In a compromise between delusion and practicality, Urza had decided his brother's talents were uniquely suited to constructing spiders. Ratepe had tried to argue his way out of the responsibility, but Urza's instructions were clear and, aside from charging the white mana crystals, making the small artifacts was more tedious than difficult. Every nine days, when they were together at the cottage, Urza banished Ratepe and Xantcha from his workroom while he grew
and charged the crystals.
Summer ended, autumn vanished, winter came, all without disrupting their cycles.
"Not that you couldn't do it," Urza would say, the same words every time he and Xantcha returned, as if they were written on the instructions he'd given Ratepe. "But you've been alone all this time, and Xantcha likes to talk to you. And I've got another idea or two I'd like to tinker with. I can make them better, make them louder, wider, more powerful. So, you two go on. Let me work. Go next door. Talk, eat, do as you like. I'll be busy here until tomorrow night."
"He's as mad as he ever was," Xantcha said as Ratepe put his weight against the workroom door, cracking the late-winter ice that had sealed it since Urza and Xantcha had left nine days earlier.
"He was mad long before the real Mishra died," Ratepe said lightly and regretted his nonchalance as he lost his footing on the slick wood. "You didn't really think anything was going to change that, did you?"
Like Urza, the two of them had fallen into habits and scripts, at least until they'd lit the oil lamp and the brazier and warmed the blankets of Xantcha's old bed. They seldom talked much or ate after that until the lamp needed replenishing.
"I want a favor from you," Ratepe said while Xantcha re-lit the lamp with a coal from the brazier.
Xantcha looked up silently.
"It's getting on toward a year."
She'd been expecting that. Winter lingered on the Ridge. It was spring in the lowlands, a bit more than two months shy of the year she'd asked of Ratepe in Medran. She and Urza were three-quarters through the workroom maps, but their chances of finishing the job before midsummer were nil, and none if Ratepe demanded the freedom she'd sworn to give him.
"You want to go back to Efuan Pincat." A statement, not a question. She made tea from the steaming water atop the brazier.
"No, I can count as well as you-better, usually. Urza needs me here until midsummer, at least. I have my doubts, so do you, but nobody knows what happens next. We agreed to take the risks."
"So, what's the favor?"
"I want you to go back to Efuan Pincar."
"Me?"
"Everywhere else the Phyrexians are all sleepers- everywhere, except Baszerat and Morvern, and they'll keep fighting each other with or without Phyrexian meddling. But I'm still worried about Efuan Pincar and the Shratta. We never went back-"
She interrupted. "I did. I plastered the walls of Medran and seven other towns while Urza did Pincar City. You said midsummer's the biggest holy day of Avohir's year and everybody goes to the temples, so I put a few spiders in the sanctuaries, just in case, but I didn't smell anything suspicious. My guess is that the Red-Stripes wiped out the Shratta years ago. Maybe they had Phyrexian help, maybe not. It's history now."
"I figured that, and that's why I want a favor. I've
tinkered with the spiders-studied the changes that Urza's made since last summer, even made a few of my own and tested them, too."
Xantcha raised her eyebrows as she strained the tea.
"It's not like you didn't experiment with the cyst after Urza gave it to you," Ratepe retorted.
Xantcha decided not to pursue the argument.
"Urza doesn't count the crystals. I think he expects me to damage a few-and, anyway, we know the crystals work. It's the other part that I modified."
"You're not trying them out on me." She slammed the straining bowl on the table for emphasis.
"No, they're not like that, but I did change the sound they make. The way Urza had them set, the sound makes things boil. What I did makes solid things like rocks and especially mortar break down into sand and dust. And I want you to plant my spiders in the foundation of the Red-Stripe barracks and under the high altar of Avohir's temple in Pincar City. When the Glimmer
Moon passes overhead, the sound will rattle the stones until they come apart."
It would work, but, "Waste not, want not-why? Even if I could do it, why? Not that I care, personally, but Avohir is your god. Why would you want to turn Avohir's altar into rubble?"
"And the Red-Stripe barracks. Both. I want to make a sign for every Efuand to see that whatever strikes down the sleepers strikes down the Shratta, too. If there's any left anywhere, I don't want some bearded fanatic to take advantage of what we've done. All right, the Shratta didn't kill my family, but they drove us out of the city. They burnt the schools and the libraries. If the Phyrexians got rid of them, well, that's a mark in their favor, but I don't want to take the chance. Will you do it, Xantcha? For me?"
She followed the steam rising from her mug. "I'll talk to Urza."
"Urza can't know."
"Ratepe! I'm not just wandering out there. I 'walk out of here with Urza and nine days later I 'walk back with him. What am I supposed to do, yawn and hightail it up to Efuan Pincar the moment he sets me down and then hightail it back again?"
"That's what I thought you'd do."
"And when he asks about the spiders I was supposed to be planting?"
"I thought of that. You'll tell him they didn't feel right so you didn't spread 'em around. I've learned how to make duds, too. If he gets angry, he'll be angry at me for being careless."
"Wonderful."
"You'll do it?"
"Let me think about it. Lying to Urza. I can get angry with him, I can yell at him and keep secrets, but I don't know if I can outright lie to him."
Ratepe didn't push, not that night, but he asked again the next time they were together and alone. If he'd gotten her angry, just once, she'd have put the whole cockeyed notion behind her, but Ratepe was too canny for that. Passionate, yet totally in control. Xantcha wondered what
Kayla Bin-Kroog would have thought. She wondered whether Kayla would have stood under the stars as she herself did a few visits later and said:
"We're getting to the end. He's taking me to Russiore tomorrow. It's not infested with sleepers. More important, it's not far from Efuan Pincar. I can get down the coast to Pincar City, plant your spiders and cover Russiore, too."
Ratepe lifted Xantcha off the ground and, before she had a chance to protest, spun on his heels, whirling her around three times while he laughed out loud. She was gasping and giddy when her feet touched down.
"I knew you would!"
He kissed her, a kiss that began in joy and ended in passion as he lifted her up again.
The next evening, when Urza took her wrist for "walking, Xantcha was sure that he knew she had extra spiders in her sack and deceit in her heart. She couldn't meet his eyes at their most ordinary.