by Kate Elliott
The spider scouts form up in front of Father and clank out in front of the infantry vanguard like a spear thrown in advance of the line. Ahead, pinpricks of light grow until I see they are lanterns hanging from the heads of pikes. They illuminate the shields forming the vanguard of Nikonos’s group. Each shield is marked with the white sea-phoenix of the king’s royal household but I am sure they are East Saroese troops in disguise.
A horn blasts three times. The men in the front rank slam the lower rims of their shields onto the ground, a wall bristling with pikes that horses won’t charge. It spans the entire road, blocking our path.
We spiders clank to a halt a stone’s toss from the shields. Father and his four adjutants approach. In the line facing us, two shields lift away, and five horsemen ride through the gap to meet him.
The man in front wears a helmet with a gold prince’s circlet worked into the iron to mark his exalted rank. Of course there’s no hint of the king’s diadem. His officers are likewise wearing full armor and helmets. The night makes it hard to distinguish their faces because only their eyes are visible.
Father rides forward with his helmet tucked under his arm, head uncovered as a sign of subservience.
“Well met, General Esladas!” a voice rings out commandingly. I recognize Nikonos’s rich, silky tone, and how false it sounds when he isn’t spewing sarcasm and disdain. “The gods have providentially brought about our meeting at this very convenient time and place.”
“Well met, Prince Nikonos. What reinforcements do you bring?”
My gaze catches on the slightest of movements: two shields part to create a narrow gap. Bodies shift position behind it, and I’m suddenly sure I see the curve of a bow. This is it. This is the ambush.
I lever back my forward limbs. My spider rears up like it is clawing at the starry heavens as I wildly cast one of my javelins toward Nikonos. Of course it goes wide but it’s only a distraction.
“Ambush!” I scream.
Father ducks instinctively. An arrow sings through the air right where his head just was. A second arrow slams into his horse’s withers. His officers push their mounts forward to place themselves in the line of fire between him and the enemy, and he lets them do it. He falls back, is hit in the leg, slides off his wounded horse.
With the same motion, I lower my carapace and charge. I can’t look back or I’ll die. Adjutants screen Nikonos with their own bodies and several go down in a flurry of arrows. I can’t find a way around their thrashing horses as he flees.
Another spider punches through a shield with its lance arm, scattering men. Arrows pepper my brass skin as I slam down a leg atop more shields, its weight crumpling metal. All I can think of is my father sliding off the horse with an arrow in his flesh.
Braced on six legs, I punch with my two forelegs, over and over, breaking down the shield wall until the soldiers give way and fall back.
Behind us, a horn calls twice, pauses, calls four times, pauses, calls twice.
It takes me a moment to realize the other spiders are pulling back from the half-broken line. Why? Why? The enemy is giving way because we are metal and they are flesh.
I want to punch and punch but Nikonos has vanished into the roiling mass of his troops and I remember that Father has a plan.
I swing around, using my left foreleg like a scythe to cut a path out of the fray. Soldiers scatter, scuttling out of reach like crabs. My carapace swings over a corpse all bloody and crushed until, fully turned around, I stump after the other spiders. We flee like dogs retreating with tails between their legs as projectiles slam harmlessly into our brass backs.
Jeers rise from Nikonos’s troops as they mock our flight.
But I know what is coming.
“Brace! Pull!”
A loud ratcheting noise clacks.
“Fly!”
Sealed ceramic pots sail over me and crash to the ground, shattering amid the enemy. There is a momentary silence, then more laughter from Nikonos’s allies.
No scorpions here.
Flights of burning arrows streak out from our ranks. They set alight the naphtha splashed through the East Saroese pretenders.
A second volley launches and splatters, followed by a second flight of burning arrows. The fire spreads in stubborn, fierce flames.
Men scream and scramble. We spiders swivel back to the attack. We become a moving wall of blades and claws, brass flashing, legs thumping down in a shuddering rhythm, the fire no menace to our metal. There isn’t enough naphtha to burn for long but the damage to their cohesion is done.
