by Kate Elliott
Leaping out of the spider, I jar my knee but the pain barely registers. Nothing registers except the body lying facedown in the dirt. As I dash up a scout shouts in warning and grabs for me, but I dodge him and drop to the earth.
I take hold of the captain’s shoulder and ease him over, praying under my breath that I am wrong as I pull down the scarf to uncover his face.
But I am not wrong.
I could never be wrong, not about him.
Kalliarkos lies unmoving on the ground, eyes closed, not breathing.
20
You! Get the priest immediately!” I use Father’s command voice. “You! Make sure the enemy isn’t dead yet. Don’t kill him. We need his spark. Lord Kalliarkos is not breathing.”
Both scouts obey, hurrying off.
I run a hand down Kal’s clothes, trying to find a stab wound, but his chest is all hard muscle. Gently I turn his head to see if he has cracked his skull open, but except for a trickle of blood at his ear he’s untouched. Either the enemy smote him with a terrible magic or the impact from the tackle killed him.
It’s taking too long for the others to act.
I trawl through my mind, seeking any scrap of hope.
Mother taught her daughters certain humble healing skills but I was always too impatient to sit still and memorize such details when I could be up and moving around instead. Bettany was the one who kept asking Mother question after question. I remember that now as I stare into his lifeless face.
Breath is life.
I press my dry lips to his mouth and I breathe my breath into his body, only to feel my own breath puff against my cheek from his nostrils. Clear the mouth of obstructions, then pinch the nostrils closed. That’s what Mother taught us.
He does not stir as I swipe a finger through his mouth, then pinch his nose shut, then set my mouth to his in a kiss that has all of desire in it: not the desire for love but the fierce need to save him. My lips to his, I breathe the force of my stubborn determination into him, once, twice, three times.
I will save him.
I will.
My chest brushes his, and just as I realize his chest has risen to touch mine, his eyes flutter and open. As I tilt my head back his gaze fixes on me. With a puzzled wrinkling of his brow, he shapes my name—“Jes”—and yet no sound comes out.
His eyes roll up, and close.
Hands grab me and drag me away. When I kick, fighting them, the meaty impact of my fist into flesh gives me pleasure.
“Spider! Leave off! Step back!” Oras’s bark of command seizes me like a spider’s pincer legs. All the air sags out of me as I’m hauled away from the men clustering around Kalliarkos. The priest rises from beside the body of the enemy soldier. Misty ghosts like the dregs of shadows drift in the sockets of his empty eyes. The glittering net hangs from his hands, light whispering through its threads.
The scouts scuttle aside like a cloud of locusts.
When the priest kneels beside Kal I can’t see him, only hear the intake of many breaths as the soldiers wait.
Breath is life.
“Is he alive?” I whisper.
Sergeant Oras guides me back to my spider, which I have left precariously balanced on three legs, such was my haste to get to Kal.
“That was a breach of protocol, Spider. Don’t do it again.”
“But—”
“Next time you’ll get whipped if you’re fortunate and executed if you’re not. You do not approach a lord captain in that reckless, careless way.”
“I was trying to save his life.”
“Just get in your spider and obey orders.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’ll have to regroup and make a new plan,” says Oras.
“Where will we regroup in this wasteland?” I demand.
“The desert is no wasteland for those who know it. We spiders have carefully built nests, camps hidden away supplied with food and water for our long-ranging patrols.”
I get into my spider and shift position until I can see Kalliarkos. He’s still lying on the ground but his eyes are open and he is rubbing his head. The priest stands over him like a parent over a child who needs to be scolded for trying to do too much after an illness. A crow hops up Kal’s torso and peers intently into his face.
The scouts efficiently loot the enemy gear. Several bring out long knives and begin butchering the horses. In the desert you never leave food behind, only corpses.
