Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Yeah, don’t know why, maybe it’s that lovely judgmental streak.”

  This time she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him into a doorway. At the end of the narrow street, the Brotherhood were filing into a two-tier building.

  “Talk fast, before I send you to Dion with a split lip,” she warned him.

  “I don’t trust you to keep Enth alive,” he told her flatly, not giving an inch.

  “We need the monster for our quest. Hence it lives that long.” And only that long, was the unspoken implication.

  “And if Big-Nose in there gives you some holy spiel about how his plan’s better, you know what, I think you might just go for it. Because his plan involves killing Enth, and you’ve been spoiling for that since there was an Enth.”

  She stared at him and a couple of retorts died on her lips. “What, are you buggering the thing now, that you’re so in love with it?”

  “Please, save the cheap shots, you’re bad at them.” And she was: the venom in the words was forced.

  “You seriously think I’d compromise our mission just to spill the monster’s blood?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Again the halted answer, and it came to Lief that she didn’t know, exactly, and that she had not anticipated being uncertain about her own motives. Presumably she had thought the answer—the one in her head, rather than whatever guff she gave to him—would have been a flat “yes.”

  “If the creature does its part, and takes us to Darvezian so we can end his evil, then I don’t care what happens to it after,” she stated. Even that was said with reluctance, but Lief guessed it counted as a major volte-face.

  “Fine, good. I’m still going in and you’re going back, and I don’t care how Harathes has pissed you off.” Although I can guess. “Because I’m better at breaking into people’s houses than you are.”

  Something of her anger had drained from her, through the crack she had found when she looked for her certainty. “Fine,” she snapped. “If you get yourself killed I am going to laugh.”

  “How very Light of you.”

  “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  “Never have and don’t intend to start now.”

  After Cyrene had run off to the High Temple, Lief studied the building before him. It was, like most of Armesion’s housing, a great box of heavy stone squeezed between its neighbors. Normally there would be several families in such a place, but right now Lief was willing to bet it contained just a single cult. How many of the Brotherhood of the Dawn were there? No way of knowing. If Abnasio was a genuine prelate, that placed him with a decent rank in the church, hence access to a fair flock of followers. On the other hand he might just be a heretical loon with a handful of nutters and an exaggerated idea of his own importance. And who had Gamograth been, for that matter, and what were the terms of his prophecy?

  All this went through Lief’s head as he scaled a building three away from the Brotherhood’s hideout. The walls of Armesion were smooth and short on handholds, but he had been a second-story man for long enough that he barely felt challenged.

  Once up, he trotted lightly across the roofs until he was over his target. He was also wondering how much time he had. If Abnasio had just cut Enth’s throat the moment they got indoors then he was absolutely too late, but he didn’t reckon it would be like that. Religion, prophecy, and secret brotherhoods all said ritual to him. They had been waiting a long time for this foretold moment, surely they would want to do it properly.

  He scaled down to one of the small windows and secured himself until he was hanging upside down over it. It was a simple matter to lift the bar of the shutters and peer in. The room revealed was a dormitory, the floor crowded with mattresses: he counted twenty-four of them, crammed in just like Armesion’s buildings were crushed within its restrictive walls. That gave him some idea of the size of this pack of jokers, anyway. Seven of the beds were occupied, robed forms sprawled there. More reassurance, that: no doubt everyone would want to be awake when the actual doings were being done. Still, not the best entry point. Lief moved crabwise along the wall.

  The next window gave onto a darkened room, but he could make out some furniture: a desk maybe, a chair, some sort of assemblage along one wall. It seemed unoccupied, and that was good enough for Lief.

  He closed the shutters after himself, the blotting out of the moon leaving him in almost complete darkness. He had a good idea of where the door was, nonetheless, and crept to it, listening: voices, but distant, nothing right outside. There was a keyhole, too: a little star shining in the dark night of the room. Peering through it gave him an enlightening view of a small section of the far wall.

