The Spider's War

  “It’s different, anyway,” Wester said. “We’re hard-pressed for good in any of this. We’ve slowed him to a crawl, but that was with support coming from the east. With that cut, Kalliam and Daskellin… well, I don’t see a way to keep Dannien in the field. Better to have them pull back to the city. The road up the cliff on the south’s a nightmare. We could hold it with two legless men and a slingshot. The question’s whether we want the siege to come in from the east or the west. He’ll go to one of them.”

  “There are still priests coming in from the Keshet,” Geder said. “All of them from Asterilhold are here already.”

  “And Birancour?”

  “Soon,” Geder said, hoping it was true.

  “Better to have Karol dancing out west of the city, then. So draw Jorey and Daskellin here”—he pointed to a hill to the east of Camnipol, where the landscape of Antea grew rough—“and here.” A small lake halfway between Kavinpol and the city.

  “But the traditional families…”

  “They won’t set foot out of Kavinpol,” Marcus said. “They’ve taken themselves a city, and they know better than to push on past their strength.”

  He spoke the words with a bland matter-of-factness, but Geder felt the sting of them anyway. They would know better how to fight a war than he had. Well, that was fair, after all. They didn’t have Basrahip pouring poison in their ears. It wasn’t his fault the spiders had tried to ruin everything.

  “I’ll send out the orders,” Geder said. “Anything else I should tell them?”

  “No,” Marcus said. And then, “There hasn’t been any word from Magistra Isadau, has there?”

  “There hasn’t,” Geder said.

  “All right, then no. Just have them set up where I showed you and we’ll see what comes next.”

  Geder made his way out first. So far as the court was concerned, he was planning out the rest of the war by himself. With Mecelli lost in his own despair and Daskellin in the field, the only one of his advisors left was Emming. And he’d been happy enough to leave Geder to himself.

  He walked out to the gardens and the private house where King Simeon had spent his last days. Geder understood the sense of keeping rooms outside the Kingspire. Walking up numberless stairs for the pleasure of looking down over city and empire could get wearisome, especially for a man in failing health. He’d have been tempted to use the house himself just for the convenience of it, except that he’d been thinking of Basrahip’s comfort. Holding the royal apartments where he had given the big priest a way to come only halfway down from his temple. Geder didn’t care a wet slap about that anymore. Let the huge cow of a man puff his way up and down a dozen flights of stairs and have his priests haul him the rest of the way on a rope. It didn’t matter to Geder.

  But the other reason not to was Aster. These wooden walls with their carved shutters, this fountain with its verdigris-taken statue of what was supposed to be a dragon, were the place Aster’s father had belonged. Better, Geder had thought, to leave it behind. Sitting with the sorrow would only make the boy sad.

  And so, when Geder walked in and found Aster sitting beside the little fountain, it surprised him.

  The prince wore a dark leather cloak, full cut in the style that Geder had started years ago, with a green sash that had only come into fashion this season. His hair was slicked back and dark with the water, and his face was terribly still. When Geder cleared his throat, announcing that Aster wasn’t alone any longer, the prince stiffened.

  “Didn’t think to see you here,” Geder said.

  “I can go if you want,” Aster said, and the raw hurt in the words felt like a slap. Geder paused.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Aster said. “Everything’s fine.”

  The water chuckled and murmured to itself as he came nearer. He more than half expected Aster to rise up and storm away, but he didn’t. The prince only kept his gaze fixed on the water and scowled. It was an expression Geder knew well, though from the other side of it. He’d worn it enough himself.

  “Is it something I did?” he asked, gently. “If it is, I’ll apologize. If it’s someone else… I don’t know. Maybe we could think of some way to make me useful?”

  “It’s not you. It’s not anyone,” Aster said. And then, a moment later and softly, “It’s me.”

  “Feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?” Geder said, his words pressing gently to see where the hurt was and trying not to make it worse. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to. But if you do want—”

  “Then what?” Aster shouted. “You’ll take time out of your busy schedule to nursemaid me? Put a rag in some warm milk so I can suck on it? Why would you suddenly start caring about me?” The pain in the boy’s voice was like violence.

