Which, in fact, it was. If not for the priests, the whole thing would have fallen into chaos long before.
“He’s a good man,” the young huntsman said. Vincen Coe, Lady Kalliam had called him. Her conspirator and servant. And, since he’d followed the army only from the Free Cities and not trekked with it all the way through Sarakal and Elassae first, he was about half again the weight of the average Antean soldier. All in all, not a bad ally to have. “Jorey’s men like him.”
“They’re told to,” Marcus said. “If he didn’t have this dragon’s trick on his side, it’d go harder for him. And I didn’t say he was a bad person. I said he was an inexperienced war leader.”
“He took down your dragon,” Coe said.
“Once,” Marcus said. “That’s the problem with a maneuver like that. It works best the first time.”
Coe shrugged. The man seemed to take any criticism of House Kalliam personally. Either doglike loyalty or the natural distrust of a servant for anyone who might take his place in the household. Either way, Marcus made the point to himself again not to bait the man without meaning to.
The three of them—Marcus and Coe and Kit—had set up tents in the gap between two of the larger factions within the camp. It was an unpleasant piece of land. The siege towers and machinery that had brought down the dragon sat to the east, white with frost. Come morning, their tent would be in shadow until the sun was five or six hands above the horizon. The curve of the low hills seemed to channel the wind to it, and the heat from their sad, underfed little fire didn’t do much against it.
Marcus wouldn’t have chosen the spot, but in four of the past five days, the spider priests had crossed this way on their rounds. Marcus’s first hope had been that the priests would sleep far enough from the others that he could take them in the night. But the enemy was in the center of the most concentrated group of soldiers, and so the second plan was this. Find a place along their customary route, distract them, and then kill them fast enough that no one noticed.
The middle of an army was a poor place for an assassination. His only comfort was that, once it was finished, the Lord Marshal would be able to help cover the thing over. If he’d been trying to escape after, it would have been harder.
Not impossible, but harder.
Voices came from the neighboring camp. The chatter of the men, but above them, trumpeting in rough tones, the priests. Vincen Coe had helped them stay out of the priests’ immediate path while Marcus made his plan. Even now, he hadn’t come close enough to see them as anything but dusty cloaks. They spoke like actors from a stage, filling the camp with their words. We cannot fail. The goddess is with us. All enemies will fall before us. We cannot fail. It didn’t work if the soldiers didn’t hear it, and they shouted it all wherever they went.
For all that he knew it was hairwash and deception, Marcus found himself wondering when he heard them. When they said We cannot fail, the soldiers all took it as a promise of Antean victory. Marcus knew more, and the words meant other things to him. The war will never stop. There are too many of us already, and scattered too far across the world. The chaos will come, and nothing will stop it. Put in those terms, their argument seemed convincing. And he thought it would have even if it hadn’t come with Morade’s cruel magic to back it.
The others heard it too. Coe’s face took on a clarity and focus like a hunter on a trail. Kit folded his arms together. The lines at the corners of his mouth drew deeper.
“You all right?” Marcus asked.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s only… I can feel them. Like little rivers of pain in my flesh. I hear them say that the goddess is with us. The truth of that is in their voices, and yet that it’s false is something I’m sure of. The two come together, and it’s…” Kit shook his head. “I find it difficult to fully describe.”
“Are they going to be able to feel your presence too?” Coe asked.
“I think not. My experience is that the spiders have an affinity for one another, but I expect each of them will assume any sense of my presence is inspired by the other. Unless they hear me speak. When that happens…”
“It’ll be close to the end,” Marcus said. “May not even need it.”
The voices of the priests grew louder, and then stopped. Their visit to the neighboring camp was ended. If the previous two days were a guide, they’d cross the empty space near Marcus’s tent on the way to the next little camp. The poisoned sword lay beside the fire, the scabbard covered by dirt, the hilt by a bit of cloth. Kit met Marcus’s gaze, nodded, and moved into the darkness within the little tent. Vincen stood, stretched, and ambled off toward the frost-rimed bulk of the siege towers. Marcus understood the man had been badly injured earlier in the season, but there was no sign of it in how he held himself. There had been a time when Marcus had healed that quickly too, but it hadn’t been in the last decade. Or since he’d started carrying this thrice-damned sword, for that.
The two men appeared, walking together. The cold breeze pushed their brown cloaks against their bodies. They had wiry hair not unlike Kit’s, and skin of a similar cast. Mostly, though, they were just a pair of Firstblood men. If he’d seen them sitting together at an inn anyplace from Daun to Stollbourne, he’d have thought them cousins and ended there.
Marcus shifted from sitting to a low squat. One hand rested on the hilt of the hidden blade. Two men, unsuspecting. He saw them notice him. From their smiles and nods, he was nothing more than another soldier to them. The plan was simple. Draw them to his fire, have Coe distract them, then cut them down. Two quick cuts, and then let the blade’s toxic magic finish the rest. And if things went poorly, hope that Kit could pull him out of it.
Now he just had to see it work in practice.
“Afternoon,” Marcus said, loud enough for it to carry. “How are you two doing?”
“Well,” the taller of the two said. “The goddess blesses us with this beautiful day.”
“If you say,” Marcus said. They hadn’t broken stride. A single tent apparently wasn’t draw enough for their time. “You’re priests then? I saw another like you not long ago. Up in Northcoast, it was. Eshau, he called himself.”
Their steps faltered. Marcus poked at the little fire, bringing up a cloud of tiny sparks. It was the truth. Marcus had seen the man die in dragon flame. Now, Eshau was an unpleasant memory and bait for the hook. And bless the man, he did his job.
The two priests came to stand by the fire, looking down at Marcus. The shorter of the two had a chipped front tooth. The taller, a scar on the back of his wrist. Marcus smiled up at them, his fingertips brushing the hilt under its cloth.
“You knew Eshau?” the taller one said.
“That’d be an exaggeration,” Marcus said. “I met him once. He was up looking to speak with King Tracian. All on about how your Basrahip fellow had become corrupt and the goddess was incorruptible, and everyone should raise up an army against you and Antea and revel in the light of her truth. Something along those lines.”
They exchanged alarmed glances. Marcus smiled vacantly up at them, making himself seem innocuous and a little dim. It was a mistake to think you couldn’t mislead the spiders. You just couldn’t lie outright to do it. There was and always had been a gap wide enough to march a cohort through between speaking truth and being understood.
Coe whistled sharply from behind them, and they glanced back. Marcus grabbed the hilt and moved forward, using the weight of his body to unsheathe the blade and swing it. The tall one was turning back to him when the blade took him in the side, just under the ribs, cutting up. The priest’s eyes went wide, and Marcus yanked the sword back to free it. The shorter priest yelped with alarm, and the taller one grabbed the blade in his bare hands, encumbering it, holding it in his own gut. The blood pouring down his belly was lumpy and black. The spiders already dead from the venom of the blade.