Some Strings Attached

  Marci brooded as she watched the mountains give way to rolling pins that had once been green and verdant. Vast farmnds that had supported much of the northern realms, millions of people, had stretched for hundreds of leagues in every direction: wheat and oats and barley and vegetables and all the other things that with sufficient ingenuity could be turned into alcohol.

  Those times, however, were long gone. Now what fields remained were filled with anaemic looking crops, and worked by teams of men and women bound in chains, under the watchful eyes of demonic supervisors. Jagged, bck-stone fortresses sprouted from the ndscape like vicious sores, and huge brambles and thorns grew where once neat green hedgerows had separated fields. Even the sun overhead seemed weak and feeble, peering through sulphurous yellow clouds that crackled and rumbled with dry thunder.

  The Northnds, a pce that beyond a few unsuccessful sorties, and those who willingly colborated with the twelve demon lords and dies who ruled it, no southerner had seen in decades.

  Marci's body still hadn't reformed, and the Shard ached from where it had been struck. She could sort of feel… potential building up, moving towards what she hoped was a recreation of her body, but she couldn't be sure. Like so much about her fortress, she didn't really understand how anything worked.

  It was two days since she had been attacked; two days since she had nearly died. In that time, she had thrown herself into improving her defences. She had recruited more demons, developed doors that opened on a whitelist system, and automatically shut and warded themselves again afterwards. She had instituted a round the clock guard of the Throne-room, which was the only way to access the Shard itself, and tripled the number of guards positioned around the dungeon.

  Her undead army too, had grown, and her test attempts had come out much better than previous efforts—less rickety and reliant on their armour, quicker and faster and stronger. Not up to Saoirse's efforts, but according to the demoness 'extremely impressive.'

  She hadn't spoken to Of again, although she had watched him with her Shardsense as he'd spoken to Gillian. The dwarf was battered and bruised, but still angry and defiant, and cursed not only Marci, but Of, Anke, and Tissa too. 'Colborators,' he called them, no matter how hard Of tried to convince him that Marci was still the woman they knew: in his worlds 'slightly unreliable, but with a heart in the right pce.' The dwarf had spat on the floor, and cursed their ancestors.

  She was also running into some difficulties of a more mundane nature: finance. Although her treasury was still full beyond what would have been her wildest dreams. Well, after she'd stopped being a princess, at least, it was slowly and steadily diminishing. Demons needed to be paid to fight, and although their retainers weren't that bad, their fee for taking part in battles and skirmishes was quite significant. She'd already burnt through more than a third of her treasury; without any income, and with her demonic army now ballooned out into the three hundreds, she knew that it would not be long before she ran out of funds and, consequently, a way to maintain the army she needed to defend herself.

  Selling the heroes' gear, and the gear of all the dead and captured soldiers had helped defray some of the costs, although her troops got a cut of that 'loot' as well. Had she not been a monster, and been prepared to engage in svery, she would be well out ahead. But no matter what Gillian thought, Marci wasn't a monster—she was just trying to survive, and would release all of those in the Dreadfort's cells just as soon as she could figure out a way to that didn't immediately turn over potentially fatal intelligence about her weakness to her enemies—which, for the moment, was the entire south.

  She also wasn't blind to the suffering below her, even if she knew that currently there was little she could currently practically do. If she tried to free the ensved kattdjur, perhaps justifying it as a 'raid' to her demons, she would bring down whatever Shardkeeper controlled this area onto her head, and then have absolutely nowhere to run and recuperate. Perhaps, in the future, assuming she survived that long, she'd be able to do something.

  A demon overseer, an incubus, took off from ahead of her, and coasted slowly forward to meet the Dreadfort as it cut through the sky. They were, apart from a whip and a dagger, unarmed and more or less unarmoured, and approached at such a leisurely pace that it was clear that it wasn't an attack run.

  Still, Marci tracked him as he came into nd through the eyes of her watchers, catching as his green eyes switched to bzing red, and a familiar, feminine and slightly gurgling voice came from his throat.

  "Hello, Marci dear, are you there?" said Deirdre through her demon puppet. "Permission to come aboard?"

  Marci reached for the nearest demon, a female wrath demon with green fur who Marci hadn't bothered to learn the name of.

  "Hello Deirdre," said Marci, trying to keep her tone as friendly as the other Shardkeeper's ostensibly was. "Please. Is this your territory?"