  “I’ve been thinner on the ground than I should be,” Geder said. “That’s truth. I’m sorry for it.”

  “Why be sorry? You’re busy doing all the things that I should be. If I could. Trying to keep everything from falling apart because I can’t. And all the armies and the dead men and…”

  When Geder took the boy’s hand, Aster tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let him. By main force, he pulled Aster close, wrapped his arms around the boy’s shoulders, and held him. Aster struggled for a moment, trying to break free, and then the sobbing came in earnest and he held tight to Geder instead.

  He’d been a fool to forget Aster. All the effort that Geder had put into avoiding Basrahip and the other false priests had also kept him away from the boy, and that was a cruelty he hadn’t intended. He thought of all the confusion and pain he’d suffered before Cithrin came. The sense of wrongness that had filled the world and his heart and everything in between. Of course Aster felt the same things, only more so because he was young and fatherless and doomed to spend a lifetime on the throne that Geder had the chance to walk away from. In Geder’s mind, Aster was still a child, and what you didn’t point out to him he wouldn’t know. Likely he’d been wrong about that last part even when the first had been true.

  “I don’t know why I feel this way,” Aster forced out between sobs. “The war. And you calling all the priests back. And spending all your time away. I know everything will be all right, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it that way.”

  Geder shushed the prince gently, and rocked him back and forth the way he remembered his own father rocking him.

  “It’s my fault,” Geder said. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I thought it would be easier for you not to know, and I was wrong. And I’m sorry. This was my fault.”

  “I don’t understand,” Aster said. A life’s burden of longing fell in the last word, and Geder kissed the boy’s temple.

  “Come with me,” he said, “and you will.”

  Watching the reunion of Cithrin and Aster was like getting to live his own moment over again. The boy’s shock and confusion and then Cary and the others sweeping him up in their arms, grinning and laughing and telling Aster how much he’d grown and changed. Aster’s smile was more the blank look of a man stunned than actual joy until Master Kit led him to the garden to explain.

  In the withdrawing room with its screens and lemon candles, Cithrin looked like a picture of herself painted by an artist who loved her. She wore her white-pale hair braided back and a thin summer dress with loops of silver at the shoulders that caught the warm light of the sunlight and remade it. The murmur of voices—the apostate priest and the crown prince of Antea—drifted in on the evening’s breeze. His father came in briefly and then made a pointed show of being needed elsewhere and left them alone again.

  Geder couldn’t tell if the silence between them was comfortable or charged. He wished more than he’d ever wished anything that he knew Cithrin’s mind. A summer beetle tapped against the screen, trying to reach the candle flames, then gave up and buzzed away into the afternoon sun.

  “I wanted to…” he began, and then found he didn’t know what he was going to say next.

  Cithrin shi
fted to look at him. In truth she looked older than he remembered her. Her Cinnae blood meant she would always be unnaturally thin, unnaturally pale. He could trace the veins beneath her skin. Her smile seemed genuine, though. Encouraging, but the way she’d have encouraged Aster. To speak, perhaps. Not more than that. When the time came to do what he’d promised himself he would do, pull her close to him, enfold her in his arms, kiss her again as he had once before, it was going to take more courage than anything he’d ever done. He could feel himself balking at it even now. He found himself breathing shallowly and made a point of not glancing at her breasts. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself. He wouldn’t do that.

  Through main force of will, he kept his voice from shaking. “I wanted this, you know.”

  “This?” she said, the smallest lilt making the word glide a little.

  “All this,” Geder said. “I wanted to be someplace nice, with you. Where we weren’t worried that someone was going to try and kill us at any moment. With a little breeze and the smell of flowers. Aster somewhere we could hear him. That’s silly, isn’t it? Like having a little family. I’m Lord Regent of Antea. I could have anything I want, but this… this is nice.”

