Feet scuff on the rungs behind me. Helias jumps the last distance and lands with a thump. His sword tastes of death as it slashes past my head in a wild cut.
Clap clap.
I leap backward into a gap that opens as a metal bar swings past and fades into shadow. “You’ll never be the soldier my father is. You don’t have it in you.”
It’s a cheap insult but he bites. Insecure adversaries always do.
A gear clicks. The metal arm swings back just as he steps forward to strike me. It slams him sideways, into the teeth of a gear. He screams. Just in time I duck, the arm swiping over my hair like the hand of death. I roll sideways out of the way. He gets dragged into the next circle of gears with a shriek of such agony that it shocks tears from my eyes.
The scream cuts off. The machinery grinds to a squealing halt. Men begin shouting. I crawl through the frozen mechanism to its other side and crouch beneath a wheel’s shadow as the engineers on duty unlock the door. The captain has started screaming again. An engineer grabs the glass lantern and starts around the escapement, leaving a momentary gap at the exit. I dart into the warren of the undercourt’s passages, running past winches and capstans and ropes, the undergirding of the obstacles we race through. I can tell which quarter of the court I’m under by the arrangement of its walls, posts, and pulleys. Sweat pours off me from the heat. Fortunately it’s easy to hide beneath folded nets and stacks of beams neatly placed along walls for another day’s trial. Bells are ringing. The crowd roars.
An unlocked door allows me to sneak into the attiring hall, which is in chaos, everyone talking. I steal a cat mask. Behind this disguise I whisper that a highborn conspiracy is trying to eliminate the new king because he is too popular among the lowborn and the Commoners. By the time the lord engineer in charge calls off the games for the day, the entire attiring hall is buzzing with the rumor I’ve started. I ascend the steps amid the others and slide into the masses of spectators streaming out of the huge building. Everyone is chattering. As I push through the crowd I drop my rumor every few steps. Words are weapons too, as the honored poet would love to remind me. Even small ripples spread.
The crowds give me cover as I walk downhill from the City Fives Court into the Queen’s Garden that lies at the foot of the Queen’s Hill. In the day and a half since the raising of the siege, people have had better things to do than walk through the overgrown sections of the public garden. The spider sits crouched where I left it amid a screen of bushes. The shield hinges open smoothly but I taste the problem before I even climb in.
The spark that powers the spider has finally faded. The metal creature is dead, useless to me or to anyone.
I had thought to walk out of the city disguised as a spider scout so I could personally speak to Inarsis about how the new information I’ve learned can be used in the plan. And maybe I would also have had a chance to infiltrate the Royal Army on its first day of march and personally warn my father about the plot to kill him rather than leave it up to a note. But now, leaning against my spider’s metal carapace in the humid shade, I consider my options and the Rings I have already set spinning.
The East and West Saroese armies have left Saryenia, although the West Saroese will come back in about ten days. Mis and the other spiders have delivered my first message to Inarsis, and Anise can get further messages out to him and to Maraya, who will understand and even anticipate what I need to make this reckless undertaking work.
So maybe the sparkless spider is the excuse I need to stay in the city for the next five days, close to Kal, even though I can’t see him or influence him. It’s probably a bad idea, and yet in a way I’m glad of it.
But when I return to Anise’s stable she tells me I can’t stay there, that’s she arranged a different place for me to sleep. I’m allowed to practice on the Fives court until an Efean man appears at dusk to take me away. The trowel of the masons’ guild is inked on his shoulder.
“Are we acquainted, Honored Sir?” I ask.
“You’re that spider who rescued the women from the tombs. I was one of the masons who assisted you that day. My name’s Dedu. Come along.”
“Where are we going? To the Heart Tavern?”
“No. That’s where the dame council and the Honored Custodian preside. I’m taking you to where the war council meets.”
“A war council meets in Saryenia?”
He gives me a side-eyed look. “Do you think we haven’t been preparing for this day for many years, Spider? Anyway, you’ve been to the Jasmine Inn before.”
I remember the compound where we met Thynos and Inarsis after the masons led us out of the buried ruins beneath the City of the Dead. Somehow it seems appropriate that I will end up there, where beneath a trellis of night-blooming jasmine I almost kissed Kal for the first time.
We stride along less traveled side streets to the East Harbor District, whose boisterous taverns and boardinghouses are frequented by stevedores and dockworkers. Like the markets, it’s one of the places in the city where Saroese and Efean mix. In some crews the men work side by side as sailors do out on the perilous sea. I have vague memories of coming down here when I was little but those expeditions ended the day Father gained a captain’s rank.
There’s a festive air in the city tonight. Singing and laughter float on the breeze. Beer and wine flow freely. Maybe it’s my imagination but it seems there are more Efeans in the streets than there were yesterday.
A group of Saroese laborers jostle past us, talking in loud voices. “Not only did the king win the trial today but he foiled a plot to depose him.” “I heard he threw a traitorous bodyguard into the undercourt to be crushed to death.”
They all laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world but Helias’s screams echo in my mind. Did I actually hear his bones break as the gears crushed him? A memory of the battle on the Royal Road flashes: blood on the pavement, a man’s guts spilling out while his eyes were still open, one of my forelegs crashing down on a prone body.
I stagger. Dedu grabs my arm and hauls me through a gate. When I begin to retch he hurries me to a latrine but I don’t have anything in my stomach to heave up. After a while the nausea subsides. I bury the ugly images beneath a mask of calm and take a deep breath, centering my focus.
“Are you well?” Dedu asks more gently than I expect.
“Yes. Thank you, Honored Sir.”
He leads me through a crowded courtyard of revelers and into a shadow-washed space behind it. The scent of jasmine floods me with the physical memory of Kal hooking his little finger around mine, a gesture of such intimacy that I have to stop and catch my breath again. But that’s not the only thing that takes me aback.