How the 239th tier woman could be blithely confident that the Spider would fix the city’s growing fractures without interference, Riyen didn’t know. Then again, Riyen had dismissed rumors of the prison experiments until he became a subject himself. And perhaps it was simply that citizens did not care what happened to prisoners.
Riyen reached the base of the stairwell. He was no longer breathing. The air’s necessary elements circulated directly through his system by virtue of his exposed left side. This could not be anything but a bad sign, but for the moment he meant to take advantage of it.
He had memorized the map of the city in his past life of depredations. This tier was known for its physicians and apothecaries. Indeed, the quarter through which Riyen must travel to reach the next set of stairs was modeled after the chambers of the human heart. There were drummers in the streets. In his past life, Riyen had known the dancers who danced to those drums. No doubt they still feared him. Fear, at least, would have been a taste of normalcy in a city increasingly unstable. For the drummers’ beats scattered into arrhythmia; the dancers upon their balconies stumbled or swayed. The cloud-light that reflected from the city’s convex mirrors raised smoke rather than diffusing heat.
Limping, Riyen did not expect to find a barrier to his progress. But there one stood.
“I have been waiting for you,” said Yaz Five of Masks. He was resplendent in the uniform of the city guard, with sleek, polished armor and grey cloth so rich it was almost blue.
Riyen lifted his head. “Captain,” he said coldly.
The captain was wearing Riyen’s face.
~ ~ ~
The poem
Eskevan had not expected to spend so long pursuing the stray line of a poem. Ordinarily, lacunae were one of his easier duties. Poetry was flighty. If it felt unappreciated, it loosened its verses to fly across the city. Coaxing them to come home was rarely difficult. But this verse was already unusual.
He had sent a message to the master archivist that he would be late. Given the city’s small disruptions, it would be a matter of no great import. Already the verse had led him through what must be half the shallows’ graffiti and crumpled broadsheets. His tome was full of the same relentlessly repeated line, with increasingly creative errors of spelling or grammar: The Spider ascends.
The poem had led him to the city’s nexus. Eskevan eyed the massive gates and the guard with apprehension. Still, he had his duty. He approached, trying not to notice the guard’s discouraging expression. Surely the tome would convince the guard that the poem had to be restored and examined for its portents.
“Sir, I—” he began to say to the guard when a voice keened out of the nexus. Eskevan clutched his head. The guard shuddered and looked ill. For a second, Eskevan saw two people where the guard stood, one taller and one shorter, both deadly. Since the guard was distracted, he waved his lensgear as a badge of identification and ran into the nexus. Surely a single poem could not be the cause of all this?
~ ~ ~
The gate
Attavudhra was as alert as ever when the song came out of the gate, high and low and everywhere at once. She was no musician, but she knew the sound of danger.
Attavudhra had not thought to have another use for her pistol-bow so soon. She shot at the small man in a librarian’s coat as he stumbled toward the gate. To her astonishment, a streak of white-and-gold light wrapped itself around the arrow, slowing its momentum so it dropped to the ground before the man. Then the light leapt forward to wrap her pistol-bow. Agony nearly blinded her, but she did not relinquish her weapon.
“Read it!” the man said, scrambling away from the arrow, which had turned black.
Out of the corner of her eye, she did: The Spider ascends. Nevertheless, Attavudhra drew her sword. She had her orders.
A wind howled out of the gate, bringing with it
one man standing, triumphant, and another, half in shadow, slumped to the ground.
“Captain,” Attavudhra said wonderingly, for the man on the floor shared his face.
“Don’t listen—” cried the man in shadow.
Instinct told her the shadowed man was a greater threat than the librarian. She drove her sword downward. The man rolled, escaping the blade by a handwidth, and Attavudhra saw that he was not quite whole.
“Stop,” said a dry, whispering voice from her left—from the gate.
Attavudhra froze.
The Spider stepped out of the gate. She was a stooped woman with dark hair. The sockets in her face were empty and scarred over. She wore gloves that were cut off at the first knuckle. At each fingertip was a tiny glittering eye.
“Guard and captain, librarian and silhouette,” the Spider said. She raised her hands, fingers questing: an eightfold gaze.
“Attavudhra,” Yaz said warningly.
“Your duty is to me,” the Spider said to Attavudhra.
For a second, Attavudhra stood frozen between two loyalties that had once been one. Then she thought of the city with its roads unraveled, its libraries mired in unindexed words, its foundries filled with rust and stagnant water. The city must survive.
She blocked Yaz just as he attempted to stab the other man.
Yaz’s eyes narrowed. “There’s a better way than the Spider’s,” he said, his voice silken and persuasive. “We have had enough of chaos, of imperfections and flawed young recruits and emergencies in the middle of the night. We have had enough of a city that sways every time you breathe in the wrong direction, and that depends on a single architect for its stability. There’s a better way.”
Attavudhra realized he was speaking not to her but to the Spider, and said nothing. Her sword caught Yaz’s shoulder and slashed a bright red line. Elated, she cut him again. The Spider watched, unmoved by their struggle.