  “It is,” Cithrin said.

  “I was thinking of kissing you,” he said, “but I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”

  The air in the room seemed to go solid. Nothing moved. He looked down at the floor. Someone had tracked in lumps of mud and grass. He might have doen it. He couldn’t be sure. The brightness and excitement faltered in him, and settled into a kind of peace. He’d said it. It was done. He’d jumped off the bridge, and there was no taking it back now. Either he’d fall or he’d fly.

  He glanced up at her. Her gaze was on him, her face expressionless. The candles danced in the pale blue of her eyes, sparks living inside ice.

  “It’s stupid, I know,” he said. “But there it is. Every time I think of it, I remember coming to Suddapal thinking you’d be there. Rushing through the streets like an idiot. And then…” He pressed his lips together, as if the pressure could keep the memory at bay. Humiliation shifted in his heart like a snake in darkness. He gestured vaguely, trying to explain something to her, show something to her.

  Her voice, when it came, was perfectly calm. “Do you think about the people you’ve killed?”

  Geder blinked, thrown off by the change of subject. “Who? You mean Dawson?”

  “Dawson Kalliam,” Cithrin said. “The others who fought with him. Lord Ternigan. The people of the court who weren’t loyal enough. The men and women in Elassae and Vanai. Sarakal. Birancour. The hostage children. All of the thousands who would be alive if things had gone a little differently. Do you think of them?”

  For a moment, he saw the little Timzinae girl in his memory. The one he’d had called back from the edge. And the silhouette of a woman against the flames of a burning city. “I do sometimes,” he said, and sighed. “I don’t like to, but I do. Why do you ask?”

  “I have never laughed at you.”

  Outside, Aster said something and Kit responded. A bell rang from somewhere deeper in the house, and a man’s voice called out. The door slave, most likely. Geder couldn’t look away from her. So many nights, all he’d thought about was her mouth, her body, the look in her perfect eyes. His heart felt full and heavy with her presence, like it was the only real thing there was about him.

  “Thank you,” he said softly, and she nodded. Footsteps hurried toward them from the house. Geder didn’t know if he wanted them to turn aside or hurry to him. The moment was perfect and painful and too rich to stand for long. When the knock came at the door, Geder looked deep into Cithrin’s perfect eyes and said Come in as if the words meant I love you.

  His father entered the room, his eyes bright with excitement. He held a scrap of paper in his hand, yellow and black in the light of the candles. “There’s a message come, my boy,” Lehrer said. “From the Kingspire. A message.”

  Geder rose as his father pressed the paper into his hand. The script was Basrahip’s. He recognized the shapes of the letters even before he read the words. It said a great deal about where Geder and Basrahip had been and what they had become that the priest used these dead words he so much despised to seek Geder out.

  “They’ve arrived,” he said. “The last of the priests have come to the temple. Basrahip wants to know when I want them to gather so that I can share my revelations.” Cithrin made a small noise at the back of her throat and closed her eyes. It might have been joy or fear or something of both. He tucked the paper into his belt. “What should I tell him?”

  “Tomorrow, midday,” Cithrin said. “That will give us time to arrange everything we need.”

  “Tomorrow then,” Geder said with a sharp nod. I will kiss you tomorrow.

  Cithrin

  The day moved quickly and quietly as a rat in a dining hall. Marcus brought the actors out to the gardens, drilling each of them in turn, Yardem at his side. Geder, thankfully, went back to the Kingspire to make a full night of preparations there. As many of the servants and guards as could be sent away from the great structure would be. Even the royal guards were to be stationed outside the royal quarter, their backs to the Kingspire ready to fend off some imagined attack from the streets. And Geder had taken Aster with him, which cut Cithrin’s heart a little. Seeing the boy, she’d realized she’d missed him. Or if not quite him, at least the thought of him. In a better world, she’d have known Aster more.

  The little drawing room by the garden became a war room. Or no, not that. Something like it, but dedicated to something different. As desperate, as dangerous, as likely to end in sudden death, but different. She had to believe that.