Arrows and javelins slam my carapace, shaking me in my harness. A soldier backpedals in front of me, trying to get out of my way as I raise my forelegs. My memory flashes to a day long ago in the Ribbon Market when a spider’s leg crushed a tiny child in front of its mother.
I can’t think. I mustn’t think. I must keep pushing forward and not think about what it means, how in war we use weapons to cut the spark of life out of bodies. We steal sparks to win battles. We are all in the business of killing to stay on top.
A horn cries in bursts. A noise rises like the rumble of waves beating on a rocky shoreline. My father’s firebird veterans race across the last dying naphtha flames, past our brass legs.
Their punch shatters the weakening enemy line. Weapons rise and fall, clash and crunch. Lanterns crack and break and fall, transforming into a pulse of shadows as men keep fighting although they can barely see.
I follow the other spiders off the edge of the road and barely keep to my eight feet as I race down the slope. Something warm, wet, and salty slides from my forehead into my eyes, running around the curve of my nose. I don’t hurt anywhere. I don’t feel injured. Yet I swallow blood. I’m so thirsty.
Up on the road soldiers die or surrender. I am numb to the cries and screams of messy, ugly dying. I have to be numb.
Stars blaze in pinprick thickets overhead. The moon advances into the west as our beacon. The Royal Army plunges into the night in pursuit of Nikonos and his fleeing allies.
Instead of giving up the road we have claimed it.
I clank alone against the tide, stumping east as the Royal Army marches west past me. By the time I come up alongside the banners of the command company, I’m shaking with exhaustion and my head throbs.
I jerk my spider to a halt, unlatch the shield, and hang there, half in and half out of the carapace. Soldiers scramble down the bank as I drop to the ground. My legs give out, and I collapse to my hands and knees. Blood drips onto my left hand.
“Jessamy?” Steward Haredas’s voice cuts through the haze. “Good Goat! Are you wounded?”
At home the steward would never have touched one of Captain Esladas’s daughters. Now he hoists me and force-marches me up the steep embankment. The general’s carriage rolls at a walking pace with shutters open and my father inside. My lips move in a soundless thanks to all the gods that he is alive. Naturally he is leaning out the window, flinging commands like spears. Messengers appear and vanish, bringing him news, racing away to deliver new orders.
When I’m unceremoniously shoved into the still-moving carriage and slam down onto the bench opposite him, all I can think to say is “It’s not my blood.”
He’s seated with his injured leg stuck straight out in front, his boot resting on the bench beside me. A man wearing the coiled serpent badge of the physicians’ guild is holding aside the skirted plates of his armored coat so they don’t jostle the arrow sticking out of his thigh.
“By the creases and smudges on your riding gear, I see you have spent some time in a spider. Which I do not recall giving you permission to do.”
He beckons with a hand for me to come close enough that he can brush his fingers along the injury. My hair is still tied back although the scarf is working loose.
“Turn your head,” he orders so curtly I cringe. He is really angry with me. But he probes the wound with a touch as gentle as Mother’s.
To the doctor he says, “What do you
think? It feels like a graze, not a deep wound. There’s a lot of blood.”
The doctor considers me with the dispassionate gaze of a person who has seen much suffering and death. He does not remove his hands from Father’s armor, however, and his feet are braced on the floor so he can absorb every shake and rattle of the carriage without allowing the armored coat to jostle the protruding arrow.
“Scalp wounds bleed a great deal. A salve of honey and alfalfa should set it to rights.”
“Have you this salve in your pouch?”
“Yes, General, and if you would be so kind as to allow me to stop the carriage as I have requested ten times now, I can treat her wound as well as get this arrow out of your leg before more damage is done.”
Father ignores the doctor’s sarcasm. He signals to a captain trotting alongside the window. “Take your squad to the rear. Cover the road with naphtha and wait, in hiding, until the enemy’s vanguard arrives. Then set it alight. That will slow them down.”
