The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) (38 page)

“Vincen!” she shouted as she ran. “Vincen! To me!”

To me, to me, and burn anyone who says otherwise. To me, damn it, before he gets away.

Basrahip reached the tower before her, pushing open one of the servants’ doors. Behind her, a welcome voice called her. “My lady!”

“Stop him, Vincen,” she shouted, and ran on. Her knees hurt, her feet hurt, a sharp pain stung her back, and she felt none of it. There was only the chase. The perfect focus on the bastard huffing his way along before her, and the desperate need to stop him.

The Kingspire was a maze to her. Halls and corridors, stairways and servants’ passages. If she lost sight of him, he would be lost. Everything would be lost. She spared nothing, and Vincen Coe, his sword drawn, ran at her side.

They found him before a wide, sweeping stair. She threw herself at his legs to slow him as Vincen looped around to block his way. The huntsman’s blade shone in the light. Basrahip lowered his wide head, shook it like a man recovering from a blow.

“You think,” Basrahip said, “to cut me?”

“This far,” Vincen said. “No farther.”

Basrahip laughed. “Would you draw my blood? You wish to feel the goddess’s kiss? I can do this for you.”

Clara cried out, crawling away from him. With the sprint done, her lungs felt in flame. Her heart might burst at any second. Vincen moved forward, putting himself between her and the priest.

“You end where you are,” Vincen said.

“I continue forever,” Basrahip said, and Clara knew it was truth. He wasn’t a priest, nor even a man. All unknowing, he was the voice of dragons. Of war and death and violence that bred violence that bred violence, in a fire that burned on bodies from the dawn of time to the death of everything. “You have already lost. Listen to my voice. You dare not hurt me. You and your filthy sword. Everything you love is already lost. Everything you hope for is already gone. You cannot win.”

The words burst against her like storm waves. Jorey would die on the field, cut down by Timzinae blades. Sabiha, Annalise, Lady Skestinin. All would die. Vicarian was gone. Dawson was gone. And if Vincen turned his blade, if he drew the enemy’s blood, the spiders in it would come for them as well.

“No,” she said. “You have to let him go.”

“You have already lost,” Basrahip said. “You cannot win. You will
never
win.”

Vincen’s blade shifted, its point drifting down as a terrible comprehension filled his eyes. Tears of horror streaked his face. Basrahip stepped forward and took the sword from Vincen’s hand.

“You cannot win,” Basrahip said, and pushed Vincen to the ground. She crawled to him, took his hands in hers as behind them the great priest mounted the stairs, his fist making Vincen’s blade seem a table knife. “Everything you have is already gone.”

It was the spiders, she thought. It was only their power; there was still hope. But her heart knew otherwise.

They’d lost.

M
arcus’s left foot hurt. A mild ache down in the joints at the ball of his large toe. He tried to stretch it as he walked the three-sided dueling yard, leaning back a little into each step. It didn’t seem to be helping. The sword strapped across his back chafed, and he was getting an annoying little twitch near his eye. Likely he wouldn’t have noticed any of it, except that he was tense as if he were leading a full army into the field, with nothing that he could do but pace and wait to light the signal torch.

He’d planned it out with Yardem. If Inys came too early, the priests wouldn’t be gathered in their sacrificial temple. Too long, and they’d have noticed they were trapped and devised an escape. As soon as Geder and Yardem reemerged, Geder could call in his guard, put them in place. Be ready when the dragon came. Any of them that jumped, he’d be at the bottom with the sword to kill whatever spiders splashed out of the corpses.

Only being anxious tempted him to move too fast, so while the thing he wanted most in life was to take the little torch from beside the wide iron brazier they’d set out on the gravel of the yard and push it into the lump of sage and pitch, he waited instead, cataloging the ways his body hurt and watching the shadows shift with the sun. He looked toward the Kingspire, waiting for Yardem and the Lord Regent. They weren’t there.

The buildings around the base of the Kingspire felt empty as a burned city. The pathways seemed to miss the servants and courtiers that normally walked them. The windows stood shuttered against the summer sun. Geder’s private guard manned the streets at the edges of the grounds, keeping any attacker, the story was, from interrupting the priestly conclave. He had to think their eyes were as much on the tower as the streets. The goddess was the center of the empire, after all. The enemy was nearly at the gates. He’d been in enough cities facing attack to know how deeply a people consumed by fear could long for the miraculous—a cunning man’s vision of victory, a child’s imagined portent, anything that promised a future that could be known. Geder and his priests had spent so much effort pruning away everyone in the city who didn’t have faith, the ones who remained had to be certain that this was the moment that would save them.

And maybe it was, but it would be an ugly surprise for them all the same. If their salvation came today, it would be dressed like defeat. He squinted up into the sky, tested the air with his upstretched palm, and wondered again how long the dragon would take to arrive.
I will come
had sounded near to immediate when Inys had said it, but even the thickest smoke needed the wind to carry it. Flying might be faster than the swiftest horse, but it still took time. Why wasn’t Yardem back yet? This was all taking too long. Or he was more impatient than he thought? Marcus stretched his foot again. It ached.