When Kal is up and back in his own spider, we march out, Sergeant Oras in the lead, heading south toward the coast although we don’t return to the road. Conical hills turn into rocky ridges whose southern slopes are heaped with sand blown by the winds out of the south. We clank in our file down a narrowing canyon, sticking to a patch of blessed afternoon shade. Oras leads us into a roughhewn cave mouth that turns into a short tunnel, which brings us into a tiny valley. It’s baking hot and waterless, but there are shelters built of rocks, covered cisterns, brick hearths erected at the openings of overhangs, and even a clay bread oven.
After I come to a halt I sit in the harness, too dull to think about anything except that Kal is alive. Kal is alive. Kal is alive. My mind veers away from the uglier truths that press down on my shattered heart.
“Hey! Soldier!” Sergeant Oras wavers in front of my blurry vision.
He talks me out of the harness and with a hand under my elbow guides me over to a shelter and forces me to drink a repulsively salty brew and eat two figs. Afterward I lie down, head pillowed on my scarf, and close my eyes.
In the haze of my thoughts my last vision of Bettany vanishes into a puddle of blood. She’s dead.
She’s dead to us. A traitor.
I fall into a restless sleep.
When I wake, night has come. The smell of sizzling fat and sage-smoked meat makes me sit bolt upright. There’s a covered bowl next to me filled with tepid water, and I gulp it down like it is royal nectar.
The stars and moon bathe the valley in a light that casts a shimmering web over the many spiders tucked up at rest. The Great River of Light that Efeans call Our Mother’s Milk splashes its way across the sky. According to the Saroese, the universe is a celestial sphere that embraces the humble earth; stars abide in the immortal heavens while mortal creatures live and die below. But Mother once told us that stars are souls, each a luminary that shines for the space of its celestial life and then, like all living things, dies.
We will all die, if not now, then later. It’s time to face the truth.
I test my feet and, finding myself steady, stand. All the hearths are lit, men cooking meat over them while others sleep, covered by blankets against the cool night air. At the entrance to this overhang Oras sits with three men I don’t know, turning spits over a smoldering fire.
I walk over, and the three strangers stare as if I have two heads.
Oras hands me strips of hot meat. “Horse,” he says.
It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and I lick my fingers as he talks on in the genial tone of a man accustomed to death and heat and close calls.
“These three fellows are one of Crags Fort’s missing patrols. They followed a crow here. But four of our scouts are missing.” A strip of linen caked with dried blood wraps his neck but he doesn’t seem to notice.
As the food and water settle, I test my voice. “Where is Lord Kalliarkos?”
His frown hits like a blow. “Good Goat, girl, you can’t just walk up to a highborn lord like that. What were you thinking?”
“I thought he was dead.”
“You did act quickly,” he admits grudgingly. “That one last enemy soldier still had a spark in him. Saved the lord’s life, the priest did.”
“But he wasn’t dead.”
“That’s right. Thanks to your quick thinking, the priest saved the lord captain.”
No. Kal’s eyes opened. I’m sure he saw me before the priest came. He had started breathing again. Either the priest didn’t see it or he didn’t want to believe
I could have saved him.
I clench my hands, feeling dizzy. My head aches, I am aware all over again that a cursed splinter is dug into the flesh of my palm, and that I left my friends and maybe Amaya to die. A great gaping maw of dread and pain opens a hole in my heart for those I left behind. For Bettany’s betrayal.
And yet Kalliarkos is alive.
I stand there in mute anguish, torn between grief and joy.
A bearded man comes into the firelight. I recognize him as the one who almost stabbed Kalliarkos with a javelin. Alone among the scouts he has a true beard, not the stubbly growth of a man who hasn’t had time to shave.
“Sergeant Oras, Lord Captain Kalliarkos wishes to speak to you.”
“Very good, Sergeant Demos.” He glances at me. “Stay here, Spider. Don’t go wandering around. Don’t forget that scorpions hunt at night.”
As soon as he and the sergeant depart, I try out one of Amaya’s poor-kitten faces on the three scouts, who are staring at me like they are afraid I am going to sprout a third head.
“Is there a place I can… you know.”
Their embarrassment almost makes me laugh.