“Yes, General.” The captain taps his chest twice, the salute we girls learned when we were tiny. Father replies with the same salute, and the captain rides off.
“But Father, how can a few men sent back to enemy lines like that not get cut down as they try to run away afterward?”
“Quiet, Jessamy!” This stern look is the one that made me fear I could never win his approval, but I see the shadow in it now. How many men has he sacrificed in this way in his years in command?
“General, I need to get this arrow out,” repeats the doctor.
Father rests an arm on the window’s edge, leaning out. “Any news of Prince Kalliarkos?” he calls to someone I can’t see.
A male voice answers, out of my view. “By last report his troop was chasing the royal carriage.”
“Very good.” He calls out to the driver to halt, then settles back with a sigh. “Very well, Doctor.”
“Thank the gods, stubborn goat,” the doctor mutters.
We slow to a stop.
“Give me the salve,” says Father. He unties my scarf. On one side the fabric is soaked through with what must be my blood. Carefully he uses the doctor’s tiny trowel to press salve along the cut. At first the mixture feels oddly cool and then it stings so brutally that I’m dizzied by the pain and shut my eyes. My memory flashes to an image of a dead man crushed on the ground, and I open my eyes because I can’t bear to think of how I mauled through soldiers and kept walking.
Father takes the scarf out of my hands and does a creditable job of tying it around my hair, bloody patches and all. “As well I allowed your mother to teach me how to deal with you girls’ hair,” he murmurs so low he probably doesn’t even mean me to hear. The words carve misery straight into my heart. It’s a battle not to burst into sobs, but I manage to focus the agony into the burning gash.
He grasps my right hand between his. “Go ahead, Doctor.”
I tense, ready for anything. He fixes his gaze on a target spot behind my head as the doctor works the arrow loose from the flesh. His grip crushes my fingers, his lips pressed together until they lose all color. Sweat drips down his face.
“Ah!” The doctor gives a satisfied gasp. The arrow clatters onto the floor. After smearing salve over the wound, the doctor gives it two neat stitches and binds it with a cloth. “Not as bad as it could have been, General. You’re fortunate.”
Slowly Father unclenches his fingers. My hand aches, and I shake it to get the blood flowing. He gestures out the window to a waiting adjutant.
“Bring a horse.”
“General!” objects the doctor.
“Father! You shouldn’t be riding.”
A soldier leads a horse up. Father tests his weight on the wounded leg. He winces at first touch, then nods crisply when the leg doesn’t buckle. Finally he turns back to me.
“If we don’t capture and kill Nikonos now, we’ll lose our best chance to defeat him cleanly. I know it was you in the spider who warned me. But now you will stay in this carriage. Not because I believe you are incapable but because adversaries work alone while soldiers work in concert. Do not cause trouble for me by trying some new reckless stunt. You aren’t trained for this.”
“Yes, Father.”
An officer cups laced fingers under Father’s boot to lift him to the saddle. He mounts clumsily for all that, with a grimace of pain he would not normally show in front of me. I grip the windowsill, staring after him with my heart twisted into knots and my head stinging, blood gone sticky on my lips as he rides into the night.
I want to leap out of the carriage and race after him but strength also lies in knowing when to wait. Anyway, I’m so exhausted, dragged down by my vision of the crushed soldier, that when I brace my body into a corner of the carriage, its jostling and jolting shakes me into sleep.
I wake when the carriage halts. I’m alone, the doctor gone, the shutters closed. The stuffy air makes me sneeze, and the sneeze makes my head flare with pain. Just as I put my hand on the latch to look outside, the door opens. I jerk back in surprise, but it’s Kal who leaps up into the carriage. His face is smeared with grime, his hair looks crusted by sand, his hands are several shades darker from layers of dirt, and I could gaze at him forever.
He examines me with a frown, then carefully touches my head. “There’s blood on your scarf.”
“Just a cut on my scalp.” I lean across him and shut the door. “I’m fine, Kal.”