  If there was a guard outside, then he was in trouble. Only one way to find out, though. He plotted a mental course back to the window, in case of mishap, and tried the door.

  Not locked, and no guard when he drew it slightly open. Of course the Brotherhood were all terribly faithful, and who would expect an intruder here in their sanctum?

  He let the slice of light he had admitted lead his eyes back to the room he was in. The business against one wall was an altar, perhaps this was Abnasio’s private chapel. Certainly there was a rather fine rayed disc set up there, with gems at the cardinal points, and some exquisite filigree at its center. Lief’s hands twitched.

  Moments later, and with one of his conveniently capacious pockets rather heavier than before, he crept from the room, ears pricked for footsteps and voices.

  He quickly worked out that the fashionable place to be for slavering fanatics was down below. Aside from the sleepers, the upper story was deserted, the ground floor little better. There were a handful of monks cooking, black robes and all, and Lief had to dodge a few more who were bustling purposefully from place to place, often carrying various odds and sods of regalia. Everything had a ghoulishly festive feel to it, and all the Brotherhood were in obvious high spirits, practically buzzing with energy and joy. The time had come for their dour existences to have meaning, Lief guessed. He had no idea how long ago this Gamograth had made his pronouncements, but he had the feeling that waiting out the years had been a rather unfulfilling task. He wondered what most of the Brotherhood intended to do, when they had finished with Enth. Go home? Take up a trade? Or would they all crusade out of Armesion and ablate themselves against the armies of Darkness that stood between them and Darvezian, having killed the only creature who could possibly have led them past?

  Lief located the stairs down to the cellar swiftly enough, as this was the bottleneck for most of the activity going on in the house. From below he could hear some rather tuneless chanting that was probably intended to be triumphant, and he could not help but notice the character of the material that was being taken down there. There was wood, lots of wood—of some fragrant and expensive kind—and there were plenty of sharp implements of a variety of shapes, and most with gold handles and gleamingly polished blades. His hands twitched again, but his gut did too. He didn’t like the look of any of it, save for its resale value.

  He had, in his career, gone into many dangerous places, and come out of them too. Sometimes he had only just made it out, and sometimes he had only got out by talking very fast, or running very fast, or on one occasion taking an extremely foul potion and pretending to be dead. He did not much want to go into that cellar, though. No thief relishes somewhere with just the one exit.

  So: improvise, and there was one major advantage to dealing with creepy cults. Infiltrating a bandit hideout or a noble’s castle or a townhouse crawling with servants, these tasks had their pros and cons, and the pro of the Brotherhood was that their flair for drama mandated nice concealing robes.

  It was easy enough to retreat back into the body of the house until a lone monk ambled past. It was only slightly more taxing to cosh the luckless votary over the head, and then a couple more times for good measure, strip him, and bung him in the private chapel. As an added twist of the screw, it was out with the lockpicks so that Lief could secure
the door, and let Abnasio boggle about that one.

  Lief was well aware that there was a clock ticking on the whole venture now: the missing devotee would be noticed, or located, or Abnasio would realize he had forgotten his sacred disemboweling fork and head back to his chambers for it. Lief needed to get in, get Enth, and get out.

  Properly be-robed, he headed back for the cellar stairs, uncomfortably aware that if the Brotherhood had some sort of ritual greeting or signal so far hidden to him, then this little plan was going to unravel very fast indeed.

  He passed three of them on his way without anyone calling him out. He made sure that he moved with the same eager, purposeful tread as they. That seemed to suffice, for now.

  Descending the stairs, he entered a world reeking of incense, the air stale and dry and hot with the fires that the Brotherhood were banking up. He had to force himself not to stop and gawk: there was a big chamber here, surely larger than any legitimate cellar needed to be, the ceiling propped up on what looked to be far too few pillars. At one end, the radiant visage of Armes cast back the flames, that same heroic countenance that Lief had seen all over the city that bore his name. Here, a life-size effigy of the man-god was officiating over a pair of high fires, and between them . . .