The bravest one attempts to answer, speaking in the slow, slightly overloud Saroese many Patrons use around Commoners, even though I have just addressed them in Saroese. “The latrine, yes? The latrine next to the tunnel mouth. Be careful of scorpions.” He gestures with a hand, trying to replicate the scuttling walk and stabbing sting of a scorpion, as if he fears I still can’t understand.
“My thanks,” I say in my most polite tone.
Of course I do not seek out the latrine. I use the darkness to follow the two sergeants to another overhang illuminated by a hearth fire where five men stand and three men sit. Besides the crow priest there is another, younger priest, a man who also has both eyes cut away and an escort of crows. The third seated man is the lord captain.
From the shadows I examine Kalliarkos’s face. He’s thinner, and his usually clean face is smeared with grit and prickly with the stubble of days-old beard growth. A hard resolve has chased away the soft charm that used to light his gaze. I can’t stop staring at him.
“We will march to relieve the citadel at Crags Fort,” he is saying to the assembled sergeants. “My patrol was sent out from the Royal Army in pursuit of a company of East Saroese light cavalry that marched northwest into the desert. General Esladas feels the likeliest scenario is that they are attempting to cut off the road from Akheres Oasis to Port Selene.”
“It appears he was right,” agrees Sergeant Oras, “since an enemy force has attacked Canyon Fort and Crags Fort.”
Kal nods decisively. “I’ll need your knowledge of the terrain to plan a strategy to retake the forts, especially since we are outnumbered.”
“The forces inside the two citadels will support us once we arrive,” says Oras. “If we can coordinate an attack with them, the enemy will be caught in the forts between hammer and anvil.”
“You think the two citadels can hold out?”
“Oh, yes. The forts were designed specifically to sustain a siege. The inner citadels are built to survive six months because all the stores and water are kept there. Meanwhile the attackers will only be able to scavenge water and supplies from Lord Gargaron’s supply wagons, which won’t sustain their numbers for more than a week—”
Taking a step forward I break in. “They aren’t after the road or the desert forts. They’re after the gold.”
Kalliarkos’s head snaps back, eyes going wide as if the sound of my voice has shot through him like burning sparks. His gaze catches on my form where I stand in the shadows behind the others.
Sergeant Oras turns. “Spider, get out!”
“My lord,” I add, belatedly remembering my place.
“Jes!” Kal slaps a hand on the stone bench, mutters under his breath, then speaks too loudly, like he’s trying to convince the men he just said anything other than my name. “Just! It’s just that there are good strategic reasons to believe the old Saro alliance is after the forts.”
The crow priest’s sightless eye sockets halt on me. “My lord, this creature should not have addressed you. I will have it taken away at once.”
“Of course you won’t! This is war, not a temple with its elaborate code of purity. In war any person with potentially useful information must be heard, especially in such desperate circumstances as our army is in now.”
Kal looks at each man in turn, a trick I’ve seen my father use to assert his authority. I study his face, his eyes, a healed cut on his chin, and the square stubborn set of his shoulders. He was willing to let those enemy men die from sunstroke by waiting them out. Only a few months have passed since I last saw him and yet there’s an intangible aura about his presence that feels utterly different. Harder. More ruthless.
“Come forward, soldier.”
I obediently walk forward, the men moving aside to let me through.
“Why do you believe the attack on the forts is directed at gold, not at any strategic goal?”
“Because I heard one of the leaders of the attack say so. Everyone knows the king and queen of Efea sit atop a mountain of treasure.”
He glances away as I repeat words he once spoke to me, and I falter, remembering that night and how we kissed like the whole world had offered us its promise. But the Fives has taught me well. I can’t afford distraction.
“Gold is a strategic goal, my lord. Gold pays armies and buys grain to distribute in a hungry city ripe for rebellion. Gold can lure discontented mercenaries who haven’t been paid into switching sides and fighting for old Saro instead of Efea.”
“That’s true. But you are underestimating the importance of the chain of desert forts as a line of protection to hold the enemy on the Eastern Reach. If the old Saro alliance takes control of the desert forts and road, then they can move a force safely through the desert and hit our army from the north when it reaches Port Selene.”
