She found Yardem at the watch fire alone. The flames lit the back of his head and glittered off the rings in his tall ears. He never sat facing the fire. She sat next to him, her hands between her knees.
“Ma’am.”
“Yardem,” she said.
Across the road, someone struck up a mournful tune on a violin. The eerie reeds of a bellows organ rose with it. Yardem held up a wineskin, and Cithrin took it, wiping its mouth on her sleeve after she drank. It was a bright taste, and it warmed her throat, but it didn’t have enough bite to it to affect her thinking. She looked out at the night, trying to see the buildings and streets, lanterns and alleys of Suddapal the way she imagined Yardem did. No walls to speak of. Streets too wide to block. Commons big enough to field an army. History had made Suddapal a wide sprawl of a city. Rich with the trade from the Inner Sea, safer than the Keshet, and natural partner to the Free Cities and Pût. Indefensible. Even if the Imperial Army arrived exhausted and half dead from thirst, Suddapal would fall.
There was nothing she could do to stop it. No hope she could offer up. She wondered whether Magistra Isadau would leave when the time came, or go down with her city like the captain of a sinking ship. She wondered how long she would stay and watch or go back to Porte Oliva. It was the time for asking questions like that.
“Looking bleak, ma’am.”
“The situation or me?”
“Meant the situation, but either works. Talked to Karol Dannien this morning. He says the defenses are going up at Kiaria. It’s the traditional stronghold. Thick walls, deep tunnels.”
“And are they going to fit everyone in Suddapal into it?”
“No.”
“Half?”
“No.”
“One in three?”
“Two in ten.”
“So the city falls with most of the population still in it.”
“Yes.”
“Isadau’s putting together a group to smuggle people out afterwards. She hasn’t told me, but it’s what she’s doing.”
“Brave.”
“Doomed.”
“That too,” Yardem agreed. “But it’s her people. Her family. Likely a third of the people in Suddapal are related to her if you squint hard enough. People do that sort of thing for their families.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“There’s more than one kind of family,” Yardem said. “It’s the kind of thing the captain would have done for you.”
“If you say so.”
Yardem sighed and drank more of the wine. Cithrin closed her eyes.
“Yardem?”
“Ma’am?”
“What’s Roach’s real name again?”
“Halvill.”
“Halvill’s gotten the magistra’s cousin’s daughter pregnant.”
“That’s a problem,” Yardem said. A moment later, he chuckled. Cithrin found herself smiling too.
For a while, they laughed.
Marcus
The mountains changed when they got close. The air still tasted of dust and the sun still pressed down on them like it bore a grudge, but before, the rise and fall of the land had been rough and stony. Here, it became knifelike. They skirted the village, but the spoor of goats and men in the few, weedy meadows made Marcus nervous. They were in the enemy’s land. Every turn meant the risk of another chance encounter. Kit promised that the path they were taking was the least traveled, only of course he didn’t say it that way. He said, I believe it is the least traveled, and I expect there will be fewer people here, constantly reminding Marcus that his guide was decades out of date. In truth, almost anything could have changed in that time, and something almost certainly would have. The only question was what.
And still, Kit knew the landscape well enough to be a guide. Without him, the long dry paths would have taken months to pass through instead of weeks. And all along the way, they talked of what still lay ahead.
“The great temple has a statue of the goddess,” Kit said as they walked through a defile so narrow Marcus could touch both sides with his outstretched fingers. “The hral kaska is through there, and down.”
“Hral kaska?”
“In the old tongue, it means something like ‘private chamber.’ ”
“Past massive golden statue, into bedroom of incarnate goddess. All right,” Marcus said. “Do you have any idea how big she is? Physically, do goddesses run the size of horses or houses?”
“I was never allowed past the outer chamber. I never saw more than a glimpse of her. But I have heard her breath.”
“So at a guess?”
Kit frowned
“Houses.”
“Lovely.”
