It is a curious thing, how the trials of exarchs and daemons alter the calculus of war. Absent some overwhelming circumstance, only an exarch can counter a daemon, and so too in reverse. But there are daemons, and then there are daemons. Madiel and Abatur both perished fighting off the Sun Eater, and it was all that Camiel could do to keep Sammāʾēl from Tithing their strength. That is, perhaps, the greatest danger when such powerful forces meet: to the victor, the Tithes. And the sudden increase in power at the conclusion of such a duel is doubly catastrophic to the allies of the loser.

* The Marian Codex

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7th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Agrat, in the form of an owl, landed on Valeria Avitian du Champs d'Or’s shoulder as soon as she’d slid down off her palfrey. Valeria passed off the reins of her new horse to a groom, then headed toward the gate of Cheverny Castle itself. Her riding boots scuffed at the paving stones as she walked, and she lifted her skirts to keep them off the ground. She was thankful her father had disposed of the bodies, at least, before she arrived. One could never tell, with him.

Servants scrambled out of her way along the route to the great hall, which she found her father had decorated according to his own peculiar tastes. Cages of black iron had been suspended from the beams overhead, two to each side of the throne, and every cage held an Exarch. Valeria recognized all of them from her time at court: Dame Margaret, who’d accompanied her hawking twice and always been so clever; Sir Bruin, the Bear, called so because of the thick coarse black hair that covered his body in such profusion; Sir Cynric, who had sung to her once when she’d first come to Cheverny, before it was plain her sights were set on the Prince; and of course Sir Lorengel, the late King Lothair’s nephew through his sister. Her father would not allow such a valuable piece to be removed from his game at such an early stage.

Though each of the Exarchs had been stripped to their underclothes and bound in chains so that they could hardly move, the more disturbing sight by far was what had been done with their Angelus. The stone floor behind each cage had been painted with a circle in blood, now dried rust-red, and surrounded by sigils and symbols which Valeria doubted more than a handful of people on the continent could read. The circles went right to the walls, and each Angelus was spiked up against the stone with shafts of iron. Golden ichor dripped from their wounds and from their shoulder blades, where their wings had been torn from their perfect bodies.

Valeria, well practiced in her father’s horrors, showed no more reaction on her face than a raised eyebrow, and continued up the center aisle to the throne, where Decimus Avitus, sometime heir to an Etalan Emperor, and sometime Baron du Champs d'Or, lounged like a cat.

“I see that you both have recovered from your wounds,” the Exarch of Sammāʾēl drawled, as if she held only half his interest. She would be a fool to believe it.

“Father,” Valeria greeted him, lowering herself in a curtsy. “I am recovered and prepared to serve you once again.”

“And your service was so valuable the first time that I must have great need of you.” Avitus lifted a goblet of wine, then shook his head. “No, as I recall you had a single mission, daughter, and you bungled it. How hard could it be for you to fuck a single mortal man? In my experience anything with a warm hole will do, and I could have sworn you had the requisite body parts. Are you so unspeakably hideous that he was disgusted by you?”

“No, Father,” Valeria said, rising to meet his gaze. “I was well on my way to seducing the Prince, but these things take time.”

“No, you aren’t ugly,” Avitus agreed. “I’ve had half a mind, occasionally, to take you to bed myself, but I thought the wine more valuable with the cork intact. So why aren’t you pregnant, daughter? I wanted an heir in your belly before we struck. Are you too good to slip into his tent one night and do what comes naturally? Every animal in nature knows how to fuck; horses do it, pigs do it, even dogs. You appear to be less competent than any of them.”

“I thought,” she began, swallowing to wet her throat, “It would be better for the child to be legitimate. I had him almost ready to wed me.”

“I don’t give a fig whether the child was legitimate or not, you could have been known the world over as Lionel’s whore for all I care, so long as you came back with child!” Avitus threw his goblet down onto the floor of the great hall, where it skittered off across the stones, leaving behind a trail of wine as it went.

“I apologize, Father,” Valeria said. She lowered her eyes to the floor; only a fool challenged him by meeting his gaze when he was in such a state.

“You apologize. What good does that do me?” Avitus waved his arm around the room. “We hold Cheverny, the king is dead, and if you were with child we would have a story to tell the populace, a tale they would have believed. A regency, until the child was born and grown. There would have been grumbling, perhaps some minor rebellion, but the peasants would have gone along with it. Now we have a Prince who didn’t die, an empty womb, and a civil war in the making. I am not best pleased, Valeria. You have disappointed me greatly. You forced me to attack before we were ready, on top of it all. And you even, somehow, managed to get my daemon wounded.”

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“That wasn’t my fault!” Valeria protested. “We thought there would only be two Exarchs at the battle, three at most. There were four.”

Avitus drummed his fingers against the right arm of the throne. “There were six Exarchs here,” he reminded her with a scowl. “Though I suppose you are not so capable as I am. Tell me of these unexpected Exarchs, now that you aren’t half dead from being gutted like a fish.”

“One of them was from the Caliphate,” Valeria explained quickly. “A woman with a red veil, and a curved sword. She felt new to the Accords - not a single thread above red. I do not know her name.”

“And the other?”

