The Spider

by Leo Carew

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Leo Carew

  Excerpt from Soulkeeper copyright © 2019 by David Dalglish

  Excerpt from The Gutter Prayer copyright © 2019 by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

  Author photograph by Leo Carew

  Cover design by Patrick Insole

  Cover image by Lee Gibbons

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Wildfire and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2019

  First U.S. Edition: July 2019

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933106

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-52140-6: (trade paperback), 978-0-316-52138-3 (ebook)

  E3-20190627-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map of Albion

  Prologue

  Part I—The North

  1 The Drop of the Body

  2 The Blaze

  3 When the Dead Rise

  4 The Accomplice

  5 The Stones

  6 Unhierea

  7 The Man in the Mountains

  8 The Trials of King Gogmagoc

  9 A Flush of Red

  10 The Trial

  11 The Hand

  12 The Great Canal

  13 Into Suthdal

  Part II—The South

  14 The Spymaster

  15 The Empty Lands

  16 Lincylene

  17 A Broken Crow

  18 The Passes Are Shut

  19 Thingalith

  20 Under Siege

  21 The Quiet War

  22 The Rock

  23 Silence

  24 The Weapon

  25 Brimstream

  26 Like Locusts

  27 Sickness

  28 Hunger

  29 The Earl and the Giant

  30 The Spymaster Unleashed

  31 Reciprocity

  32 Help Me

  33 The Incantation

  Part III—Lundenceaster

  34 The Smell of Blood

  35 The Tunnel

  36 Ellengaest

  37 The Walls of Lundenceaster

  38 The Breach

  39 The Suthern King

  40 The Witan

  41 The Fire

  Epilogue

  Roll of Black Legions

  Houses and Major Characters of the Black Kingdom

  Acknowledgements

  Discover More

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  A Preview of Soulkeeper

  A Preview of The Gutter Prayer

  By Leo Carew

  For Dad, with love

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  Tap here to learn more.

  Prologue

  Through the rain that fell soft as down, two figures sat in a little boat, on a sea like tar. Moon and stars were hidden, the only sounds the splash of the oars and the waves lapping at the hull. The dark mass at the oars heaved and grunted, puffing a fine spray of water from his lips. His passenger was a black silhouette crouched at the back of the boat, so huge that his weight lifted the prow from the water.

  “I still don’t know the plan,” said the oarsman.

  The darkness clotted at the stern made no reply. It just hoisted a hood against the rain, and stared out over the pitch sea.

  “You could take an oar,” said the oarsman, whose name was Unndor. “We’d be faster.”

  The shadow flicked a hand towards his own enveloped arm, held in close and vulnerable at his chest. “We would not.”

  The boat was drawing towards a bright pinprick, far across the water. The waves knocked on the hull, rocking the pair as the distant light slowly resolved into a ship, twinkling silently as dark figures crossed the deck. It grew huge: a rolling, sweating, round-bellied hog of a ship without porthole or mast, fastened to the sea floor by two hemp ropes running beneath the waves. The top was awash with yellow lamplight, obscured as the little boat passed into the shadow of the hull. They had been spotted, and a silhouetted head protruded over the side. “Ellengaest, is that you?”

  “It’s me,” replied the shadow from the stern.

  The head retreated at once. “They were expecting you?” asked Unndor.

  “I am their only visitor who arrives at night.”

  A rope was tossed over the side, a pair of hands appearing above to lash one end onto the rail. Unndor took the rope and knotted it onto an iron ring at the bow, and then a rope ladder tumbled down the hull, its end coming to rest just above the boat’s knocking gunwale. The passenger, the Ellengaest, did not move, and after a moment, Unndor took the ladder and began to climb. When several hands had reached from the ship to help him over the rail above, Ellengaest followed.

  He was pulled aboard a solid acre of planking, bordered by a low rail, and gently curved like a fragment of an enormous barrel. The deck bristled with posts, each bearing a pair of blackened storm lamps, and the whole vessel gleamed with tar and rain. The men on the deck wore beaten expressions and heavy black cloaks, each emitting the smoky reek of tar, rain beading on the stifling garments and drifting through the lamplight. The captain, Galti, was small and hunched, and stood a half-pace further back from the towering form of Ellengaest than might have been normal. “What can I do for you, sir? Leave us,” he added to the deckhands.

  Ellengaest watched them go. “This place is hell,” he said.

  Galti did not disagree, staring up at his visitor, the rain running down his face.

  “We have come to see one of your prisoners, Captain,” said Ellengaest. “Urthr Uvorenson.”

  Galti’s foot twisted beneath him. “What do you want with him, sir? I ask as he is quite a high-profile prisoner.”

  “Not your concern, Captain. Lead on.”

