King Tracian frowned, but there was something in his eyes. A glimmer not of hope—it was much too early for that—but of hope’s seed. King Tracian was curious.
“How,” he said, “would we do that?”
CUT THUMBS! the sheet read in letters half as high as her finger was long. Each one was drawn in red ink with a lining of black to make it easier to see. The writing went on underneath in a less ostentatious script. The forces of madness are all around us. Protect your mind and your family. Do no business with anyone who will not prove themselves free of the spider’s taint! When they say there’s no need, that is when the need is greatest! The servants of the spider are everywhere. Never let down your guard!
In truth, it was not her favorite of the letters. There were five of them now. The first laid out what the spiders were and where they had come from, and the rules by which they functioned. Another listed twenty strategies for defeating the priests in the field of battle, including a rudimentary set of visual signals that could be used with torches or banners to guide troops whose ears had been stopped with wax. But the one that was hardest for her to read was the letter that Magistra Isadau had written to her race, telling the Timzinae what the spiders were and of Inys’s creation of their whole people as a measure against them. We have suffered, that letter said, but not without reason. We have suffered because they fear us. And they fear us for good cause.
Cithrin imagined the copies of the letter coming into the hands of the slaves of Antea. She could barely imagine what it might mean to them. Isadau’s words already had the power to move her to tears, and she was sitting safely in the scrivener’s house at the south of Carse with the sample copies in her hand and a cup of watered wine sitting on the bench at her side.
“How many can we produce?” she asked.
The master scribe was a dark-skinned woman of middle years. Her forefinger and thumb looked almost deformed by the calluses there. “Done to standard, a full member of the guild could make five copies in a day.”
“And how many full guild members are available?” Isadau asked. Through everything, she managed to seem gentle and firm.
“Twenty,” the woman said.
“Not enough,” Cithrin said. “How many senior apprentices?”
The master scribe scratched her arm. “If we used them, we might have as many as… fifty desks? So that way we could have two hundred and fifty pages a day, but that would be—”
“We will supply paper, pens, and ink,” Cithrin said. “And you’ll accept payment in letters of transfer.”
A shadow passed over the master scribe’s face, but at least it passed. “King Tracian has commanded that we will, and so we will.”
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Cithrin said. She drank off the last of the wine in a gulp and put the cup back on the bench with a sharp click. “It’s a pleasure working with you.”
“Likewise,” the master scribe said.
Cithrin and Isadau rose. The main room of the house was row upon row of desks, and fewer than half of them occupied. That would change. Cithrin could already picture every desk full, the air thick with the scratching of pen on paper. One point in a plan of a hundred, and thankfully not one that had to be paid in coin. Buying paper with paper. There was an elegance in that, she thought. Or it might only have been that she was a little bit giddy.
The plans she’d drawn up in Porte Oliva had been for besting Antea in the field, and not all of them applied to her new framework. But some did, and others she could create with Komme and Chana and Magistra Isadau and Magister Nison.
“Magistra?” the chief scribe said as they reached the wide blue doors that led to the sun-drenched street. Cithrin and Isadau turned back together, each of them answering to the title. The master scribe held up the sample letters. “All of this we’re copying. Is it… true?”
“All of it,” Cithrin said.
The master scribe said something obscene.
Walking back toward the holding company, Isadau folded her arm with Cithrin’s. Carse was not a beautiful city, but it was handsome. And there were places—the dry fountain of dragon’s jade by the magistrate’s court, the Grave of Dragons, the glassblowers’ street—where it achieved moments of radiance. Still, she missed the close, cramped streets of Porte Oliva and Maestro Asanpur’s coffee. For that, she missed Vanai’s canals and wooden houses and the gates that had closed off one section of the city from another.
She wasn’t certain, even now, that Komme had ever given her freedom of the city. Nothing had been said. But after the last meeting with the king, Isadau had started taking her along. It was almost as it they were back in Suddapal and Cithrin was finishing out the last few months of her apprenticeship. Odd, with all that had happened since, that the thought reassured her. Yes, she’d lost Porte Oliva. Yes, Pyk Usterhall had been lost or killed. She’d spent the gathered fortunes of her branch on a half-mad scheme to remake what the world meant by money, but she was finishing her apprentice work, by God. Perhaps it was just the ritual of it that comforted.
“Do you think we’ll manage it?” she said as they turned north into one of the great, dragon-wide main ways.
“That depends on what you mean by it,” Isadau said.
“I was thinking of defeating the ancient enemy, bringing Antea to heel and the dragon’s war to an end. Little things like that.”
She’s meant it as half a joke, but Isadau’s tight smile made her think that perhaps she was on more serious ground than she’d known. “I hope that will be enough.”
At the compound, Komme Medean was pacing in the courtyard. His left knee was swollen with gout, and he leaned heavily on a carved oak cane. All through the yard, palm-sized sheets of yellow paper hung from string tied between the walls and trees. The little pages fluttered in the breeze like the banners of a vast miniature army. As Isadau and Cithrin came near, Komme plucked one from its place and held it up to the sun. A line of purple ran along its lower edge, startling against the yellow, and bright flecks caught the light. He looked over at them and lifted his chin in greeting.
“Komme,” Isadau said, smiling as she steered Cithrin toward him. “I don’t know what these are, but I think they’re beautiful. Have you taken to art in your old age?”
Komme’s single laugh was harsh, but genuine. He held out the page in his hand to Cithrin. “I’m doing what you two should have done before you gave all my damned money away. These letters of transfer we’re writing? They’re too easily forged. Doesn’t do us any good having sole right to make these if everyone and their sisters can make copies. We need to find a way to make them distinct, yes?”
The paper felt thick and stiff between Cithrin’s fingers, almost more board than paper. Tiny mineral chips glittered on its surface and tiny threads of red and blue spiraled through it. The violet band at the edge was damp. Komme saw her considering the discoloration and smiled sharply. She nodded her question.
“Put it in vinegar and it turns color. Until it dries, anyway. The maker swears that no one else in the world knows the process or could figure it out. My guess is that’s lies, but even so, it cuts the number of people stealing our right down from everybody everywhere to a few that are really dedicated to it. The yellow and the flecks? That was my thought. Gives people the idea of gold without the actual coin. Brings them halfway.”
“It’s a good thought,” Isadau said.
Cithrin handed back the page. “I wasn’t sure you were going to let the contract stand.”
Komme’s smile vanished. He pinned the page back in its place on the string. “I didn’t have a choice, did I? That’s the thing that all your plans and schemes skip. Contracts and letters of transfer and clever arrangements of business? All of it assumes that the agreements can be enforced. Well, his majesty’s the one with the crown and the guardsmen, so if he wants the agreement enforced, enforced it’s going to be.”