All the food you can eat, and wine you can drink, the ear of the Queen, an eighth-circle wizard who cares about you more than does Toff Ornelos - these are only the bare beginnings of all which I will do for you.

Our situation is dire. I won't whitewash things or try to manage your emotions.

But among our many terrible and potentially lethal problems, we of Korvosa are lucky that we do not suffer from unresponsive and incompetent royalty.

Not while I sit the Throne.

The future is littered with prizes, and we can position ourselves to snatch the lion's share.

The world's old order is crumbling; we are of the few aware. We can be prepared to pick up the pieces.

Our experience with terror is hard-earned; would it not be generous of us to share what we've learned with all of Varisia? I say again, Korvosa will not fade into irrelevance while I sit the Crimson Throne.

On the whole this... seems like a positive development? And not clearly to Ileosa's advantage? Like, she just gave Cressida Kroft another organization to be openly secretly in charge of, and this one's got everybody in it.

What's the trap?

Why the uncharacteristic generosity? I don't remember anything like this happening in Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Perhaps the Megapope's sermon softened Ileosa's heart.

And maybe the Thrunes actually sold their souls to Heaven and everything that's happened since then has been a farcical misunderstanding.

What are you playing at?

Last night while she was thinking, Ileosa found herself caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Fundamentally, she has two problems.

The first is that she can't trust Korvosa. The second, that she must trust Korvosa.

If the people of Korvosa are empowered and have good internal communication, she will be overthrown.

Maybe not today. Or... maybe in fact today.

Whereas if the people of Korvosa are disempowered, if she restricts their lines of communication, rotates their officers, pays people to inform on each other, executes or exiles anyone who competently rivals her, the whole coup-proofing nine yards of cloth; a) they won't be able to fight the shadows, and b) Cressida Kroft will stop humoring Ileosa to the extent that she currently is.

(Sabina could kill Kroft, Ileosa thinks. Kroft's an old dinosaur who does her best work at a desk or table. But the fallout wouldn't be pretty.)

(And Sabina would be so upset.)

Eodred never managed to give Ileosa an heir. Which she has deeply mixed feelings about - the idea of carrying and raising his child has come to make her skin crawl - but she was hoping to have more self-evident legitimacy behind her by the time Eodred went and kicked the bucket than "gold-digging foreign teenage bimbo who the king was was briefly married to."

And it's pretty clear at this point that she doesn't.

She's neither loved nor feared, but boy is she hated.

Ileosa had plans for coup-proofing, but they rested on the bedrock assumption that Korvosa would remain a regional power even if she greatly reduced its short-run military and economic efficiency.

Which chair has been kicked out from under her.

Doom for everyone in the Vault could come with no warning. Doom for everyone outside the Vault is coming with warning, and will take some serious strain to avert.

Ileosa has nowhere to ride this out. She can't even flee back to Westcrown with her tail between her legs and an apology on her lips.

Right now "Queen of Korvosa, such as it is," is the only thing that separates Ileosa Arabasti from all the other second-circle bards on the planet.

While she's Queen, she can raise armies and order them to fight. She can tell people to collect taxes and give them to her to spend. She can ask Togomor or Toff Ornelos to build a fortress for her in an unassailable demiplane, or on the moon. She can get a good price for her soul. She can build on her existing base of wealth and power. She can seek eternal youth like Galfrey, or become a vampire under controlled circumstances. Ileosa's abilities are only limited to what people assume she's allowed to have them do.

Without that... what are her options?

Go find someone powerful like Eodred to attach herself to like a stirge but sexy? This time probably forever?

She'd really rather not.

Beg Kayltanya to extend her charity? Or - Ileosa could join the Red Mantis?

Ileosa doesn't imagine that she'd make a very good contract killer, let alone fanatic contract killing cultist. Also, it probably wouldn't improve her life expectancy by very much. Also. Putting on a bug-faced mask and skulking in the bushes with a knife with which to stab someone twice your size who you've never spoken to and who might very well kill you in self-defense seems very... blue collar.

Ileosa needs Korvosa firing on all cylinders, or she's as good as dead.

But there's maybe a narrow path between Scylla and Charybdis, if she abandons her attachments and seizes it.

Ileosa has no delusions that she can buy lasting popularity for any price: it was drummed into her head, growing up, that the person who builds upon the people builds their house on mud. Public opinion is fickle and irrational. If you give them things, they'll be grateful for a day and ungrateful by the morrow. (But once you have given people rights, don't expect to take them away; do that and they'll hate you forever.)

But she can buy that day's worth of gratitude, at an exorbitant price in future revenue and the cost of throwing stones in the path of her future absolutism.

It's the best she can do for her short-term survival while she makes the Vault-dwellers militarily effective.

As her father once said: the game isn't always recoverable while you're alive, but it's almost never recoverable if you're dead.

...Ileosa had been planning what she'd do when she took the throne since she was sixteen years old.

Nearly three years of daydreams and diaries and whispered conspiracies.

When she needed to get away, she'd walk Korvosa's walls, watch the ships in the water, the hippogriffs in the air. And she'd think, all of this will be mine.

