The Web Rulers Weave: Ruins of Unity

by J Glen Percy

  The battle had lasted mere moments and an eternity all at once. Her cloak falling limp and the aura suddenly blinking out, Aryella collapsed in place. Gabryel recovered quickly and scrambled to his sister’s side.

  Cecily could not speak. She could hardly think. Murder and gore decorated the gulch like party lanterns strung throughout the citadel’s gardens. The blood peppering her battered face and clothing was all that remained of her assailants. She tried justifying the scene, but her mind could not connect the villainous men to their outcomes. Even Kadin, cruelty in human form, did not deserve the violence seen here. Oh well. Dead was dead, she supposed. Her lip quivered uncontrollably. Dancing specs crowded her vision, forcing out the Starling boy and his nerve-chilling sister. If only Breccyn were here. With that final longing thought, Cecily’s consciousness vanished.

  CHAPTER 22

  Her shaved head wasn’t so much strange as it was fascinating. Intriguing. What was strange was the kinship he began feeling with the foreign woman. He hadn’t known Ar’ravn long, yet in some ways she understood him better than many life friends. This despite her radically different beliefs. This despite the fact she had tried to kill him.

  The attempt on his life was not personal, Breccyn had gathered that much at least. He had spent every free hour with her since that night, and though she was exercising her thickly accented speech more and more, it was still true that the captive was learning more of the interrogator than the other way around. It was like wringing a sponge that was still taking on water. What’s more, he did not mind.

  “Bringing gifts, Breccyn Starling? Is there no end to your insult? What next, spilling water at my feet? You’ve already offered more food than a sand ox could eat in a month.”

  “You are welcome?” Breccyn replied. The contempt narrowing her eyes reinforced the indignation in her tone. It was not the first he had been acquainted with her stubbornness; she could teach patience to the mountains. He more than suspected it would not be the last.

  “What is welcome?” Ar’ravn asked sincerely, like he was the one causing the confusion.

  “Just take the flaming thing.” He shoved the thick blanket through the bars. “I’ll tally temperature next to emotions on my list of things Grayskins do not feel,” he muttered after. In truth, the keep’s dungeons were dim and damp, but not all that cold this time of year. Mostly Breccyn had fetched the heavy wool to conceal the abundant cloud-colored skin her clothing – if the scant leather could be called that – revealed.

  “We feel what is needed,” Ar’ravn said, taking the blanket grudgingly and wrapping it about herself. Breccyn relaxed instantly. Guarding his gaze for fear it would wander somewhere inappropriate had been a full-time task. “Insult is purposeful. It exposes fractures, weaknesses.”

  Fractures? Weaknesses? Breccyn wasn’t going to pretend he understood a lick of that. The fire kindled behind her powerful eyes was presently cooling. He was cautious not to place another log on the flames. “How is the blanket an insult?”

  “How is it not? Something you do not need that I cannot provide for myself. Your excess pushed on to me.”

  “Groveling gods woman, I gave you a blanket! If it eases your mind, I’ll have it back once my father pushes you from these cliffs.” Unsurprisingly, a gracious nod suggested that it actually would make her feel better. “A barbaric bunch you lot are.”

  “Yet you owe your life for defending your sister’s solely because you weren’t born in the city-nation.” Cooling or not, her eyes burrowed to his core.

  “Point taken,” he conceded. Then he added thoughtfully, “My siblings’ punishment is likely to be barbaric when they return. Our parents forbade them from leaving.” Occupied by the mysterious gray, Breccyn hadn’t dwelt on the thinness of his own life. He had been worried about his siblings’. Men were searching the city and surrounding countryside day and night. Likely they were doing what Starling children did best; being Starlings. Still, it did not explain Mykel’s disappearance. His was most troubling of all.

  “Were you not forbade from talking with me?” she asked pointedly. Breccyn’s mouth thinned as he recalled an old fable. It went that a fool mouse reprimanded another for setting foot in a trap, all the while failing to notice the hawk circling overhead. He was that fool to be certain, and by her hungry air, Ar’ravn was undoubtedly the hawk. “You’ll sooner share the switch with your siblings than spare yourself from it, I think.” She paused. “I see you care for them.”

