The Spider's War Read online

  Or after. Maybe it was assassins after all. Geder felt a thrill of fear. “Is Basrahip back from the temple yet?”

  “I do not know, my lord.”

  “If he is, bring him. And my full guard—”

  “They are outside your door, my lord.”

  “I didn’t ask where they fucking were. I said bring them in here. With Basrahip. When they’re all here, you can get this Morn person.”

  The servant backed out bowing. Geder turned his gaze back to the fire, but the flames had lost their charm. With a growl, he threw the rug aside and stood up. He paced the room, his hands behind his back, his legs aching with every stride, for what seemed like hours. The windows had long since gone dark. Without moonlight, the glass became only a dark mirror that reflected Geder’s movement. When the door opened again, Geder’s private guard entered the room in silent formation. And after them, Basrahip.

  The massive priest’s face was broad and untroubled. He bared his teeth in a smile. “Is all well, Prince Geder?”

  “Fine,” Geder snapped, and Basrahip shook his head.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t really mean it to be true,” Geder said. “It’s not really a lie if you don’t mean for people to think it’s true, you know.” He was whining. He hated it when he whined. Odd that it wasn’t enough to stop him.

  “What troubles you?” Basrahip asked.

  “There’s someone come to see me from Asinport. The protector, apparently. Only I thought maybe Ternigan… or Dawson Kalliam…”

  “You fear he is not loyal?”

  “It crossed my mind. People have tried to kill me, you know.”

  “And failed, for you are beloved of the goddess,” Basrahip said. “Bring this man, and let his living voice proclaim whether he is corrupt.”

  Sir Raillien Morn was a Jasuru, which was odd. But the court of Asterilhold had allowed for more mixing of the races than the Antean. And even in Antea, there were a few minor nobles whose line was said to be less than purely Firstblood. The Jasuru noble fell to his knees. His scales were a deep copper color, his teeth black and sharp. It was odd, really. The Timzinae were the race that weren’t really human but a kind of lesser, debased dragonet carved into human form. But Jasuru scales were more like dragon skin than the chitinous plates of the Timzinae. Or maybe that wasn’t true. After all, he’d never seen a dragon, only gotten reports. They might be more like great insects than the serpent scales in the old books. He’d have to ask Jorey when he got back.

  As Lord Marshal, Jorey had defeated one in battle with the tools and weapons Geder had made for him. The story of that battle was one he wanted to hear. Certainly more than he did whatever the man still kneeling before him was going to say.

  “What’s your name?” Geder asked.

  “I am Sir Raillien Morn, Lord Regent. I am protector of Asinport.”

  Which was all pretty well established, Geder thought, but he looked to Basrahip all the same. The priest inclined his great head in a subtle nod. That was true.

  “Are you loyal to me?”

  “Yes, Lord Regent,” Morn said, and looked to Basrahip. There had been a time that not everyone had known that it was the priest who told Geder whether things were true or lies. Everyone had held him in awe back then and wondered how he’d known so much. Now everyone looked to Basrahip and the other priests that way instead. It shouldn’t have irked him. It didn’t, only he’d enjoyed it back then and he wished he could enjoy it now too. It was like the libraries that way.

  Basrahip nodded.

  “Do you mean me any harm?” Geder asked, more sharply than he’d intended.

  “No, Lord Regent.”

  He thought about following it up with something more extreme. Would you sacrifice your life for mine? or What are you most ashamed of? Not that it would change anything, but Geder was curious what the limits of Sir Morn’s dedication were, and prying open someone’s private self was always interesting. But he’d only have been doing it because he was feeling peevish, so instead Geder ordered his guard back out and sat again by the fire.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I have ridden through from Asinport in the north,” Morn began, and Geder cut him off.

  “I know you did. They told me. What is it?”

  “There have been statements, Lord Regent,” the Jasuru said. “They began appearing in the city very recently.”

  Geder shifted in his chair. “Statements?”

  Morn, still kneeling, fumbled at his belt. When he held out his hand, a thick paper was in it, folded in a square. Geder plucked it out and unfolded it. It was sturdy and thicker than the page of a book, the fibers that made it up coarse enough to texture the words inked upon it.

  THE SPIDER GODDESS IS A LIE AND HER PRIESTS ARE THE TOOLS OF MADNESS

  The scourge of the spider goddess that has touched all the world in recent years is not what it claims to be! The peculiar and insidious powers of those dedicated in the false temples hide their true nature, but now THE TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN! YOU CAN RESIST!

  It went on down the page. The spider priests, it said, were not the voice of a suppressed goddess, but a creation of the dragons, like the twelve races of humanity or the eternal jade roads. They had two powers—to sense it when people knowingly spoke an untruth and to convince whoever heard their voices that what they said was true, whether it was or not. The page called the first “the power of the ear” and the second “the power of the mouth,” which seemed like a particularly old-fashioned way to frame the idea. Archaic, even.

  For a moment, an old fascination stirred in him. The pale ghost of his old love of speculative essays. What if it were true? What if the dragons had made a tool to sow chaos among their own servant races? How would that fit with all he’d read of the ancient past? Something like excitement sparked in his brain.

