He Drank, and Saw the Spider

by Alex Bledsoe

  She stood inside the cage, clad only in a tattered prison shift. She had no choice about standing—a leather collar around her neck was attached to a chain from the ceiling, preventing her from sitting down. She leaned against the bars with the weariness of a woman resigned to her fate.

  On the wall behind the cage was yet another portrait of Sylvia and Mannheim. The artist must be fabulously wealthy by now, I thought, after making all these copies. Why was it here, though?

  The sorceress did not open her eyes. It was possible to sleep standing up if you were tired enough, and it appeared she was. She looked even older than before, her short gray hair almost white and plastered with sweat to her skull. Her exposed skin was saggy and pale. I didn’t know how those mantis-men tortured prisoners for information here, but it was clearly a long, slow pro cess.

  I put the torch in an empty sconce and stepped closer to the cage. There was a goblet of water on the floor, but of course she couldn’t bend down to reach it—subtle torture, but effective.

  I said gently, “Opulora.”

  Her eyes opened. They weren’t guarded and in control as they’d been before, but there was the hard steel of courage in them, the kind that only real warriors possess. And I was well aware, of course, that not all real warriors carried swords and shields. Like I’d told Viola, women were some of the fiercest warriors I knew.

  Her voice was cracked and dry and, combined with her appearance, made her seem especially old and fragile. “You’re LaCrosse, right? The sword jockey.”

  “That’s me. I’ve brought Isadora Glendower to you.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  I expected questions about Tatterhead, but she only said, flatly and wearily, “It’s too late.”

  “No, it’s not midnight yet. There’s still time.”

  When she didn’t respond, I picked up the goblet and held it out to her. After a moment she took it and greedily drained it.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice less ragged. “I was very thirsty. Licking the sweat off the bars only gets you so far.”

  “Why don’t you do that thing where you suddenly disappear?”

  She tapped the collar. “I can only do that unfettered.”

  “Well, even fettered, you should be able to tell me the truth about Isadora.”

  “Isidore,” she corrected.

  “She can decide which name she wants later. Who is she?”

  She closed her eyes, and I was afraid she’d pass out and strangle herself. Then she said, “Oh, Mr. LaCrosse, if I hadn’t already experienced your skills, I might fall for them now. But I know how good you are at getting people to talk. So I’m on my guard.”

  I thought for a moment. I couldn’t trick her, and I doubted I could outsmart her. So I used the only weapon I had left. I said, “I have a story to tell you. A true story, about Isidore and me. When I’m done, you decide if I should know who she is.”

  “I’m making no promises,” she said.

  “I’m not asking for any.”

  I told her about rescuing Isidore from the bear, and placing her with the Glendowers. Then I told her how I found Isidore again, and how Tatterhead kidnapped her after following us right to her. “I don’t appreciate being used that way,” I finished. “I normally get paid for it, if nothing else. But this isn’t about money. It’s about a girl who’s done nothing wrong, being treated like she was some kind of prize toy.”

  “She’s far from that,” Opulora said. She shook her head slowly. “So that’s why I lost track of her. Poor Kyle. He was a good man, you know. That’s why I trusted him with her safety. He deserved a better death.”

  “He was tough, all right,” I said, recalling the way he’d hung on to life long enough to ensure I’d care for Isadora. “Tougher than I’d be after being mauled by a bear.”

  “And my poor Tatterhead. I thought he might rescue me when he returned, but now that will never happen. He wanted so much to be a normal person. Now perhaps he’ll get his chance.”

  I said gently, “If Isidore’s not a prize . . . what is she?’ ’ ”

  Again she closed her eyes. “She is the heir to the throne of Mahnoma.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said. “Gerald’s only heir was a boy who died. He and his wife had no more children, and bastards can’t succeed to the throne.”

  She smiled with her eyes closed again. “That’s true as far as it goes. The full truth is . . . unbelievable.”

  “It usually is,” I agreed.

  “If I tell you, even you won’t believe it.”

  I thought about some of the things I’d seen: a dragon, a sea monster, an incognito goddess, a pair of ghost children. “I’ll come closer to believing it than just about anyone you’re ever likely to meet.”

  So she told me. And she was almost right. If it hadn’t explained everything, I wouldn’t have believed her.

  When she finished, she watched for my reaction. I said, “That’s really possible?”

  “It’s really possible. If the magic is right, and the intent is true.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “Mr. LaCrosse, I’m not even fifty. Why do you think I look this old?”

  “It took a lot out of you, I guess.”

  “Years of my life. But I don’t regret it, and I’d do it again.”

  I was silent, absorbing the story and letting it connect up to past events on its own. “I understand why you haven’t told anyone. There’s no proof, I take it.”

  “None at all. And now, with Isidore dead—”

  “She’s not dead. Stop saying that. It’s not midnight, so there’s still time . . . isn’t there?”

  “Possibly. I have everything ready. But trapped in here, I can do nothing. And I’m so weak. . . .”

  My mind raced with possibilities. The sorceress was right, of course; no one would believe the story without proof, and what proof could there be?

  Then the painting on the wall caught my eye. “Why is that here?”

