-----------------------------------------

  Evie

  -----------------------------------------

  She had not, in the end, escaped her well-intended imprisonment. The second time she had awoken, Dian had been predictably incapable of preventing her from rising, but she had unfortunately (or fortunately, dependent on one's perspective) anticipated this. Hurlish was waiting at Evie's bedside, and that was one woman Evie had no hope of overpowering.

  The orc smith may not have had Master's magical control over her, but her word was no less absolute. Evie had been instructed to rest, and rest she had. There'd been no other choice. Hurlish's strength was inexorable, and unlike Dian, Evie could not fight back. She'd been forced into the bed, recalcitrant, but impotent to change her fate.

  Yet while her body may have needed further mending, she was not content to simply y about. There was far too much to be done, and a great deal of it could be achieved from her bed. She had Vesta's taxation figures to review, reports from the barely-literate southern militias to decipher, as well as Ignite's accounts of the ongoing naval efforts. This st report should have been from Nora, but Evie had long since abandoned any expectation of an effective report from the woman. For one who literally never slept, she seemed to quite frequently cim she cked the requisite time to send off a proper record of her efforts.

  In short order after her awakening Evie found herself encircled by a nest of paperwork, sheets of parchment and bottles of ink id precariously across her voluminous bed. She buried herself in this work immediately, working her way through weeks and months of once-delegated tasks, sending off a torrent of corrective orders to those who had previously been too insignificant to warrant her notice. The chaotic, fractured nature of Tulian created an incredibly inefficient form of governance. It was an ongoing problem, one that had worsened considerably since the beginning of the war, as she and Master were the only ones with the wide range of information required to manage the many facets of reassembling a city-state. Master's abject refusal to install any overall leader in her stead created a multitude of bickering factions, all nipping at one another's heels as they tried to accumute what resources they could across the teetering economy.

  She was particurly gd for this work, because it allowed her to distract herself from far more uncomfortable realities. She had not spoken to Master since she awoke. Only when she had chased after the Night's Eye scouts had Evie gone so long without hearing her voice, not willingly. It disconcerted her greatly, filling her gut with a nauseating, rolling sensation, as if she were seasick.

  But she persisted in this isotion throughout the day. She was grievously injured. She had nearly lost her life. Recovering from a gaping stomach wound, even with the regur attendance of a healer, was a time-consuming process. She knew, logically speaking, that resting and recovering was the only logical path forward for her. But regrettably, she was not a purely logical creature. Evie could feel Master's anger through her colr, was intensely aware that she was intent on joining battle with the enemy. She knew Master was right for wishing her to remain in bed in the interim, and she also knew that should she learn anything of Master's struggles, she would be compelled to return to her side immediately. She did not know if Master was bluffing with her cim that she would use the colr to order Evie to rest. She did not want to know if it was not. She knew Master would hardly forgive herself for such a thing, and frankly, Evie wasn't sure how she would react to be on the receiving end of such a command. Mere months ago she would have thought nothing of it, perhaps even uded Master for asserting herself, but that Evie no longer existed. She had changed, and she was not sure how.

  Evie felt her hand drifting to her colr for the fifth time in as many hours, fingertips shaking. She forcefully pulled her hand away. She looked to Hurlish to distract herself.

  "Is the revolver in good condition?" She asked, mastering her voice.

  "Looks like it," Hurlish said. The revolver that had saved Master's life was, in Hurlish's estimation, the greatest weapon to have yet existed in this world. The smith was nearly as proud of it as she was their own child, and ever since she had joined Evie in the saferoom, she had been meticulously disassembling and reassembling it. "I don't see any signs of corrosion or rust. Cylinder rotates well, no signs of wear in the metal."

  "It's bcksteel, Hurlish," Evie said. "Surely you needn't worry about such maintenance."

  "How do you know?" Hurlish asked, clicking the cylinder to its next position, squinting at the depths of the firing chamber. "Bckpowder's corrosive as shit. You've seen what it did to the guns people didn't clean right."

  "A bcksteel bde can sit on the ocean floor for a century and be retrieved in pristine condition. Surely the rigors of bckpowder are nothing next to such a trial."

  "Maybe." Hurlish clicked the gun's cylinder, this time holding up a glowing crystal so she could see further within. "But your life's riding on this thing, and it's the second one I've ever made. I'm not going to be risking your life on a 'probably,' no matter what you say."