  “They… began appearing?” Geder said. “What does that mean?”

  “All through the city, my lord. They would just… be there. One was pasted to a wall near the port. Another, we found on a table in a common house. In all, we’ve gathered almost a hundred.”

  “Are they all like this?” Geder asked.

  “No, my lord. There are several versions, and people are copying them. We found a house in the salt quarter where a scribe had started making others with the same text. We questioned him before he was killed, of course, but he didn’t know where the papers had come from. He only made copies out of his own hatred and malice. But I fear he may not be the only one such.”

  Geder handed the page to Basrahip, who shook his head. “Dead words on a dead thing, Prince Geder. They are less than nothing.”

  “It isn’t true, what it says,” Geder said. “The spider goddess wasn’t made by the dragons.”

  “Of course not,” Basrahip said with a warm, rolling chuckle. “She is the truth itself, and her enemies are the servants of lies. It is why they must use this emptiest form of words to defy her.” The priest sobered. “What is written is in no voice. Ink on a page means no more than a bird’s scratches on bark. You know this as well as any man.”

  For a moment, Geder remembered another letter. The one Cithrin had written him from Suddapal. The one he had humiliated himself over. Bird scratches on bark indeed. Was this letter hers as well? It seemed likely.

  It was the kind of thing she’d do. The kind of thing she’d done. Hiding behind phrases. Pretending things were true that weren’t. With a growl, he threw the Jasuru’s page into the fire grate. The flames dimmed for a moment, then brightened as the words turned to smoke.

  “You did well by bringing this,” Geder said through clenched teeth. “And by killing the scribe.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Go back. Make patrols. Anyone who has one of these, take to the gaol. The priests can question them. Anyone who’s making them or passing them on is guilty of treason against the Severed Throne. As the Lord Regent, and in the name of Prince Aster, I authorize you to question them and execute
them in whatever manner you think would be most likely to keep anyone else from following in their path. Torturing a few people to death in the public square’s better than being gentle and letting them get away with… with this.”

  “Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”

  “And if you find how they got here? Who’s writing them? I’ll get you your own weight in gold.”

  The Jasuru’s eyes went wide. Geder regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. It was too extravagant a promise, but taking it back now would be embarrassing. He was stuck with it. He had to be more careful about that.

  “I will turn the city out like a pocket, Lord Palliako,” Morn said. “I will pull every man, woman, and child in the salt quarter into the sea if I have to. No one will escape.”

  “Good,” Geder said. “Do that.”

  After the man had left, Geder turned back to the fire. The last remnants of the page floated over the coals, grey and fragile. He felt his scowl as an ache at the corners of his mouth.

  “I thought after we stopped the apostate, everything would get better. That it would be over.”

  “Everything is getting better, Prince Geder,” Basrahip said. “The world of lies is failing before us. All this that you see is only the curling back of the corrupt world. There is no cause for mourning.”

  The darkness of Geder’s mood didn’t ease, but a layer of shame overlaid it. Basrahip was right, of course. Things were going well. They’d beaten the apostate. There was no reason that he should feel so dispirited. That he did left him with the creeping suspicion that he was the problem.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Geder said, forcing a grim smile. “We’ll march ahead all the same. Back to Camnipol and Prince Aster and all the rest of it.”

  “We shall,” Basrahip said. “Bring yourself, Prince Geder. The feast in your honor is to begin.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  “Your work has been long and noble and hard,” Basrahip said. “Your sacrifices are deeper than those around you know. All this that troubles you? It is only the passing of a cloud across the face of the sun. Come eat and drink. Let those who love you surround you. All will be well.”

  Put that way, the feast actually sounded worth sitting through. Geder hauled himself up and bowed to the priest. “I’m sorry. You’re right. A little food will certainly do me some good. Let’s go to it.”

  The great hall was filled with the members of the court and their families. The heat of their bodies filled the room. The scent of pork and mint, stewed plums and cinnamon, fresh bread and sweet butter caught Geder’s attention at least. Lanterns of worked crystal glowed along the walls. Men and women both wore the overlarge black leather cloaks that he himself had made popular what seemed like a lifetime before. A group of Dartinae acrobats amused the crowd; lithe thin bodies capering impossibly in the air, eyes aglow. A Southling cunning man conjured fire out of the air for a time, his massive black eyes seeming to recoil from the light. A Cinnae girl with a silver slave chain around her neck sang second-empire love songs in a voice as rich and warm as a viol, and bright and clear as a flute. Geder waited for it all to salve him, but the most it managed was to distract.

  It wasn’t until Basrahip stood before them all on a raised dais, his palms out to the crowd commanding silence, and gave a speech honoring Geder as Lord Regent and chosen of the goddess that he started to feel a little better.

  Geder Palliako had been drawn across the Keshet, called for the righteousness of his soul. He had brought the Righteous Servant out of the desert and into the noble houses for her glory. No man in all of history had done as he had done. It was like being reminded of something he’d almost forgotten. Yes, that was right. He had led the empire to glory. That was true. He had been entrusted by the dying King Simeon to care for and raise Aster. That was true too.

