“I would have your judgement, Peregrine,” he calmly requested.

The Grey Pilgrim did not answer immediately. Instead the holy man gazed at the distant ring of raised stones, that incongruous crown atop a tall barrow.

“She will not step in even if the palisade is assaulted,” the Pilgrim finally said. “Perhaps not even if the camp is breached, as you had arranged.”

And so, Yannu knew, this meant the Peregrine would not intervene either. It had been made clear to the Lord of Alava what the consequences of the Grey Pilgrim acting first might be, and he would not have such disaster brought upon them all.

- Book 5, Interlude: Graves We Have Yet To Fill

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“Well, he’s pulling out tricks there we haven’t seen down here,” I said. “And I know he has more: we haven’t seen either devils or demons yet, for one, and he’s perfectly capable of calling on both.”

The old man shook his head.

“He cannot use either,” Tariq said. “It would represent too steep an increase in strength on his side of the scales, Catherine. Providence would allow us to bridge the gap, and the last thing the Dead King wants is a war of equals with such power in play: it would put his forces at a genuine risk of annihilation.”

The Grey Pilgrim leaned back into his seat.

“He has been most careful to limit his efforts to grinding us into dust by attrition for good reason,” Tariq continued. “It is a method of victory that involves very little risk for him and has proved difficult to handle.”

I frowned. That… held up somewhat, I supposed. I honestly wasn’t sure what providence would be able to spit out to even the odds, but arguably that was rather the point. I’d known for a long time there was a risk to villains winning by too large or obvious a margin – invincibility as a prelude to failure, my father had once phrase it – but I’d not considered that on the scale the Pilgrim had. It was the crusading mindset, I supposed. It was not only battles and Named that had a story, but the crusade itself. It was what I knew of the Dead King’s rise to power that had me inclined to believe the Peregrine: carefulness had always been his priority back then, even if it meant slowing his advance.

- Book 6, Chapter 61: Adouber

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The Intercessor had mocked me, in the Arsenal, asked me where Neshamah’s devils and ancient sorceries were. Well, they were here now. Why? More importantly, why now? But I’d already been given the answer to that, I belatedly realized, by an old man that was now a dead one. He cannot use either, Tariq Isbili had told me, speaking of devils and demons. It would represent too steep an increase in strength on his side of the scales.

The Pilgrim had meant in the sense that if the Dead King used devils, then the heroes of the Grand Alliance would in turn get to call in angels as a superior counterstroke. Except we’d struck first, hadn’t we? The Grey Pilgrim had died intertwined with the Choir of Mercy calling down his dead star, it was our side that’d broken the seal. The story’s not on our side, I realized with dread. Even if Masego had proved to have the capacity to Wrest the spell, he still would have failed – the scales were tipped in Neshamah’s favour for this to work, he had earned it.

- Book 7, Chapter 78: Keter's Due