  “I tried to tell Gerald what I told you. With Tatterhead bringing Isidore back, I knew I had to come clean with him. He did not believe me. To put it mildly. He had that painting hung to remind me of the memories I’d soiled.” Her eyes welled up. “Sylvia and I were like sisters. She was too trusting and she was beautiful. Those two things will surely kill you. You can have no idea how awful it was seeing her son die, then her . . . and all for that man’s baseless jealousy.”

  “He drank, and saw the spider,” I said.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “he did. And no one could convince him otherwise.” She wiped her eyes, smearing the dirt on her face.

  I stared at the image as an idea formed and quickly took shape. It was either brilliant, or so stupid not even Liz would stay with me afterwards. “I think,” I said, “I might know how to convince Gerald of the truth. But we have to get you out of here, and now. If Isadora—I mean, Isidore—dies, then it’s all for nothing.”

  I pulled the knife from the side of my boot, reached through the bars and cut off the leather collar. She slid to the ground, rubbing her neck. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” I unscrewed the pommel on my knife and withdrew a set of lockpicks hidden there. The first lock opened easily, but I worried that the second one never would. Then it clicked and the door swung open.

  I helped Opulora to her feet. She weighed hardly anything.

  “Swear you’re not tricking me just to get out of here,” I said.

  “I swear.”

  “All right. A couple of froggy old women took Isadora from me when I got here. I don’t know where they took her, but—”

  “I can find her. I have quarters in the castle, secret rooms that no one can find if I don’t want them to. That’s where I’ll be.”

  “Then how will I find you?”

  “When I have everything ready . . . I’ll find you.”

  I looked her in the eye. Behind the weariness and abuse, there was now the fire of conviction. Outside the cage
she stood straight, and the prison weariness vanished. I hoped I hadn’t been sucker- played. “I can trust you, right?” I asked her seriously.

  She smiled slightly. “Aren’t you a good judge of people?”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Yes, Mr. LaCrosse. You can trust me.”

  And with that she vanished: no flash, no smoke, just there one moment and gone the next, with the same lack of drama as when she’d appeared in the king’s antechamber.

  I hoped I was right to trust her. If not, Gerald would probably have me in that cage before long, and he’d be right to do it. Because it meant I was an idiot.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Hector pushed open the throne room double doors, then stepped aside so I could make a grand entrance. Gerald, back on his throne and surrounded by his guards, looked up as I approached. I knelt before him.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What nonsense did she tell you?”

  “The same thing she told you,” I said. “Isadora’s your daughter.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I believe it’s possible, yeah.”

  He laughed without any humor at all. “By all the gods in the sky, is everyone insane but me? My wife and I had one child. One. A son. His bones lie with the bones of my fathers.”

  Sweat trickled down the back of my neck, and it wasn’t because the room was hot. “What would convince you?”

  “That her ridiculous story is true? Nothing. The world doesn’t work that way, and whatever she calls ‘magic’ is nothing more than simple tricks and nonsense. It certainly doesn’t extend to—”

  “Then how do you explain Tatterhead?” I said.

  “He’s a freak of nature.”

  “No, she created him. She used the same magic, only this time she fashioned a being from scratch.”

  “I think you and her need to spend some time in the same cell,” he said. “Guards, take this—”

  I was ready to fight, and prepared to die rather than submit to the Mahnoman interrogators, but a shrill female voice cried, “Your Majesty!”

  One of the dowdy matrons who’d taken Isadora ran the length of the great hall toward us. With her short legs and bulk, it took a while. At last she stopped, curtsied without toppling over, and gasped, “She’s . . . gone!”

  “The shepherd girl?”

  The woman nodded, her face red and sweaty. “One moment she was there, and then . . . she wasn’t!”

  Gerald turned to me, furious. “What do you know about this?”

  I raised my hands. “Hey, I was here with you.”

  “Your Majesty!” came another cry. The taller of the two interrogators emerged from a side door, minced to the dais, and dropped to one knee. “The sorceress is gone!”

  “What?” Gerald snarled.

  “Someone cut her free of the restraints, and opened the cell!”

  Again the king looked at me. I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around Ellis’s ring. I took a deep breath and began, “Before you go off half-nocked here, let me—”

  “Kill him,” Gerald said through his teeth, pointing at me. “Kill from the ankles up, and make sure he feels everything.”

  The interrogator smiled. “Oh, with pleasure.”

  I glanced over at Hector. He shrugged; he was sympathetic, but he was also on the job. I’d get no help from him.

  I backed up a step. I didn’t mind going down under the swords of honest soldiers, but I wasn’t about to let myself be peeled alive by these human dung beetles.

  Before anyone drew blood, though, the big main doors burst open, and King Ellis strode through as if he were in his own palace back in Altura. Behind him came Liz, Beatrice, Clancy, Glendower, Jack, and Harry. Ajax brought up the rear, and behind him were a half dozen palace guards, swords drawn but clearly taken aback by Ellis’s brazen confidence and Ajax’s intimidating demeanor.

  “Eddie!” Liz called when she saw me, and waved.

  The throne room guards rushed to block off the space in front of the newcomers. Along with the trailing guards, they formed a ring around them.