When Inys came, there would be a moment when he was just in front of the great opened doors of the temple, bathing the enemy in flame. The eyes of Camnipol would all be on him, including the harpoons and lines that would encumber him and bring him down so Geder and his guard could end
both threats to humanity in a single day. Marcus made it an even bet that the little bastard would be hailed and remembered as a hero for it. The world wasn’t fair that way, but so long as the dragons’ war was well and truly ended, Marcus didn’t care. That everyone who deserved credit claimed it and blame stuck where it belonged was too much to ask for. Winning would have to be enough. If Yardem would just
get back
.

Aster came running down the path, head down, arms and legs pumping. Cithrin sprinted just behind. All of Marcus’s aches and complaints were forgotten. His mouth went dry. He took two steps toward them, looked toward the torch, the tower.

“Basrahip knows,” Aster gasped. “He heard me. He heard Lady Kalliam. He knows.”

“All right,” Marcus said, his voice calm despite the copper taste in his mouth. Cithrin came, her lungs working like a bellows. The distress in her eyes said more than words. If he left the torch, Cithrin could light it, provided Yardem came back down. Or Geder. Or him. Or anyone. He squinted up at the tower, and past it to the sky. No great wings marked the blue. There wasn’t time. In two long strides, he reached the torch and tossed the living flame into the brazier. The dry sage spat and the stink of burning pitch billowed up and out into the wide and empty air.

“Marcus,” Cithrin said. The word carried more questions than he had time to answer.

“Rally the guard,” he said. “If I don’t come back, finish the job.”

“But—” she cried, and he was already running. The Kingspire had a dozen ways in at the base, but only one direction: up. The great priest would try to stop Geder and Yardem, and that meant climbing the endless flights of stairs. Marcus
moved through the empty hall, ignoring the wide and airy archways, the statues of thousands of years, the tapestries and censers and images of worked gold. For him, there was only the hunt.

He took the stairs two at a time, reaching back as he did and tugging the wrapping away from the blade. They were past all disguises now. His footsteps echoed. Far away to his left, he heard something like a woman’s wail, but he didn’t have time or attention to spend on it. He didn’t know where the priest was, how far the man had gotten, how much of a head start he’d had. It didn’t change anything. The worst that would happen was Basrahip would reach the temple, sound the alarm, and Marcus would have to hold as many of the priests from coming down as he could before they slaughtered him or the dragon came. He felt himself grinning with the effort of the run. Or maybe it was just grinning.

As the tower rose, the walls sloped gently in, each level a bit smaller than the one below, the rooms and corridors a bit less grand, the stairs to the next level up narrower and fewer. The nearer they got to the temple, the more the tower itself would push them toward each other. He’d known a butcher once, and had the sense that slaughterhouses worked in much the same way.

The priest knew the path, and Marcus was finding it as he went. The priest had a head start. The urge to sprint, to push himself up as fast as he could go, tempted him. The sense that the enemy was just beyond his reach, and that if he pushed himself a little harder, he might catch him in time, sang in his blood. Instead, he kept to a brisk, steady pace. He focused on the architecture, finding his way through the halls and corridors like it was a deer path in the wood.

Outside, beyond his senses, the signal smoke was rising.
The dragon was on his way. He couldn’t think about that. Just where was there more wear on the carpets, where had steadying hands left smudges along the wall. He couldn’t hurry. If he went too fast now, he’d exhaust himself. He’d fail. If he drew the sword—and he wanted badly to feel its weight in his hands—it would cost him speed and add to his fatigue. He found another curving stair, and went up. His footsteps echoed weirdly against the jade.

Only no, they didn’t. The sound he heard complicating his steps came from above. He paused, his hands stretching wide and then tightening into fists. Footsteps retreating above him. The feral grin stretched his lips wider, and Marcus let himself run. Up the flight to a hall with half a dozen corridors converging on it. The sound was louder here. There was labored breath as well. He was close. A narrow window looked out to the southwest, offering a view of the grounds, the gaol, the Division, the sprawling city. But not a dragon. Not yet. Marcus closed his eyes, listening. The footsteps and breathing grew a degree quieter as he turned slowly, but he found which of the hallways it came from. He ran again with the long loping stride of a scout and a soldier.

The chamber at the hallway’s end was low-ceilinged and wide. Carved wooden tables stood discreetly against the walls under portraits of kings long dead. A thin white carpet covered the floor like fallen paper, and the spill of light from the shuttered window drew bright lines across it. The priest labored his way across it toward a half-open door and a fresh flight of stairs.

“Hey!” Marcus shouted as he drew the poisoned sword.

The priest turned. He was a large, broad man with flushed face and rage in his eyes. Marcus had known others like him, naturally strong even if he didn’t train. It wasn’t the only hint of Yemmu blood in the man’s history. The shape
of his jaw had a bit of it too. Marcus drew the poisoned sword, holding it in a double-handed grip. He saw Basrahip understand what it was, and what it meant.