  Galti hesitated, gritting his teeth, and then turned away, leading them to a hatch at the heart of the deck. He pulled it open to unleash an abominable stench: damp, excrement, rot and urine in one potent gust. Unndor staggered back, but Galti swung himself down onto the rungs of a hidden ladder and disappeared into the cavity. The two new arrivals paused by the entrance.

  “Ellengaest?” asked Unndor. “Why Ellengaest? Sounds like a Suthern word.”

  “You next,” said Ellengaest, without looking at Unndor.

  “My brother has been living down there for three months?”

  “Go and ask him yourself.”

  Unndor screwed up his face and plunged in, having to twist slightl
y to accommodate his shoulders. Ellengaest delayed long enough only to take a fortifying breath before he followed inside.

  Beneath the deck, the air was a poisonous fume. Ellengaest advanced, guided by half a dozen flickering candles lining the corridor, ignoring the gleaming eyes that followed his progress from behind iron bars. The passage rocked and swayed, and there was a soft clink from either side as the prisoners stirred.

  By the time he reached Galti and Unndor, the cell before them stood open. He stepped inside, taking a candle from Galti, which illuminated two wooden bunks. The top one was empty. The bottom supported a shackled prisoner, who sat up stiffly to face the newcomers, squinting in the candlelight.

  “Leave us,” said Ellengaest. Galti retreated, his footsteps fading down the passage, and Ellengaest, Unndor and the prisoner were left observing one another.

  Urthr Uvorenson had been put in this fetid belly by Ellengaest himself, though he probably did not know that. He had served three months of his sixty-year sentence and already looked a broken man. He was thin, his hair matted, his face watchful. Open sores covered his hands, and his nails were tattered from the endless work of grinding flour, unpicking tarred ropes and shattering metal ore. “Brother,” he said, eyeing Unndor. He turned his attention to the other visitor. “And I know you. You are Vigtyr the Quick—”

  “Ellengaest,” he overrode. “My name is Ellengaest.”

  Urthr stared at him, then he shrugged. “Why are you here?”

  The visitor—the Ellengaest, Vigtyr the Quick—smiled at Urthr. “I’ve come to see if you would like to walk free.”

  Urthr gave a brief, flat laugh. He looked bitterly at his brother, sitting in the other corner, in rebuke at this cruelty.

  “I do not make idle offers,” said Vigtyr.

  Urthr shrugged. “And how could you arrange that?”

  “I could take you with me tonight,” said Vigtyr. “Your brother and I arrived by boat, tethered outside. It is as simple as you agreeing to help me, and then the three of us will take that boat back to shore.”

  Urthr examined him. “They would stop us.”

  “The captain,” said Vigtyr, leaning forward to watch Urthr’s reaction, “is quite considerably in my debt. We have a good arrangement. I maintain silence about what I have done for him, and in return I have access to the prisoners I need.”

  There was a look of incredulity on Urthr’s face. “What have you done for him?”

  “If I told you, it would erase the debt.”

  Urthr held up his hands, showing his manacles. “I am tempted by any agreement that gets me out of these. So what do you want from me?”

  “It is not what I want from you. It is what I want for you. For both of you,” he added, indicating Unndor. “Revenge. On the man who killed your father and put you in here to rot for crimes you did not commit. We are going to tear down the Black Lord.”

  There was a slight movement as Urthr examined his brother’s face, then turned back to Vigtyr. “And why do you want this?” he breathed.

  “Your freedom is in your hands,” said Vigtyr, “but you may startle it away if you’re too rough.”

  Unndor spoke then, leaning forward from his corner. “But you cannot simply expect us to trust you. There are rumours about you. How can you bring down Roper? How could you do it, when our father could not?”

  “There is a man below the Abus,” replied Vigtyr. “A Sutherner of unusual cunning, who has let it be known that he needs spies.”

  “Bellamus,” said Urthr, unimpressed. “Perhaps the Black Kingdom’s greatest enemy. You want to use him?”

  “I will use him. And I will use the Kryptea. And you will help me, or you’ll rot here. Those are your choices.”

  The darkness thumped as someone walked the deck overhead, and the three could almost sense the straining ears tracking their every word. “I know you,” said Urthr at last. “I know your reputation. You come here offering a great deal, but there is no payment I can imagine that would satisfy you. What would it cost me to be in your debt?”

  Vigtyr shrugged. “Nothing you treasure. Nothing you haven’t already lost. I need messengers. I can’t regularly head south of the Abus to contact the spymaster, it would be obvious, and I’d be missed. That is where you two come in. No one will miss you. You will have your freedom, and you will have revenge on the man who killed your father. Will you take it?”

  There came a pause. Then Urthr began to laugh. It was a noise so uncontrolled that even Vigtyr leaned back a little, eyeing the prisoner. The laugh rattled beneath the deck like a die in a wooden cup. Urthr fell silent, his wrists tugging at the shackles that linked them. “Yes,” he said. “Get me off this hulk and I’ll do anything you want, but especially kill Roper Kynortasson.”

