The Spider's War Read online

  Lord Skestinin grinned. His teeth were yellow as ivory, and crooked. She wondered now whether she’d ever seen him grin before. “Whyever would it not be?”

  “That’s a longer conversation,” she said, and turned back to the still-open door. “I’ll call.”

  The door closed, though the bar did not scrape back into its place. Poised for a swift return, she supposed. Well, it would be embarrassing to have a visitor assaulted on one’s watch. She couldn’t blame the man for being anxious on her behalf. She arranged herself at the foot of the cot. Lord Skestinin lowered himself to the thin desk, seeming almost to deflate. Clara cast a weary eye on the walls, the cot.

  “It’s not so bad,” Skestinin said. “I’ve shipped in smaller cabins than this. Miss having a deck to walk at will, though. And the sea. I seem to have fashioned myself into the sort of man who needs the sea about him. What news of the war?”

  Clara shook her head. It wasn’t a question she knew how to answer. The war was going well, or poorly, or dancing on chaos’s edge. How was she to tell the difference? Or report it? Facts, she supposed. Simplicities. “Jorey took Porte Oliva. I suppose you know that, seeing as you aren’t there any longer.”

  “May he burn the place flat,” Skestinin said with a rueful laugh. “It was not the site of my greatest triumph. And my men? The navy?”

  “The ones who were still imprisoned in the south are freed. I don’t know how the ships stand. Winter, you know.”

  “Winter business,” Skestinin said with a bitterness she recognized.

  “Winter business,” she said, letting the words roll in her mouth.

  “If it isn’t too indelicate to ask,” Lord Skestinin said, “how were you captured?”

  “Oh,” Clara said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t.”

  For a moment, he was confused. She watched him understand. He lifted his eyebrows and looked at the ground. “Ah,” he said.

  “You’ve seen what’s gone on in Antea. Palliako is the worst thing that’s happened to the empire in my lifetime or yours. We’d have been better giving the throne to Aster straightaway. A kindhearted child would be better than the Lord Regent we have now. And, Anton, these priests…”

  “Yes, my lady,” Lord Skestinin said. “The foreign priests your late husband led his rebellion against. I… understand and respect your loyalty to his cause.”

  She felt for a moment as if he’d spoken in some unfamiliar language. Her laughter was sharp and sudden and only partly related to mirth. There was also disbelief in it. And something sharper for which she had no name. “I can accuse myself of many things these last years, but slavish devotion to Dawson has not numbered among them.”

  “We disagree on the point. No, hear me out. I am loyal to the crown. Did I agree with every choice King Simeon made? No, but that doesn’t matter. You can’t pick and choose when to be loyal. That isn’t loyalty. There is a right system to the world, my lady. God, then the king, then the lords of the court. The father rules over the mother rules over the children. The husband rules over the wife. That is the right order of the world from the stars to the lowest nomads in the Keshet.”

  His voice had grown louder and rougher. Spots of red appeared on his cheeks. She considered him closely, as she might a particularly colorful insect that had landed on her arm. The brightness of his eyes. The folds of his sea-leathered skin. The jut of his jaw. He had been her son’s commander for years. He was her own family, first by marriage, and now both of their blood flowed in a little girl in Camnipol. How strange, then, that she felt she had never seen him before as he was.

  “You’re quite right,” she said. “We do disagree on the point.” He clenched his jaw, his white beard jutting out like a goat’s. A sorrow she had not expected shook her. And then a guilt, and a resentment at being made to feel guilty. She laughed again, but more gently and more to herself. “Still, we needn’t be rude to each other. God help us both, we are family. Is there anything I can do to make your confinement less odious?”

  “I wouldn’t ask favors,” Lord Skestinin said. “Gives the wrong impression.”

  “Of course. But all this unpleasantness aside, might we not come to a private understanding?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  A gust of wind spat a snowflake in through the window. It spiraled close to the lantern, shining for a moment, then winking out as it melted. “The world is a cruel place, and the next few years are going to be difficult,” Clara said. “I don’t know how this all comes out. And… and they did name her after me.”