  It was not a question, but Breccyn answered it as such. “More than the air we breathe. Certainly more than a flower branded on another man’s wrist. Do you have siblings?”

  “I do not. Neither do any of Manalla’s Children.” Her expression shifted, like she had said too much, and was gone in a blink. “What is that material?”

  “This?” Breccyn was spinning the knife she had used – Prince Cere’s knife – point first in the dirt floor. “It’s steel. It’s mined from the ground, then refined and strengthened.”

  “A gift from Terra.”

  “If you believe such nonsense, I suppose. Where did you get these?” he asked in return. The woman had carried enough daggers to skin an army of skunks and leave one clean to pick her teeth besides. The oddly shaped, oddly crafted assortment sat on a small table in the cave-like hallway.

  “East of the Ash, we have beasts with bones harder than anything Terra could make. Malia created them,” she offered plainly, his face donning confusion.

  “It seems backwards, bones harder than rock and metal.” He did not dispute the hardness of the blades; he had pinned one in the stone wall from a dozen paces distant. He did dispute that it had anything to do with impotent deities. And it did seem backwards.

  “There is an order to all things,” Ar’ravn explained. She pushed a slender finger into the dirt, drawing five unrelated lines in no particular order. Or so Breccyn thought. When she finished, a perfect star existed. She capped each point with a halo. “Which is most powerful?” she asked.

  “The one at the top?” Breccyn ventured.

  “None and all. Tracing the lines, each point is more powerful than the last, less powerful than the next. Null, Terra, Malia, Manalla, Eather, and back to Null.” Her finger ended at the top where it began. “No single point existing without the other two, none existing without all.”

  To Breccyn’s understanding – nearly a week and counting - half a millennium had been enough to color the Grayskins, but not so long as to entirely rinse their language or even touch their common religion. Skin color was more malleable than ideology, it seemed. He also admitted that supplicating to higher powers would be much more attractive in an environment that worked every minute of every day to see you dead.

  “It’s a nice yarn,” Breccyn said. “Other than an underground movement of cracked proselytizers, the Five have lost their hold on this side of the river.”

  “It’s no more a yarn than history is a yarn, Breccyn Starling.” Her face was stone. “Manalla’s Children hold strongly to the way of our common ancestors, east of Terra’s Vein-”

  “Yet, as you say, your crafters are marginally more powerful than our shadesayers.”

  Ar’ravn conceded somewhat with a telling silence. “North, south, east, west; mankind plays like a feeble child compared to the power it once harnessed. It has been longer than our lifetimes since anyone has touched the gods. Not since before the moonshadows’ birth, the Ferals you say, has anyone touched all Five.” She hesitated once more. “Though your ghost brother must have come close.”

  Curiosity shifted the woman’s unmovable expression ever so slightly. Perhaps marvel was a better word for it. Breccyn snorted softly. Everybody marveled at Wyn Fellsword, why would an emotionless rock resting in a jail cell be any different?

  “Why do you say that?” he asked curiously.

  “Your description of fear; that night was my first encounter. I saw something in him.”

  Breccyn spun Ceres’ blade, catching the handle as it
teetered. “I don’t know what you saw, but I’d be careful going moon-eyed for that one. He’s incapable of returning the feeling.”

  “You speak as if his heart had been removed,” she replied, gathering Breccyn’s meaning well enough.

  “In a way, it has,” Breccyn considered. “He took the strongest oath a man can take, never to love or be loved.”

  “A great warrior,” she commented reverently. It was subdued, filtered through walls thicker than the dungeon’s, but it was marvel all the same.

  “He is that,” Breccyn agreed. “Do the Grayskins know love?”

  “After a manner, yes. It is much less impulsive than you colorless have it. More practical, less wasteful.”

