“Yes, I suppose that wouldn’t be likely to go well.”
“We have to get word back to Cithrin and the bank. Most wars, the enemy is looking for victory. If these spiders just want war and more war and more after that… well, that’s a very different thing, isn’t it?”
“How shall we proceed?” Kit asked.
“I think we’ll have to scatter. Pairs, I think.”
“Cary won’t like that.”
Marcus pressed his lips thin. It was too easy to forget that it wasn’t Kit’s company now. Or his own. “I’ll talk to her about it as soon as—”
The dragon rose up on its hind legs, wings spread, and stretched its immense neck toward the forest with a hiss. Marcus held up his hand to Kit, and the old actor nodded. Marcus trotted back toward the water, uncomfortably aware of acting as a servant would when his master called but unable to respond otherwise.
“Enough of your whispers and muttering,” the dragon said. “I will not be treated with disrespect. Even now. Even if I have earned it.”
“Didn’t mean to keep you outside the circle,” Marcus said. “It’s just… well, we’re in the middle of the enemy’s land. Getting all you’ve told me back to the people who are standing against the spiders is going to be a bit of a trick.”
The dragon’s head drooped, the vast iris contracting as it focused upon him. The power of its regard was like the cold coming off ice.
“Why is that?” the dragon asked.
Making the harnesses took the better part of the morning, but the dragon was astonishingly deft and there was enough leather and cloth and steel to salvage from the ruined inn and stables, and from the players’ cart. Rope and leather and cloth made slings on each of the dragon’s legs, and then at the dragon’s instruction, they crawled into them. The scales Marcus pressed his body against were as wide as his palm and iridescent in the light. The warmth of the huge body was almost uncomfortable. He and Cary and Sandr had taken the left foreleg; Kit, Charlit Soon, and Mikel the right. Smit and Hornet had each strapped onto one of the rear legs.
“I wish we could take the cart,” Sandr said. “All the props. All the costumes. I’ve grown up in that cart. It’s like a part of the company.”
“We’ll make another,” Cary said. “And there are plenty of pieces we can play from the ground.”
“It won’t be the same,” Sandr said.
Inys shifted, swiveling his head down to consider them. Sandr went quiet, but everything he’d said had been heard. “Better men have lost more,” the dragon said, and then to Marcus. “You are ready?”
“No, but waiting won’t help.”
He thought he saw a bleak amusement in the vast eye, and then the leg he was strapped to tensed and shifted. The wings unfurled with a sound like sailcloth in a high wind. The last dragon took to the sky, and Marcus held on to the straps, his mind reeling as the wrecked inn and the ruined cart, the brook and the trees, the world as he’d known it, receded.
They flew.
Geder
Geder leaned forward, his elbows on the table, like a magistrate at a trial. The peasant man kneeling on the floor below him looked up, then bowed his head, then looked up again. The risers on either side of the room were filled with Geder’s private guard, and Basrahip lurked behind the man where Geder could see him and the prisoner could not. Only this was not a prisoner. He had to keep reminding himself of that. The urge to throw the man in chains, have him whipped, have him thrown off the Prisoner’s Span churned in Geder’s guts. It was an effort to remember that the man had done nothing wrong.
He could not keep the rage from his voice.
“You’re sure those were their names?” Geder said. “Cary? Hornet?”
“Y-yes, Lord Regent, sir,” the peasant said. “And… Smit? And the other girl.”
“Cithrin?”
“No, Charlit. Charlit Soon. And there was an old one they called Kit. And the sick one. Marcus, he was. And the skinny bastard’s name was Mikel.”
Geder looked over, and Basrahip nodded once. All of it was true. Geder sucked his lower lip between his teeth and bit down until the pain made him stop. “Did it eat them? Did the dragon eat them? Or did they get away?”
“All their things were there still when we came. Except the one shiny sword the sick one liked. That was gone. But the remnants of their cart were there, and the horses. And they were just… gone.”
Basrahip nodded. The peasant went on. “I don’t know if that great bastard ate them or they ran a different direction, my lord.”
Or if they were there with it, Geder thought.
If it hadn’t been for Basrahip, he might well have missed the incident. The business of running the empire had always been more odious than he’d expected it to be. His days were filled with letters and meetings and occasions of state. He tried to fit time with Aster in among them and include the prince in as much of it as he could. There was the whole apparatus of servants and slaves, magistrates and priests, who concerned themselves with the mundane functioning of Imperial Antea. Without them, Geder wouldn’t have had time to sleep, and even if he could have done without sleep, the work would have been too much. When the report came in, he had not even seen it, and might never have, except Basrahip had given orders that any message like it be treated seriously. Any message involving dragons.
Even after the news had been brought to his attention, he hadn’t taken it too much to heart. It was only now, with the priest back from his investigations and the witnesses in tow, that Geder understood the gravity of the situation.
After the peasant was sent away with Geder’s thanks and a wallet filled with silver to help him rebuild his lost inn, Geder had the doors closed. His guards remained at attention, swords and bows in their hands, their eyes fixed straight ahead. Basrahip sat at his side on the lowest tier of steps, his expression sober.
“I know them,” Geder said. “I know all of them, except this Marcus and Kit, but she talked about them too. Those were Cithrin’s friends. The players that hid us during the uprising.”
“Yes, Prince Geder. They were.”
“And they had a dragon.”
Basrahip nodded slowly; his jaw slid forward a degree, and his fingers dug into his thighs. “The enemies of the goddess are strong, Prince Geder. And they are full of deceit. They hate her for she is the enemy of all lies, and they are creatures of falsehood and evil. The dragons were her greatest enemies. The false world they created is falling around them now, and the coming pure world has no place for their kind. It is to be expected that they would rise in their fear.”
It was no coincidence, he was certain of that, and it changed everything. He had to look back and wonder now. If Cithrin had been the tool of the Timzinae from the start, then everything might have been arranged and engineered. Dawson Kalliam had been his patron and his friend. The more he looked at it, the clearer it became that his rebellion had not truly been his own. He had been the tool of the Timzinae. It seemed plausible now that Cithrin and her friends had engineered it all, even Dawson’s rebellion against him, in order to undermine the goddess. And now the Timzinae’s master was exposed too. Not only the shadowy Callon Cane, but the emperors of the world—the dragons—were rising against them. Against him.
“What do we do?” Geder asked.
“Do not fear this,” Basrahip said. “You are the chosen of the goddess. No harm will come to you so long as you keep your faith in her. There will be dark days ahead. Desperate struggles. We must not falter.”
“We won’t,” Geder said.