When nobles and commoners alike showed her fake smiles and no respect, she thought. When I'm Queen I'll teach them to fear me like people fear the Thrunes.

When her married life seemed unbearable, Ileosa would commiserate with Corbastia, or sneak out with Sabina, and she'd think, I will be free and all of this will have been worth it.

It was going to be perfect.

As Ileosa was considering her precarious position last night, there was a powerful temptation to - modify her plans just a little. Enough to convince herself that they could still work, without tossing them out like yesterday's milk.

The year is 4702, Absalom Reckoning.

A fourteen-year-old Ileosa Arvanxi stands on a chair, supported by the tips of her toes and by a very itchy necklace.

"I am going to tell you," her father says, "the two quickest ways in the world to see your neck lengthened on a gibbet."

He wouldn't be lecturing her if he'd actually been enchanted by Lord Rasdovain's wizard. This was all an elaborate test - and Ileosa failed it, but she'll live.

For some reason that's what starts her crying.

"The first way," he speaks over her hiccuping sobs, "is to find yourself without a plan, outmaneuvered by those who thought to think ahead."

She knows where he's going with this. He's tried to make this point before.

"The second is to cling too tightly to the plans you already made, instead of drawing new ones, while all the world tries and tries to talk you out of your mistake."

"I won't do it again."

"You will. But next time, Ileosa, I need you to catch yourself at it."

So, yeah. Out with coup-proofing, in with whatever this is.

Why the uncharacteristic generosity? Because it's the best option I can see.

What am I playing at? I want to stay alive.

What's the trap? I admitted to myself that my odds of victory weren't as high as I would have liked for them to be, and decided that in worlds where I lose I'd rather lose down the road than lose today and rather lose to you than to the shadows.

There is no trap.

(Well, there's a very minor trap in the works, where the lands that she doles out will come with associated taxes that initially look fair and objective but turn out to swing wildly from year to year and also be somewhat manipulable by her, with the intent that in bad years large numbers of people will find themselves unable to pay. Ileosa doesn't particularly expect to get back anything that she's giving away like that - she's been told that you can't take people's rights back without their melting down - Ileosa just wants the option to put a faceless agency in charge of knocking on people's doors and shaking coins out of them, so that people have to come appeal to her and she can look generous by constantly intervening to forgive debts.

There might be some other traps too that she hasn't thought of yet, also she's going to get a contract devil to look over her ideas and they might have Recommendations.)

(Overall, though, a striking paucity of traps.)

While they're dealing with the shadows, Ileosa will of course scrabble to increase the power invested in her personally, or which answers to her.

She'll raise a parallel military to the Korvosan Guard, make herself the linchpin to international agreements, invite the Red Mantis into Varisia, figure out how much she trusts Togomor and whether she can rely on him as a counterbalance to Toff Ornelos and the Academae without having the rug pulled on her or becoming his stooge, build closer ties with Archbishop Reebs, kit herself out in better magic items, sell her soul, figure out for sure what that thing in the basement of Castle Korvosa is and whether it can really help her level, figure out what Player Character Cave did to those people and whether it can bestow otherworldly knowledge on her, find powerful monsters and bargain with them.

And then... there only are a few thousand survivors of the shadow plague within Korvosa proper.

She'll have to find a way to cut that bridge after she crosses it.

The war council meets in a mage's magnificent conference room; the air's cleaner and there are places to sit.

Half the people who should be here aren't, and half the people who shouldn't be here nonetheless are. Overall there's something more than 30 people in attendance:

Her Royal Majesty:

Queen Ileosa Arabasti, Queen of Korvosa, Steward of Chellish Varisia;

Seneschall of Castle Korvosa:

Dame Corbastia Lettice;

Representatives of Korvosa's Great Houses, including:

Lord Valdur Bromathan, Head of House Bromathan;

his bodyguard;

Lady Eliasia Leroung, Head of House Leroung;

Lady Brie Endrin, representing House Endrin;

Lady Sebastia Jeggare, representing House Jeggare;

Lord Rem Ornelos, representing House Ornelos;

Arbiter Zenobia Zenderholm, representing House Zenderholm;

The Korvosan Guard, including:

Dame Sabina Merrin, Field Marshall;

Spellmasters Tavid Bromathan

and Maganrad Hestrigsen;

Watch Sergeants Cressida Kroft

and Jope Chantsmo;

Detective Menten Brontolone;

Guardsmen Altronus, Hasagi, Mayyad, and Mull assigned to protect Queen Ileosa;

Guardsmen Sahlara and Karralo assigned to protect the representatives of Korvosa's Great Houses;

Knowledgeable wizards, including:

The Academae Deans

Master Julaei Cangi, Abjurer;

Master Salgar Irevotnin, Evoker;

Master Orianna Delmore, Necromancer;

Master Norva Allesain, Diviner;

(Master Elgin Remorri, Dean of Transmutation was invited and declined to attend);

And also

the mercenary wizard Togomor;

the Pathfinder Savant Aram Zey;

various apprentices and familiars;