Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection

by Hailey Edwards

  “They aren’t your best feature,” he said, “or even my favorite.”

  Too afraid to ask what either of those might be, I settled for asking, “How did you do it?”

  “If I had a piece of gold for every time someone asked me how we cut our silk, we could live off the income of curiosity and never spin again.” He grinned wickedly, and I liked it. “I could tell you our secret, if you think you can handle it, and if you swear that you will keep it to yourself.”

  More than a tad concerned by the gleam in his eye, I agreed. “All right. You have my word.”

  In response, he widened his grin until he flashed me every one of his perfectly straight, white teeth.

  “You’re scaring me.” It wasn’t far from the truth. “What’s the secret?”

  Henri tapped a front tooth with his fingernail. “These are.”

  “Teeth,” I said.

  “Teeth,” he agreed.

  “That’s how Araneidae silk is cut? With your teeth?” Mine ached thinking about it.

  “What tools the gods gift for us, we must use to the best of our abilities.”

  “That sounds like a quote.” Similar to one my mother used on me. As the river gives life, it may also sweep it away. Sage words considering floods and drownings were a part of Deinopidae life.

  “Mother said it often, more often to Pascale than any of us.”

  I had learned my lesson about prying into his family. I left him the choice to illuminate me.

  He chose to keep me in the dark.

  To prevent our awkward pause from becoming unbearable, I focused on the saw. “How does it work? You cut through the plaster then bite through the silk?” I scrunched my nose. “That can’t be comfortable for you, especially not around a fresh wound—or worse—near someone’s feet.”

  “Feet are worse than a fresh— Never mind.” Lifting the saw, he twisted it. “If I had to gnaw at silk around open sores, I would never leave my laboratory. No. It’s as you said, not the most practical way to apply our gifts, which is why our foremothers invented a tool for the task.”

  “The saw.”

  “Yes.” He ran his finger along the dull side of the blade. “Can you guess what those are?”

  “No.” I blinked. Shuddered. Looked again, and I still saw them. “You wouldn’t— That’s disgusting. Those are—those are teeth. Did they come from your clansmen? Of course they did, what am I saying? They must have. How did you get so many? There are dozens. Does every Araneidae have one?”

  “They’re heirlooms,” he explained. “These teeth came from my siblings and me.”

  Had I not been lying down already, I might have fainted. “Those are from your mouth?”

  “Isn’t that where most teeth originate?” he teased, but I didn’t find him amusing just now.

  “You have a tooth saw and dare to mock me?” I recoiled when he offered it to me.

  “When you were a child,” he asked softly, “didn’t you lose a mouthful of teeth?”

  “If by lost you mean my brothers knocked them out or I swallowed them, then sure I did.”

  Amusement saturated his tone. “We are more careful of ours.”

  I curled my lip. “Obviously.”

  “Any Araneidae child can turn a baby tooth in to the maven for a gold coin. It was actually a thriving business for my brother when we were children. He would scour the tourney fields after games to see if he could earn extra coins.” He studied the blade. “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Armand had kept every ounce of his gold. He always was a hoarder. I never saw the fascination.”

  “Your mother paid you for your teeth?” I choked. “She bought teeth from her own children?”

  “She did, as Lourdes does now. When there are enough collected, they are fit into the blades of tools we need for our work. Most become shears for the spinners. My saw is, of course, one of a kind. It’s longer and narrower than most, but I based my design on the heavier saw blades used by masons for tunnel construction.” With that, he put his specialized saw to use on my poor cast.

  Every last one of my toes curled.

  “All my life I thought Mimetidae were the ones with the most disgusting customs—eating the flesh of their enemies after battle? That’s horrid. But this?” I covered my mouth. “This might actually be worse.”

  “There are Deinopidae customs others might find equally offensive.”

  “Offensive? Yes. There are several I could name off the top of my head, starting with the belief a female’s highest calling is to sit at home and wait on a male to come and claim her. Disgusting? No. In that respect, I believe your clan’s customs well and truly beat mine. Who would have thought?”

