It was almost night when they reached the Division. The great chasm ran through the city’s heart like a river. Marcus stood at the center of a span and looked down. The depth of it left him breathless.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. How many bodies would you guess go into that in the course of a year?” Marcus said. Then, “Kit?”
Kit’s face had gone pale. Marcus followed the man’s gaze to the far side of the great canyon. A building four floors high and painted the yellow of egg yolk loomed on the farther side of a common yard. A stable stood off to the south with carts and horses enough to mark the place as a wayhouse and a tavern. Kit began to walk toward it in a drunken stagger, and Marcus followed, confused until he saw what Kit was walking toward.
The cart looked much the same as it had when Marcus and Kit and the others had hauled it as part of the last caravan from Vanai half a decade before. Two of the boards on the stage had been replaced recently, and the new wood stood out brightly from the old. Kit put a trembling hand to it. A tear tracked down his cheek.
“Hey, you old bastard,” a rough voice called from behind them. “Watch whose cart you’re feeling up.”
The woman, thin across the shoulders with dark hair pulled back in a braid, swaggered across the yard. Two men walked behind her. When she reached them, she fell into Master Kit’s arms. The two men wrapped arms around the pair until all four were in a tight knot of affection and humanity. The larger of the men turned his head to Marcus.
“Good to see you too, Captain,” Hornet said.
“Always a pleasure.”
Hornet pulled back an arm, inviting him into the huddle, but Marcus declined with a smile.
“Cary?” Master Kit said, half choked with sobs. “What are you … how did you come back here?”
“You made an assumption there,” the other man, Smit, said. “You see how he made that assumption?”
“I did,” Hornet said, grinning. Cary only looked up at Master Kit with a smile of defiance and pleasure. She looked like a child whose father had come home from a journey of years.
“You’ve been here all this time?” Kit said, disbelief in his voice. “This same yard for … ? How can that be?”
“Cithrin came by with a little side work,” Cary said. “Brought us enough money we could sit tight for a time.”
“Been pretty much playing to dogs and pigeons the last six months, though,” Smit said. “Nothing like being in one place seasons in a row to take the novelty off a production.”
“We’re all still here, though,” Smit said. “Sandr left for about two weeks once, but the girl caught on to him and he reconsidered.”
“Why did you do this?”
“So you could find us when you came back,” Cary said. Her eyelashes were dewy. “Because you were coming back. You couldn’t leave us behind.”
“But I had no way to know that …” Kit said, and then ran out of words.
“You see? That’s the problem with always playing the wise-old-man roles. You start taking them off the stage with you and thinking you’re Sera Serapal with all the secrets of the dragons in your purse and acting like it’s miraculous every time you’re wrong about something. I always knew you’d rejoin us. I only made it easier for you. And,” Cary said before he could object, “I was right.”
Master Kit laughed and spread his arms. “How can I argue against that?” he said. “Thank you. This is the sweetest gift the world has ever given me. Thank you for it.”
Cary nodded once, soberly. “Welcome home,” she said.
Geder
The first group of Anteans to be initiated into the mysteries of the spider goddess stood in the great hall of the new temple. The pearl-white ceiling arched above them all, and fine chains with crystal beads flowed down from the top like dewdrops on a spider’s web. Three walls of the hall were glowing with lamps fashioned from shells that glowed soft gold, but the south was open, and Camnipol stretched out below them. The carts in the streets were no larger than Geder’s thumbnail, the heads of the people as small as ants. It had taken him the better part of an hour just to walk up to the hall, and his thighs ached a little from the effort.
The dozen initiates knelt in two rows of six, their heads bowed. Their robes were simple ceremonial white. For once, Basrahip was the center of attention with Geder sitting at the side. The huge priest stood at the dais with the open sky behind him. A smaller banner with the eightfold sigil hung behind him, and the light coming through the cloth made it seem bright.
“The life you once knew is over,” Basrahip intoned. “The veil of deceit will soon fall from you. In this time, you will be lost and vulnerable, but we, your brothers, will stand at your side. You will hear the truth in our voices, and we will lead you to see the world as it truly is.”
“We accept this gift,” the twelve initiates said as one. They bowed their heads to the floor.
Basrahip lifted his hands and began to chant ancient syllables. Geder felt the terrible urge to cough and swallowed hard to try to keep the sound from interrupting. As he wasn’t an initiate, he wasn’t strictly speaking supposed to be there, but Basrahip had given permission for him to be present for the welcoming. After that, things became private and mysterious, but from what Geder had read that was true of any cult. He didn’t take the exclusion personally, though he did wish Basrahip had been a bit more forthcoming about the details of what the men would be going through. It was only curiosity, though.
