“You,” Inys said. “The slave races. I shouldn’t have eaten the one. It was bad form. I wasn’t even hungry. And if I do not police myself in these small things, how will I preserve my mind from the large ones? The path from trivial misstep to losing myself utterly is short and broad.”
“Trivial,” Cithrin said. She hadn’t meant to.
“I am the only hope for the resurrection of the world. Everything depends on me. On my holding my mind in place. But I am ashamed, and I am humiliated.”
And you are enjoying it entirely too much, Marcus Wester said in Cithrin’s imagination. She wondered if she said the words aloud whether Inys would laugh or destroy her as he had the guard. Better, she thought, not to answer that question.
“The spiders,” she said. “Was there any pattern to how the conflicts between them first spread? A distance between them that allowed disagreements to take hold? A number of people? The time they were separated from each other?”
“Not that I know,” Inys said. “It was unimportant to me at the time. The slaves were corrupted, and the corrupted were of no use. We culled the tainted and kept the pure. The only pattern, so called, was the frenzy they fell into when that which they believed and that with which another confronted them would collide. To hear another voice say something offensive to their sense of the world and also know that the other was not lying? To be faced by the fact of their error called forth a rage like no other.”
“That’s not the spiders,” Cithrin said. “That’s people.”
“It was the bent scale in your minds where Morade put his claw,” Inys said. “It is how he destroyed you.”
“How he destroyed all of us.”
“No, just you,” Inys said. “I destroyed the rest.”
What I hear,” King Tracian said, “is that the dragon can’t be depended upon. Yes, if it’s a bright day and he’s in a sunny mood. Or if Wester is here to goad him into it. But I think we can all see that Inys cannot be commanded. Can that be agreed?”
The meeting room, while it was in the palace, wasn’t the one Cithrin had first seen. This had a fire pit in its center worked in iron, silk upholstered chairs, and lanterns of crystal lit not with flame but by some cunning man’s trick that more nearly seemed like sunlight. The tapestries on the walls were designs of blue and red and gold as deeply saturated as if they’d just come from the dyer’s yards, though they were likely centuries old. Komme Medean, sitting near the fire in robes of simple brown, nodded. Tracian’s master-at-arms—a thin-faced man called Lord Fish though that wasn’t his name—hoisted an eyebrow and waited.
“I think that can be agreed,” Komme said, “at least provisionally. Inys can be negotiated with—”
“And if he breaks his word, what punishment are we going to place against him?” Tracian said. “Put him in the stocks? Fine him? Stop giving him food and drink?”
“Dealing with great power does limit our options,” Komme said. From Tracian’s nod, Cithrin thought she was the only one who’d heard the mordant humor in the words.
“And so we need to have something else on our side,” the king said. “I’ve been in conversation with Birancour. The ambassador of the queen.”
Komme looked up, his expression bland but his eyes suddenly sharp. “Sir Brendis Sarreau? I didn’t know he’d come to the city.”
“Come and gone,” Tracian said lightly, but Cithrin heard the pleasure in his voice. Diplomats and statesmen speak, of course, to the throne. Not the bankers. So Tracian was beginning to understand the deeper price that came with the gold he’d taken. That was a shame. She’d hoped to have a few years at least before that happened.
“A wise man,” Komme said. “Deep thinker. Have you met him, Cithrin? No? Well, I’m sure you will. What did the ambassador have to suggest?”
“An expansion of what we already have. Tamed spider priests of our own to counteract the others. Men like your Master Kit who can use Morade’s weapon against Antea and its false goddess.” Tracian smiled and made a wide, sweeping gesture as if he were displaying a fine piece of art. “We’ve already seen that we need the man in more places than one. We needed him here to safeguard the court. They need him with the Lord Marshal’s army to see that it retreats. How many other places would men like him be of use? We could send them to Borja and Hallskar. Cabral. You have your papers, but how much more convincing would demonstrations be? Our tame priests standing before every court in the world, explaining how the whole thing works, how it can be fought against. Your public letters are fine, I don’t dispute that. But if they heard the truth from one of our Master Kits—”
“They wouldn’t be able to disbelieve it,” the master-at-arms said. “They’d have to believe.”
The knot in Cithrin’s gut tightened. Komme stroked his beard and looked into her eyes. His silence was a warning. She took her lower lip between her teeth and bit to keep herself from speaking. Komme had lived his whole life in Northcoast. He knew King Tracian better than she could. She had to trust the old banker to see the world she did, and the dangers it held.
“It’s an interesting thought,” Komme said. “How far have you gone with it?”
“Porte Oliva will be retaken eventually. The queen has plans in place,” Tracian said. It wasn’t a direct answer, but Cithrin understood. If Kit didn’t return or didn’t agree, there were other priests. If Komme and Cithrin objected, there would be other opportunities to find the corrupted blood and use it. She took a salted nut from the silver plate before her but couldn’t bring herself to eat it. Anything close to hunger she might have had before was drowned by her quiet alarm.
“Well, it will be interesting to see what the queen does with her new agents,” Komme said, leaning back. “I can certainly see how it would help with the immediate issue, but I wonder how we would convince Birancour to put that sword down once they’d picked it up.”
“We might not,” Tracian said. “All tools are dangerous when they’re misused. Properly controlled, though, these may be a blessing.”
“Perhaps,” Komme said. “Perhaps.”
After the meeting ended, Cithrin and Komme rode back toward the holding company in a carriage. The sky was dark, and the streets frigid. Shuttered windows glimmered at their edges, the light of lanterns and fires slipping out into the night. Otherwise the streets were only moonlight and stars. Cithrin huddled into a wool blanket, but Komme sat in his shirt and jacket, his eyes on the passing buildings.
“It’s a terrible plan,” she said. “He can’t do it.”
“I know,” Komme said. “He won’t. But we can’t tell him not to. He’s the king. Informing men on thrones of what you will and will not permit them to do… Well, people juggle knives too. The danger’s what makes the sport interesting. If we weren’t already doing what he proposes, it would be an easier argument to make.”
“You mean Kit.”
“These spiders,” Komme said. “They’re meant to drive us against each other, yes? Factions within factions, all with their own particular priests leading the way. Maybe by standing at a pulpit, maybe by whispering in the right ears at the right time. With your actor fellow, we fit that description.”
“Kit’s different,” Cithrin said.
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am.”
“Tracian’s not. Others may not be. And even if Master Kit is unlike the others, that’s an argument that they can be tamed. Used by forces of good to bring victory to the righteous.” Cithrin’s short, choked laugh brought a wry smile to Komme’s lips. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”
“Even if they destroyed all the corrupted that believed in the goddess, it would be a season before Birancour and Northcoast were at each others’ throats over something else. They wouldn’t even recognize that it was happening.”