  "Mm," Evie hummed. She looked back at the papers for a moment, trying to focus. The words and figures seemed to twist and blur, ink running down the pages into indecipherable swirls. She had done nothing but read for thirteen continuous hours. She rubbed her eyes, looking back up at Hurlish.

  "Sara's not going to retreat, is she?"

  Hurlish looked at Evie with a kindly expression.

  "No. I mean, if you really make her, she will. But she's not going to give up easy."

  Evie pursed her lips, looking across the field of papers. Over the past few days she had sent off dozens, perhaps hundreds of missives. She had packaged weapons from Hurlish's personal collection, sending them via courier to those she thought might wield them best. She had thought and rethought certain orders, running them over and over again, sometimes for hours, before finally putting the letter into ink and sending it off. That was not the behavior of a woman who expected to be abandoning the city the moment they had recovered from their wounds.

  "...tell Sara I will listen to her judgement," Evie said.

  Hurlish straightened. "You sure?"

  "I am." Evie felt her teeth grind, but she didn't relent. "Yes. I'm sure. The cult came for us, Hurlish. Not Vesta. Not Nora. Us. Tulian is not their target. We are. And they will not abandon their pursuit after a single failed attempt. I am an effective guard for Master, for you, but I am only one woman. And right now, she is surrounded by an army." Evie set her pen down, taking slow, measured breaths. "I do not think she can outwit Graf. I think we will lose. But our enemy is secretive, hidden. At this time I can, ironically, think of no safer pce for Master than at the head of an army, even one at war. So yes. She has my blessing to continue the fight. I will join her as soon as I am able."

  Hurlish gave Evie a dubious look. "I mean, if you're sure..."

  "I am."

  "Alright." Hurlish stood, chair creaking in relief as she relieved it of her bulk. She walked up to Evie, holding out the revolver and its holster. "You going to stay here if I leave? Because if we're going to fight this thing out to the end, I've got a lot of shit to do."

  Evie flicked her eyes over to Dian, who was watching with interest from the corner. She was reluctant to admit it in front of the infuriating healer, but she nodded. "I promise I will rest."

  "Good." Hurlish dropped the gun onto the bed, putting her hands in her pockets. "I'm gonna go back to the forge. I don't know how long Sara's going to wait, but it won't be long." She gnced at Dian. "If she gives you any trouble, you let me know."

  "If I'm alive to report it," the woman grumbled. Realizing what she'd said, she patted her cheeks, recovering an amount of her decorum. She nodded primly at Hurlish. "I certainly will, of course."

  "Good. Talk to y'all ter."

  "Goodbye, Hurlish."

  "See ya, Kitty," Hurlish replied, bending over to give Evie a quick kiss atop her head. "I'll sleep here tonight, anyway. Won't be gone all that long."

  "Be careful."

  "I will."

  Hurlish walked out of the saferoom's door, stooping slightly as she left. Evie y back in her bed, exhaustion suddenly filling her. She did not know what exactly she had done, but it felt monuments. A moment in time that could not be undone. Their course had been selected, and knowing Master, not even the intervention of the gods would be capable of dissuading her.

  Evie let her eyes fall closed, sleep taking her.

  --------------------------------

  Lieutenant Shale

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  Shale's fingers ached. She had been walking through the jungle for hours now, and she had spent the entire time clutching her rifle as tightly as she was able. She had no choice. It seemed that the pnts themselves were jealous of her weapon, vines constantly looping around the barrel, branches smacking against the metal, thorns leaving long scratches in the wooden stock as she shoved her way through the undergrowth.

  The sun had risen hours ago, but that didn't seem to matter to the jungle. The uppermost canopy was dense, and only grew denser with each descending yer, all manners of pnt life competing for what little light leaked past their elders. The greenery lowest to the ground, where Shale was trudging through, often had broad, wavy leafs, sporting razor edges and thin dagger-like needles that conspired to draw blood with every step. The roots of the towering trees rose and fell like frozen waves from the damp soil, their knobby edges impossible to see, constantly stumbling her. She'd been struck across the face with branches so many times that she was spending half her time walking with her eyes closed, swinging her shortsword blindly. It hardly mattered. The jungle was so thick that she always struck something.