What’s fine is the way his mouth feels when I kiss him. What’s fine is the pressure of his knee against my thigh. What’s fine is the stroke of his thumb across my palm.
He breaks off, sets me back on the bench, and sits opposite, careful not to touch me.
“Kal…”
“We’re not alone anymore. Everyone is watching me.”
His tone is gentle but it still hurts, even as I know he’s right. “What happened to Nikonos?”
“We won the battle and took possession of the royal carriage, but Nikonos escaped. His East Saroese allies were able to signal to a war galley that was shadowing them offshore. He got away on the ship.” He rubs his eyes wearily. “He abandoned most of his troops.”
“He abandoned the people who fought and died for him? No wonder the soldiers of the Royal Army have the good sense to prefer my father, and you.”
His bleak expression lightens as his smile melts into me. I take hold of his hand, and he gives up the pretense of formality and slides across to the bench next to me, bringing his mouth to mine.
The door opens.
“My lord Kalliarkos.” There stands my father, with his impeccable timing, catching us doing the thing he adamantly warned me never, ever to do with a highborn Patron lord.
9
Kal squeezes my fingers in reassurance and only then releases me and steps down from the carriage. He does not blush as he nods at Father. Why should he? Father may be a general, but Kalliarkos is the prince.
“My lord, the army awaits you.” Disapproval sharpens Father’s diction.
Kal presses his lips together, glances at me, then says, “Doma Jessamy will accompany me.”
“My lord, these soldiers have maintained exceptional discipline under extreme circumstances. Your presence gives them courage for the final and most dangerous phase of our fight. Don’t let this get in the way; it will be seen as a sign of poor judgment and weakness on your part.”
Only then do I realize how many people are within view of the carriage and its open door, how many saw that the prince who means to be our next king woke the sleeping girl in the carriage and must suspect he gave her a kiss that should never belong to her. They don’t want a mule mascot to fight alongside. They want a noble Patron king to fight for.
“I’ll stay with you, Father.”
Kal’s gaze meets mine accusingly.
“You just said essentially the same thing in the carriage,” I say to him in a low voice.
His frown deepens. “Very well.”
He walks away, officers falling in beside
him. A resplendent carriage flying the crowned sea-phoenix banner of the royal palace has been drawn up to take pride of place in the command company. The carriage also flies the personal banner of Nikonos and, to my surprise, they leave it flying.
Officers wearing the livery of the royal guards kneel before Kal and offer their swords, hilts toward him, as if expecting him to drive the blades into their bodies. They are commanders of the troops whom Nikonos abandoned. Kal speaks words I can’t hear; their weapons are taken away by the soldiers surrounding them. I press a hand over my mouth, short of breath, but they are allowed to live, to offer their allegiance to a new prince.
A splendid brown gelding is led forward. An officer ties a magnificent hip-length cloak of gold silk over Kal’s grimy riding clothes. Purple ribbons attached to the cape’s shoulders flutter in the wind. He swings onto the horse and a golden-handled whip is handed up to him. From this elevation he gives a triumphal wave and a crisp salute to the watching men.
A wild cheer roars, carried out along the ranks. His gaze touches mine across the distance that separates us.
The heat seems suddenly overwhelming. My vision blurs.
“Move back from the window, Jessamy.” An unfamiliar vulnerability trembles in Father’s tone.
An adjutant helps him in beside me. The frowning doctor hops in after and begins fussing over his leg as horns blare and the carriage rolls. Father massages his forehead, in more pain than I had guessed, but when he lowers the hand his gaze is clear. “Tell me what happened to Bettany.”
“To Bettany?”
“Do not pretend you do not understand me. When we were at Port Selene together, both you and Amaya slid around the topic of your sister as if around a scorpion on the path.”
I fold my hands on my lap and bow my head.
“If you are frightened to confide in me, Jessamy, then I have not been a good father. Bettany and I have had our troubles, but I love her just as I do all you girls. Please do not leave me wondering.”