  “Brace yourself.”

  “No.” I covered my ears. “If you have something worse to tell me, I don’t want to—ouch.”

  His lips were moving, but I missed what he said.

  I bit my lip. “Next time give a girl some warning.”

  “I tried.” He lifted my foot from the mold. “You plugged your ears before I finished.”

  “I thought you were going to impart more Araneidae clan secrets to scar me for life.”

  “I think you’ll survive.” He ran his hands over the worst of the swollen and bruised areas.

  “I think I’ll have nightmares about blue-eyed, toothless children gumming my leg tonight.”

  “I could give you a gold coin to slide under your pillow just in case.” He kept his head bent.

  “If we keep talking, I won’t be sleeping at all, ever again.” Good thing he had insisted I sleep so well last night. “I’m tempted to take your gold as compensation, but I worry how you earned it.”

  His chuckles subsided. “I earn coins the same as anyone else these days, with honest work.”

  Honest work. I wonder if he meant his words to sting. No. He was not the kind to deliver his compliments backhanded. Henri told me what preyed on his mind. No. The problem, it seemed, was all mine. When had mercenary work lost its appeal? When it became a necessity? My life’s work?

  Granted, I never wanted a husband to wash ashore for me—I would prefer to find a partner based on less archaic rites—but neither had I ever wanted to leave the water, the comfort of home, the satisfaction of a good day’s catch and the knowledge my family would eat well because of my skills.

  “This may sting.” Absorbed in his work, he failed to notice my preoccupation. “Hold still.”

  I sniffed. “Is that more of the astringent?”

  “No. It’s pumice.” He scooped the contents of a yellow glass jar on his cloth and scrubbed. “While we’re at it, we might as well get rid of the dead skin and plaster before sealing your leg again.”

  I scrambled to snatch the rag from his hand. “I can clean myself.”

  He passed the ball of crumpled fabric to me. “If you insist.”

  “I do.” The pumice was creamy soap with harsh bits that dug in and scoured my skin. I savored its subtle floral fragrance and the tingling sensation left in its wake. “What’s that scent?”

  “Water lilies.”

  “I thought it smelled familiar.” I inhaled again, wishing I had a tub of hot water for soaking.

  “You like it then?”

  I paid him the highest compliment I had to give. “It reminds me of home.”

  “Good.” He poured fresh water into a shallow basin and offered it to me with a dry cloth.

  While rinsing my leg, I peeked up at him. “You made it?”

  “I did.” His gaze was far away, his thumb smoothing over the coin from his pocket. “For you.”

  Soft as his admission turned my foolish heart, I made light of it. “When did you find time?”

  “While you were riding ursus and slaying risers, I was bent over a mortar with a pestle.”

  “The ursus I was riding slayed the riser.” I wrung out the cloth and flung it at him. “All I did was cling for dear life while praying to the gods I didn’t fall off her or get eaten in the process. On the topic of urs
us, the slain ones can hardly remain as they are. What will you do with the bodies?”

  “We’ll burn them.”

  “How—? Never mind. It’s probably best I don’t know.”

  Henri lifted a set of five metal treads welded onto a rectangular frame and set them on his lap.

  “What are those?” I touched the edge. Each tread resembled a dull knife blade.

  “In case you get an urge to go exploring on the crutches I’m no longer sure you should have, these will give you traction.” Shaking his head, he set to work wrapping my leg with plaster cloths while he lectured me on what I should and shouldn’t do if I ever intended to walk on my ankle again.

  I absorbed his key points with a nod, content to let him stroke and rub and smooth my leg.

  I could say this for Henri; the male was very good with his hands.

  Chapter 11

  Smoke clung to the inside of the laboratory, its faint menace a reminder of the slaughtered ursus. My eyes stung, but I was quick to assure myself it wasn’t the thought of Farrow’s cub that made my eyes leak. What sort of hunter was I to mourn alongside a mother for her cub when I had once considered traveling into the northlands to hunt their kind for its hide?