  Perhaps the reason she'd had her eyes closed was standing beside her. She'd volunteered to travel with the 1st Combat Engineers, her old command, because she as incensed as anyone in Tulian after the failed assassination. But she hadn't expected what the Champion would be like.

  The steel-cd woman stomped mindlessly through the brush, vines and branches alike snapping with pistol cracks as she churned endlessly forward. Since the 1st Combat Engineers had left the city, Sara hadn't so much as lifted her facepte. The only glimpse of the woman anyone had gotten was through the slits of her visor, her cold eyes always narrowed. Her melodious voice had been repced with a ft monotone, her orders given without emotion. The smoke that rose from her Champion's Runes had ebbed and flowed, sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter, but never truly stopped, a floating red mist marking her path as she swept through the forest.

  When the Champion had asked for volunteers to take rifles out into the forest, near the whole army had stepped forward, herself included. Sara had taken a thousand of them, equipped them with as many rifles as the smiths had been able to bore out on short notice, and stalked out into the night. They'd been angry and proud, ready to do their duty.

  Now, Shale knew, many were questioning themselves. The Champion wasn't herself. She was erratic, furious, and above all else, silent. That wasn't natural. The Champion of Amarat was many things, but quiet wasn't one of them. She didn't chat with the troops as she walked, didn't share any amusing anecdotes about her own time as a borer to lighten their load. She just stomped forward, branches and vines tugging futilely against her armor until they snapped, and on rare occasions she would draw her sword, cutting through the thickest of limbs blocking her path.

  And all the while, that smoke. Red and turbulent, never ending. Anyone who caught a gnce through the woman's visor saw it swirling there, mist rolling off her skin, eyes glowing the same shade. It seemed appropriate for the jungle. Shale had learned the same lessons as every child of Tulian. Most creatures cloaked themselves in greens, bcks, and browns, camoufging themselves in the jungle foliage. Those that didn't, that dared to sport bright colors on their back, did so for a reason. They were to be avoided at any cost.

  And so, as she walked beside the increasingly silent Champion, she felt it fell to her to keep the troops in order. She spoke to the lieutenants in private, conciliatory tones, warning them that though the Champion was clearly in a rage, she was no less a General than she had been before. Her orders were sound, her objectives clear, and it was their duty to see them through, even if they didn't understand them. The sergeants she approached with liquor and wine, a smudged smile on her face, pyfully jabbing them in the ribs as she handed out cups. If they'd had a piece like the Steward of Tulian in their beds, she asked them, only for some trumped-up royalists to try and snatch her away, how would they react? Herself, she wouldn't have done well. Hells, she might've been mad enough to stomp through the forest with a gun on her shoulder, daring any royal pricks to come and try it again. They'd ugh and take her booze with a slightly warmer smile, reassured that humor hadn't fled the army entirely.

  The common troops, funnily enough, were the hardest of the lot to convince. After all, they're the ones Sara worked the hardest to prove herself to. They felt the loss of the genial Champion the hardest, missed her casual conversation and utter disregard for decorum. For them, when they came to Shale and managed to work up the courage to ask after Sara, she'd not had much to offer them. Just a firm grip on the shoulder and her reassurance that the woman would, eventually, snap out of it. And if they needed to kill some Sporaton bastards to help her out of it, all the better for it. Not like they'd been pnning to do anything else.

  And in between those conversations, she'd join the effort to hack a path through the undergrowth. It took hours to travel even a single mile through the thicket, the entire line of soldiers having to halt each time one of them started struggling through a particurly difficult patch. It slowed their progress down to a crawl, but they didn't have another choice. In the jungle, with voices stifled by the endless vines and shouts overwhelmed by the hoots and cries of unseen creatures, a hundred yards was as good as a thousand. One turn around a tree, one jaunt to take a leak out of sight of your fellow soldier, and you were gone. The greenery swallowed people as eagerly as it did sound and light, and it didn't give them back without a fight.

  When they'd first waded into the forest, it had been with one thousand and eleven soldiers. Now they were down to eight hundred and thirty two. Not a single loss had been witnessed. No arrow had found an unlucky soldier, no tiger had let out a bestial roar as it dragged some poor fool off into the undergrowth. Yet every time they returned to their camp, it was with fewer soldiers.