  “We’ll need to have the letters out to the farms as soon as the couriers won’t get cut down by the Timzinae,” Cithrin said.

  “We could send them to the south,” Clara suggested.

  “They won’t leave the south road open. The main body of the army will swing to the west, but they can’t have a siege with an open route to the south.”

  “No,” Clara said. “No, of course not.”

  The siege of Camnipol that would mean the end of the Antean Empire. The death of Clara’s friends and family, the sacking of her city. It was the war they were trying to stop, it and all the wars after it. Or as many of them as Cithrin could.

  “The gaol will be the first thing,” Cithrin said. “And after that…”

  “I have… friends ready,” Clara said. “I’ve sent word. When we go out the gates, we’ll be well accompanied. There’s a baker I used to frequent near the Prisoner’s Span? I have him devoting himself to raisin cakes and lemon bread. And there’s a footman who used to serve at my house. Back when I had a house. He’s gathering up toys. Dolls, you know. Little things for the children.”

  Cithrin took Clara’s hand, and the older woman’s head bent forward. Wet tracks slid through the powder on her cheeks, and Cithrin felt tears of her own coming up in answer. She didn’t know what they were for. She thought Isadau would have understood.

  “I feel as if I’ve been playing at making peace my whole life. Only playing. Now I look at all my nation has done,” Clara said, “and I think we’re going to defend ourselves with children’s baubles and ribbon. A knife will cut through that so quickly, and so deep.”

  “It’s how peace gets made,” Cithrin said. “At least I hope it is.”

  “It is when it is,” Clara said, “but I wonder whether we deserve mercy.”

  “It isn’t mercy if you deserve it. Mercy justified is only justice.”

  Clara laughed once and mirthlessly. “That has all the virtue of being true and none of the comfort.”

  “It wasn’t mine. Someone told me it once. I don’t remember who.”

  “Someone with more mind than heart,” Clara said, and looked at the candle on the little table by the wall. It had already burned a third of its length. “I should go back now. It would be strange if I weren’t at Lord Skestinin’s hom
e.” Her voice carried a burden of dread, and she wiped at the tears angrily.

  “Is there something happening there?” Cithrin asked.

  “Yes, dear. My son the priest has come home from Birancour. Vicarian is no doubt waiting for me.”

  And you will let him go to his death, Cithrin thought. The two women were silent for a long time before Clara rose, placed her hand briefly on Cithrin’s head as if passing her a blessing, and left. Cithrin sat alone after that, listening to the patter of moths against the screens and the voices of Sandr and Lak, Charlit Soon and Cary, Marcus Wester and Yardem Hane and Lehrer Palliako. Her chest hurt, just between her breasts and up a little, and she tried to remember if she’d been hit there. It felt like a bruise, but she came to the conclusion it was only sorrow and nothing to be done about that.

  She was in her room near midnight, a third bottle of wine on its way to ignominious death by her hand, when the soft knock came at the door. She rose, sat, and rose again more carefully. The little twinge of shame she felt at being drunk was easy enough to push away. Without the wine, she’d have been sick hours ago. She opened the door, her chin already lifted in defiance. Marcus Wester stood alone in the corridor, not even Yardem at his side.

  He looked old. Still strong, but old. His hair had gone whiter since the first time she’d seen him on the caravan from Vanai. His skin had a transparency despite a lifetime of being roughened by the sun. His eyes were the same, though, and the way he held himself.

  He nodded to her. “You sent for me?”

  “Hours ago,” she said. “I assumed you’d chosen not to come.”

  “Lost track of time. Night before an action, I’m always worried.”

  She held the bottle out to him. “So am I.”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. He sat on the little stool beside the washbasin and she sat on the bed. He was a handsome man, well bruised by the world. He wore his scars and weariness gracefully. She wondered whether, when she was as old, she would do the same. He wiped the mouth of the bottle with his sleeve and drank. Smacking his lips, he passed it back to her.