Geder’s interest in the theology and practice of the priesthood was real, but it had its limits. The history of the world as the spider goddess knew it was endlessly fascinating, but when he came to asking more practical questions—who would be the best candidate to become a priest, what were the trials the initiates would go through, how long did the process require—it became more like another ceremony in a life that had become thick with them. When he’d asked Basrahip why women didn’t serve as priests of the goddess and the answer had hinted broadly at something to do with menstruation, Geder stopped pursuing the questions.
When the chanting was ended, four of the minor priests came forward with a ceramic cup, offered a drink from it to the first of the initiates, then led him away into the depths of the temple. This they repeated eleven more times, and by the time the last young priest had been taken back to discover whatever secrets there were to discover, Geder was secretly getting bored. When Basrahip came to him to say that the welcoming was done, Geder was happy to hear it.
“My thanks again, Prince Geder. As her power spreads through the land, so will your glory.”
“Good,” Geder said as they walked back toward the stairways that led down into the more commonly used levels of the Kingspire. “Because as far as I can tell, my glory is stuck fast in the north of Elassae.”
“The stronghold of the enemy,” Basrahip said, frowning. It was rare to see him look so disturbed. It occured to Geder, not for the first time, that the rise of the spider goddess had, in a sense, come at the worst possible time. True, without the plot against Aster and King Simeon, he wouldn’t have had reason to spend a summer tracking rumors of the Righteous Servant back to the hidden temple, but it seemed that since then, Antea had been drawn into one battle after another. Basrahip would say that it was the lies of the world pained by the arrival of truth, but Geder could still wish that it had happened at a gentler moment in history.
“I’m sure we’ll take it before long,” Geder said, starting down the stairs. His personal guard waited at the foot, not being quite so deeply in the good graces of the goddess as Geder was.
Basrahip shook his massive head. Somewhere far in the distance above them, someone started screaming, but Basrahip took no notice of it. Geder put it down as being part of the ceremony.
“The battle against the lies of the world must be fought. Long or brief, costly or quick, it does not matter. She will prevail, and we with her.”
“It’s just that they won’t come to parley,” Geder said. “Ternigan
says he’s tried calling it eight times now, and they won’t come down. And the walls at Kiaria are too high for speaking trumpets to reach the men at the top.”
Basrahip paused, and Geder went down a couple more steps before he realized it and turned back and up at him.
“Is there something you are asking me, Prince Geder?”
“Well,” Geder said. “I don’t want to … I mean. I was only wondering if there were any other gifts that the goddess had that might help with this particular problem?”
“There is one other,” Basrahip said. “Patience.”
Geder nodded. The screaming from the temple was getting louder, and there were more voices now. Basrahip looked back toward them, then turned to Geder and sat on the stair.
“We will be tested many times. The world will resist her truth because the world is a thing of lies. But she cannot be beaten and all who stand against her will be ground down. The world is entering into her, and we are her bearers. You and I.”
A particularly high and sustained shriek caught Geder’s attention. Basrahip chuckled and put a hand on Geder’s shoulder and pointed up the stairway with a gesture of his chin.
“Them as well,” he said. “All of us are her creatures. And those who are not will be, or they will be erased from all places under the sky.”
“But it’s going to take patience.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that after Nus fell and Inentai, I thought …” He waved the thought away. “I’ve kept you long enough, though. Take care of your new initiates, and let me know if there’s anything more I can do to help.”
“I will, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said, then rose and ascended again. At the bottom of the stair, a massive bronze door had been cast in the image of a huge lion. Geder walked through it, and two priests closed it behind him. The thick metal rang with a sense of finality and the sounds of human voices went silent. Geder sighed and began the long descent to his own rooms. He was beginning to regret putting the temple at the top of the spire. It was wonderful for the symbolism and security, but it was such a long walk.
Another decision he was beginning to regret was having the reports from the expeditions brought directly to him. When he’d given the order, he’d thought it would be interesting. Diverting. He’d read book-length essays about adventurers before, and as near as he could recall he’d expected the letters from the field to be similar. And also that this way, he would have the feeling of being part of it. An adventurer himself. In practice, it felt like reading any other report on the small functions of the empire.
But he’d asked to do it, and to turn it away now would make him seem unreliable and petty. So when the aged servant delivered his personal correspondence in a silvered box, it was stuffed with things he didn’t actually want to read.
“Will there be anything more, Lord Regent?” the old man asked, his bow a model of obsequiousness that bent him almost double.
“No,” Geder said. Then, “Yes, bring me some food. And coffee.”