  They'd found corpses, however. Some intact, others not. Shale had seen some herself. She'd thought she caught one soldier sleeping, curled comfortably at the base of a tree. When she'd booted their shoulder, however, the woman had slowly rolled over, skin falling apart. Her entire body had been rendered porous, circur holes as small as a needle or thick as a fist opening up across her skin with a sickening squelch. There'd been no blood left in her to fall from the gaping wounds. Then there had been the reports of one soldier whose behavior had drawn the concern of his fellows, as he'd started stumbling over ft ground, mumbling incoherently. By the time Shale had brought a healer over, the man had started violently seizing, muscles and tendons clenching so tightly that she'd heard his bones snapping, his back contorting to inhuman angles, so many vessels bursting in his eyes that they were consumed by a deep red. The healer had taken one look at the man, drawn their crossbow, and put a bolt through his head. The soldier's friends had thanked them.

  When they finally stumbled back to camp eight hours after they had left, the Champion was the first to enter the clearing. Shale was right behind her. She watched the woman draw herself up in her armor, take a deep breath, and then slowly exhale, turning her head to survey the camp.

  The first day after they had left, they'd spent countless hours cutting a single precious circle out of the foliage. A pce for them to camp deep in the jungle, where the Sporatons couldn't follow. The tents were pressed post to post, the alleys between them so narrow one had to turn aside to let another pass. The foliage they'd cut had been piled up haphazardly to form a palisade wall, trunks of all sizes and variety shed together with vines, whittled spikes decorating the entire length. Shale and the rest of the riflemen began filtering through the single gap that had been left in the defenses, bunching up as hundreds of soldiers tried to press their way through a hole in the wall five feet wide.

  The moment Shale entered the camp, she knew something was wrong. She stopped, sniffing the air. A moment ter, Sara stopped too, turning to look down at her.

  "What?" The Champion asked.

  "Bckpowder," Shale responded. "Lots of it. They fired the cannon while we were gone."

  "Something tried to get in."

  "That's what I figure. I'll interview the cannoneers and report to you."

  Sara grunted, moving off towards her tent, unslinging her massive gun as she went. Shale felt some relief from the fact that she'd remained so dedicated to cleaning the thing after every fight. Meant she wasn't totally gone.

  She hurried to the center of the camp, where the single bronze Napoleon they'd hauled through the jungle sat. They'd had to dismount it, pcing the twelve hundred pound beast on a sled, its disassembled carriage shed tightly around it. It had taken a team of twenty soldiers to pull the thing over every lump and bump, with twenty more rotating out on clearing duty ahead of it, hacking a path through the forest that was smooth enough for the sled to not get endlessly caught. The bitching from the assigned troops had been endless, but Shale thought it was worth it. She knew what lurked in the jungle, and she didn't want to face them with anything less than twelve pounds of supersonic iron.

  As she approached, the six cannoneers snapped off a set of synchronized salutes, pride practically oozing from their every pore. They were all shirtless, soaked to the bone in sweat, enough powder grime smeared across their skin that the men among them could've been mistaken for Ignite.

  "Ma'am!" The lead cannoneer barked, holding his salute.

  Shale returned the salute, then waved the man down. "At ease," she said, looking at the cannon. It was spotless, freshly cleaned. "I take it you had some trouble while we were gone?"

  "Might've been trouble, if it weren't for Popper here," he said, patting the cannon fondly. The crews of the cannons had taken to giving them names, growing loyal to the particur weapon they served on, some so attached they refused being transferred to a different crew. "She let off four shots as quick as could be, saved us all with hardly a sweat."

  "From what, soldier?"

  "Can't say what it was," the man said, directing Shale's attention a section of the wall. "Only that it was big, hungry, and not a fan of twelve pounders."

  Thanks to the haphazard nature of the palisade, Shale hadn't noticed the damage until the cannoneer pointed it out to her. Now that she was looking, she saw a deep dip in the wall where the top halves of logs had snapped off, long trails of of drying blood and gibbets of viscera dangling from the shattered wood. The damage was fifteen feet wide or so, and the spray of bckening blood covered twice that distance, thick globs flung so far as to coat nearby tents.

  "What'd it look like?" Shale asked. She'd seen few jungle beasts in her lifetime, and none had been the same.

