The Spider's War

by Daniel Abraham

  As they rode through the city streets together in a small and open carriage, Clara’s gaze kept drifting to the Kingspire. The bloody banner of the goddess hung almost motionless and dark, heavy still with dew. This is the last day I will see it there, she thought. Tomorrow, it will be gone or I will. The fear and excitement and grief and rage all fused together in her body. Like metal in a forge, she became an alloy of herself, stronger than anything pure could be. Or so, at least, she hoped. Vincen rode behind, but not too close.

  “You’re quiet this morning,” Vicarian said. Clara smiled.

  “I’m tired,” she said.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Her heart began to tumble in her chest, but Vicarian’s demeanor hadn’t changed, or if it had it was only a bit embarrassed. She saw no malice in him, or no more than she ever did since the change. “If I may reserve the right not to answer, I don’t see why not,” she said, forcing a lightness she did not feel.

  Vicarian nodded more to himself than to her. He rubbed his palm against his cheeks. It was a gesture he’d learned from his father, and seeing it here felt like an omen. Not a good one. “Mother, did you think no one would find out?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She lied, and she saw in his face that he knew. But he hadn’t revealed the plot yet, had he? Surely if he’d told anyone, she’d be on her way to the gaol in chains, and Cithrin and the others beside her. The gaol or the Division. Perhaps there was something in him that was still her son, Dawson’s son. She held her breath.

  “He’s my age,” Vicarian said. “Or if he’s older, not by more than a few years. And he’s a servant. A huntsman? What would Father think?”

  Clara lowered her head. Bright relief ran against shame. It wasn’t the banker and the dragon he’d discovered. It was Vincen.

  “I hope your father would understand,” she said. There was no point in denying it.

  “Jorey has done everything he could to return the Kalliam name to dignity,” Vicarian said. “I love you, Mother. Never doubt that. But you’ll become a joke in the court. Chasing after the army was peculiar enough, but at least there was a way to tell the story that you did it from bravery and love of the throne. Spending your nights with your dead husband’s huntsman?” He shook his head. “You know this has to stop. If not for your own dignity, for Jorey’s. And Sabiha and Annalise. Can you imagine what that little girl’s life will be like if the name she took from you comes to carry the reputation for fucking the servants?”

  The truth was, she hadn’t. Now that she did imagine it, she didn’t like the picture. She didn’t ask how he’d found her out. It didn’t matter.

  “This has to stop,” Vicarian said, “before someone else finds out.”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  They were almost at the low wall and the wooden gate that led to the paths of the royal quarter. The huge priest, Basrahip, stood by the open gate, embracing another man who looked much like him. One of the original priests come from the Keshet, she supposed. She was a fool. An idiot. A randy old widow like the jokes all painted, and it had taken her monstrous son to show her how she looked through other people’s eyes.

  “It has to stop,” he said again.

  “I said you’ve made your point.”

  He turned away with a grunt, and the carriage stopped. She heard Vincen’s horse clatter to a halt, but she couldn’t look back to him. She stepped out of the carriage, her legs unsteady beneath her. Did Lady Kalliam know? Did Sabiha? Did Jorey? And if it did stop, if she did send Vincen away as she’d always known in her heart she should, what of her would be left?

  “Brother Kalliam,” the huge priest said, wrapping his arms around Vicarian’s shoulders.

  “Minister Basrahip,” the thing that had been her son said, returning the embrace. “You remember my mother?”

  “Of course,” Basrahip said, bowing to her. “The fearsome Lady Kalliam and the swordsman who fights at her side.”

  Did he know too, then? Only, no. Basrahip and Vincen had met each other before. Had faced Feldin Maas together once in some long-vanished world. God. How had she ever thought that any part of her life could be kept safe from any other? Everything mixed. Everything bled into all that surrounded it.

  “Are you well, my lady?” the priest asked.

  “Fine. Or, no. I’m not. But I’ll be fine, Minister Basrahip,” she said. “I find I need to refresh myself.”