  “What the hell is this?” Gerald bellowed. “Can anyone just wander into the throne room now? Should we just take the doors off the hinges and move the bedroom furniture out onto the courtyard? Who are you people?”

  “Friends to this crown,” Ellis said loudly.

  Gerald froze. “Ellis,” he said in disbelief.

  Ellis pushed past the ring of guards until he stood in the open. “Gerald, I share the blame for our estrangement lasting as long as it has. For the sake of our fathers, I offer my hand to seal this rift.”

  I moved (okay, I ran) down to stand beside Ellis. I wanted to get as far away from the interrogator as possible. I stood beside the other king (okay, behind him) as he waited for Gerald’s reaction. I pressed his ring surreptitiously into his hand, saying quietly, “You might need this.”

  Liz slipped up beside me and whispered, “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “You guys made good time.”

  “Beatrice didn’t let us dally. And don’t worry, I’ll never tell how you scurried away to hide under Ellis’s skirts.”

  I squeezed her hand.

  Before Gerald could speak, though, Beatrice pushed past the guards and demanded, “All right, where’s my daughter?”

  “And who are you?” Gerald said.

  “Beatrice, please,” Ellis said. “This is the king of—”

  “I don’t care if he’s the king of the goddamn moon, he kidnapped my daughter and I want her back.”

  “Your daughter?” Gerald asked.

  “Yes, my daughter, Isadora. Your monster was bringing her here.”

  “Your daughter?” he repeated, accusation in his voice. “Oho. How do you explain that, Mr. LaCrosse?”

  I said, “Actually, I can—”

  “I can explain it better,” Opulora said.

  Gerald did such a full-body double take that I almost laughed out loud. The billowing sleeves of his royal raiments fluttered like a man besieged by bees. But he was taken aback only for an instant. “Grab her!” he ordered his guards. “And kill her! Now!”

  “Wait a minute,” I said loudly. “If you want to know what’s going on, she’s the only one that can tell you.” And convince you, I thought but didn’t say.

  Gerald’s guards had their swords out and leveled at the sorceress. She was dressed formally now, and had cleaned up the prison grime, but she still looked old and tired. She said, “Gerald, if you kill me, you deserve every bad thing that has ever happened to you, and ever will.”

  “Is that a threat?” Gerald hissed.

  “It’s a curse,” she shot back.

  “Please, listen to us,” Ellis said, walking past me and up the dais the way only another king could do. He went past the guards, none of whom tried to stop him, and touched Gerald’s arm. “We have a come a long way to uncover the truth about this girl. My son loves her. I’m asking, as a personal favor, man to man, crown to crown: Let this woman speak.”

  Gerald stared at Ellis. Finally, in a faint and childlike voice, he asked, “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, Gerald, it’s me. Ellis.” He laughed. “Elly Belly.”

  Someone choked down a laugh. I was pretty sure it was Ajax.

  “The young man with his arm in a sling?” Ellis continued “That’s my son, John.”

  Gerald’s eyes grew wet. He looked at Jack for a long moment, then slowly smiled. “Your mother was most true to wedlock, Prince; you are the very image of your father.” He wiped his eyes. “If I were twenty-one again, I’d call you brother as I did your father, and talk of some wild adventure we once shared.”

  Then Ellis and Gerald embraced. Gerald began to sob openly now, and Ellis had to hold him up.

  The rest of our band joined me at the foot of the dais. Hector and Ajax eyeballed each other the way professionals always did. Liz took my hand again, and when I looked, she was misty-eyed as well.<
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  Finally Gerald broke the embrace and said, his voice trembling, “I don’t know what to do here, Ellis. I don’t know whom . . . to believe. . . .”

  “Then let’s hear what they have to say, and decide,” Ellis said calmly. He turned to Opulora. “You seem to have the floor.”

  Opulora said, “Gerald, I must ask you to share something with the rest of the group. How did Sylvia die?”

  Gerald made a strangled sound, and I think he would’ve collapsed had Ellis not supported him. “What has that got to do with any of this?” Ellis said.

  “It is crucial,” Opulora said, “to proving that I’m telling the truth.”

  Gerald took a deep breath, blew it out, and managed to choke out, “She killed herself. After learning of our son’s death.”

  “I know,” Opulora said. “But exactly how?”

  Gerald’s teary eyes were scrunched closed as he said, “She . . . disemboweled herself. She cut her belly open, and when that didn’t work fast enough, she stabbed herself in the heart.”

  Liz gasped. Ellis sighed and lowered his head. Even Beatrice turned pale. Glendower squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, and she patted his hand. Harry furiously scribbled on his pad. I’m not sure Clancy knew what “disemboweled” meant. Jack spoke for us all: “That poor woman.”

  “And what has that got to do with anything?” Gerald demanded, lurching upright. “Or do you just want to dredge up as many unpleasant memories as you can? You’re very good at that.”

  “It should be an unpleasant memory,” I said. I wasn’t going to let him get out of this with a few tears, since it was all his fault, anyway. “And maybe you deserve to get it dredged up every once in a while. Have you ever seen someone gutted, Your Majesty?”