  By the end of the speech, Geder actually felt a little better about himself and all he’d done. Even the slaughter in the swamp seemed to have taken on a patina of grand adventure. If he went to bed afterward more nearly at peace, the rest, he told himself, would pass with the morning. It was only that he needed to recover from his struggles.

  It wasn’t—couldn’t be—that he was oppressed because the morning would begin a long, cold journey along the jade road. Or that he already dreaded the work that would be waiting in Camnipol for him. Or that he still loved Cithrin, and hated her. Missed her, and who she could have been to him. That he was disappointed by how the death of the apostate and the moment of greatest victory had seemed to change so little.

  Applause and cheering rose up at the end of Basrahip’s speech, and Geder stood to acknowledge it as his due. Once, long before, he’d told Basrahip that he wanted his enemies to suffer. It had been true at the time. The adulation of the court washed over him, warming him, cleaning him, forgiving him his failures or else denying they existed.

  If that wasn’t enough, it was close. It would have to suffice. He drank in not love but renown like a man dying of thirst and pretended to be slaked.

  Clara

  Buildings, she thought, echoed each other. Though they might have been in different cities, every palace she’d been in had had the feel of a palace. The rooms, the decors, even the scents of the places might be as different as apples and walnuts, but they served the same functions, and so perhaps it was natural that they took on an ineffable sense of being the same. Marketplaces all seemed to have the same resemblance among themselves as siblings of a large family. Even the cunning man tents in the field had some resemblance to the sickrooms of great manor houses.

  And the same was true, it now appeared, of gaols. The one she’d seen most recently had been a prison of the innocent: Timzinae children parted from their parents and brought to Camnipol as assurance of the good behavior of the newly enslaved race. The one she sat in now held the guests of King Tracian of Northcoast. And still they were meant to divide space, to confine, to represent the power that one person held and another did not. They were even meant, as unalike as they were, to represent justice, though if justice had so many different faces, she wasn’t at all certain she knew what the word meant any longer, and good God, but her mind was running away with itself.

  Clara adjusted her sleeve for what must have been the fiftieth time. Cold radiated from the stone of the wall, and the weak winter light that came from the high, thin window did little to push back the shadows. Her throat felt tight, as though she might be coming down with something, and wouldn’t that be unpleasant. She’d heard cunning men say that unchecked emotion could bring on illness, but she couldn’t help thinking of all the times she’d felt swept away by strong feeling and hadn’t gotten so much as a sniffle, so perhaps that was only a story they told to explain away what they had no better answer for.

  But why, after all she’d been through, all she’d done, should she feel so unmoored now? She had faced down soldiers drunk with bloodlust with no more than her voice and a raised eyebrow. She’d sentenced men to death and stood to watch her sentence carried out. What was this meeting—with an unarmed man who hadn’t enough power now to walk outside when he wished—that it should make her blood cold? The complications of her allegiance to her nation were well enough known by now. Jorey knew. Barriath. Vincen Coe had known almost before she had. Hers was a secret well-practiced in the telling, only…

  Only never before to someone who would feel it as a betrayal. The thought settled on her heart, calming it, though not in a comforting way. At least she knew now what fear was driving her. Knowing made it easier to bear.

  “Lady?” the gaoler said. He was a thick man. Firstblood, but as wide across the shoulder and belly as a Yemmu. She wondered—a passing fancy—if the races echoed one another the same way buildings did. If a gaoler in Borja might seem the fellow of this man, though he was Tralgu or Jasuru or Dartinae. Clara took a deep breath, rose, and banished all other concerns.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” she said, and the gaoler turned. She followed.

  The
walls were too cold to be damp. Frost rimed them, and the gaoler’s torch smoked. He looked back at her when she coughed, his expression an apology. She lifted her chin and moved on. Their footsteps sounded lonely on the bare stone, as if they were looking for some companionship besides the walls. It was a silly thought, but that she’d had it meant something. The door, when they reached it, was black oak bound in iron. There was no rust, and she found herself perversely grateful for that. It would have been worse, somehow, if the cell had been poorly kept.

  “I can come in with you if you like,” the gaoler said. “Keep him in line.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “You sure about that, lady?”

  Was she? It didn’t matter. The answer had to be the same. “I’ll call if there’s need.”

  The gaoler shrugged, undid the lock, and slid back the bar. Even with her assurances, he pulled the door open carefully, his torch at the ready like a cudgel. Within, the cell was small and close, with a window no more than a finger’s width just by the ceiling. But a crystal lantern hung from a hook, and there was room enough for a tiny desk beside the cot. If there was a lingering scent of the chamber pot, it was no worse than she’d suffered in far nicer rooms, and a small brazier left the air warmer than the hall. Lord Skestinin himself rose when she entered, his snowy eyebrows beetled, but his eyes bright and alert. He wore a prison gown rather than the uniform of a lord of the Antean court, but he wore it well.

  “Lady Kalliam?” he breathed, as if uncertain of his senses.

  “Clara,” she said. “If you’ll permit my calling you Anton. We are family by blood now, after all.”

  “Sabiha?”

  “I understand the birth was touch-and-go, but from all I’ve heard she and the baby are quite well now. They’ve named her Annalise, after me. I hope that’s all right.”