“Sir Trist du Camaret-à-Arden,” Valeria said, her stomach roiling at the thought of the man. “Exarch to Acrasia, a faerie in service to the King of Shadows.”

Her father’s fingers stopped, leaving the room silent but for the moans of the imprisoned Exarchs. “Auberon permitted an Exarch?” Avitus frowned. “He hasn’t done that since Sir Madoc.”

“He did more than that,” Valeria said. “He claimed the Tomb of Abatur, then sent his Hunt to war against Adrammelech.”

“Aubreron does not take sides,” her father snarled. “He did not take sides three hundred years ago, he would not take a side now.”

“Then something has changed,” Valeria insisted. “Because if it weren’t for the faerie knight, we would have put the southern Exarch down like a cur, then been able to turn the Tomb just as Adrammelech intended. And Bors would have died, and Lionel been mine.”

“I do not like things that cannot be predicted,” Avitus said. “Bathin,” he called, and a daemon coalesced out of mere absence. It took the form of a towering, muscular man, nearly nude but for a loincloth, with the massive tail of some great serpent, as well as the customary four horns and bat-like wings of cobalt blue. Its skin was of a shade more often seen in stone than in human flesh, and his eyes were bright red, like rubies held before a fire.

“You have need of me, First Exarch?” the daemon rumbled.

“Indeed,” Avitus said. “You will take my daughter, and Agrat with her, to the Caliphate of Maʿīn, and then you will return to me. You, daughter,” he said, leaning forward in the throne to pin her with his gaze, “Will use whatever means necessary to deprive the Caliphate army in Narvonne of support. You will have it recalled, along with the Exarch. Seduce the Caliph, kill whoever you need to, see the entire province rotted with plague for all I care, but pull those allies from Lionel Aurelianus’ side. Is that understood?”

“It is, Father,” Valeria confirmed. “I will not fail you again.”

“As for the other,” Avitus said, contemplating. “Camaret-à-Arden. Is this Rience’s whelp?”

“I believe Sir Rience du Camaret-à-Arden is Sir Trist’s father, yes,” Valeria answered.

“Excellent.” Her father smiled, and it was a thing of horror. “It is long past time that I settle accounts for Cecilia. When you return, Bathin, you will collect Vinea and Zepar, and the three of you will join Sir Moriaen and his troops on their way south. Before he invests Rocher de la Garde, you will go to Camaret-à-Arden and burn it to the ground. Take some of the Kimmerian mercenaries, kill everyone there, save for Sir Rience, who you will bring to me, and then salt the earth. If that doesn’t draw this boy out, nothing will.”

“And when he comes to us?” Bathin asked.

“Kill him, and his faerie slattern, as well,” Avitus instructed. “You have my permission to consume them both for your Tithes. And the both of you, consider this. I detest failure, but I reward victory.” The last son of the last Etalan Emperor rose from the throne of the Kingdom of Narvonne, turned his back to Valeria and Bathin, and approached one of the four iron cages.

In the cage, Sir Bruin stirred. “Bors’ll do for you, traitor,” he spit. Before any of them could hear what the imprisoned Exarch might say next, Avitus’ arm shot through the bars, and his fingers wrapped around the man’s throat. Chains rattled, and Bruin struggled, but with no more effect than a child thrashing in the arms of a grown man. Finally, his eyes bulged outward, his face turned purple, and he collapsed. Avitus twisted, and a sickening snap echoed across the throne room.

Not only Bruin’s soul, but every Tithe he had ever collected, and used to feed his Boons, shot up Avitus’ arm in writhing flashes of light. He smiled, eyes half closed and fluttering, as he absorbed the power flowing through him, then finally dropped a corpse which had once been an Exarch onto the bottom of the iron cage.

Against the stone wall behind the hanging cage, an Angelus without wings screamed. Valeria could see burning threads of yellow and orange lash out from where the immortal creature was spiked to the wall, but each fiery whirl stopped at the age of the circle drawn in blood on the floor. It was as if an invisible barrier extended up from the dried blood, no less solid for all that it could not be seen with the eye.

Her father cast a single glance over the Angelus, lip twisted in contempt. “Be silent,” he said. “I’ll get to you later.” With strides that ate up the distance, he crossed the throne room and approached Valeria.

“Take a lesson from this, daughter,” Avitus said, reaching out with one hand and catching her by the chin. It hurt, and Valeria tried to will her body not to tremble. “Please me, and I will let you feed from one of those pathetic, mewling knights. You would like that, yes? Another taste of power?”

Valeria winced and did her best to nod.

“I thought so.” Her father’s hot breath was in her face, and it stank of wine. “But remember this: I can always get myself another daughter, or a son. Your death would be no more inconvenience to me than putting down a horse with a broken leg. What is a few years to grow another whelp? Nothing.”

He thrust her face aside with his hand and released her, and the force of it, the raw strength, was enough to throw Valeria off balance. Agrat rose from her shoulder with a flap of wings as she fell, and skinned her palms on the stone floor of the hall.

“Get out of my sight,” her father said, turning his back on her, and strode over to the throne once again. Valeria scrambled back to her feet, and practically fled for the entrance to the great hall. “And daughter?”

She paused, looking back, to see that Avitus had once again settled into the throne of the Kingdom of Narvonne.

“Do not fail me a second time.”