More people had gathered along the roadside by this point, and now Lindon scanned from face to face, looking for a drudge. A Soulsmith might have sold this many constructs to someone else, but controlling so many at once took skill and practice. The spiders' creator was probably here, among the crowd.
Most of the witnesses looked disgusted, confused, or alarmed, save for the man with the long yellow hair that Lindon had seen before. At least, he assumed it was the same man; in a camp this size, perhaps there were many disciples of this strange Path that lightened hair color. He was wearing intricate robes of blue and white, so that the cape on his shoulders was raised and separated to resemble wings. It looked as though he'd prepared for a parade.
He met Lindon's glance with eyes of pale blue, no doubt another consequence of his Goldsign. He gave a cheery wave.
Lindon focused on him as the only individual that stood out, but he didn't see a drudge. In fact, the yellow-haired man casually scanned the crowd himself, as though waiting for the one responsible for the spiders to come out.
Only a breath or two had passed since the constructs had descended from overhead, but Lindon had already started to push his way through the crowd to look for the Soulsmith.
He stopped when an old woman drifted down the road from behind the Fishers, her body remaining perfectly still as though she rolled on wheels. He craned his neck to see why, and saw eight legs moving beneath her sacred artist's robes.
What kind of mad experiments were they up to in this Five Factions Alliance? Did Soulsmiths graft construct legs onto human beings? His mother would have called it a horrifying violation of conscience, and she would have hunted down anyone who dared to break such a taboo.
This woman was old, perhaps older than anyone he'd ever seen in his life, with gray hair tied up into a tight bun. Her face was little more than a mass of wrinkles, her body so shrunken that he might have been able to tuck her comfortably into his pack. She held her hands behind the small of her back as she drifted forward on spider's legs, and never reached for the huge bladed goldsteel hook that gleamed on her back.
When she reached the fight, she hopped down and continued on her own two feet, leaving a spider construct behind. Of course she hadn't grafted a spider's legs onto her own, that would have been crazy. That much, at least, was the same here as in Sacred Valley.
The spider she'd left behind was different than the others. It was bigger than the others, its main body lower to the ground, its legs proportionately longer. It was duller than the others, a flat gray, and it didn't seem to have a head; it looked almost like a mechanical disk with spider's legs attached to it.
This one wasn't floating, but Lindon had seen variations of his mother's own segmented brown fish often enough. Drudges didn't look like other constructs—they were duller, usually, more mechanical looking, as though they were made out of real physical parts rather than manifest madra.
This tiny woman wasn't wearing the hammer badge of a Forger, nor the crossed hammers of a Soulsmith, but even so...she was everything that Lindon had ever wanted to be. And no matter how powerful those sacred artists were, she had stopped them with nothing more than the presence of her constructs.
She scurried up to Jai Long, peering at him through eyes almost fused shut with wrinkles. “What is this? Hm? You think Fishers are your mining slaves, that you can beat us whenever you like?”
The young Fisher woman stepped forward, a hook in each hand. “Fisher Gesha, this—”
That was as far as she got before the Soulsmith, Fisher Gesha, turned and made a beckoning gesture. The young woman jerked forward as though pulled on an invisible string, pulled forward into Gesha's waiting slap.
“If I want the words of a silly girl, I will reach back a hundred years and ask myself.”
“Can she really do that?” Lindon asked Yerin, voice low. She gave him such a look that he swallowed the question.
The old woman had turned back to Jai Long, hands clasped behind her back again. “The silly girl called me for help. And I come here, expecting to see dreadbeasts by the thousand, and instead here is a boy with a bag on his head threatening my sect. Do you think that I am not needed? Hm? Do you wish to test yourself against Fisher Gesha?”
Jai Long loomed over the tiny Fisher, but Lindon was impressed when the man didn't take a fearful step back. Instead, he ground his red spear. “I was trying to send a message to the leadership of your sect. It appears I have succeeded.”
Fisher Gesha growled and gave the young man's shins a kick. She might as well have kicked a tree, for all the reaction that provoked. “Prattle prattle prattle. You have a message, tell me the message! Do I have to pull it out of your throat? Hm?”
“The Arelius family is on their way,” Jai Long said.
The Fisher froze, the statue of a thoughtful grandmother. “You have confirmed this?”
“To our satisfaction. I can have the evidence delivered to you tomorrow.”
Fisher Gesha thought for a moment longer, then turned to the tall young woman again. She was still rubbing her cheek, but Gesha leaped two feet into the air and slapped her on the other side. Then once more.
“Stupid girl! Selfish girl! Your pride is more important than the sect, is it? You think that your honor will matter when Arelius gets here? You think the Underlord will let your eyes touch his spear?”
Underlord, Lindon thought. Was that a title of respect, like ‘Patriarch’? Or was that the rank beyond Truegold?
The young Fisher woman looked as though she were teetering on the edge of tears, but her voice was clear. “I assumed their words were Sandviper lies.”
“How can a blind girl see the difference between truth and lies? You pass the words on to me, and I will tell you whether or not they are speaking wind.”
Shakily, the young woman buckled her bladed hooks onto straps on her back, then bowed over a salute to Fisher Gesha. “Your unworthy servant understands.”
“Hmph.” Gesha turned back to Jai Long. “The young are stupid. This was nothing more than an argument between children.”
Kral stepped forward before the spearman could respond. His expression was grave again, a prince negotiating with a respected enemy. “One moment, Fisher Gesha. The young woman and her friends have disrespected us gravely. They have a mining team that belongs to us, along with all the hundred scales they harvested from the Ruins today. If we do not recover our property, it will be a slap delivered to all Sandvipers.”
The young Fisher woman started to speak up, her voice indignant, but the old Soulsmith cut her off. “Was I wrong? Was this a battle between our great sects, hm? Not a childish spat? If that is so...”
From overhead, all of the spiders hissed in chorus, working their legs furiously on their strings.
“...then this old woman will keep you all company for a while.” Her face molded itself into a sketch of a smile.
This time, Jai Long was the one to reply. “We were unwise and unworthy, honored Fisher. The message is delivered, along with our respects. The Alliance will not be divided before the arrival of outsiders.”
He bowed himself back, melding into the crowd of Sandvipers. Kral waved them all away, and they seemed only too eager to leave.
The old woman grunted. “You get too strong too early, and it inflates your head,” she muttered. Then she turned back to the Fishers, leaping into the air once again to grab the leader woman's ear. “I shouldn't have to drag a married girl back to her mother once again, but we'll see what she has to say about you.”