  Lord Skestinin’s smile was flinty. “The king protects his land. The father protects his child. And his grandchild, however unfortunately conceived. There is no need for agreement between us, Lady Kalliam. Not for that.”

  “Should history favor my views over your own, my lord, I will bend stone and bleed fire to see Sabiha kept safe. And not as a favor to you.”

  “I am pleased that you still have some honor. Perhaps we may yet be reconciled.”

  “It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that’s happened since we left Camnipol. If I see your wife and daughter, is there a message you’d like me to give them?”

  “Other than that Lady Kalliam and her exiled son have betrayed the kingdom?”

  “Yes, other than that.”

  “No,” he said. “It won’t be called for.”

  Clara put a hand on his knee. The fur was cold to the touch. “It was good to see you.”

  “And you, my lady,” Lord Skestinin said. Etiquette was such a beautiful system of lies. It allowed everyone to pretend when the truth was too ugly to bear. That they all shared in the lie made it at least something that they shared. She rose and called for the guard. The door opened at once, and then closed behind her once she’d reached the hall. The bar ground back into place with a sense of finality. She wondered whether she had just seen her granddaughter’s grandfather for the last time.

  “Ma’am?” the gaoler said, bringing her back to herself.

  “Yes, of course. They must be waiting,” she said. “Lead on.”

  No chance then of Skestinin taking our side?” King Tracian said. He was a young man, and she had a sense that it was more than just his age. He was older than Simeon had been when he took the throne, after all. There was a nervousness about him. An anxiety that seemed to infuse his words and movements. Perhaps it was natural in the son of a usurper. Or it might only be that he was harboring the sworn and public enemy of a kingdom that had recently conquered all its immediate neighbors and had an army camped at his southern border. Or that the last dragon roamed his street. Come to think of it, he had more than enough reason to be uncertain of himself.

  “I think he will not,” Clara said, accepting a cup of mulled wine from Komme Medean’s thin hand. There were no servants in the withdrawing room, and none in the hall without. It was not a conversation to be overheard. “It would have been too pretty, I suppose, to have the Lord Marshal and the master of the fleet both in our confidence.”

  “Shouldn’t get greedy,” the old banker said. If it was meant to be ironic, he hid it well.

  The room was colored with gold. It was in the tapestries on the walls, woven into the carpet beneath her feet. There were other colors—the shining green and indigo of the cushions, the scarlet of the wall hangings, the gentle yellow of the lanterns—but all of them seemed there to offer contrast to the gold. The air was mulled wine and incense, rich without being cloying, which was much rarer in a palace than Clara thought it should be. Incense was too easily overdone. It spoke well of Tracian that he knew to restrain it. There was a plate of raisins and cheese to go with her wine, though she couldn’t bring herself to taste them. Not yet.

  The king of Northcoast paced, four steps along the wall, then back the other way, hands clasped behind him. Komme Medean sat beside the wine with his fingers woven together and a calm expression in his eyes. She had the sense that the world might turn to fire and ash, and the banker would have the same cal
m about him. The king turned again. For a moment, she wasn’t certain what he reminded her of. Ah, yes. A captain pacing his deck.

  “It would be a kindness to put him in a larger cell,” she said. “One, perhaps, where he could walk a bit.”

  “Did he ask for that?” Tracian said.

  “No,” Clara said. “He was quite careful to ask for nothing.”

  “We have Barriath’s pirates,” Komme said. “And the ships of Northcoast, of course. I’d be surprised if we couldn’t convince Narinisle and Herez to step in as support at the least. Though they may balk at open battle.”

  “Is open battle our plan?” Tracian said. “Because last I checked, we still had an army to the south with orders to bring Cithrin bel Sarcour to Camnipol in chains.”

  “Jorey won’t come north,” Clara said. “We’re safe here. For now.”

  “With respect, Lady Kalliam,” Komme said as he poured himself more wine, “are we sure of that? Have we had word from the army since you came?”

  “I haven’t, but neither was I expecting any. Jorey has no intention of marching on Northcoast. He knows I’ve come, and he will wait until I return.”