  Lief swallowed. Between them was a great big slab on which something close to a hundred different knives and saws and other implements had been arrayed, no doubt each one with its own purpose and significance. It was all golden and gleaming, and the monks were singing happily about it, and everyone was grinning almost blissfully at the thought of what it was all for. It was one of the most skin-crawling sights in Lief’s shadowy life.

  No Enth though. The guest of honor had yet to be brought forward.

  He made a circuit of the room, head bowed as if in prayer but sneaking every glimpse he could past his cowl. There were more monks in here than before. The place was filling up, but still fairly aimlessly, as though these were early arrivals who simply had nothing better to do than wait.

  Still a little time, then . . .

  He walked from the room, playing the role of a man who knew where he was going, and started to unobtrusively find out what else the cellar held.

  It held Enth.

  He had expected a rather longer search, but there were only a handful of other chambers there. The Brotherhood had no dedicated cells, which at least suggested that they didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. Instead, there were just alcoves, and some held monks doing monastery to each other—Lief was rather vague on what monks actually did—and others were stores, and one, the grandest, held Abnasio midway through being adorned in robes of red and gold that shone like fire, so that Lief retreated hurriedly. And the next one, when he drew the curtain aside, had Enth in it, lying miserably on the stone floor with his hands chained before him, shaking.

  He crept close, wondering if the man-spider would just go berserk and attack him: perhaps simply being removed from the company of Dion’s people would have plunged Enth back into something monstrous.

  “Enth,” he hissed, poised to flee. There was no response at the first call, but on the second those black disc eyes were turned toward him, lips drawn back from fang teeth. The expression there was terrifying, feral and snarling, and a stranger might have taken it for the epitome of savage evil. Lief had learned to read that book, though, and what he read there was pain, dreadful pain. Enth’s hands were crooked into claws, and the manacles they had put about his wrists seemed to glimmer and shine.

  Lief understood. It made him sick, but he understood. These shackles were made here in Armesion, by priest-smiths. Just as the beer would have turned Enth’s stomach, simply for where it had been brewed, so these chains must scorch and sear his skin by their very touch.

  And it took him aback. It made him stop and think about precisely what he was doing. Even he, a creature of sin as he no doubt was, had never thought of himself as having gone to the Darkness. He had never quite committed such an irredeemable act of cruelty or madness or willful ambition so as to take that step. Unlike Dion he could never claim to know the wiles of evil, nor to own to the piercing sight of one who wore the mantle of the Light. For all that Abnasio had seemed a self-important thug, he was also a man who wielded that golden power. He was, in that great cosmic war, a force for good. And Enth . . .

  Enth was a creature of Darkness. There was no getting round it. And what if Dion is wrong and Abnasio is right? Am I really about to rescue a monstrous servant of evil from the hands of the righteous?

  Enth whimpered. It was a human sound. Lief knew it: he himself had once or twice been beaten and broken just enough to make that sound.

  Fuck the righteous.

  He bent over the manacles, seeing how they fastened. There was something like a keyhole there, though it wasn’t quite anything he had seen before. Holy locks were something he had a passing familiarity with, however, to the despair and fury of a dozen separate church treasurers. He tucked a finger into his belt and winkled out one of his sets of picks.

  Luck was with him then, for there was a scuff of sandaled feet behind him before a voice challenged him.

  “Brother, what do you do?” Surprised, but not suspicious yet.

  Lief stood hurried, making sure his hood was up and shadowing his face. “I checked on the monster. It seemed to be working free of its bonds,” he reported.

  There was one of those awkward do I know you? sort of pauses that had screwed Lief over in similar capers, but then the monk was pushing past him.

  “That should be impossible,” he announced briskly. “Our Lord Abnasio set those chains himself. This beast has no power to break them, certainly not here in the heart of the Light.” And yet he went to see for himself, as people always did. He knelt before Enth without fear and bent his head to scrutinize the shackles. Really, he could not have obliged Lief more unless he had divested himself of his robe first.