The librarian, who had gone unnoticed, flung the lensgear at Yaz Five of Masks. The lensgear glowed when it hit him and made a sharp, loud click. Yaz screamed and shattered like porcelain before recoalescing into a thing of shadows and broken arteries across the floor, sewn together only by a tendon here, a rope of intestine there.
The man in shadow struggled to his feet. His missing half flickered, growing steadily more solid, although his skin had an unnerving translucent quality.
“Let the silhouette speak,” the Spider ordered.
“Your captain has been carrying out human experiments,” Riyen said. “He stole some of my skills, although he could not help but take my face as well. Other people vanished in pieces. I was the only one lucky enough to escape.”
Yaz’s voice spoke, horribly, from the floor. “You were almost the perfect murderer until we caught you. The world had no more use for you, except as part of something greater.”
Attavudhra remembered the guard she had seen, the peculiar double image. She lifted her hands: for a second she saw the ghostly hands of two women, one pair slender and dextrous, one pair broad and strong. “What am I?” she demanded of Yaz. But she already knew the answer.
“You were my latest creation,” Yaz said. “You were the perfection of my hopes. If all things could be balanced by halves, including people, then so could the city.”
“You are a fool,” the Spider said. “People are not to be sacrificed for the city’s symmetries. It is the other way around. If something does not suit the citizens, then the city is what must be adjusted.” She added, “It is much harder to change people than it is to change things.”
“Then I am not a person,” Attavudhra said, chilled.
“Yes and no,” said the silhouette. His face was whole now. “We are all built from broken things.”
So it was, she realized, with the city.
“The city requires a new captain,” the Spider said. “Will you step into your superior’s place?”
Attavudhra stared at Yaz’s bloody remnants. “He still lives.”
“There’s a remedy for that,” the murderer said.
“It is my duty,” Attavudhra said, glancing at the Spider for her app
roval. The Spider nodded. With several strikes, Attavudhra severed Yaz’s remains.
~ ~ ~
The cobweb
“Come here,” the Spider said to the woman. She knew Attavudhra’s name, and Eskevan’s, and Riyen’s too, the way she knew every detail in her city. She laid her hands on the new guard captain’s head. “I must realign the city, but I cannot do it alone. Will you assist me?”
“Of course,” Attavudhra said. She looked at Riyen and Eskevan. “They saved the city.”
The Spider inclined her head. “Nevertheless, the fact remains that one of them is a criminal. What guarantee do we have that he’ll murder no more?”
“None,” Riyen said. “There are never any guarantees where people are concerned.”
“Quite right,” the Spider said. “I am the architect in the city’s depths; will you be its conscience in the sunlit heights?”
Attavudhra frowned. “The perfect killer as the city’s conscience—”
“Perfect no more,” Eskevan said in a quavering voice. The others turned to regard him curiously. “The perfect killer wouldn’t have a heart. He wouldn’t have cared about the city’s downfall.”
“Not strictly true,” Riyen said, “but correct in essence.” He bowed to the Spider. “I will do as you ask; it is the least I can do as amends.”
The Spider nodded, smiling faintly. “As for you, librarian,” she said, “you have words to set back in their proper places, do you not?”
“I do,” Eskevan said. He bent to pick up the undamaged lensgear.
Three people with which to weave a new web. She had worked with worse beginnings. “Let’s begin our work,” she said.
Together, they walked out of the nexus and into the city.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yoon Ha Lee’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Clarkesworld Magazine. She lives in Pasadena, California with her husband and daughter.
SILK AND SHADOW
Tony Pi
THE AUSTERE WAR has cost our tsardom much, in blood and in hope, I wrote in the letter to my mother the Tsarina. But at last Father’s killer lies dead, and we are victorious against the raiders from the sea. Soon, I will return to the capital and lead the citizens in remembrance of all we have lost, but for three months still must I tarry in the East. For though Palace Austere is returned to us, the same cannot be said for the spirit of our people. May my presence here speed their healing.
My quill paused. I had not written the truth of all I had risked to achieve the hard-won victory. Had I told of my covenant with the witch or of the Stormlord’s dying curse, my mother the Tsarina would command Lord Fabek to ship me home to Nobylisk at once. By the abyss of the dead, let my soul escape to plague you, had said the man I slew to avenge my father. By the blood of storms, may the Five Dooms drown you in grief. Mother would fear for my life if she heard those words.
But having seen the suffering in these provinces first-hand, I would sooner commit this sin of omission than leave before the East regained its strength. I signed the letter and sealed it.
Lord Fabek strode into the library with a smile on his ruddy face and knelt before me. “Joyous day, milord! The puppet-witch Anansya has returned to the palace for her reward! She begs an audience, if it pleases you.”
I frowned, unable to share his enthusiasm at the news of the witch’s return. It had been seven days since the puppeteers disappeared. While my heart ached to see Anansya’s apprentice Selenja again, I had mistrusted the witch’s offer of aid against the Stormlords from the beginning. Anansya asked for no gold, land, or titles, desiring only the privilege of crafting my life into a shadowplay. But to avenge my father’s death at the hands of the Stormlord Hraken, I had accepted Anansya’s offer, sealing the pact with a drop of my blood. I was certain she had an ulterior motive for aiding me, though I had not yet fathomed it.
