The King's Blood

“You have to get me out of here.”

“I do. But I wanted to speak with you first.”

Master Kit sat with his back to the rough stone wall. He looked older than Marcus remembered him. There was more white in his hair, and he looked thinner than he had even on the long caravan road from Vanai to Porte Oliva. Marcus pulled at his chains, setting them to rattle.

“I can talk to you without being strapped to a wall,” Marcus said. “We could skip to that part. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Do you know why we cut thumbs when signing contracts or treaties?” Kit asked, drawing a dagger from his belt. It was a simple huntsman’s blade, but sharp.

“Because that’s how you sign a contract,” Marcus said.

“But how did it get that way? Why blood and not… I don’t know. Tears. Spit. The story is that it’s been that way since the dragons, but it wasn’t always. That it began during the last war, when Morade forged his Righteous Servant and his clutch-mate built the Timzinae. Last race of humanity.”

“All right,” Marcus said. “I’ve never heard of a righteous servant apart from someone trying to convince me to buy a squire, but I’m going to assume you’re going somewhere with this?”

“I believe it was meant to show that neither party was tainted. If one or the other had been able to cheat, to force the other into agreement, the blood would show it.”

“And I’m sure you’re right. Kit? Unchain me now?”

“Come. Look at this.”

Kit pressed the blade to his thumb until a tiny drop of red appeared. The cut was tiny, no more than a pinprick, but the deepness of the blood made it seem almost black. No, there was a knot at the center of the drop, a tiny dark clot like a flake of scab that was forcing its way up through Kit’s skin.

The scab rolled to the side, tracking bright red behind it, and extended tiny legs.

“All right. That’s odd,” Marcus said.

“Don’t touch it. They bite. I find they’re poisonous in more senses than one.”

“Not to be rude, Kit, but you have spiders living in your blood?”

“I do. I have since I became a priest of the goddess many, many years ago. I believe we all carry the mark, though I haven’t tested it.” Kit caught the tiny spider and cracked it between his thumbnails. “I had a falling-out with my brothers. I’m afraid I lost my faith, and I found there was very little room for dissent. You may recall that before I left Porte Oliva word came of a new cult, drawn from the mountains east of the Keshet. It was mine. It was men who bear the same taint that I do. The war with Asterilhold and the unrest in Antea are, I think, the first, stumbling steps toward something much larger. Much worse.” Kit held up his bleeding thumb. “And that is why you cut thumbs on a contract. Because of men like me.”

Marcus ran his fingers through the beard that had grown during his captivity. His skin was crawling, but he kept his voice steady.

“This is the thing you were talking about. The evil that got loose in the world. It’s you?”

“It’s men like me. The taint in my blood is the sign of the goddess, but it isn’t her power. Her priesthood is given gifts by her. We are the masters of truth and of lies. I told you once that I could be very persuasive and that I was very difficult to lie to. It is this way with all of us. Tell me something I couldn’t know. Tell me true or lie. It doesn’t matter.”

“Kit, I don’t think that parlor tricks—”

“I don’t think you’ll find this a cunning man’s small magic,” Kit said.

“All right. Ah. I stole honey stones from my friend when I was a boy.”

“You did,” Kit said. “Try again.”

“The first battle I was in, I lost my sword.”

“You didn’t. That’s a lie. Try again.”

Marcus frowned. Something was shifting in the pit of his stomach, and it took him a moment to recognize it as fear.

“About a month ago, I found a silver coin in the street outside the counting house.”

“No.”

“It was copper.”

“Ah. Yes. So it was.”

Marcus let his breath out.

“That’s a good trick,” he said. “Could see how a man might be tempted to use that.”

“I don’t think it’s the worst thing I can do. I find the spiders can make me impossible to disbelieve. With time and repetition, I can make anyone believe anything. However ridiculous or absurd or dangerous. If it were in my interest, I could convince you that you were a god. Or that your family was still alive but hiding from you. Even if you knew better, even if your mind knew better, your heart would lead you wherever I told it to go. I can do that, and so can they.”

“And they’re in Antea?”

“And very close to the throne.”

Marcus sat for a moment, considering it. The corruption of kings and princes was nothing new. The twist- minded cunning man was a standard character in a thousand songs. And still, there was something about the tiny spider birthing itself out of Kit’s skin that made Marcus shudder.

“What do they want?”

Kit considered his thumb. The cut was already closed, neither blood nor spiders leaking out of his body. His voice was almost contemplative.

“When I was there, I was taught that the goddess would return justice to the world. We were to keep faith and wait for the day when she would send us a sign. A leader whose Righteous Servant we would be, and through him, the goddess would free the world from lies.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“Probably, yes, but I also decided it might not be true,” Kit said with a smile. “I was a very junior priest when I left. Many of the menial, small tasks fell to me. One was to be sure the temples were swept. I didn’t actually sweep. There was an old man who did that. I don’t even remember his name now. But I asked him one day whether he had swept, and he said yes. He had. And he was telling the truth. Do you see? I felt it in my blood, just the way I did with you. Only he was confused. He was mistaken. He thought he had. He was certain he had. He hadn’t.

“And so I fell from grace.”

“Over an unswept floor?”

“Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably. Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren’t. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it.

“One day the high priest came to me. He had found a remedy to my unfortunate predicament. I was to be taken to the goddess herself. Deep in the temple, through the secret ways, to her holy cavern. Only the high priest was ever allowed to commune with her directly, you see. But now I was to have that honor.”

The doves shifted, as if made uneasy by Kit’s voice.

“Didn’t like what you saw of her?”

“I ran,” Kit said. “He told me that no harm would come to me, and I believed him. I knew he was lying to me, and I believed him anyway. I told myself that no harm would come to me. That she wouldn’t harm her own. I had faith that what they were doing came out of love for me. As long as I had faith in her, she would not hurt me. And then, like a reflex in my mind, I thought probably. Probably she won’t. But she might. And as soon as that doubt was there, I saw how likely it was that I was being sacrificed. I found I wasn’t interested in finding religious completion. So I left.”

“I get the feeling it wasn’t as straightforward as that.” “It wasn’t. I’ve spent years, decades now, in the world we never saw. It is more complicated than the priests of the goddess taught. Truth and lies, doubt and certainty. I haven’t found them to be what I thought they were. I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it