“From what I was told in the temple and the stories I’ve gathered in my travels, I believe that you need only cut her. The poison of the blade will end her.”
The gorge tightened and began to slant upward. Marcus let Kit go ahead, then followed, the mule’s woven leather lead in his hand. The mule snorted but made no other comment.
“Any thoughts how quickly this ending would happen?” he asked. “A long, lingering death that gives her time to slaughter me doesn’t do as much good as a sudden collapse.”
“I don’t know,” Kit said.
A long shelf stood at the top of the rise, the stone marked by shallow indentations where rain had eaten away at the softer stone. Far below them, a great wall stood, massive sentinel statues along its top. Thirteen figures eroded to facelessness by water and wind and time, with the spread wings of a vast dragon above them all. Banners flew by each of the statues, all in different colors, and all marked in the center by the same sigil: a pale circle divided in eight sections. The sign of the spider goddess. From above, the great iron gate looked like the mouth of a gaol. The ironwork above the gate seemed to form letters, but Marcus couldn’t read the script. Behind the wall, the living face of the stone was marked by caves and paths.
“That’s the temple?”
“The home and seat of the spider goddess over whom deceit has no power.”
Marcus squatted, looking over the edge. Practiced eyes took in the details of the hundreds of openings. The paved space at the wall’s base. What might have been a simple well, with a man in a brown robe kneeling beside it.
“It looks … empty. How many men are in this.”
“When I was there, we were almost five hundred,” Kit said, his voice bitter and gentle at the same time. “The best and strongest children of the villages, chosen by fate and skill for service.”
“Did you sleep in shifts?”
“Hmm? Oh. No, we slept at night and kept the temple during the day.”
“So this is the busy time.”
Kit nodded. Marcus adjusted the sword against his back.
“Not many people at home. All off bringing truth to the unwashed, I suppose. Better for us. This back way you were talking about. Where down there would it put us?”
Kit described the rest of their path, as best he recalled it. Marcus listened, considered. What he wanted more than anything was to draw the blade, charge in swinging, and God help any man who stepped in his path. He wouldn’t, though. They’d come too far and through too much to fail now. The wise thing was to wait for night and make it as far as stealth could take them. Then, if he had to, he would fight his way through the last of it, and try to sink one good stroke on the body of the monster before the priests took them down.
He felt tired, but also alive in a way that reminded him of who he’d been as a younger man. He’d plotted the death of King Springmere for months, putting each piece in position until the man who’d ordered his wife and daughter burned lay dead at his feet. Then, he had been fueled by anger and the lust for revenge. Now, he mostly felt weary. It took the better part of the afternoon, sitting in the shade of a great stone, before he figured out why. Both plans ran to a point and then stopped. If he died when the job was done, then he died. If he didn’t, he’d have to come up with something else.
The nig
ht was dark, the moon low. Marcus tied the mule to a gnarled pine that had found purchase in the stones. If he and Kit died, the priests would find it, maybe give it a nice life hauling water while humanity descended into chaos and war. The path wound through the rocks, higher into the mountain, through a short tunnel as black as closing his eyes, and into the halls of the temple. Kit lit a thin stub of candle and led the way. The passages were high-ceilinged and round. They reminded Marcus of the holes that worms ate in rotten wood. Doors loomed in the shadows and passed away behind them. Kit moved quickly and silently, with a sense of certainty. The passage opened into a larger chamber. A slight breeze made the candleflame gutter, and Kit cupped it with his hand. The air was hot as breath.
“Any idea where we are?” Marcus whispered.
“I believe so,” Kit replied. “The great chamber should be through the next hall, and then—”
“Who’s there?” a rough voice asked. “Atlach? Is that you?”
Marcus reached out and tapped Kit’s candle out with his palm. A soft and flickering light remained, dim shadows dancing on the vast stone wall. An old man stepped around a corner, a brass lamp held above his head. His white hair looked only a lighter shade of grey in the darkness. Marcus stepped away to the side and eased the blade out of its scabbard. Kit, understanding his part, lowered his head and stepped forward. The old man came closer.
