The Tyrant's Law

be alive or dead. Cithrin, who wasn’t his daughter, but could have been. He opened his eyes. Master Kit was looking at him nervously.

“It’s been good working with you, Kit. I’ve enjoyed your company.”

“I’ve also enjoyed traveling with you. I think you are a genuinely good man.”

“You think a lot of strange things. Open the door.”

Kit pulled on the bracket. The door inched open, a ruddy light spilled out, and the sound grew louder. Marcus steeled himself, then ran through, knees bent and body low. The chamber had high stone walls with a dozen braziers of low, smoky flame. The beast stood perfectly still in the center of the room, a massive spider twice the height of a man. A low stone altar squatted before it. The light glittered from eight massive eyes and mandibles long as a man’s forearm.

Marcus leaped forward, vaulting over the altar, and swung the blade at the closest leg. The impact numbed his finger, and he let the force of his charge carry him forward, under the massive body. Both hands on the hilt, he thrust up into the vast belly. The blade rang with the force of the blow and skittered off the spider’s carapace. With a cry of despair, Marcus pulled back for another strike, ready to feel the hooked claws grabbing at him, the knives of its mouth ripping his flesh.

The spider goddess hadn’t moved. Marcus swung again twice, before the oddness of it sank through, and he stopped. Tentatively, he reached out the sword, poking at the joint of the nearest leg. The clack was of metal against stone. He lowered the blade. The rushing of air filled the room, but the beast’s abdomen didn’t shift. Carefully, sword at the ready, Marcus stepped to the great, many-eyed head. The fire of the braziers reflected in each eye.

“Kit?” Marcus called.

For a long moment, there was no answer.

“Marcus?”

“This isn’t going quite as I’d pictured it.”

Kit stepped through the door, his eyes wide and filled with barely controlled terror. Marcus pointed to the spider’s great leg and hit it with the flat of the blade.

“This is a statue.”

“Be on your guard,” Kit said. “It may come to life.”

“It also may not,” Marcus said, but a twinge of anxiety passed through him all the same. He moved away from the vicious mouth. Kit stepped closer. He was trembling so badly Marcus could see it.

“She’s petrified? Turned to stone?”

“I don’t think so. Look here, where the feet meet the floor. You can see the chisel marks.”

“Where … where is the goddess? There must be a deeper chamber. A secret path. She must be close. Her breath—”

“That’s not breath, Kit. That’s air moving. There’s been wind running through these caves since we got here, or all the fires would have suffocated all these priests years ago and saved us the trouble. No offense.”

“None taken,” Kit said by reflex. He put his hand on the spider’s leg where Marcus’s first strike had chipped it. The fresh stone was white and grey. The actor licked his lips, his gaze flickering over the massive beast as if searching for some hidden meaning. When he spoke, his voice was weaker. “They may have taken her. Moved her to some—”

“Kit, has it occurred to you that this goddess might not be real?”

“But her gifts, the power she gives. You’ve seen it.”

“Have. And those little bastards in your blood too. Those I won’t deny. But that’s all I’ve seen. I don’t know what’s giving it power.”

“There must be a central force. A will to direct it. There has to be—”

“Why? Why does there have to be?”

Kit sat on the empty altar, staring up at the many-eyed face. Tears welled up in his eyes, streaked down his cheek to disappear into the thick grey brush of his beard. He coughed out a single, painful laugh. Marcus sheathed the blade and sat at his side. The statue looked down on them, motionless and blind.

“There is no goddess, is there?”

“Might be, but no. Probably not.”

“It seems I’m an idiot,” Kit said. “I thought I had overcome her madness. I thought I had questioned everything, but …”

“Well, there may have been madness to overcome. Just maybe it wasn’t a goddess. Plenty of crazy to go around if all you have are priests.”

The fires in the braziers fluttered in the breeze. Marcus thought he saw, high up along the walls, where the air shafts were hidden by curves in the stone. Whoever had built the chamber, however many centuries ago, they’d been brilliant. Controlling the air flow alone would have been impressive.

“It’s what I feared, isn’t it?” Kit said. “All of it. All the tales and histories. All the sermons. I think they were all just children whispering to each other down through generations, each believing and repeating what the one before had said, all the misunderstandings building on each other, until anything became plausible. Not a mad goddess, but human dreams and fears given the reins.”

“We should probably have this conversation someplace else, Kit. If your old friends come and find us here, they’re not likely to thank us for pointing all this out.”

“Why?” Kit said, and Marcus recognized the despair in his voice.

“Why won’t they thank us, or why should we leave?”

“We came to kill a goddess and break her power, but there’s nothing here to break. Nothing here to die. She can’t be stopped if she doesn’t exist. What’s happening out there is only men lost in a terrible sort of dream. I don’t know how to stop that. What sword kills a bad idea, Marcus? How can we win against a mistaken belief?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. He rubbed his hands together, the soft hissing of his palms a counterpoint to the deep rumble of the false breath. “But someone did.”

“What do you mean?”

Marcus spoke slowly, the thoughts forming as he spoke them.

“This temple is a hiding place. The men like you have been out of the world for centuries at least. Maybe all of history. Something put you in here. Something scared your however-many-generations-back predecessors so badly that they crawled off to the ass end of nowhere and pulled the desert up over their heads. Something drove them here.”

“Can you think what?”

“No. And I can’t think how we’d find out. And if we did, I don’t have any reason to think it’s the sort of thing we could manage. I’m only saying it’s been done before, so it can be done. And we should find out how.”

Kit pushed his fingers back through his wiry hair. His tears had dried, but the salt tracks still marked his cheeks.

“Where do we start?” he asked.

Marcus rose to his feet and put a hand on the spider goddess. The stone was warm and hard and dead. There was a vast world outside. Nations and races tearing themselves apart, blood and war and tragedy. He didn’t have any idea where to start looking for the way to stop it. And then he did.

“Suddapal,” he said.

Clara

Flor and Daskellin, I understand, but I can’t imagine him getting on with Mecilli at all. And of course Emming will fit right in,” Clara said. “The man is full of argument and bluster, but only so no one will notice he never has an opinion of his own. Could you pass the butter, dear?”

Sabiha handed across the jar. The butter was white and fresh, without the waxy cap or echo of the rancid that Abatha Coe’s had. The bread was soft and pale, the eggs and pickles served in a fashion that reminded her of