  “You’re making some assumptions,” the old banker said. “By your own report, the soldiers are overtaxed. There are two of the priests there at least.”

  “Only two,” Clara said.

  “Only two if no others have arrived in your absence.” Komme’s voice was gentle, but firm. “We speculate on what’s happened in the winter camp, but we can’t know. And though I hesitate to point it out, Lord Marshal of Antea hasn’t been an invitation to a long career since Palliako took the crown.”

  “Why didn’t Skestinin come to us?” Tracian said. “He has to know what the priests are. We have showed him the one we have, haven’t we? The actor?”

  “He’s known since Porte Oliva,” Komme said. “It isn’t at issue with him.”

  “Why not?”

  Several thoughts collided in Clara’s mind: He is bound by his honor and He has reason to fear Palliako and Men of a certain age can only understand the world they were boys in. She was left with an impatient grunt as the most eloquent answer she could give.

  “More to the point,” Komme said, “is what we can do about it. You know the court in Camnipol better than any of us. Will they rise against the priests? When they know, will they take arms? Or will they be like our guest?”

  Clara wished badly she’d thought to bring a pipe. The wine was warm, but too sweet. She wanted the feel of the stem between her teeth and the taste of smoke. “The court,” she said, “is unlikely to turn. The lords who were most prone to object to the priests rose already, my husband among them, and they’re all dead. Anyone disloyal to Palliako is dead or exiled or hung from the Prisoner’s Span. The fear he has built in these last years… No. I think they won’t rise up. Even if they know what the priests are and how they function. And after all, they think they’re winning.”

  “They are winning,” Tracian said, only of course that wasn’t true. None of them were winning, except perhaps Morade, thousands of years dead and still sowing chaos among the dragons’ slaves.

  Komme Medean sighed. “That’s the thing with these spiders, isn’t it? Even when the wolf’s at their door, they’ll believe they’re on top of the world and pissing down on the rest of us. You can’t change a man’s mind when he’s lost the capacity to see he’s wrong.”

  Cithrin

  How long did you work with Karol Dannien?” Marcus asked. If she hadn’t known him for as long as she had, it might have sounded like an innocuous question. The Yemmu sitting across the table from them reached up and scratched at one of the great carved tusks that rose from his lower jaw. Since Cithrin was fairly certain the intricate whirls and images in the enamel weren’t capable of itching, she interpreted it as a sign of annoyance.

  “Three seasons, more or less,” Dantag Moss said. “Two in Borja when the council shat itself and Tauendak declared against Lôdi, and then a summer in the Keshet.”

  “Small unit work?” Marcus asked.

  “And some garrisoning. Elder Samabir up in Tauendak wanted his family to have the glory of the battle, so he set us up to stop anyone from looping around behind him.”

  Yardem flicked a jingling ear. “And you let him?”

  “Dannien let him,” Moss said. “I was tertian back then. Not going to dictate to my prime.”

  Marcus glanced over at Yardem, the two men conducting some tacit conversation over her head. Cithrin wished she had a tusk to scratch, then smiled, amused by the image. Around them, the common house was quiet. It was just after midday, and the streets were at their warmest. When the door opened, there was the smell of water and the sound of dripping snowmelt from the roofs. The winter sunset would come in fewer than three hours and turn it all back to ice. There would be time later to huddle together around the rough wood tables, but anyone whose work called them out into the city was hurrying now to get it finished before the dark came.

  Cithrin was comfortable where she was.

  “Fair enough,” Marcus said. Whatever test he’d been making, the mercenary had passed it, or near enough.

  Cithrin took it as time for her to take the negotiation. “How long before you could put your men in the field?”

  “Start of fighting season’s still six weeks out, if the weather’s with you. Nine if it’s not.”

  “Not what I asked.”

  “Then the answer’s going to depend on what your cold bonus is. Man loses a finger, it ain’t much comfort that it was frostbite and not an axe.”

  “Fair enough—”

  “And, ah, no offense, miss? Captain Wester? But hard coin. This war gold? It doesn’t do with the men.”