  Perhaps I saw a mother mourning her lost child more than a sow grieving for her cub. It called to mind my own mother and how she must be handling the loss of not one, but all six of her children.

  All was quiet. Conversation was a rare commodity these days. Even the merry bubbling and hissing from Henri’s pots and kettles was absent. Today’s dreary silence reminded me of a tomb.

  Henri exited the bastille, sealing the door behind him. “You’re up earlier than usual.”

  I patted the armrests of my chair. “I heard you when you brought the wheelchair this morning.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “I’ve already seen Ghedi. He’s better, thanks to you.”

  I startled. “You used the oil I made?” Of course he had. That was the point. And yet…

  “You’re going pale.” He crossed to me and rubbed my good shoulder. “Don’t panic. I have every confidence in your ability. If it helps, I tested your reduction on myself first.”

  “Oh yes.” I groaned. “Far better if my ineptitude kills an Araneidae heir than my brother.”

  “You love him, so yes. It would be better.” Henri gave me a final squeeze. “I left you to finish a task I should have handled. The least I could do was ensure the end result was as it should be.”

  “I have four more siblings where he came from.”

  “Lourdes has three more able-bodied heirs besides me,” he countered.

  I tapped a finger to my lips. “And yet, I believe she would take issue with your demise.”

  A mellow chime pinged overhead.

  I glanced around. “Expecting company?”

  “No. A delivery.” He pointed at the far wall. “It’s time to feed your ward.”

  “Do you need any help?” With the cure made, I had nothing pressing to do.

  “You’re welcome to come if you like.” He gestured for me to follow him. “Each morning, I ask her a series of questions which gives her a chance to earn her meal. Some sessions are more productive than others, as you can imagine.”

  “Have you asked if she knows about the risers?”

  “I have. She denies all knowledge of them. I wouldn’t have mentioned them to her at all, except for how high-strung she’s become as of late. I have no doubt she is very much aware of what’s happening, though I’m not sure how or if she has any influence over the events unfurling overhead.”

  “Kaidi said harbingers can only control the corpses they raise,” I reminded him.

  “That means if the risers aren’t our ward’s, there’s a good chance we’re dealing with only one other harbinger.” He shook his head. “More than that and they risk having too many risers following conflicting orders.”

  “From what Kaidi said, getting one horde to play together nicely is difficult enough.” Thank the gods for small mercies. “If each harbinger’s army refuses to play well with the others, at least they can’t coordinate an anti-Araneaean movement. They would be too unorganized.”

  “It’s better for us if they have trouble amassing and controlling their risers,” he agreed. “If they have grand designs, then we don’t know them. I don’t think our ward knows them either. She’s smart enough to realize the knowledge would be of great value to me. In her case, because of how you came to possess her, it’s difficult to say if all harbingers are kept ignorant or only this one.”

  “Isolated as Hishima kept her, it makes sense she wouldn’t understand much of her nature.” Cast in that light, she wasn’t a very useful specimen after all. “Still, we know she at least met the harbinger Hishima sought to deal with. It was that harbinger that gave him the name Necrita. She must have been more aware than ours, or better informed. I should have considered that.”

  “We all have enough on our minds. I hoped she might surprise me, but I think when Hishima decided to keep his mother as a pet, he crippled his bargaining ability. If another, more powerful harbinger saw how he treated one of her kind, she might have feared he would treat all her people as poorly. His attempt to broker peace for his city might have been its downfall.”

  “I’m not so sure as you are they feel fear,” I said. “Hunger and rage seem to be the range of their emotions. Our ward was kept in the crystal cavern beneath the city. What would it cost the harbinger to send her army to avenge a sister crippled by ignorance? Too much if you ask me. If our ward is largely useless to us, then she might have been equally useless to them. The majority of the infected appear to be female, so I assume the same is true of risers and harbingers. Since harbingers procreate by infecting other species, it seems likely to me they wouldn’t suffer maternal pangs when losing their offspring.”

