“I appreciate that. Should we keep watch tonight?”
“Always. I’ll take first, if you’re tired.”
Kit settled into his bedroll, the meat of his bent arm for his pillow. A breath of wind moved across the plain. Made visible by the shifting of the low scrub, it reminded Marcus of a vast banner. In the high darkness, stars were spilling out from behind the twilight. Already, the temperature was beginning to drop. There wouldn’t be frost by morning, but it would be cold enough that he’d be damned glad to see that same sun coming up over the mountains.
“Whatever the price, you said. You’ll lose the spiders too.”
“I expect to,” Kit agreed.
“Any idea what that will be like?”
Kit shifted to look up at the stars.
“I feel I have been astoundingly lucky,” he said. “Imagine living a life of constant eavesdropping. Of wherever you go, knowing more than the people around you intended you to. I have heard a million lies from a million lips, and I feel it’s taught me all I know of what it means to be a living part of humanity. It taught me to love.”
“Lies taught you to love?”
Kit lifted a hand, motioning Marcus to silence.
“There was a woman I saw once in a market of Sara-sur-Mar. Young Firstblood girl with a child in her arms. The child was asleep. I don’t know how they came to be there or why the child was sleeping in the marketplace. But this woman—this girl—was stroking the child’s back and saying over and over,
“Only it was a lie, wasn’t it?” Marcus said. “She didn’t love the kid.”
“It seems she didn’t.”
“And that’s what made you love humanity? Because I don’t think I’d have taken that lesson.”
“You can’t choose who you love,” Kit said. “Or at least I’ve never been able to. A mother is supposed to love her child, but when that doesn’t come, what? That girl knew that something beautiful and profound and important had abandoned her, and so did what she could do. She lied. She told her sleeping babe that it was loved and cared for not because it was, but because she wanted it to be. Not because she cared, but because she wanted to care. And if I hadn’t carried the spiders in me, I would never have seen that. Almost every day, it seems, I’ve come across something like that. Some moment in a stranger’s life that’s unfolded before me, shown me what I wasn’t meant to see. And Marcus, there is a great nobility in ordinary people. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. On balance, I find much more to admire about humanity than to despise.”
“And if we win, you’re going to lose all that.”
“If we win, I’ll become human,” Kit allowed. “I think it isn’t so terrible a price to pay.”
They were silent for a moment. Marcus leaned forward and put a fresh twig on the fire. There weren’t enough trees in the Keshet to gather real wood, so the night was going to be spent feeding in small twigs and bits of scrub every few minutes. Kit laughed.
“And,” he said, “I’ll finally get to find out whether I’m any good as an actor.”
“Well, even if you’re terrible, I’ll tell you that you did well.”
Kit’s grin was brilliant in the gloom.
“Thank you. I would very much appreciate that.”
“Least I can do. Sleep now. We’ve got a long way still, and I want to be in those hills before nightfall tomorrow.”
Geder
I wish I could have gone too,” Aster said, pitching a stone into one of the garden pools. It struck with a dull plop and set ripples opening out across the water.
It was striking how changed the prince looked. Geder had been gone for only a few weeks on his trip to Nus and then back, but Aster seemed almost a different person—taller, thinner, more awkward in his movement. It wasn’t magic, just the normal progression of child to youth to man, but Geder had never had the chance to see that happen to someone else. And maybe there was a little magic in it, even if it was only the ordinary kind.
“I couldn’t take the crown prince into a war,” Geder said from his bench. “The Timzinae had raiders and assassins. Anything could have happened.”
“You went.”
“I’m just the Lord Regent,” Geder said. “If someone stuck an arrow in my neck, they could get you another protector. You’re the prince. You aren’t replaceable.”
Aster sat on the grass, disappointed and petulant.
“They’d find some cousin or other,” he said. “They always do. I just wanted to see a war. By the time I’m old enough to go, there won’t be any left.”
Geder had stayed in Sarakal to watch Nus fall and to witness the sack of the city. He’d even gotten up before dawn to walk down the line of troops, Basrahip at his side, and encourage the men. Then, as the still-unrisen sun lit the horizon, the army moved into position. If he thought about it, he could still feel the cool of dew soaking his boots and weighing down his cloak. He hadn’t been able to keep Vanai entirely out of his thoughts, even though he knew this was different. And then the great iron doors gave out a massive boom and cracked open a fraction.
The foothold was all his army needed. They roared like a single being with ten thousand throats and charged. Geder was almost sorry he wasn’t riding with them. In the moment, he’d wanted nothing more than to grab a horse and a sword and spill into the city streets.
By afternoon, the siege was over and the matched banners of Antea and the spider goddess hung from the walls as an announcement and a boast. Any lingering resentment he’d felt over Dar Cinlama and the other expeditions was gone. The Lord Regent had gone to Nus, and the city had fallen. Geder left the next day, but ten of Basrahip’s priests remained with Ternigan. Sarakal would fall before autumn, and the rest of the empire had gone without his attention for long enough.
Aster threw another stone into the pond as the ripples of the first reached the edge and either echoed back faintly or died.
“Lord Regent?”
Geder turned to look over his shoulder. The servant at the edge of the garden bowed until he was bent almost double.
“Yes?”
“Your advisors await you, my lord.”
Geder rose, but Aster only scowled at the surface of the pond.
“Are you … would you like to sit in?” Geder asked, then when Aster didn’t answer, “All this is going to be yours. Probably best that you see how it all works.”
“Not today,” Aster said, and threw another stone. This one skipped twice before it sank.
“Is something wrong?”
The prince didn’t respond, and Geder, for want of a better idea of what to do, let the servant lead him away. As they walked along the paths of crushed marble, he brooded. He’d been selfish, perhaps, to go to Sarakal and leave Aster behind. The prince was usually so mature and well contained, it was easy to forget he was still a child, and more than that, a child who’d lost his father. Who’d been the target of assassination. Geder was his protector, and he’d gone off to the war. And now he was making jokes about his own death and his replaceability. He reimagined the conversation that he’d just had, but from Aster’s point of view, and he cringed. He’d only meant to make Aster see that being prince made him special and important, and instead he’d brought up the idea of yet another person Aster relied on dying. Little wonder the boy hadn’t taken comfort in it.
“Stupid,” Geder muttered to himself. “Stupid, stupid,
“My lord?” the servant asked.
“Nothing. Keep going.”