  "Mighty fucked up when we were done with it," one of the other cannoneers happily decred, her expression beaming. She, like the rest of the cannoneers, went without a shirt, and it took a bit of effort for Shale to maintain eye contact. Sara had said that if the men were allowed to go without shirts in camp, so were the women, a perfectly reasonable command that Shale nonetheless could have done without. "Started off looking like a snake with big fat legs," she continued. "Long snout like a viper and all that, but by the time it ran off its nose was as good as turned inside out. Knocked out both its big fangs with the first shot, and after the next few I'd be surprised if it even had a single tooth left in that maw."

  "Did it ever get over the wall?"

  "No ma'am," the lead cannoneer said, taking back control of the conversation from his over-excited juniors. "Tried to climb over several times, but its legs were short– retive to its body at least, they were ten feet from shoulder to toe I'd wager– and it couldn't scramble over before we got reloaded. Four times it tried to get in, and four shots we sent its way. Last I saw, the beast was scrambling back into the forest like a whining pup."

  Shale looked at the forest beyond the gap in the wall. It was as uncompromisingly opaque as the rest, not a gap wide enough to fit a single human through.

  "How?" Shale asked simply. "I don't see any trail."

  "Can't say, ma'am," the cannoneer shrugged. "We were wondering about that ourselves. Shouldn't have been able to squeeze a toe through the trees, yet it wandered off easy as could be. Slipped on through like it was nothing. Didn't get thinner, trees didn't get farther apart, but it fit all the same."

  "That doesn't make any sense."

  "Sure doesn't, ma'am," the cannoneer nodded.

  " Fucking jungle," she grumbled.

  "Fucking jungle," the cannoneer sagely agreed.

  There was a brief pause, the cannoneers holding their at-ease position before her. She had nothing else to say, so she nodded authoritatively. "Well then. Good work. I'll inform the General."

  "Thank you, ma'am."

  Before Shale could walk off, she paused. The cannoneer was shifting in pce, looking awkward.

  "Something the matter?" She asked.

  "Ah, not properly," he said. "Just... we were wondering, ma'am, what the General's pns are. We've been in the jungle for a few days and all, and we've made a few raids and gotten away easy enough, but it gets closer each time, so... we were wondering, was all. What's happening next."

  Shale didn't let her real emotion show. "I know you're used to the general telling you all exactly what's coming next, but things've changed. After the assassination attempt, she's decided to be a bit quieter about those things. I'm sure she'll let the army know as soon as she can."

  "O'course, ma'am," the cannoneer said, bobbing his head. "We'll look forward to it."

  "Good. Back to cleaning, then."

  The cannoneer looked at Popper, their 12-pounder Napoleon. It was glistening in the sun, golden bronze shining bright enough to blind. Shale held his eyes, uncompromising. "Yes ma'am," he sighed, pulling a rag from his waistband.

  Shale walked away as the crew took to the task of cleaning their spotless cannon, careful to keep her expression under control as she marched towards the Champion's tent.

  As always with Sara, her tent was no different from any of the other soldier's. It was simple white canvas held up by wooden poles, nothing to signify that it belonged to the leader of a nation. Shale reached up and rapped her knuckles against one of the tent poles, clearing her throat.

  "Come in," Sara grunted. Shale took a deep, silent breath, then flipped open the fp and crouched in.

  The tent was choked with the scent of sulfur. The Champion of Amarat was covered head to toe in her thick-sbbed armor, sitting crosslegged on the floor with her massive gun on her p. It was broken open, a plethora of cleaning tools scattered on the floor around her. She was running a swab down the barrel, rinsing the soaked rag in a bucket filled with swirling bckpowder detritus. Her visor was still lowered, and Shale couldn't tell if Sara gnced up as she entered.

  "I heard," Sara said. "Camp was attacked by something while we were gone."

  "No casualties," Shale said.

  "Good."

  Silence reigned for far too long. Shale was half-crouched in the low tent, watching the Champion methodically clean her weapon.

  "Ask it," Sara said.