“Atlach?”
“No, I’m afraid I am not.”
The old man raised the lantern higher.
“Who—” he began and then stopped. Marcus saw his eyes go wide. “Kitap?”
“Ashri, isn’t it?” Master Kit said. “You were younger when I saw you last.”
Marcus waited. The old man took a step back. In the dirty light, his face had become a mask of revulsion and horror. His chest swelled as he drew breath to scream the alarm, and Marcus slipped the sword between the bones of his spine just where his neck widened into shoulders.
The old man fell, his lantern clattering to the stone. Oil spilled, and the flame grew bright. Marcus dropped the blade and hurried to right the lamp before the fire grew worse. As the flames spread and smoked, the light in the chamber grew brighter. Benches lined the walls, and a dais stood in the room’s center, but nothing made from wood was near enough the oil to catch fire. Ancient markings in white and red filled the walls.
“Sorry about that,” Marcus said, lifting the lamp away from the flame.
“About what?”
“Killing your old friend,” Marcus said.
Kit nodded, then shook his head.
“We weren’t close. I think he’d have been just as pleased to kill us. And look.”
Marcus turned to the body. At first he didn’t see anything, just an old man in a pool of blood that seemed to echo the burning oil. Then, as the flame brightened for a moment, the tiny spiders that boiled up out of the old man’s wound were visible. Tiny black bodies whirling in mad distress, pulling hair-thin legs tight to pinpoint bodies. Dying. Marcus handed the still-lit lamp to Kit, took the sword by its hilt, and pulled it free. The blade glittered green and red and a black as dark as a starless sky.
“Good to know it works,” Marcus said. “We should hurry.”
The temple reached deeper into the mountain than Marcus had imagined. The great carved arches drank in the light from their little lantern and spat it back in the browns of sand. Marcus followed along after Kit, his blade ready. The old actor’s steps rarely faltered, and when they did, only briefly. Once, they heard distant voices lifted in song, the echoes making any sense of direction impossible. But the voices faded, and Kit motioned him forward.
There was something else, something eerie, about the place that for a time Marcus couldn’t quite put his hand to. At first he thought that there was something off about the angles of the spaces, as if the stones were set in some subtly wrong way. But in truth it was only that he had never seen anything so ancient that had no dragon’s jade to it at all.
The great chamber was a vast darkness that swallowed the light. Marcus could only judge by the hushed echoes of their footsteps that the space was vast. As they moved quickly, almost silently, between two huge pillars of beaten gold, Marcus looked up to see the vast, shining body of a spider above him, the pillars its legs.
“Come along,” Kit hissed, and Marcus realized he’d stopped in his tracks, overwhelmed by the size of the thing above him. As he followed Kit’s silhouette down the dark passages, the fear grew in his belly and thickened his throat. He didn’t let himself think, only willed the numbing terror to be exhilaration instead. This was no different than charging into battle or holding a wall against a hundred siege ladders. At worst, it was death.
Kit stopped at a wide black door. The black wood shone in the madly flickering light. A wide bar in iron brackets as thick as Marcus’s leg kept it closed.
“Here,” Kit said, and the dread in his voice was unmistakable. And behind that, a deeper sound like a vast, rolling exhalation. The breath of the goddess. Marcus smiled.
“Well then,” he said. “Help me with this bar.”
It took both of them to lift it, and Marcus was sure that the noise would bring the priesthood running in alarm or startle the beast on the far side of the door. But no one came, and the vast sound of the goddess didn’t alter. Marcus steadied himself. The blade was longer than he usually liked, but nicely balanced. He didn’t have any armor, not even a thick jacket. Speed and surprise were his only hope. And the poison of the blade.
