted ordering her to put her down. Her regency had come to an end the moment I’d returned, truth be told, but the manner of making that clear need not be so humiliating. On the other hand, Vivienne, I thought, what choice did you give me?

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” I said. “But here we are. I have questions.”

“Duchess Kegan is now Governess-General,” she said. “And was granted broad if temporary authority in my absence, though I kept the regency title proper until today.”

“Adjutant already told me,” I said. “Kegan was the best of the choices you had. Baroness Ainsley being Keeper of the Seals stacks the council towards nobles too much for my tastes, but I’ll concede there wasn’t anyone else with both the pull and the competence.”

“The recognition of the Confederation of the Grey Eyries-”

“Was within your authority as Lady-Regent, and something I can stomach,” I calmly said. “The Matrons are vicious monsters, but also a thorn in Malicia’s side and willing to sell us goods we badly need. The scheme to make a king of Grem One-Eye was overly ambitious, to my eye, but not offensively so. Arranging for him to hold the Blessed Isle with Black’s own legions was inspired, and I wholeheartedly approve.”

“This is not,” Vivienne murmured, “the way I expected this conversation to go.”

“I’m not going to ignore the significant achievements to your name because you angered me,” I mildly replied. “You did very well with the regency. Until, at least, you decided to allow this atrocious blunder of a campaign. Then you deepened the mistake by accompanying the army personally. So I suppose my questions is this – what, exactly, did you think this mess was going to accomplish?”

She smiled, at tad bitterly.

“And my answer determines whether I remain one of the Woe,” she said.

“Don’t give me that,” I sharply said. “Whimpering in self-pity is beneath the both of us. You were given power and authority, Vivienne. I’m asking you to explain your how you used them, not throwing a tantrum. Given the messes I’ve had to clean up, this is an exceedingly measured response.”

“You didn’t deny it,” she said.

“You think fucking up means you’re not one of us?” I said.

“Doesn’t it?” Vivienne replied, eyes unreadable.

“The lot of you didn’t cut my throat after the Doom of Liesse,” I said. “Why would you think this is any different? We can lose, Vivienne. But we have to learn. We have to own it. And we have to face the fucking consequences, because otherwise we’ll just keep doing it. And it’s more important than my feelings, or yours, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

In the lucid, terrifying moment that followed those words I realized this might be how it’d started for Black. Looking at a mess and knowing that loving those responsible was one thing but exempting them from consequence another. Is that how you learned? To put it in a box and only let it out when the necessary callousness was over with.

“So tell me,” I said, repeating myself with the sudden taste of ash in my mouth. “What did you think this was going to accomplish?”

She talked, I listened, and with careful patient cruelty I hardened her to avoid making the same mistakes twice. We walked to the ritual together, afterwards, and some part of me was almost disgusted at the glints of gratitude and respect I caught in her gaze when she looked at me. Like I’d not, as lovingly as callously, burned her with shame and bound her with affection so that Vivienne Dartwick would be one step closer to the woman I needed her to be.

I was, in the end, my father’s daughter.