  Shale swallowed. "What are we doing next?" She gingerly lowered herself to the tent floor, sitting crosslegged opposite Sara. It felt like she'd entered the cage of a half-starved lion. "The troops know something's not right. We've been attacking the enemy, but we haven't done much of consequence. They can tell that. And every time we meet them, they're a bit better prepared, get a bit closer to catching us. The soldiers are dropping like flies in the forest, Sara. It hasn't been five full days. If we spend another week like this, there won't be anyone left."

  "I don't know."

  "What?"

  "I don't know what we're going to do next." Sara set her swab aside, grabbing a canteen filled with oil. She dabbed it onto a clean rag, and began to wipe her gun down. She didn't look up as she spoke. "We're fucked. Every pn I had involved getting the Sporatons to attack the city's defenses. But Graf's not taking the bait. We were going to win. There were two reasons for it. Our defenses, and our training."

  Sara pulled the hammer back, dabbing oil down into the gap. She worked the mechanism back and forth, ensuring it was well lubricated. "We were always going to be outnumbered, but we're better fighters. Between the armor, training, city walls, and now the muskets, I was betting our troops could kill five for every one we lost. That'd be enough to break them. But now Graf's training the troops, and that means we're fucked. We could run out of the city and attack him, but we'd be outnumbered and surrounded in a heartbeat. Even if we're better fighters, we'd get dragged under by sheer numbers. If we stay behind our defenses, though, we'll be giving him all the time in the world to prepare. He'll come at us with troops as skilled as ours, with four times our numbers. That'll be that."

  "So why are we out here?" Shale asked, careful to keep her voice low. "Why march out into the forest? Why keep attacking?"

  "Because I fucked up," Sara said with a shrug. The casualness of the motion didn't match the vitriolic self-hatred cing each word. "I thought the cult was secondary. I didn't care about them. I thought they were just riled up over some petty god bullshit I didn't care about. Sure, Amarat cared, but I don't give a shit. I'm here to help people, not gods. If Amarat's so powerful, she can deal with that shit herself. I'm here to make a pce worth living in, not to be some divinity's glorified errand runner."

  As the Champion of Amarat bsphemed against her patron, Shale resisted the urge to retreat. She didn't want to get end up as colteral damage if Amarat suddenly decided to obliterate Sara from the face of the pnet.

  "Turns out, I was wrong," Sara said, oblivious to the danger of her words. "The cult bullshit isn't some god's petty worshipers working to their whims. Well, they are, but not just that. They're here to fuck me over in particur. And Evie got hurt because of it." Sara finished wiping her gun down, shutting it with a sharp click-click. "So now I want to kill them."

  "The cultists? Or the nobles?"

  "I'm not picky." Sara set the gun aside, leaning it up against a trunk. She turned back to Shale with a deep sigh, and, for the first time in days, lifted her visor. Shale blinked. Sara's face was shadowed by dark rings, whites of her eyes run across with red lines. The enchanting beauty that defined the Champion of Amarat was still there, but it was faded and pallid. She looked deeply, profoundly tired.

  "I want to kill them all," Sara said in a ft monotone. "The cultists. The nobles. Hell, at this point I've stopped caring about killing the conscripts. They're fighting for an awful cause, in the end. So yeah. All of them. Most never deserved to live, and now they're coming for the people I care about, just because I care about them. That's not something I'm going to allow." She tugged at her gauntlets, working her fingers around in the cloth-padded metal. "But I don't know how to get to them. They're surrounded by an enemy I can't beat. Hell, I'm not sure if I can kill them, not even if I ended up right in front of them. One of them survived a fight with Selliana. That shouldn't happen. So what the hell chance do I have?"

  Sara let out a long breath, rubbing her eyes. "And should I even be doing that? They're helping Tulian's enemies. But I'd be lying if I said I was gunning for them because of that. It's personal, pure and simple. I ordered the 1st Combat Engineers out here because I wanted to kill nobles. I justified it, of course, I always do. If I can't beat Graf in the open field, I thought I could take the floor out from under him. Nobles are cowards. They think they're warriors, but they're not. Take away their armor and their horses, and they're just scared, spoiled children, and they'll break as easy as any so-called peasant rabble. But it's not working. Graf's protecting them too well. It's like he can read my fucking mind. Every time we attack, he's there, and every time he's there, he's just a little bit closer. I'm the one on the offensive, but I can feel the noose he's slipping around my neck, and I can't do a goddamn thing about it. And now there's two hundred people dead in this jungle, all because of my vendetta. How the hell do I justify that?"

