isn’t. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain.”
“And what’s that like, then?”
“It’s like pretending something, and then forgetting you were pretending. It’s falling into a dream. If justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible. We’re seeing the first of them now. More will come.”
“Probably,” Marcus said, and Kit’s laughter startled the birds into flight.
“Yes,” Kit said as a dozen small feathers floated down around them. “Probably. But it seems likely enough that I feel obligated to stop it. If I can.”
“And you’d do that by… ?”
“There are swords. Dragon-forged and permanently venomed. We had several at the temple, but I have found the location of another. I believe that with it, the goddess can be killed, her power broken. And so I am going to find it and go back to my home. And I will go to that sacred cavern at last.”
“That’s a stupid plan,” Marcus said. “It’s more likely to get you killed than anything else. How am I supposed to fit into this?”
“As my sword-bearer. The spiders in me dislike the blade. I don’t believe I could carry it all the way back myself. I think you could. Of all the men I’ve met in my years after the temple, I believe that you particularly could.”
Marcus shook his head.
“It all sounds a bit overheated and dramatic, Kit. The paired adventurers rushing to find the enchanted sword? Are you sure this isn’t an outline of some old play about defeating a demon queen?”
Kit chuckled.
“I have spent a certain amount of time onstage. My perspective on the world may come from standing on the boards. But I believe I’m right all the same,” he said. And then, gently: “Come with me. I need you.”
“You’ve got the wrong man, Kit. I’m not some sort of chosen one.”
“Yes you are. I’ve chosen you.”
The excitement—the joy—that woke in Marcus was like being pulled by a wave. It was what he’d wanted, what he’d been wordlessly longing for all the dire, grinding weeks in Porte Oliva. And now God was giving it to him on a gold plate. He dug in his heels.
“I can’t. Cithrin’s in Camnipol. I have to protect her.”
“Do you think you can?”
“Yes,” Marcus said.
Kit raised a finger. His smile was gentle, half amused and half sorrowful.
“Remember who you’re talking to. I know parlor tricks,” he said. “Do you think you can?”
Marcus looked down at his filthy hands. The nails were cracked and broken from scrabbling at his restraints. He didn’t have a blade or enough coin to buy a meal. Something thickened his throat.
“No.”
“Neither do I,” Kit said. “Neither does Yardem or that unpleasant notary the bank brought in. And I would be willing to wager that Cithrin doesn’t expect it of you. If she’s in need of rescue, I don’t think her strategy will be to wait meekly for her adoptive father to fix things.”
“She’s not my daughter. I don’t think of her that way.”
“If you say so,” Kit said.
“All right, that’s going to get annoying,” Marcus said.
“Marcus, it seems to me your life in Porte Oliva is over. Perhaps there’s a way to return to it, forge it into armor that doesn’t bite when you strap it on, but I don’t see how.”
“When Cithrin’s back. When she’s safe.”
“No one’s safe, Marcus. Not ever. We both know that. I believe you’re looking for a noble cause to die in,” Kit said. “As it happens, I have one. If we win, it will save Cithrin and countless other innocents besides. Or tell me you’d rather go back to enforcing loans, and I’ll leave you.”
His belly felt heavy, the truth of his situation pressing against him like being buried in sand. Still, he managed a smile.
“Unchain me before you go?”
Kit rose, put his hand on Marcus’s shoulder, and turned him around. It took only a few moments, and the leather strap that had bound Marcus for what seemed like a lifetime fell away. Marcus scratched at the skin where the restraints had been, reveling in the freedom of being in command of his own body. One of the doves hopped back in through its hole and took a place on its perch.
Kit stepped back. The silence between them was woven from light and dread. Marcus had put his life in this man’s hands more than once. He knew he could turn away now, go and exact vengeance on Yardem and try again to find Cithrin. The idea was still profoundly pleasant, and like all pleasant things, suspect. Kit waited.
It was idiocy. It was doomed from the start. Diving into ancient mysteries and solving the problems of the world in some grand, transforming gesture was something for the daydreams of children who didn’t know the world.
“These priests. Their goddess. They’re as bad as you make them out?”
“I believe they are.”
“And this magic sword of yours. Where is it supposed to be?”
“In a reliquary on the northern shore of Lyoneia.”
Marcus nodded.
“We’ll need a boat,” he said.
Dawson
Dawson locked his jaw shut as they beat him. They were young men for the most part. He knew their names, he knew their fathers. Two at least had played games with Vicarian when they had all been children together. There was a bowl of water beside the entrance, and the strips of wet leather cut more than dry would have. Others carried sticks or the wide wooden handles of axes without the metal head. It had taken so little time to take the youth of the empire, noblest blood in the world, and turn them into thugs. Dawson stood until his knees buckled. Laughter filled the air. He couldn’t defend himself. Couldn’t shout them down. So instead he locked his jaw and denied them the pleasure of hearing him cry out. Likely it only goaded them to worse violence. That was fine. He wasn’t here to take the easy path.
He found himself on the floor, the water pail pouring over him. He sputtered, trying to draw breath from someplace in between the deluge and the stone. A voice he didn’t recognize called the halt, and someone kicked his side as casually as he might have punished a lazy dog.
Hands gripped him under his arms and lifted him up. His mind felt fuzzy, confused, and distant. He was being carried somewhere he didn’t want to go, and all he could remember was that it would be beneath his dignity to complain. A door opened somewhere and he landed on filthy straw that despite its thinness and the stink of it felt as comfortable as his own bed. His mind failed him for a time. Next he felt anything, it was a soft cloth cleaning the raw wounds over his ribs where the skin had split. Everything hurt. The old man tending to him wore chains on his wrists and neck and a filthy smock. It took Dawson what felt like a great deal of time to remember where he’d seen that face before.
“My thanks, Majesty,” Dawson managed. His throat seemed to have spasmed at some point, and his voice sounded strangled though there was no one touching it.
King Lechan nodded.
“Don’t speak yet,” he said. “Rest.”
There were no marks on the king of Asterilhold. No bruises on his face or old blood blackening his prison garb. Here was the man who had plotted to slaughter Prince Aster, and it was Dawson whom they tortured as a game. He wanted to find it unfair, but he didn’t. He understood the difference between how you treated an enemy and how you treated a traitor. They didn’t see that
