“You cannot win. You have already lost. Everything you fight for, everything you care for, all of it is already gone. Your failure cannot be changed. You have lost!”
The priest’s voice rang out in the narrow space, and Marcus felt the poisoned sword growing heavier. It sank lower, dropping out of defensive stance. Tears familiar as old enemies filled his eyes, and his chest ached with every failure he’d dragged behind him all through the wide, empty world. The priest stepped closer, as Marcus had known he would. Basrahip’s blade was stained at the tip, red with Marcus’s blood.
“You can never win. You have lost everything. Everything and forever.”
The vast and familiar ocean of sorrow in Marcus’s chest opened, blooming out endlessly. Other people healed, other people mourned and moved on. But he would feel the pain fresh every time, every moment without Merian and Alys would be as bright with grief as the first one. And nothing could ever undo it. The priest took another step nearer. His eyes were bright and certain. The blade in his vast hand was ready. Marcus blinked away a thick tear.
“Listen to my voice,” Basrahip said. “You cannot win. You have lost, now and always. Everything you love is lost to you. Everything you do is doomed. Empty. Meaningless.”
“Old news,” Marcus said, and sank the poisoned sword into Basrahip’s gut.
The priest’s eyes narrowed in what looked like confusion as he stepped back. Dark, thick blood poured out of his belly onto the pale floor. Spiders ran a few skittering inches from where they fell, tracking pinpoints of inky blood behind them, then stilled and died. Basrahip put a hand to the wound, astonished and confused. Already a thick white foam was forming where the blade had broken the big man’s skin. A smell like heated wine and fresh shit filled the room, but Marcus didn’t gag. Basrahip’s breath stuttered and became harder, gasping.
“What have you done?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
Marcus shrugged and nodded toward the flowing, spider-clotted blood. “The job.”
His own arm was slick with his brighter blood, and the pain from it was getting worse. He stepped back, waiting for the priest to fall. Instead Basrahip’s eyes filled with rage, and he bulled forward, swinging his sword before him like a farmer’s child at his first reaping. Marcus moved back, his center low, the two-handed blade shifting to turn every blow. The priest was strong, but with each breath, his attacks grew weaker. Less precise.
Something was happening under the priest’s skin; a dark mottling covered his hands, his neck, his wide face. His eyes lost their focus on Marcus, found him for a moment, then wandered again.
Slowly, Basrahip sank to his knees, trembling, but he did not drop his blade. The blood on his belly was so dark now, it looked black, and the spiders that fell from the wound were dead before they found the floor. Marcus watched, unmoved and unmoving, as the last vestiges of life left Basrahip and his empty body slumped to the side. Marcus drove the poisoned sword through the stilled chest, leaning until the blade came through the dead man’s back, just to be sure it was done. He didn’t intend to sit so much as he simply found himself, legs crossed, on the floor. The fresh red blood from his arm pooled around him, mixing with the darker spatters, and it occurred to him for the first time that the injury he’d taken in the fight might be more serious than he’d thought.
He should bind it. Slowly, like a man half-asleep, he pulled his belt from around his waist and cinched it around his arm above the wound. He felt borne up on a soft relief. It was done. He’d stopped the priest. He was done. It was over. He realized he’d closed his eyes when he opened them. The poisoned sword rose from the corpse like a flagpole. Or the marker for a grave. He’d carried the damned thing so long, and at such cost. It was good he’d gotten some use from it.
He needed to get up. Find Yardem. Warn him. The dragon was coming, or had already come. Marcus opened his eyes again and had to concentrate to keep from closing them. He wanted to rest, wanted to let sleep take him, and maybe something deeper than sleep. Basrahip’s empty face was turned toward him, still as stone. The stench from him was awful, but Marcus didn’t mind it. Death shouldn’t be pretty. It shouldn’t be dignified. Better that it come ugly and brutal and true. If you could love it then, you’d be sure you were ready.
He closed his eyes, and waited for Merian to come. For Alys to take his hand. For all the shit and sorrow of decades to go away forever. When none of that happened, he sighed and levered himself up to his feet.
Some other day, then.
“Yardem!” he shouted. “Are you still here?”
Geder
I’ll be waiting when you come back,” Cithrin said.
Geder’s heart ached at her fragility and her strength. What he wanted was to take her in his arms and swear he’d protect her and that she’d never want for anything again. Instead he looked at her, his expression serious, and promised the next best thing. “We will return.” It meant a hundred things more than the words themselves. He hoped she understood. He turned to the Tralgu guard. Yardem, his name was. “We’d best get started. It can be a long way up.”
The guard smiled vaguely, and Cithrin said, “Thank you, Yardem.”
Geder turned, and they walked toward the Kingspire. Geder felt her eyes on him, or imagined that he did. He held himself a little taller in case he was right. When they stepped through the main doors of the Kingspire, Geder hesitated. Something felt wrong. Then he realized it was only that the great tower was quiet where usually it echoed and rumbled with the voices of servants and slaves and the business of the crown.
“Prince Geder!”
Basrahip lumbered toward him from the shadows. Geder’s smile went still. The great priest wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be up in the temple. Cithrin bel Sarcour wasn’t fifty feet behind him, and here was Basrahip looking at him. It was oddly thrilling. Which one of us is the dupe now? “Basrahip.”
“We have all come to your call,” Basrahip said, hunching forward in unconscious deference. “The last of us are making their way up to the temple even now.”
“Just going there myself,” Geder said. Because it was true. He had to be careful to say only things that were true. Things were going well, but they were still on a knife’s edge.
“I will join you in a moment,” Basrahip said, and looked back over his shoulder.
“Is there anything wrong?” Geder asked.
“The Lady Kalliam said she wished to refresh herself and that she would be well, but…” He shook his great head.
You can deal with it when you come back, Geder almost said, then stopped himself. Basrahip couldn’t deal with it when he came back because he would never be coming back, and Geder knew it. No lies. He could mislead, but he couldn’t lie. He’d almost given the game away, and the nearness of the mistake chilled him. “All right, but don’t take long. I really, really want you up there.”
Basrahip’s smile was broad and grateful. “I shall be there in a moment, Prince Geder. I long to hear the voice of the goddess in yours.”
Do you? Geder thought. Well, don’t wait underwater.
Basrahip turned and lumbered off. Geder made for the stairs, the Tralgu guard at his side.
“That going to be a problem?” the guard asked.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Geder said.
What’s taking him so long?”
The temple hadn’t been made as a temple. Geder had had it dedicated to the spider goddess, the Righteous Servant, after Dawson Kalliam turned Camnipol into a battlefield. There was a large room with an open window almost as wide as the wall itself that looked out over the city and past it to the haze of land in the south. Ropes as thick as Geder’s arm held the great red banner draping down from here. Far below, the tops of the trees shifted in the wind, their soft green billows echoing the shapes of the white clouds above.