“But the Efean army isn’t at Port Selene,” I object. “It’s on the Eastern Reach, at Pellucidar Lake.”
“We’ve lost the Eastern Reach,” says Kalliarkos. “The Efean army is in retreat.”
There’s a sudden silence as Oras and I are struck dumb by these unexpected words.
Kal goes on. “In fact, Sergeant Oras, I don’t understand why your forces weren’t on high alert. General Esladas specifically gave orders to send word up the chain of desert forts about the defeat at Pellucidar Lake and the need to protect ourselves from an attack through the desert.”
“But we heard the battle at Pellucidar Lake was a victory, my lord,” says Oras.
“A victory for our enemy!” exclaims Kalliarkos. “Only the brilliant tactics of General Esladas saved us from utter annihilation. It’s due to him the army is still intact and able to retreat along the coast at all.”
“But King Kliatemnos made a proclamation of victory,” I say.
“Why would Kliatemnos lie about such a thing?” Kal mutters.
“He thought it was the truth. He got the news by messenger pigeon.”
At last he looks at me. I stiffen, because I can’t interpret the meaning of his regard. “And you know this… how?”
“Your sister, the gracious Lady Menoë, took me to the palace with her to meet the queen and Prince Temnos.” I’m irritated enough by his suspicious gaze that I can’t help the sarcastic drawl of my tone, rather as if I’m speaking to Ro. “I am a famous young Challenger, as you know.”
His voice comes out clipped. “Oh yes, I am well aware of that.”
“The message claimed to come from Prince Nikonos,” I add, hoping he’ll see the warning in my eyes. If Nikonos truly is plotting against Kal and my father, then any of the men surrounding us may be traitors. “Perhaps there is an enemy spy in the ranks of the messenger service who managed to send false information to the king.”
Kal rubs a finger along a fresh scar on his chin as if reminding himself of how he got it. “Prince General Nikonos is in cha
rge of communications and the messenger pigeons. Explain why you’re so sure this attack on the forts was specifically after gold.”
“A foreign doctor named Agalar came to Akheres a few months ago, purportedly to study how to treat mining injuries. But he is actually working with the enemy soldiers who attacked the two forts. With my own eyes I saw the attackers fly the hawk banner of East Saro. So isn’t it likely that the plan to steal the gold was in place some months ago? After the battle at Pellucidar Lake a second plan could have been put in place to take the forts for strategic advantage, once our army was in retreat. The two could be coordinated. If the citadels are set to withstand a siege, then I think we need to warn General Esladas before we do anything else.”
The crow priest rises and points an accusatory finger at me. “It is an affront to the gods for a woman to speak counsel to men.”
Kal raises a hand and, to my surprise, the crow priest gives a heaving sigh of disgust and sits down. “Defeat and dishonor are affronts to the gods. As are lies.”
“I’m not lying!” I snap, and then, “My lord.”
“No, alas, I do not think you are lying,” he murmurs with a flash of annoyance.
“My thanks.” The words lie heavy between us, and Oras glances from Kalliarkos to me and back again as if he is beginning to suspect there is more to our exchange than there should be.
“Although I advise against believing you understand the undercurrents awash in the palace when you did not grow up there.”
“I thank you for the advice, my lord,” I retort, irritated by his scolding, he who now sits wielding the whip of command when he once swore to me that the last thing he wanted was to serve in the army. I lower my voice. “If I were you, I would give orders to put a heavy guard on your grandfather Lord Menos’s tomb.”
His hard, measuring gaze fixes on mine. After a moment his eyes widen slightly, and he nods. Finally he addresses his men.
“It’s most important to alert General Esladas about what we’ve seen and learned. The citadels can hold out for now. Sergeant Oras, you will take your scouts to Akheres Oasis to give warning. We must assume the men besieged in Crags Fort citadel have sent a message by pigeon to Akheres Town, asking for help from the garrison there. You should bring up a relief force to drive the attackers away. Akheres Garrison must reinforce the desert forts and make ready for a possible invasion from the east through the desert.”