  “There are no servants or guards to lead you,” he said, apology in his voice. They were all so goddamned polite. She hated that. “The Kingspire today is the temple of the goddess first. Tomorrow, it will be the seat of the empire again.”

  “I believe I can find my way,” she said, and walked away briskly before anyone could stop her. She was weeping again, and bitterly. The humiliation had flanked her, and now the full edifice of her composure was crumbling. She marched toward one of the smaller buildings whose use she neither knew nor cared. She prayed that Vincen would not follow her. Or that he would. She turned and found herself in a stables. A dozen horses stood calmly in their stalls, considering her with huge, soft eyes as she sat on a wooden stool and quietly cursed.

  It was his voice. It was the spiders in Vicarian’s voice. The power they held to make anything seem plausible, to seem true. He’d as much as called her a foolish old slut, and she couldn’t help but believe it. It was his curse and his magic, the venom of dragons still deadly after thousands of years.

  “It isn’t true,” she said. “It isn’t true.” Except that maybe it was. Some part of her had already thought or feared to think everything he’d said. That the spiders had said it didn’t mean it wasn’t also true. In the distance, she heard voices fading in the direction of the Kingspire. She had to get up. She had to find Cithrin and the others, prepare herself for Geder’s return. She heard footsteps and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, ready to put a brave face on whatever indignity came next.

  “Lady Kalliam? Are you all right?”

  “Prince Aster,” she said. “I would say I’m well, but that might be overly simple.”

  “I saw your son going to the tower, but no one knew where you were. I asked Basrahip, but he didn’t know. I was afraid that maybe…”

  “All’s well,” she said, biting the words as she said them. “The plan is still intact.”

  “It will be over soon,” Aster said, taking her hand, offering her comfort and perhaps asking some in return. “They’ll be dead and we can put it all right.”

  She saw the shadow in the doorway even as the last words passed the prince’s lips. She thought for a moment it was another horse wandering loose, but of course it wasn’t.

  Minister Basrahip was come to see if the prince had found her, if she was well, if there was anything he or his false goddess could offer. He stepped in among the animals as Aster finished speaking and stopped, as stunned as if he’d suffered a hammer blow. His huge eyes blinked, his mouth gaped, and then, as understanding blossomed in him, he flushed.

  There could be no explaining their way free of this.

  “Go,” she said, pushing Aster behind her. “Find Cithrin. Tell her.”

  “But—”

  “Go!” Clara shouted, and with that, Aster fled.

  She stood before the priest, her hands at her sides but in fists. The priest’s gaze shifted from side to side, as though he was seeing more than only her. His jaw clenched until she could hear his teeth groan, and his voice was raw with anger. “What is this?”

  It didn’t matter what she said now. There was no deceiving her way out from under it. So, then, she was ready to be damned for what she was. “There is no goddess,” Clara said, speaking each word clearly and sharply. “You have spent your life in service to a deceit.”

  He roared, surging forward, and the world seemed to narrow to her body. The sounds all around her stuttered into silence, and she was on the ground, her face pressed against the hay and filth. Her cheek bled where he had struck her, but
she felt it only as a rivulet of wetness, both warm and cool. In their stalls, the horses shied and kicked, frightened by the violence. She rose to her feet, but Basrahip was gone, running on tree-thick legs toward the Kingspire.

  She neither thought nor hesitated, only lowered her head and ran. She was a woman, and older than the priest, but he had spent his winter sitting in a temple worshipping a lie while she’d marched through snowbound mountains, and she was half his weight. She had no doubt that she could catch him.

  “Vincen!” she shouted as she ran. “Vincen! To me!”

  To me, to me, and burn anyone who says otherwise. To me, damn it, before he gets away.

  Basrahip reached the tower before her, pushing open one of the servants’ doors. Behind her, a welcome voice called her. “My lady!”

  “Stop him, Vincen,” she shouted, and ran on. Her knees hurt, her feet hurt, a sharp pain stung her back, and she felt none of it. There was only the chase. The perfect focus on the bastard huffing his way along before her, and the desperate need to stop him.