  “And you?” said Vigtyr, looking at Unndor.

  “Of course,” he said. “Of course. Though I doubt you will find the madmen of the Kryptea easily controlled.”

  “The Kryptea are the smallest part of this,” said Vigtyr dismissively. “In the war that is coming, every soul will be involved. Suthdal is weak. We will need to uncover every enemy that Roper has and rally them against him. And not only him. Those close to him will die too.”

  Urthr was smiling still. “Who?”

  “His brothers are first,” said Vigtyr. “If they are not dead already, they will be within days. The man I have set on them does not fail.”

  The pair eyed Vigtyr for a time, the only sound the creak of the boat’s timbers. “When do we begin?”

  Vigtyr smiled. “We have begun already.”

  Part I

  THE NORTH

  1

  The Drop of the Body

  The Black Lord was a tall man, though not as tall as often supposed. He held his back very straight; his hair was dark, his face robust and stern at rest. But that was an illusion, and his attention, if you gained it, was consistent, personable and intelligent. He was a man of sharp edges, concealed by a practised and deprecating manner. It was only the very few close to him who saw the ticking heart like a clockwork spring that drove him on, on, on. And at this moment, his face had assumed the distant mask he often wore in times of turmoil.

  Because his brother was dead.

  He stood, wrapped in a dark cloak, on a white sand beach at the head of a long lake. The only person within ten feet was a tall woman with black hair and poisonous green eyes, she too enfolded in a dark cloak. Her name was Keturah, and the pair of them stood slightly apart from a score of mourners, buffeted by the wind rushing the length of the water.

  Along the lake’s edge, some fifty yards away, a procession was approaching. A dozen boys, no older than twelve, walking together in two parallel lines.

  They were carrying a child’s body.

  A grey, limp presence held awkwardly between the lines. The mouth was a dark ellipse. The arms, like slim boards of willow, bounced with each step. The flesh was naked but for a layer of charcoal, and a chain of raptor feathers clutched at its neck, and behind the procession a vast stretch of a drum thumped with each step they took.

  Dow. Dow. Dow.

  Roper did not notice the drum. He did not see the mountains enclosing them on three sides in a sheer verdant wall, or the grey waves swept up by the wind. He was lost in the memories that swarmed this place.

  He remembered a still day on this very beach, when he and the dead boy had been engulfed in a cloud of midges. He remembered how they had run up and down the beach to try and lose them, but wherever they went, still more waited for them. How they had plunged into the waters of the lake to wait for the return of the wind, and found it too cold. They had finally taken refuge in the smoke of their fire, which though he had to breathe hot fumes, Roper found preferable to the swarm beyond. He had said he was going to make a dash for their cloaks, and his brother had declared that the midges would have reduced him to a skeleton by the time Roper returned. They had joked that together, they would spend the rest of their days attempting to find the Queen M
idge, should such a tyrant exist, and destroy her as a favour to all humanity. Surely they could do no greater good.

  He remembered the moon-blasted night they had fished together on a promontory at the far end. How he had been surly because his brother had caught two fine trout, and he had managed nothing. He remembered the last time he had seen Numa, standing on this beach with the iron clouds stretching behind him. Roper had turned in his saddle as he rode south with two unfamiliar Pendeen legionaries. He remembered how Numa and his twin had looked back at him and had not waved: merely shared one last look before Roper turned away. He remembered the steady metallic hiss of the rain stinging the flat lake. He remembered the cold of it running down his cheeks and over his lips. He remembered it all, but could feel no grief. All he had was the restless ticking in his chest, seeking revenge.

  The procession was drawing near the grave at Roper’s side, its earthen walls impressed with interlinking handprints, like a canopy of leaves. As it came close, the mourners began to sing: a gentle lament that quivered and shook, swelling with the body’s approach, and presently becoming a funereal howl that almost drowned the reverberations of the drum. One of the singers standing by the grave was the double of the corpse, his face a tear-stained mirror to the scene before him. Gray was next to him, singing with the others, and placed a hand on the boy’s heaving shoulder, eyes not leaving the swaying body.

  It was manoeuvred into place above the grave, head facing east, and close enough that Roper could see the lacerations in the skin, cut to ribbons to hasten the moment his brother’s bones rotted into the earth. The dark limbs were folded to the body’s side. For an instant it floated above the grave.

  The reverberations of the drum faded and the singing fell away. Even the wind fell still.

  Then the body dropped.

  It plunged into the earth, a filthy embrace whooshing up in reaction. There was a distant thump as the corpse hit its resting place. Then Numa’s peers and his stricken twin began pressing the piled earth forward with their bare hands, filling in the grave. Roper turned away then, receiving a momentary assessment from the green eyes at his side.