Still, the puppeteers proved instrumental in turning the tide of war, even if their methods called upon dark magics. If they had not infiltrated the enemy camp, how many more of my countrymen would have died on the battlefield or been enslaved? Despite my suspicions, as Tsarevitch I was obliged to thank them on behalf of my people.
“Very well, I will receive them in Stonestark Hall. And Fabek?”
“Milord?”
“None of that. Call me Dominin.” I helped him to his feet. “There’s no place for formalities here at Palace Austere.”
“Yes, mi–” He caught himself in time. “Yes, Dominin.”
~ ~ ~
Stonestark Hall was cavernous and barren, as it should be. The only riches of Palace Austere were the fire in its hearth, the water in its well, and the whistling winds in its corridors of stone. By tradition, every Imperial must live nine winters here as simply as his people, so that he might learn wisdom and humility. I paused at the center of the hall, remembering how the Stormlord Hraken had defiled it with his golden bounty when he took the palace as his seat of power. Upon our reclamation of the ancient citadel, I had ordered my men to strip the hall of its blood-gold.
Out of the eastern corridor came Fabek and the graying puppet-witch, her pair of apprentices behind her carrying a cedar box between them. They set the puppet-box down, kneeling on either side.
Anansya was thrice my age, her teeth blackened with ash and her skin powdered white in the manner of her kind. Her hair, pale as spider-silk wrapped tight around a hapless fly. Pol, Anansya’s bright-hand, was clothed in silver, his head a polished dome. Selenja was her dark-hand and wore the black silk of her rank. Though they kept their heads low, I caught a glimpse of Selenja’s pleading eyes, and became lost in their beauty once more.
It had been Selenja who first came to me in the grim days after the death of my father. She never told me how she found her way into the Scrimshaw Tower to lend an ear to my anger and regret, or how she knew the right words to ease my pain. At the end of the month of vigil, I could deny my desire for Selenja no more. On a moonbright evening, I threw caution aside so she might teach me the passions of a man. My confidence won, Selenja told me of Anansya’s scheme to steal Hraken of the Storm’s sealskin hide, the source of his power, and I had listened.
Now, Selenja’s brief glance convinced me her mistress hid a deeper scheme, and I rued my folly for letting her seduce me so easily.
Yet I still loved her.
“Welcome, Anansya,” I said. “We owe the outcome of this war to you. Yet you vanished without a word. Why?”
“We felt it best to flee with Hraken’s hide, lest we be captured,” said Anansya. “Tell us, Dominin, how did you slay the tyrant? I must know the details to finish your play.”
I drew the saber named Fortune’s Law, my father’s legacy, and the memories flooded back. “We listened for your signal-chord and watched for the flash of light. I slew nine with my bow before we scaled the walls. The soldiers, blinded by your magic, fell easily to our swords. Hraken stood defiant in the heart of the chaos, blindly swinging his spear while he made mad libations from a half-empty cup of wine. But his gods forsook him.”
Anansya nodded. “Without his sealskin, his charms are for naught.”
“And I thank you for it,” I answered. “I fired an arrow at Hraken’s heart, bidding it to fly true. It found its mark square in the villain’s chest, bringing him to his knees. I stowed my bow, slid down a rope and cut down those between us, sending the cup spinning from his hand.”
In my mind’s eye, I held the edge of my saber against Hraken’s throat again. Who dares? the Stormlord had cried. I answered him. I, Dominin, son of Kronin, am your death. Then bear my dying curse, Tsarevitch, Hraken said. Again, his curse echoed in my ears. Let my soul escape to plague you. May the Five Dooms drown you in grief.
“He cursed me, but I would suffer my father’s killer no more,” I continued, Hraken’s voice still echoing in my mind. “With a single stroke, I beheaded him.”
Anansya drew air between her teeth. “Your deeds will make an epic song. I propose a
play this evening—”
I sheathed Fortune’s Law. “No, Anansya. My men clamor for a celebration. Tomorrow, I will attend your play. Tonight, we feast!” Perhaps with some wine and charm, I could loosen the puppeteers’ tongues and learn of their scheme.
“As you wish,” said Anansya, her face unreadable.
“The halls of Austere are yours to roam. Come, Fabek, there are things we must discuss.”
In my chambers, I told Fabek my suspicions, and spoke for the first time about my tryst with Selenja. “I should never have allowed her to steal my heart, nor bargained with her mistress for victory. Though the witch pledged her allegiance to the tsardom, her first loyalty is to her dark magic.”
“What signs of malice have you seen?” asked Fabek.
“The shadows hold their magic,” I said. One particular memory haunted me. “Once, when Selenja and I were tangled together in the sheets, I thought moonlight gleamed off a strand of hair tied to her little finger. I suspected it was an illusion, until I spied another such hair attached to her other hand. From the corner of my eye, I traced the strands to the shadows on the wall, where it seemed a phantom held their ends, but when I turned my head, it had vanished. I grow more certain each day that this specter bore the face of Anansya.”
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