  “I can imagine,” Breccyn replied with what he hoped was a warm smile. Or not a mocking one anyway. The twirling blade and a steady, echoing drip passed several moments.

  “And you?” came the jailed woman’s accented speech. “Do you love the princess?”

  Breccyn had told Ar’ravn something of Cecily while the woman was still speaking solely in questions. How she knew of their relationship in the first place – it was Ar’ravn who had originally spoken of it - was still a mystery. As puzzling, why was it so hard to answer her?

  “I do,” he said finally. Cecily was to be his wife. Anything short of his execution would not prevent that. Speaking the words to this half-stranger felt strangely out of place, though.

  “Killing you was going to spare my peoples’ lives.”

  Breccyn snatched the dagger from its spin. The softly-spoken statement was so unexpected, so unsolicited – today, anyway – that he had nearly missed it. He had spent the entire week delving for the reason she was here, the reason a Grayskin had crossed the known world for his blood. A week spent delving in the dark. Why was she opening to him now?

  “How so?” he asked cautiously.

  “Your death was to rip your kingdom apart from the inside, prior to our invasion.”

  “Why you? Why a Grayskin?” His mind was racing now, though he did not want to push too far for fear of sapping the wellspring that had only now bubbled to the surface.

  “The Forerunner works with a colorless man. He claims to know your king.”

  She had spoken something of their leader, this Forerunner. A fearsome man from the sound of it. “Then it was the king who ordered my death! But why work with his enemies?”

  “Slow, Breccyn Starling. Do all colorless attempt to run before sprouting feet beneath them? I said the colorless man knows your leader, nothing about where his banner is planted.”

  “Then this colorless conspires with Cairanthem’s enemies to overthrow the king. How much of my predicament is being manipulated? The man you speak of could be writing my sentence in King Romerian’s ear as we speak. Who is this man? What does he look like?”

  “I have said all I know, and too much besides. I never saw Whiteface, for he and I were crossing Terra’s Vein in opposite directions at the same time. From my father’s messages, I suspect manipulation on our side as well. I do not trust this Whiteface’s intentions.”

  It did not rule out the Rose family as backers of Ar’ravn’s mission, but it did confirm deeper plots were afoot. Who could it be? Somebody powerful, somebody close to the throne that stood to gain from Cairanthem’s fall to the Grayskins. Who had the connections to pull strings on this scale?

  Breccyn severed his thoughts. “You are manipulating me,” he stated, growing suddenly doubtful. “Why else would you tell me this? What purpose, as you say, does this serve?”

  Ar’ravn lowered her eyes, though it did not lessen the firmness of her response. “I am not manipulating you, Breccyn Starling.”

  Oddly, he believed her. He had no reason to, and he did not think for one moment that the information came without purpose on her part. Her body captive, she was as industrious as an autumn squirrel behind those bold eyes. She was sincere though, and manipulating or not, her words rang truthful. Her apparent shame as well.

  Breccyn tried to put her at ease. “Telling me all this, I suspect you’ve spared yourself the torture at least. My father will take some convincing to spare you the jagged cliffs.”

  Ar’ravn’s eyes snapped to his, more wolf-like than ever. “You are a strange creature, Breccyn Starling.”

  “Because I would not see a prisoner tortured?”

  “Because you speak as if you have spared me, when your efforts threaten torture worse than any questioner can offer. It is this blanket, only now, you would incase my soul.”

  “It’s a spit-swallowing blanket!” Breccyn shouted with exasperation. “Nothing more!”

  She did not back down. “So eager to act, you do so without considering that consequences exist beyond the ones you desire. Have you ever considered that striking a lantern causes some shadows to darken? Finish me off, or let me free. Do not spare me to a sedentary, wasting helplessness. Do not deprive me of purpose. That, Breccyn Starling, is torture.”

  It was not easy facing down a wolf, iron bars or no. Breccyn’s tone softened in consequence. “Most in your place would content themselves with three square meals and a place to lay their head that isn’t a wicker catching basket. Can you find no satisfaction in life itself?”