  The Kingspire was a maze to her. Halls and corridors, stairways and servants’ passages. If she lost sight of him, he would be lost. Everything would be lost. She spared nothing, and Vincen Coe, his sword drawn, ran at her side.

  They found him before a wide, sweeping stair. She threw herself at his legs to slow him as Vincen looped around to block his way. The huntsman’s blade shone in the light. Basrahip lowered his wide head, shook it like a man recovering from a blow.

  “You think,” Basrahip said, “to cut me?”

  “This far,” Vincen said. “No farther.”

  Basrahip laughed. “Would you draw my blood? You wish to feel the goddess’s kiss? I can do this for you.”

  Clara cried out, crawling away from him. With the sprint done, her lungs felt in flame. Her heart might burst at any second. Vincen moved forward, putting himself between her and the priest.

  “You end where you are,” Vincen said.

  “I continue forever,” Basrahip said, and Clara knew it was truth. He wasn’t a priest, nor even a man. All unknowing, he was the voice of dragons. Of war and death and violence that bred violence that bred violence, in a fire that burned on bodies from the dawn of time to the death of everything. “You have already lost. Listen to my voice. You dare not hurt me. You and your filthy sword. Everything you love is already lost. Everything you hope for is already gone. You cannot win.”

  The words burst against her like storm waves. Jorey would die on the field, cut down by Timzinae blades. Sabiha, Annalise, Lady Skestinin. All would die. Vicarian was gone. Dawson was gone. And if Vincen turned his blade, if he drew the enemy’s blood, the spiders in it would come for them as well.

  “No,” she said. “You have to let him go.”

  “You have already lost,” Basrahip said. “You cannot win. You will never win.”

  Vincen’s blade shifted, its point drifting down as a terrible comprehension filled his eyes. Tears of horror streaked his face. Basrahip stepped forward and took the sword from Vincen’s hand.

  “You cannot win,” Basrahip said, and pushed Vincen to the ground. She crawled to him, took his hands in hers as behind them the great priest mounted the stairs, his fist making Vincen’s blade seem a table knife. “Everything you have is already gone.”

  It was the spiders, she thought. It was only their power; there was still hope. But her heart knew otherwise.

  They’d lost.

  Marcus

  Marcus’s left foot hurt. A mild ache down in the joints at the ball of his large toe. He tried to stretch it as he walked the three-sided dueling yard, leaning back a little into each step. It didn’t seem to be helping. The sword strapped across his back chafed, and he was getting an annoying little twitch near his eye. Likely he wouldn’t have noticed any of it, except that he was tense as if he were leading a full army into the field, with nothing that he could do but pace and wait to light the signal torch.

  He’d planned it out with Yardem. If Inys came too early, the priests wouldn’t be gathered in their sacrificial temple. Too long, and they’d have noticed they were trapped and devised an escape. As soon as Geder and Yardem reemerged, Geder could call in his guard, put them in place. Be ready when the dragon came. Any of them that jumped, he’d be at the bottom with the sword to kill whatever spiders splashed out of the corpses.

  Only being anxious tempted him to move too fast, so while the thing he wanted most in life was to take the little torch from beside the wide iron brazier they’d set out on the gravel of the yard and push it into the lump of sage and pitch, he waited instead, cataloging the ways his body hurt and watching the shadows shift with the sun. He looked toward the Kingspire, waiting for Yardem and the Lord Regent. They weren’t there.

  The buildings around the base of the Kingspire felt empty as a burned city. The pathways seemed to miss the servants and courtiers that normally walked them. The windows stood shuttered against the summer sun. Geder’s private guard manned the streets at the edges of the grounds, keeping any attacker, the story was, from interrupting the priestly conclave. He had to think their eyes were as much on the tower as the streets. The goddess was the center of the empire, after all. The enemy was nearly at the gates. He’d been in enough cities facing attack to know how deeply a people consumed by fear could long for the miraculous—a cunning man’s vision of victory, a child’s imagined portent, anything that promised a future that could be known. Geder and his priests had spent so much effort pruning away everyone in the city who didn’t have faith, the ones who remained had to be certain that this was the moment that would save them.