“Yes, my lord,” the man said. With a sigh, Geder pulled out the first letter. Emmun Siu was in the back country of Borja. He had lost one of his men when they came to an obscure village near the foot of a strange mountain and the man had fallen in love with a local girl, married her, and refused to continue with the expedition. He had found three different sites where there had once been buildings, but thus far there had been nothing of interest apart from a particularly well-preserved wall with an image that appeared to be a pod of the Drowned circling a complex device. In Lyoneia, Korl Essian was apparently being very careful in how he went about buying provisions for his two teams, and his descriptions of them filled twenty pages on both sides. Dar Cinlama, who had started this whole mess in the first place, was interviewing Haaverkin along the coast of Hallskar concerning their different social orders, which in this case appeared to be something between extended family and gentleman’s club. Cinlama went into some detail about the different rituals and their significance—one order would set small stones to match the positions of the stars, another enacted a complex play involving eels and a man in a bear’s skin that appeared to be a retelling of an ancient war between Haaverkin and Jasuru and also very possibly the origin of the Penny-Penny stories that had spread through the whole world by now. They were the most interesting reports, and they were from the man Geder liked least of all the explorers. He read the letter through to the end, though, and took what pleasure he could from it.
Then there were the other letters. Most were disposed of by his staff, but invitations from the highest families were still presented to him directly out of courtesy to the nobles. The end of the season was almost upon them, and with it one last paroxysm of fetes and balls, feasts and teas. There were five marriages he’d been asked to speak at. The last wedding he’d been to had been for Jorey Kalliam and Sabiha Skestinin.
Another letter lay at the bottom of the box. It was written on decent paper, but not the thick near-board of the others. It wasn’t a hand he recognized. He tore off the thread it was sewn with, and unfolded it. All the air went out of the room.
Tell Aster I miss him, and you, and that terrible cat-piss stinking hole we lived in. Who would ever have guessed those would be the good old days?
Your friend, Cithrin bel Sarcour
It wasn’t a long letter, and he read it ten times over. All he could think was that she had touched this page. Her hand had been against it. She had made this fold in the paper. He held it to his face and smelled it, looking for some trace of her scent. Cithrin bel Sarcour. Tell Aster I miss him. And you.
The servant came back, a plate of delicately spiced eggs in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
“Get me a courier,” Geder said. “Get me the fastest courier we have.”
“Shall I call for pigeons and a cunning man as well?”
“All of them. Everyone,” Geder shouted. “I need word to reach Fallon Broot tonight.”
He canceled all of his plans, rescheduled the meetings. And the word went out to Suddapal by every means he had. The Medean bank in Suddapal was not to be interfered with in any way. Its agents were to have total freedom of the city to conduct any business they saw fit. They were not to be questioned or detained. If there was any concern regarding the activities of agents of the bank, they were to be referred to Cithrin bel Sarcour at the bank, and her judgment on the matter was to be considered final. This by order of the Lord Regent himself.
When it was done, he took Cithrin’s letter in his pocket, called for his private carriage, and rode for Lord Skestinin’s little manor house as if chaos itself were after him.
Jorey seemed surprised to see him, which was fair. He hadn’t seen anywhere near as much of Jorey as he’d meant to when the court season started. Things had just piled one upon another until all the days were full. Sabiha made her greetings in the drawing room, and then left the two of them alone. Geder gave the letter to Jorey with trembling hands and Jorey read it soberly. When he was done, he read it again, then, frowning, handed it back.
“What do you think I should do?” Geder asked.
“Well, I suppose that depends on the situation in Suddapal. If you think that the bank—”
“Not about that,” Geder said. “About writing back to her. About … maintaining relations. With her.”
Jorey leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked older than he had just a couple of years before. He looked like a man grown, and Geder still felt like a boy. At least in matters like this.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me, my lord.”
“My lord,” Geder said. “It’s only us here. You don’t have to do that. But Cithrin is a singular woman. She’s smart and she’s beautiful and she’s powerful in her way. And once I’m not Lord Regent anymore, I’m only going to be Baron Ebbingbaugh, and even then, I don’t know that she’d care to be a baroness. And of course there would be a scandal because she isn’t of the noble class, a
nd Aster would have to induct someone with Cinnae blood—”
“You’re asking,” Jorey said, “how to woo her?”
“I am,” Geder said. “I don’t know. You’re my only friend who’s ever won a woman. How did you make Sabiha love you?”
Jorey blew out a long breath and sat back in his chair. His eyes were wide and he shook his head like a man trying to wake from a dream. “Geder, you never fail to surprise me. I … I don’t think what happened with me and Sabiha will help you. The situation was so different from what you’re saying.”
“I don’t need you to write letters for me,” Geder said, with a laugh meant to lighten the mood. “It’s just I’ve never done this before. And I’m afraid … I’m afraid she’ll laugh at me. Isn’t that silly? Here I am, the most powerful man in the world, for the time being, and I am so desperately afraid she’ll think I’m funny.”
“You aren’t,” Jorey said. “You’re a thousand different things, but funny isn’t one.”
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