The priest held a bright steel blade in his right fist like it was a stick. Not much technique, Marcus guessed, but plenty enough power. In case it was easy, Marcus lunged, his blade cutting fast and low.

The priest parried him. A little technique, then. That was a shame.

The priest’s breath was fast and hard. It might have been the exertion of the run or mind-blanking rage. Basrahip bared his teeth and shouted in wordless, animal aggression. Marcus took an involuntary step back. Even absent meaning, the sound of his voice held power. The gift Morade had given him and his kind along with their world-killing madness.

Basrahip swung his own blade in a short, hard arc. Marcus danced back, and the priest surged forward, shouting again. The poisoned sword stank with fumes that left a foul taste in Marcus’s mouth, but the priest ignored that, striking out artlessly with his own steel blade. Marcus parried and countered. Basrahip pushed the attack aside like he was clearing weeds. Marcus felt the impact of blade against blade in his wrists and shoulders.

“Strong bastard, aren’t you?” he said. “How’s your stamina?”

For that
, he thought,
how’s mine
? But the priest was hammering at him again, the raw fury of the attack driving Marcus slowly back. The shuttered windows was behind him. If this went on too long, he’d be driven against it. Marcus imagined himself being tossed out, spinning head over feet to the path below. It would be a stupid way to die.

The priest used the moment’s distraction. His vast howl
came again, and the blade with it. Marcus shifted away, but the tip of the priest’s sword touched his arm as it passed. The pain was bright. Blood pattered against the perfect white of the floor and Marcus drew himself into a guard position and countered, driving the priest back toward the stairway. The injured arm felt numb, but it wasn’t weaker. Or not much so. As far as he could tell. There was a lot of blood, but no muscle cut through. He only needed one solid hit, and the venom would do the rest. If it meant letting Basrahip open his guts for him, it wouldn’t matter. The priest would still be dead. He wouldn’t raise the alarm. Where the hell were Yardem and Geder anyway?

The priest’s laughter began as a deep sound, like someone chopping wood, and grew.

“Something… funny?” Marcus gasped out.

“Cannot,” the priest said. “Cannot win. You cannot win.”

In Marcus’s belly, something gave way. Not fear, not despair—not yet—but the awareness of how he was vulnerable. He struck forward, pushing the priest, but Basrahip was laughing now, even as he avoided the envenomed blade.

“You have already lost,” the priest said. “Listen to my voice. Everything you love is already gone. You cannot win.”

“Heard that before,” he said, as if defiance would rob the man’s voice of the dragon’s power.

“There is no reason to go on.”

Marcus tried to pull his attention away from the words. Tried to focus on the weight of the blade in his hand, the stance of his opponent. The brightening pain in his arm, the sound of his blood pattering onto the floor like raindrops. But the words pressed through it all, taking him by the throat.

“You have lost,” Basrahip said, and even as he knew the trick of it, Marcus felt the deep, familiar darkness rising up
from his mind to meet the man’s voice. “You cannot win. Everything you love is already gone. Listen to my voice. You
cannot
win.”

For a heartbeat—no more—he was holding Merian’s body against his. The smell of fire and death filling his nostrils, the fumes rising up from her corpse and changing who he was forever. Merian. Alys. His wife and his child, dead because he’d been loyal to the wrong man. Cithrin was already the same. Already doomed because he hadn’t been strong enough or wise enough to turn her from the path she’d chosen. Yardem was as good as dead. Kit and the players. Because he hadn’t done better.

“You cannot win. You have already lost. Everything you fight for, everything you care for, all of it is already gone. Your failure cannot be changed. You have lost!”

The priest’s voice rang out in the narrow space, and Marcus felt the poisoned sword growing heavier. It sank lower, dropping out of defensive stance. Tears familiar as old enemies filled his eyes, and his chest ached with every failure he’d dragged behind him all through the wide, empty world. The priest stepped closer, as Marcus had known he would. Basrahip’s blade was stained at the tip, red with Marcus’s blood.

“You can
never
win. You have lost everything. Everything and
forever
.”

The vast and familiar ocean of sorrow in Marcus’s chest opened, blooming out endlessly. Other people healed, other people mourned and moved on. But he would feel the pain fresh every time, every moment without Merian and Alys would be as bright with grief as the first one. And nothing could ever undo it. The priest took another step nearer. His eyes were bright and certain. The blade in his vast hand was ready. Marcus blinked away a thick tear.

“Listen to my voice,” Basrahip said. “You cannot win. You have lost, now and always. Everything you love is lost to you. Everything you do is doomed. Empty.
Meaningless
.”

“Old news,” Marcus said, and sank the poisoned sword into Basrahip’s gut.

The priest’s eyes narrowed in what looked like confusion as he stepped back. Dark, thick blood poured out of his belly onto the pale floor. Spiders ran a few skittering inches from where they fell, tracking pinpoints of inky blood behind them, then stilled and died. Basrahip put a hand to the wound, astonished and confused. Already a thick white foam was forming where the blade had broken the big man’s skin. A smell like heated wine and fresh shit filled the room, but Marcus didn’t gag. Basrahip’s breath stuttered and became harder, gasping.