  And maybe it was, but it would be an ugly surprise for them all the same. If their salvation came today, it would be dressed like defeat. He squinted up into the sky, tested the air with his upstretched palm, and wondered again how long the dragon would take to arrive. I will come had sounded near to immediate when Inys had said it, but even the thickest smoke needed the wind to carry it. Flying might be faster than the swiftest horse, but it still took time. Why wasn’t Yardem back yet? This was all taking too long. Or he was more impatient than he thought? Marcus stretched his foot again. It ached.

  When Inys came, there would be a moment when he was just in front of the great opened doors of the temple, bathing the enemy in flame. The eyes of Camnipol would all be on him, including the harpoons and lines that would encumber him and bring him down so Geder and his guard could end both threats to humanity in a single day. Marcus made it an even bet that the little bastard would be hailed and remembered as a hero for it. The world wasn’t fair that way, but so long as the dragons’ war was well and truly ended, Marcus didn’t care. That everyone who deserved credit claimed it and blame stuck where it belonged was too much to ask for. Winning would have to be enough. If Yardem would just get back.

  Aster came running down the path, head down, arms and legs pumping. Cithrin sprinted just behind. All of Marcus’s aches and complaints were forgotten. His mouth went dry. He took two steps toward them, looked toward the torch, the tower.

  “Basrahip knows,” Aster gasped. “He heard me. He heard Lady Kalliam. He knows.”

  “All right,” Marcus said, his voice calm despite the copper taste in his mouth. Cithrin came, her lungs working like a bellows. The distress in her eyes said more than words. If he left the torch, Cithrin could light it, provided Yardem came back down. Or Geder. Or him. Or anyone. He squinted up at the tower, and past it to the sky. No great wings marked the blue. There wasn’t time. In two long strides, he reached the torch and tossed the living flame into the brazier. The dry sage spat and the stink of burning pitch billowed up and out into the wide and empty air.

  “Marcus,” Cithrin said. The word carried more questions than he had time to answer.

  “Rally the guard,” he said. “If I don’t come back, finish the job.”

  “But—” she cried, and he was already running. The Kingspire had a dozen ways in at the base, but only one direction
: up. The great priest would try to stop Geder and Yardem, and that meant climbing the endless flights of stairs. Marcus moved through the empty hall, ignoring the wide and airy archways, the statues of thousands of years, the tapestries and censers and images of worked gold. For him, there was only the hunt.

  He took the stairs two at a time, reaching back as he did and tugging the wrapping away from the blade. They were past all disguises now. His footsteps echoed. Far away to his left, he heard something like a woman’s wail, but he didn’t have time or attention to spend on it. He didn’t know where the priest was, how far the man had gotten, how much of a head start he’d had. It didn’t change anything. The worst that would happen was Basrahip would reach the temple, sound the alarm, and Marcus would have to hold as many of the priests from coming down as he could before they slaughtered him or the dragon came. He felt himself grinning with the effort of the run. Or maybe it was just grinning.

  As the tower rose, the walls sloped gently in, each level a bit smaller than the one below, the rooms and corridors a bit less grand, the stairs to the next level up narrower and fewer. The nearer they got to the temple, the more the tower itself would push them toward each other. He’d known a butcher once, and had the sense that slaughterhouses worked in much the same way.

  The priest knew the path, and Marcus was finding it as he went. The priest had a head start. The urge to sprint, to push himself up as fast as he could go, tempted him. The sense that the enemy was just beyond his reach, and that if he pushed himself a little harder, he might catch him in time, sang in his blood. Instead, he kept to a brisk, steady pace. He focused on the architecture, finding his way through the halls and corridors like it was a deer path in the wood.

  Outside, beyond his senses, the signal smoke was rising. The dragon was on his way. He couldn’t think about that. Just where was there more wear on the carpets, where had steadying hands left smudges along the wall. He couldn’t hurry. If he went too fast now, he’d exhaust himself. He’d fail. If he drew the sword—and he wanted badly to feel its weight in his hands—it would cost him speed and add to his fatigue. He found another curving stair, and went up. His footsteps echoed weirdly against the jade.