  Thwock! went the sap, and Lief gave him another quick pair of thwocks as he went down, because he had cast his lot in temporarily with the monsters of the Dark, apparently, and so a little pettiness seemed appropriate.

  “Right,” he said quietly, as he crouched by Enth again. “Now we’re definitely on the bloody clock, so let’s get this off you, and get a robe on you, and then hope that the Li—that something’s smiling on us enough to get you out.” He had his picks into service now, feeling out the contours of the lock, using his handful of little charms and tricks to cut through the holiness of them to get to the physical components behind. Even as he spoke, he felt a heaviness in his stomach that spoke of long odds and bad consequences if he failed. And where the hell’s Cyrene then? If she’s still sitting in some prelate’s waiting room I am not going to be happy.

  Enth whimpered again, holding his hands very still to let Lief work. The sound was pitiful. I wonder if feeling pain is something Penthos gave him? Spiders don’t experience it, I’d have thought. Those parts of Lief’s mind unnecessary for lockpicking drifted about, trying not to get in the way. Or perhaps pain’s the enemy no matter which side you’re on, and surely Ghantishmen and the like are close to us, and bleed, and scream. But there’s a line somewhere. Surely spiders are on the far side of it.

  The lock was proving challenging, far more so than he had thought. The gleam of it seemed to dazzle his hands as much as his eyes. Right here, in the Holy City, in the Brotherhood’s sanctum. I think I might not be good enough. A bitter thought, because he had always been a good third-story man, that rare thief who would take on a temple or a wizard’s tower or a cursed tomb.

  “Enth,” he said softly. “Listen to me. I don’t think I can get these off you.”

  A ragged exhalation from the man-spider.

  “I know, and I’m sorry, but let’s get you out of here first. I reckon Dion could probably just touch these and they’d spring off.” And Lief was thinking unhappy thoughts now, about whether Dion would in fact care to, or whether a chained and agonized spider might be entirely within
her ability to live with, now someone else had done the hard part. But what choice do I have? “I’m going to get the robe off Sleepy Joe here and onto you, and you’re going to have to walk out of here. Can you—can you actually stand up and walk? Please tell me you can walk.”

  He saw Enth’s muscles bunch—all of them rippling like a carpet of gray rats’ backs—and then he thrust himself up, stiff-legged, until he was standing before Lief with the manacles before him, away from his chest. His face spasmed and twitched, and Lief couldn’t understand why he was not screaming.

  Unless he had been screaming before, perhaps, and Abnasio had come in and made him regret it.

  Lief got onto the sapped cultist and fought the robe off the man’s unresisting body, always a more awkward job than you’d think. After that, there was the difficulty of getting it onto a man who had his hands linked together. Lief solved that one with some industrious knife work, slitting the sleeves and chest and then just slipping the whole garment over Enth’s head, until the hands held locked before the man-spider appeared something close to an attitude of prayer or supplication.

  “Going to have to do,” Lief decided, and turned round to come face to face with Abnasio and at least a dozen hefty monks.

  “Balls,” was his critique of that particular development. A more dashing or courageous hero might have gone for the high priest with the knife he was holding, and thereafter much regretted it, but Lief was not that man. Instead, he let the small blade clatter to the ground.

  Abnasio regarded him solemnly, letting the silence build before stating, “You see, my brothers, how the seductive wiles of the Dark can affect the weak of mind. This poor man is a servant of the Light, sworn to the cause of Dion, and yet in such a brief span of contact with the beast he has been corrupted, and works to free it, against his better nature. If ever we looked for a reason to take up arms against evil, here it is.”

  Lief, who was not pleased at being used as an object lesson in comparative morality, shuffled his feet. “Look, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said without much hope. “Dion’s all over this prophecy business. We need him to make it work.” He cocked his head at Enth’s suffering form. “Seriously, come along with us if you want, the more the holier. We’ll all go kick Darvezian together.”