  Yardem made a low throbbing sound in his throat, something equal parts cough and growl. Moss’s scowl deepened, his lips flowing around the carved teeth. The only other Yemmu Cithrin had worked with was Pyk Usterhall, the bank’s notary lost in the flight from Porte Oliva. Seeing Pyk’s expression on the mercenary’s face left her melancholy. Cithrin took a long sip of wine to clear it away.

  “There’s a bonus for accepting war gold,” she said. “If you only take coin, it’ll be eighty on the hundred. And you’re going to be provisioning from Northcoast and Narinisle. It won’t make much difference to a bag of feed whether it was bought with metal or paper. Tastes just the same after.”

  “Still,” the Yemmu said.

  “We could do the provisioning, ma’am,” Yardem said. “Captain Moss takes coin for his wages, we give him the horses and the food. Any arms or armor.”

  It was a suggestion Cithrin had fed to the Tralgu before the meeting. He’d brought it up a little sooner than she’d hoped, but it was close enough. She made a show of thinking about it. “Ninety on the hundred for that, but yes. We could.”

  “Let’s not get too far ahead on ourselves.”

  “Of ourselves,” Marcus said. “Of. Not on.”

  Moss shrugged, but the correction had hit home. That was fine. Marcus made an accomplished hard party. He was older, a man, and Marcus Wester. She was younger, slighter and paler than a full Firstblood, and a woman. If Moss was like the others, he’d play to her.

  “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Moss said, and Cithrin made a silent note that he’d accepted Marcus’s correction. “What’s the work we’re doing here? My men are hard as stone and sharper’n axes, but if you’re putting us against Antea in the field—”

  “We aren’t. Their army’s going to fall back. We want you to… clean where they’ve been. Look for people who’ve been taken by the spiders. Whoever you find, you burn.”

  “Hunters, then,” Moss said, sucked noisily at his teeth, and shrugged. “We can do that, yeah. If your price is right.”

  “There’s risks,” Cithrin said. “We’re working to have Birancour’s permission, but if the queen doesn’t agree, it won’t change our contract.”

  “You paying me or is she?” Moss sai
d. Cithrin felt a knot in her belly untie.

  “I’m paying you.”

  “All right, then,” Moss said. “We won’t bother the queensmen if they don’t bother us. Plenty of peace to get kept, I figure. Enough to go around anyway.”

  “One thing,” Marcus said. “If one of the queensmen has the little fuckers in his blood? Even if he’s captain or lord of whatever town you’re passing through…”

  “He burns,” Moss said. “I understand. But what’s the money?”

  The negotiation went on for the better part of an hour as they worked through the details—how much for a sword-and-bow, how much for a horse, how much for a cunning man; the length of the contract; the payment schedule; the bonus for every one of the tainted they burned; the standard of evidence they had to provide for it. The cold bonus. The penalty for killing outside their mandate. It wasn’t her first pass through this particular area of contract law, and having Marcus and Yardem talk her through the logic of it all beforehand let her seem more experienced than she was. When it was done, Cithrin shook Dantag Moss’s huge, thick hand. The contracts would be drawn up in three days. They’d cut thumbs on it and sign, and she’d hand over the initial payment—hard coin for the men, war gold for the provisions. If it had all been coin, it wouldn’t have happened.

  She stepped out to the street, Marcus and Yardem behind her, and turned to the north. The sky was white from horizon to horizon. Snow melted in the sunlight and glowed bluish in the shadows. Carse wasn’t a beautiful city. It was too open, too austere. She had grown up in the close streets and canals of Vanai, come to her full power in the dense humanity of Porte Oliva. Even the fivefold city of Suddapal—where she’d been as out of place as a candle for the Drowned—had been more beautiful in its way. Carse was unnerving, she realized again, because it was built on the scale of dragons.

  Inys could walk through these streets, his tattered wings folded behind him. He could perch in the square or throw himself down to weep among the claw-marks of the Graveyard of Dragons. Children might roll hoops in its squares and alleys, food carts could steam at its corners and fill the air with the scent of roasting nuts and spiced meat, but Carse was not a human city. It was a place for the absent masters of humanity. Or nearly absent.