“Spider! Spider!” the people cry. They sing Ro’s new song, which is a little too mawkish for my taste, not his best work. Hasten after the tomb spider! Do not be afraid. You will see the sun again if you follow where she leads.
Their shining faces and exuberant cheers lift my heart into the heavens, and as we march toward the coming battle I am sure the Mother of All smiles upon Her children.
By the time we reach the secret forward encampment on a hill west of Saryenia eight days later, I have the eleven spider scout recruits marching like real soldiers. They can move forward and backward and sideways, and they can climb pretty well, although they’re still getting used to coordinating the forelegs and back legs as weapons. They’ll be fine as long as we don’t come up against trained spider scouts or Father’s firebird veterans.
Guides sent by Lord Thynos hurry us forward through territory crawling with enemy soldiers. At first I don’t understand where we are going because the hill we’re aiming for is too steep and rugged even for spiders to climb. Our escorts steer us single file through dense vegetation. It conceals a narrow cleft that cuts through the hill’s slope like a canyon. Two of the scouts don’t pull their forelegs in tightly enough and get wedged in. The easiest thing for me to do would be to switch places with them and extricate their spiders myself, but instead I laboriously direct them until they have worked themselves free. Finally we move on, into the hill.
The cleft opens into a crater, a huge bowl that takes up most of the interior. Inside, shielded by cliff walls, lies a perfectly lovely village tucked amid a vineyard. But I don’t see a single Efean villager, only Shipwright mercenaries and Efean soldiers busy amid the village’s boardwalks, storehouses, and central Fives court. There is even a company of Saroese soldiers wearing sea-phoenix tabards who are somehow part of the revolt. Observers stand atop the crater amid a concealing grove of trees.
Because she has the most military experience, Mis was promoted over Dagger to become the sergeant in charge of our spider scouts, and I invite myself along as she leaves the squad and climbs a switchback path up the steep interior cliff. We are accompanied by Captain Mahu of the Falcon Guard, a lean man about my father’s age who requires his soldiers to pace through the menageries with us every morning and every night.
“Captain Mahu and Sergeant Missenshe reporting from Ibua,” Mis says to a sentry, who waves us forward.
Thynos and his companions watch us approach. The Shipwright officers are a varied crew, women and men of disparate complexions and features like they were plucked out of various countries and thrown together, which, given the tradition of the Shipwrights, I’m sure they were. They all wear their hair in a version of the distinctive triple braids the Shipwrights are famous for. I wonder if Bettany has started braiding her hair in their fashion, if she likes their blunt manners and infamous equality of status.
When he ran the Fives under the name Southwind, Thynos wore his hair clubbed back in the style of old Saro, but it’s shaved short now. He has a fresh scar on his neck, and a new tightness to his eyes.
“Sergeant Missenshe, good to see you back. Well done on your promotion. Captain Mahu, what news from Ibua?” In all the months I’ve known him I’ve never heard him speak anything but the highborn Saroese of his birth, yet he speaks Efean with creditable fluency.
“The army is on its way,” Mahu says.
“I didn’t know we’d captured spiders.” He looks at me. “Or Spider. So you were a prisoner in the north, just as my nephew feared.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“No need for such titles here,” he says graciously, and with a stab of a smile adds, “You may address me as General.”
“General Thynos, I thought you were allied with the West Saroese and thus with Garon Palace. If you do not mind my saying so, I am a trifle confused by your situation.”
“By my loyalties, is that what you are asking?”
“Jes,” warns Mis.
“Yes, your loyalties.”
He nods. I don’t take the gesture as a sign of amiability. A lifetime of getting his way means he never has to be acquiescent. “The kingdom of West Saro is suffering from a famine. They desperately need an alliance with Efea for our wheat. They are not particular about which king they seal a pact with, whether Nikonos, Kalliarkos… or Inarsis.”
“It is the Efean queen who supervises trade and diplomacy.”
“The rulers of old Saro don’t see women in that way. At the moment we don’t have time to quarrel with them about that.”
“Do your Shipwright allies know they aren’t fighting for Garon Palace?”
“Of course they know. The new Efean government is paying them, not Garon.”
“But Lord Gargaron and Princess Berenise don’t know. You’re betraying your own kinfolk.”
“I like to think of it as choosing new kin, but you’re welcome to call it whatever you wish. Have you chosen a side, Spider?”
“I know where I belong. Aren’t you worried about what will happen to your sister, Lady Adia? To Kalliarkos and Meno?? Your very own nephew and niece?”
“I’m sorry for it, because I care for them, but their fates were sealed when they were born into a game in which people kill to gain and keep power. Neither you nor I can change the fact of their lineage, and neither can they, no matter how much poor Kal tried to make a different life for himself. Even I can’t step out of it, and I have no claim to any throne.”
“What about your new bride, Princess Shenia? Isn’t she part of the game too?”
“None of your business, Spider. Why are you here on the front lines, anyway?”
“Because you need me to see the openings you’re going to miss.” I’m so angry about his dismissal of “poor Kal” that I flash him the kiss-off sign.
He answers with a look that could kill from a hundred paces, then gestures the sign back to me, because no adversary can resist. “Take a look at Saryenia under siege, Spider. Let me know what I’m missing.”
From up here the world seems mostly water, shining in the afternoon sun. The East Saroese fleet waits out on the sea while a few of its war galleys patrol Mist Lake, drawing a ring around the city. Although I can’t see such detail, I’m guessing the city’s twin harbors have chains run across them to block enemy ships from sailing in, but those same chains prevent our own ships from sailing out.