  Shale waited a moment, unsure if there was more the woman was going to say. Her entire speech had been spoken haltingly, starting and stopping as thoughts came to her. Earlier Shale had been wondering how Sara had managed to sleep in her armor. Now she was wondering if the woman had slept at all.

  "So that's it, then?" Shale asked, speaking in a whisper. "We've lost the war?"

  Sara rubbed her eyes yet again. "Evie thinks so. And she's not exactly in the habit of being wrong about that sort of thing."

  "So why haven't we given up?" Shale asked. "If we surrender, you might be able to get a good deal. Keep some of the ws you made, maybe argue over who gets put in charge. It would be better than nothing."

  Sara scoffed. "There's no negotiating with tyrants, Shale. And you've got no idea what standards I hold myself to. The ideas, the ws that I've put forward so far, they're nothing. The barest of the bare. If what I've done now is all I'll ever achieve, then there was no goddamn point in trying in the first pce."

  "So it's all or nothing with you?" Shale wasn't sure why she was challenging the Champion like this. She shouldn't be. It was stupid. Sara was a woman of Passion, one who had spent days teetering on the razor edge of blinding fury. But Shale couldn't help herself. The words started to spill forth. "You think that if you can't do it perfectly, you might as well give the fuck up? That there's no point in improvement, not unless it's everything, all at once?"

  "What exists now is nothing," Sara snapped. "So what if I've let commoners own nd? So what if I'm letting them keep the food they've grown? That's not progress, that's basic fucking human rights. Even if I surrender, even if I get them to put those ws on the books, they won't st. They'll whittle away at them, chip them down until the people are back under the same bootheel they've always been under."

  "So rather than have them live a better life for just a little while, you'd just have them go straight back to suffering?" Shale demanded. "You did something here, Sara. You gave them hope. You gave it to them. It's not yours to take away anymore."

  "Like it fucking matters?" Sara countered. "Oh boy, I gave them hope. Woopty-fucking-doo. But now what? I didn't give them their life, but if I order them to keep fighting, I'll sure as hell take it away, can't I? Two thousand of our troops are dead, Shale. I don't want three thousand added to that tally."

  Shale's eyes fshed. She stood up, stooping in the low tent, bent over the woman. "It's not your fucking choice though, is it?" She growled. "You think you're that fucking big of a deal? You're not. You worked too hard to make sure you aren't. You're in charge of the army, Sara, but I'm in charge of the cannons. If I gave them the order to stand and fight, and you told them to retreat, do you know who they'd listen to?"

  Sara gred up at her, anger and exhaustion intermixing across her face. Shale jabbed a finger down into the woman's shoulder.

  "They'd listen to me. They'd do what I say. You aren't in control. You aren't their Queen. Tough shit, but you worked too hard to make sure that's true. They follow your orders not because you're some godsent Champion, but because they think you know what to do. But if you really fuck up, if you fuck up bad enough to, say, tell them to give the hell up after all their work, all their sacrifice? They won't goddamn listen. They'll look to their sergeants, and their lieutenants, and their corporals, and we'll tell them to keep fighting. You don't matter."

  Sara's fists clenched in her gauntlets, metal creaking. Shale flinched at the sight, but she didn't back up.

  "So that's what you want from me, then?" Sara asked. "Some st fucking grand charge? Riding out into the rising sun to meet our fate?"

  "I want you to goddamn win!" Shale all but screamed. "I want you to take all those little toys you've cooked up, I want you to load every st one with as much fucking bckpowder as they can take, and I want you to shove it up their ass and pull the trigger! I don't want to live under a fucking King anymore, Sara. I don't want to have a noble strutting around in their stupid fucking armor, telling me where I can shit and where I can piss. None of us do! And now it's your job to make it happen."

  "They'll die," Sara snapped. "The whole fucking army. Even if we somehow won, barely any of them will be there to see it. They'll be too busy feeding buzzards with their guts to appreciate what they died for."

  "So? So? You think they'd rather live like a dog than die like a human? Is that it?"

  "Fucking yes!" Sara roared. She stood now, too, locking eyes with Shale from an inch away, csping her shoulders and dragging her in close. "I'm not building this city for ghosts! Someone has to be there to live in it!"

