“How did you get out?” Inarsis asks.
“General Esladas approached the dames in the Warrens. He wanted to get information to his allies and thought Efeans would have an easier time slipping through the lines. We thought the risk worth it, especially when the dames told us privately that we could serve the cause of Efea by delivering his messages to you, Honored Protector, instead of to his allies. Here they are.”
“So the Saroese inside the city still do not know of our uprising, that we control most of the north,” Inarsis muses. He accepts a pouch of waxed oilcloth. Inside are sheets of papyrus. “This is a detailed map of the disposition of East Saroese and Saro-Urok forces and fleets around the city. And this…” He frowns at a small note tucked inside the map. “Some kind of cipher.”
“Let me see.” Mother reads it, brow wrinkling, then glances at me.
“What is it?” I ask nervously.
“A personal request from King Kalliarkos to Lord Thynos, asking him to send word on whether you have been found. It’s written in the cipher your father taught me.”
“So his uncle Gargaron cannot read it, should he get hold of it,” I mutter. “May I see it?”
Smoothing it out over my leg, I stare at the skilled lines of Kal’s precise and elegant writing. Then I see what upset Mother: a second message appended below the king’s, in which Father personally requests news of members of his family, that he may know they are alive. I should burn it. I should. But when a horn blares an alert and an officer appears to announce the arrival of a messenger from the south, I roll it up and slip it beneath the scarf covering my hair.
A travel-worn individual strides into view with a pair of saddlebags slapping her back.
“Mis!” I leap to my feet, shaken by the sight of a person I feared might be dead.
She nods at me, even flashes me the kiss-off gesture, but she doesn’t reply because she is a soldier on duty. When she reaches the front she drops to one knee.
“I bring word from General Thynos. The Garon Palace militia and their West Saroese allies have left their beachhead on the Reed Shore and are marching toward Saryenia. General Thynos says we must move immediately to take advantage of the forthcoming clash between the two Saroese armies.”
Her words send the assembly into a buzz as Inarsis calls for a fast strike force to depart in the morning with the main army to follow a day behind.
I volunteer to escort Mis to her billet. “So you’re a soldier now,” I say as we walk hand in hand like we’ve never been apart.
“I said I was going to fight for Efea. What happened to you? I heard a song as I was riding into Ibua about how a tomb spider led Efeans out of the underground prison in which they’d been buried.”
“Ro,” I mutter, but also I’m a little flattered.
“What it really sounds like is that something terrible happened that you barely survived, and I’d believe it. You look awful.”
“Thank you!”
She punches me on the shoulder, and we embrace and cry a little.
“What about Dusty?” I ask as we go on.
She sighs. “The most boring story of all. He just wants to be friends because he’s infatuated with someone else. Tell me what happened to you.”
Speaking lightens me because she doesn’t judge or fuss or give advice. She just listens. Yet when our path twists into the narrow, dark passages of the part of the temple dedicated to Lord Judge Inkos, I shudder.
“What’s wrong?”
“It reminds me of the mines. And of Eternity Temple.”
She puts an arm around me and hurries me along to the servants’ compound at the far end of the complex from where we entered. At the stables she checks in with a captain in charge of the courier riders and, upon being released from duty for the night, guides me to a courtyard surrounded by storehouses and workshops. Wagons with broken axles are being fixed, and armor, weapons, and harnesses repaired.
“Hey! Dusty!” She waves at a man standing in the open door of a storehouse. He’s wearing a patch over his mutilated eye.
“Glad you’re back.” He gives Mis a brotherly hug that makes her roll her eyes at me over his shoulder. The greeting he gives me is more muted and less welcoming, as if he isn’t sure he can trust me.
“You look better than when I last saw you,” I mutter, and when he taps his ear I repeat it in a louder voice.
“You look worse,” he answers with a pained gaze.
“I like how everyone points that out.”
Mis chuckles. “Because we love you. Over here, Jes. I want to show you something.”
I don’t see them at first because it’s night. Instead odd flashes of what I think is lamplight draw my attention to hulking forms lined up in a row along a shadowed wall.
It is a full squadron of twelve spiders. Wisps of spark-light chase through the curves of brass bodies.
“Good Goat,” I murmur.
“You see why I brought you here.”
“They’re not set in proper resting configuration.” I walk down the row, touching each one to feel the buzz of its spark. “The forelegs are supposed to be raised, so the scout can mount easily into the carapace. And they’ve not been oiled and polished. Father used to talk about how much time the scouts spent making sure spider joints didn’t get clogged with sand. Who is in charge of this squad?”
“It isn’t as if we have any sergeants or captains from the Royal Army to train us.”
The last spider in line rests in shadow, but when I place my hand on its dented carapace I recognize it at once: years ago my father patrolled in this spider.
“Mis, where were these spiders captured? And how? They were stationed at Crags Fort.” I’m stricken by a memory of Sergeant Oras as he tried to apologize for an insult to my mother that he later regretted. “These are the spiders from my father’s old unit. The sergeant in charge there remembered me.”
She grips my elbow, watching me carefully. “I’m glad to see you, never think otherwise, Jes, but I have to ask. Are you here only because you escaped the mine and are stuck with us for now?”
“Do you mean do I wish I was back with the Royal Army? With my father?” I don’t add, With Kal?
“I didn’t want to say it so bluntly. But yes, do you?”
I don’t take my gaze from hers. “No, I don’t. I was intending to leave Saryenia with my mother when Lord Gargaron kidnapped me.”
She releases me with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry but I had to ask. I don’t know what happened to these particular spider scouts, but if you think we’ve taken control of the north by politely asking Saroese garrisons to trot off home, then you don’t understand how a rebellion works. Can you truly fight for Efea, Jes? Do you understand what that means?”
Is Oras dead? The thought raises a pang in my heart. But what happened to the scouts who once controlled these spiders is beyond any effort of mine to sway the outcome.
“I do understand, Mis. We did what we had to at the mines. Anyway, a captured spider squad offers an astonishing opportunity.”