He closed his eyes. He knew any number of men who made peace with their God before they went on the field. He thought of his family. Merian and Alys were waiting there, cut into his memory like scars. He felt the old love and the old pain again, the way he always did. Maybe this time, he thought. Maybe this time it’ll be the last. For a moment, Cithrin was there too. Cithrin who might be alive or dead. Cithrin, who wasn’t his daughter, but could have been. He opened his eyes. Master Kit was looking at him nervously.
“It’s been good working with you, Kit. I’ve enjoyed your company.”
“I’ve also enjoyed traveling with you. I think you are a genuinely good man.”
“You think a lot of strange things. Open the door.”
Kit pulled on the bracket. The door inched open, a ruddy light spilled out, and the sound grew louder. Marcus steeled himself, then ran through, knees bent and body low. The chamber had high stone walls with a dozen braziers of low, smoky flame. The beast stood perfectly still in the center of the room, a massive spider twice the height of a man. A low stone altar squatted before it. The light glittered from eight massive eyes and mandibles long as a man’s forearm.
Marcus leaped forward, vaulting over the altar, and swung the blade at the closest leg. The impact numbed his finger, and he let the force of his charge carry him forward, under the massive body. Both hands on the hilt, he thrust up into the vast belly. The blade rang with the force of the blow and skittered off the spider’s carapace. With a cry of despair, Marcus pulled back for another strike, ready to feel the hooked claws grabbing at him, the knives of its mouth ripping his flesh.
The spider goddess hadn’t moved. Marcus swung again twice, before the oddness of it sank through, and he stopped. Tentatively, he reached out the sword, poking at the joint of the nearest leg. The clack was of metal against stone. He lowered the blade. The rushing of air filled the room, but the beast’s abdomen didn’t shift. Carefully, sword at the ready, Marcus stepped to the great, many-eyed head. The fire of the braziers reflected in each eye.
“Kit?” Marcus called.
For a long moment, there was no answer.
“Marcus?”
“This isn’t going quite as I’d pictured it.”
Kit stepped through the door, his eyes wide and filled with barely controlled terror. Marcus pointed to the spider’s great leg and hit it with the flat of the blade.
“This is a statue.”
“Be on your guard,” Kit said. “It may come to life.?
??
“It also may not,” Marcus said, but a twinge of anxiety passed through him all the same. He moved away from the vicious mouth. Kit stepped closer. He was trembling so badly Marcus could see it.
“She’s petrified? Turned to stone?”
“I don’t think so. Look here, where the feet meet the floor. You can see the chisel marks.”
“Where … where is the goddess? There must be a deeper chamber. A secret path. She must be close. Her breath—”
“That’s not breath, Kit. That’s air moving. There’s been wind running through these caves since we got here, or all the fires would have suffocated all these priests years ago and saved us the trouble. No offense.”
“None taken,” Kit said by reflex. He put his hand on the spider’s leg where Marcus’s first strike had chipped it. The fresh stone was white and grey. The actor licked his lips, his gaze flickering over the massive beast as if searching for some hidden meaning. When he spoke, his voice was weaker. “They may have taken her. Moved her to some—”
“Kit, has it occurred to you that this goddess might not be real?”
“But her gifts, the power she gives. You’ve seen it.”
“Have. And those little bastards in your blood too. Those I won’t deny. But that’s all I’ve seen. I don’t know what’s giving it power.”
“There must be a central force. A will to direct it. There has to be—”
“Why? Why does there have to be?”
Kit sat on the empty altar, staring up at the many-eyed face. Tears welled up in his eyes, streaked down his cheek to disappear into the thick grey brush of his beard. He coughed out a single, painful laugh. Marcus sheathed the blade and sat at his side. The statue looked down on them, motionless and blind.
“There is no goddess, is there?”
“Might be, but no. Probably not.”
“It seems I’m an idiot,” Kit said. “I thought I had overcome her madness. I thought I had questioned everything, but …”