  Pity almost stirred me. But I had seen the damage our ward was capable of doing. She might be defective by Necrita standards, but she was an anatomy lesson on our enemies that we needed.

  “Has our ward had anything interesting to say?” I should have asked him sooner, but between Ghedi’s return and the riser infiltrating the stables, there hadn’t been time to wonder at what Henri might have been learning from our ward during the time he spent with her.

  “It’s gibberish for the most part.” He pinched his nose. “The one phrase I understand is this: On gilded wings, she will come. It’s a mantra. She chants it when I visit. It holds meaning to her. She thinks by saying it she will earn a treat. It’s a secret she wants to give in exchange for food.”

  To distract myself from what constituted a harbinger treat, I said, “It could mean anything.”

  “Most likely, she expects the harbinger who visited her in Titania to come again. Our ward’s wings are transparent and shot with yellow. Perhaps the color mellows with age? There’s no way to know without capturing a second specimen. At present, we must make do with what we have.”

  “I doubt your sister would welcome a second harbinger into her nest,” I agreed.

  “A temporary pass was as much as she was willing to give.” He lowered his hand. “It has to be enough. Our time is running short. At least once this is over we may have answers for Mana. I think she will be very interested in our notes on the results of using the unblessed dayflower oil.”

  “Is the blessing so important?” I asked. “If the cure works, then it works, right?”

  “You must understand.” He explained, “In Beltania, the flowers are grown in soil that is blessed by her mentor—Old Father—who is also a spirit walker. The plants are tended with blessings, harvested with thanks to the two gods, and each plant taken is spiritually cleansed. It’s hard to explain the level of care used in the cultivation of those flowers by her clan. For the Salticidae, they are the only medicinal plant they will ever see, taste, touch or consider.”

  “I had no idea the process was so involved.”

  “Mana and I…” He brought
out his coin. “We argued the last night she was here. She gave me a few very precious dayflower seeds so that I might cultivate my own plants. The seeds that I couldn’t sprout, I ground up and used for other things. I tested them in all the ways I had heard her people used the dayflower.” He flipped the piece of gold. “Spirit walkers put a drop or two of dayflower oil on their tongues before they enter their healing fugue. I discovered through a similar test that the crushed seeds have hallucinogenic properties that can induce a fugue state.”

  I saw where this was headed. “You told Mana you don’t believe in her religion?”

  “Not in as many words,” he said quietly.

  I whistled. “She couldn’t have taken hearing that well.”

  “Mana left that night without a word. Vaughn was tasked with escorting her to Beltania. They had intended to leave three days after Pascale’s trial, but I woke up and they were gone.” He noticed the coin in his hand and pocketed his token. “I didn’t get to tell her goodbye.”

  “You’re still friends.” Or else Mana held her grudges tighter than I did.

  “I asked her permission to write her earlier that same night. She declined even that offer, or so I thought. Some days later, her first letter arrived.” He glanced up then. “That’s how I learned Mana had gone to Cathis to be with Vaughn.”

  “I’m sorry things ended the way they did.”

  “If she hadn’t left that night, she might not have discovered the cure.”

  “That’s true.”

  “If she had stayed…” His absolute attention centered on me. “I would have missed this, missed you.”

  The chime sounded again, several times in succession.

  Smoothing the Henri-induced chills from my arms, I smiled. “Edan’s replacement is impatient.”

  “That he is.” Henri strode past the kiln to a section of cabinets. To their right was a metal door with a plain handle. It was perhaps the length and height of my arm from elbow to wrist. When he pulled the door upward, he exposed a platter of raw varanus steaks stacked four high. He removed the tray and flipped a switch inside the compartment. In a moment, it began to rattle and shake and gradually to rise, exposing an empty shaft.