  "It is indeed!" said Deirdre, cpping the incubus' hands together. "But don't worry, I know you're not here to try and take the nd—although I'll have to ask you to slow to a stop here, you're already taking siphoning some of my mana."

  Mana? Ah, yes, right. Like the Dreadfort, the slime-demoness' Shardfort was devouring the life-force of the pnet. It was what had turned the once verdant farmnd beneath so twisted and decrepit.

  Marci flexed her will, and the fortress came to a halt. This far north, she wasn't too worried about getting attacked by another aerial army, and she didn't want to offend her monstrous host. Not while she was so weak.

  "Wonderful," said Deirdre, putting the demon's hands on his hips and looking around at the grand, imposing gothic architecture of the bck, pyramid-like Dreadfort, which rose in great archways and buttresses that didn't seem to serve much purpose, and had suffered some damage in the battle, but which Marci had noticed were slowly… regrowing. "Spectacur—I always was a little envious of Aisling's home. And your cannons! Always packed such a punch…"

  She chuckled.

  "So, my dear, I see some signs of battle—ran into some trouble in the bordernds, hmm?"

  Marci had been hoping she wouldn't notice, but apparently the shattered, only partly repaired battlements and scored and gouged arched entryway made it obvious.

  "Yes, a coalition, mostly on gryphons," said Marci. "A few hundred."

  "Hmm, I see," nodded Deirdre. "And do you think they have many more of such forces avaible to them?"

  Marci paused for a moment, pretending to consider the question, even though she already knew the answer. Yes, most likely. The Southnds were big, and if they were already banding together after her raid on Saxmoor it was likely that they would be able to raise more forces. Particurly since, although several gryphons had been killed, many had got away, and were smart and loyal enough to return to their roosts.

  The question was, did she want to let Deirdre know that? The demons seemed like they were already more or less set on unching a southern invasion, would overestimating or underestimating the Southnds deter them?

  In the end, she opted to err on the side of pying up their strength.

  "I believe so, which is why I came north," said Marci. "You mentioned that you would put some resources at my disposal?"

  "But of course, darling," said Deirdre, before leaning in closer and offering her puppeteered demon's hand. "Especially, if you've decided to take us up on the offer we discussed?"

  The offer. To join the faction of Shardkeepers organising the invasion. At the time of the cocktail party back in Pandemonium, Marci had pretended to be interested just long enough to learn the outline of what they were pnning, and then get away to warn the South about what she knew. She hadn't considered actually joining them.

  But that was before she had nearly died, nearly been overrun by the army of gryphon-bound warriors and her friend's betrayal. And she needed resources to pay her troops, to say nothing of a safe harbour. At least long enough to figure out what she was going to do next.

  But, for whatever reason, this… felt different. Everything morally dubious before this had either been in aid of surviving or freeing her friends. But this? Signing up with Shardkeepers who wanted to invade her homend, to subjugate her people as the kattdjur beneath her had been subjugated? That went beyond survival, desperation, that even went beyond her not-actually-but-sort-of 'colboration.'

  She could refuse, head south again and try to y low, not attract too much attention and perhaps see off another assault. But the next assault would almost certainly be bigger, and she was haemorrhaging gold; she knew that she probably wouldn't survive in the mountains, not at least without time to prepare. Marci needed help, and here it was, being offered, with just the small price of whatever remained of her soul.

  The Southnds weren't going to help her, nor listen to her: not Altnd, not her mother, not anyone. That had been a fool's hope. All she would ever be to them was just another Shardkeeper, just another monster—even Gillian, a man she had loved like a brother, had turned on her.

  So, what was she really losing by making such an agreement? No one was ever going to believe that she hadn't become a Shardkeeper on purpose, that all her actions had been to defend herself or rescue her friends. So why should hold herself back in some futile hope that someone might believe her?

  Part of her knew that this line of reasoning would lead her to a very, very dark pce; but there was another part of her: the scared and frightened and hurt part of Marci that still could barely comprehend how Gillian could have betrayed her like he did.

  Marci gnced at Deirdre's hand. It was, on the surface, fairly normal looking—with a skin tone that wouldn't look out of pce on a human, elf, or fairy. But it didn't feel like a hand, it felt like a spider's web, and that one touch would draw her in.

  "Ah, I see you still aren't convinced of our pn," she said, her smile faltering just a little. "Well, not to worry—you still have a little time to decide. Why don't you lick your wounds here for a while, and then hear us out at the next get together? You can make your decision then."