  Breccyn could feel her fingers rummaging through his consciousness. Her lips remained neutral all the while. The shimmer dancing her eyes did not. She found what she was after and hauled it to the surface.

  “Purpose drives you as surely as myself, Breccyn Starling, though you call it by another name. Greatness cannot be obtained in a cage. Would you content yourself? Would you find satisfaction in captivity?”

  Breccyn had been around Ar’ravn enough to mask his surprise at the private things she knew, but castles and crows, was his every want and whim played out for her like a theater performance? Yet again, she was right. How could this woman, this near-stranger, understand him better than anyone? It was Breccyn who lowered his gaze this time, his cheeks growing warm.

  “You’re face turns red,” she said plainly. “What is this meaning?”

  Breccyn began a long-winded curse about a woman’s ability to read minds having nothing to do with the gods. At the same moment, Ar’ravn leaned forward. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, unveiling uniform gray flesh and mere straps of tightly fitted leather, and Breccyn’s tongue rolled over itself like a wounded snake. Apple-red cheeks became a furnace of colors flushing his entire face.

  “It is comforting to see that men are not that different outside the Drablands. Fools are fools the world over, it seems,” she added. The smallest smirk touched her lips.

  Breccyn bit off his sputters with unwieldy jaws. Was that warmth in her voice? Fondness even? He really was a fool if he believed that. Whatever it was, her amusement was unmistakable as she returned the blanket to her shoulders.

  Breccyn could do nothing but grin like the fool he was. It was hard to believe he had once thought this foreign assassin an unfeeling void. She had not softened one feather, but there was more to her than a solid granite exterior. Vibrant mosses grew there. Water pooled in small fissures, concealing depths that reached to her very center. Crystals formed. You simply had to know where to look.

  As luck would have it, the guard’s door clanged open at the end of the corridor interrupting the unrecoverable awkwardness that Breccyn had crafted. A messenger entered, covering the distance to Ar’ravn’s cell at a brisk pace.

  “My lord, an urgent message.” The older man’s words came through gulps of air.

  “From?” Breccyn asked, rising and receiving the frayed cloth.

  “It’s marked for your eyes, my lord. I speak urgency for the fact that it rode into Shorefeld on Lady Aryella’s gelding and your sister did not.”

  Hurriedly unfolding the oddly purposed material, he recognized Cecily’s flowing hand instantly, if not the words the princess meant to convey. They were scrawled with a charred branch, though that wasn’t the cause of his difficulties in deciphering. Characte
rs did not come easy to the young lord.

  “How long have you had this?” Breccyn asked sharply.

  “I was made aware an hour ago. I turned the keep over looking for your lordship.”

  Breccyn could feel Ar’ravn’s pointed gaze without looking towards the woman. This was precisely the unseen consequences she spoke of. Set on receiving answers in the cells below, what had he neglected above? The clock did not stop turning in one place just because he was in another.

  The writing could have been Furmen script for all Breccyn could make out. Perhaps something of captors to the south and east. Puzzling, yet unsurprising given Poet as the message bearer, Aryella’s and Gabryel’s names appeared also. Were the three together? Was Mykel there too? Though Breccyn had been hoping for a letter from Cecily since this all began, this was not what he had in mind.

  More than not knowing who to trust – and irrationally so, Breccyn recognized – he did not ask the messenger to recite the cloth’s contents because of the two glowing embers just behind the bars. She could likely recite the words better than he despite having come of age in an arid waste. Irritated at his own inability – and his tangled emotions - he dismissed the man.

  “What is it?” Ar’ravn asked as the sturdy guard’s door met its stop. She stood, thankfully holding the blanket close about. He did not need that distraction mixing itself into the fray.

  “My siblings are in trouble,” he replied distantly. His thoughts went to their safety of course, Cecily’s too, but scenarios rolled through his imagination one after another like windblown clumpweed across the plains. Did this play into the news Ar’ravn herself had provided. Could this be his chance to do what had always been Wyn’s to do? A chance to clear his name? A chance to elevate his name?