  "It's not your choice to make!" Shale shouted, shoving against Sara, hard. It did nothing, didn't even budge the woman, but it felt right. "You didn't conscript a single goddamn one of these soldiers, Sara. They're volunteers, every one of them. They're here to fight. They'll fight with or without you. Maybe they'll win, maybe they'll lose. Maybe they'll all end up dead. No one will know until it's all over. But you know what I know?" Shale shook Sara's hands off her shoulders, taking a step back towards the tent's fp. "If they're going to be fighting anyway, they want you in charge."

  Sara took a single step forward, leaning close, until Shale's vision was consumed by the sight of her bck armor.

  "Do you think they know that I don't care about them?" Sara asked. She spoke in a whisper, nearly a hiss, her pupils vibrating with senseless rage. "I realize that, now. That I don't care about them as much as I do Evie. As I do Hurlish. All my grand ideals, all my fucking... fucking internet arguments, and anarchist theory, and protesting? It's nothing. Nothing next to keeping them safe. Do you think they know that, Shale? That if it came down to it, if I had to choose between ten thousand of them or one woman, I'd leave them to rot?"

  "Some of them might. Others might think you're some fwless hero. But you know what? It doesn't. Fucking. Matter."

  "How could it not?" Sara demanded, ripping her helmet off, cwing at her hair. "How could... could being led by a fucking hypocrite, a fucking piece of shit like me, not matter? I wouldn't follow someone like me into battle. I wouldn't listen to a single goddamn thing they had to say."

  "Yes, you would. You would, because there's no one else. No one that can take your pce. We'll fight without you, Sara. But we'll lose. They have Graf Urs on their side, the King of Sporatos and hundreds of his Knights. All we've got is you. Our Champion. You might not matter, what you want doesn't matter, but you know what does? The goddamn goddess on your shoulder. That's what they need. Not you. What you represent."

  Sara held eye contact for a long, wavering moment. Her jaw was clenched, her greasy hair tangled and obscuring her face. Her pupils continued to vibrate, dited to narrow dots. The smoke that rolled off her skin had begun to pool around their feet, filling the bottom of the tent with a deep red mist, as if they were standing in a pool of boiling blood.

  And then, abruptly, as if a lever had been thrown, the Champion's spine snapped straight. Her head smmed into the tent's roof, but she ignored it. Her quivering jaw unclenched, cracking open in a wide smile. Shale felt a chill run across her skin, hair raising.

  "Aight," the Champion said. "Alright. Cool. Fuck it then, right?" She reached up, unbuckling one of her armor's shoulder straps. "I mean, fuck it, right? That's what you wanted to hear? Fuck it, I'll fight. We'll go after them." She finished unbuckling the first strap, moving to the second. "We can't wait for them, after all. Graf'll figure something out if we give him enough time. So yeah. On the attack. The big, final csh, a set-piece moment. A decisive battle. That's what all the textbooks talk about, anyway. The fight where everyone on every side brings everything they have, and at the end of it, one side's dead and gone, and the other's standing tall." She finished unbuckling her chestpte. It fell off her body to hit the dirt with an earthy thump, so heavy it halfway buried itself in the soil. She shook her arms out, beginning to pull off her gambeson. "The climax. The final, big fucking melee. All in, double or nothing. Sure. Why not? Let's go. Let's head back to the city. Start telling people to pack it up. We've got an army to lead."

  "Sara–"

  "Nope," the Champion snapped, still smiling wildly. "You want me to fight, to throw everything in? Sure. I will. But you know what that means?" She tore off her gambeson, so she was covered only by a thin, disgustingly stained undershirt. Her smile grew even wider, wider, so wide that it looked like her skin should have split. "You get to see what it looks like when I give the fuck up. So no. No 'Sara' this, no 'Sara' that. Fuck it. Fuck it, we're attacking. And I'm going to do every goddamn thing in my power to make it work, and you, all of you, you're going to look at me and say 'yes ma'am', because that's the only fucking thing you're allowed to do. If this army is going to march to its death, it's going to be because of me. Not any of you. It's all on me now." She began tearing off the armor covering her legs, one eye still locked on Shale. "You got that?"

  Shale swallowed. She nodded. "Yes ma'am."

  "Good. You're dismissed."