It was only as the nearest spidra approached her in their overlapping black metal armor that Tif remembered her plan.
She lifted her hand with Death ris and tried to smile.
“I’m so glad I found you!” her voice came out high because of the nervousness that tightened her chest. Tif recognized that it should probably be full blown fear, but she was too excited to be something as simple as afraid. These were people who could teach her how to use her new seal, and when she was Archon, knowing the ways of Lercel’s biggest enemy would be invaluable.
Tif saw the nearest of the spidra frown at her greeting, but others spread out, obviously looking to see if anyone else was with her.
“I’m alone,” she called to them. That’s also when Tif realized she didn’t have her bag anymore, or her map, or her food, or anything else she needed--she must have dropped them in her mad flight away from the enormous Aspect. She felt the loss of the supplies keenly but then pushed it aside. Her plan was probably more believable this way.
“What are you doing out here by yourself?” the lead spidra said when he reached her. He was stocky and had grey in his beard. Grey similar to that of the Death Aspect Tif could still hear clomping closer in the distance, the ground quivering with each step. “Was your sect attacked? And what happened to your bond-mate?”
Tif didn’t have good answers to any of those questions, especially since she didn’t understand what most of them meant. Two more spidra slid into position on either side of the first, both looking much too eager to draw the hilts that poked up from behind their backs and making Tif feel the lack of those answers even more keenly.
“I, uh…”--she had to say something and quickly, she knew that much--”don’t remember. I hit my head on a tree.”
“Don’t remember?” the thin-faced spidra to the left sneered. Both of his right hands twitched closer to his weapons, and all four of his eyes looked at her unkindly.
“Probably a Blood warrior who stole some of our ris,” the female spidra on the other side said.
“Probably,” the older spidra agreed. Tif did not like where this conversation was going. “Strip her,” he said, which she liked even less.
The younger spidra hastened to obey, using their extra set of arms to quickly separate Tif from her few pieces of clothing. Tif had never worn the sheer garments she had seen in the highs of Lercel, so she felt instantly exposed. However, the spidra didn’t act like they were shaming her in any way to take her clothes--no crude comments or unwanted looks, and others in the group barely seemed to pay her any mind--so Tif tried to act like standing naked in the middle of the forest was just something she did from time to time.
Garments off, they spun her around to show her spine to the lead spidra; a spine Tif knew only had a seal of Death now. For his part, the older spidra grunted.
The other two spidra were continuing to check her body over, for hints of foreign ris she was sure.
“Well?” the lead spidra eventually asked.
“There’s nothing else,” the female spidra said, clearly unhappy.
“Never had Blood in my life ris,” Tif said, pleased to discover that buffing with a straight face was significantly easier when the people you were trying to fool were looking at your backside instead of your front.
“You’re sure?” she heard the older spidra press, effectively ignoring her.
“Wait,” the thin one said. He grabbed Tif’s left hand, pushing her fingers open, but just as quickly dropped it with a disgusted sound.
“What is it Quin’Shu?” the older spidra gruffed.
“Nothing. Not ris. Just some odd marks on her hand.”
Tif turned her head to be able to see the thin spidra and the older one who was obviously in charge. “That’s Pep,” she explained.
The grey bearded spidra eyed her for a time and then looked away. “Perhaps she did hit her head…Cardas’Shu!” he called, and one of the spidra who had been checking the surroundings dashed over to where the four of them stood. He was even younger than the others, maybe Awt’s age, and Tif noticed that his helmet was smooth on top unlike the crests the three others she had been speaking to had.
“Commander,” he said, bowing until his head was lower than the old spidra’s waist. “Lieutenants,” he added, bowing half as far to the other two.
“Delve her,” the leader said, pointing at Tif.
Tif was equal parts thrilled and confused by the command. This ‘delving’ was exactly the sort of thing she wanted to learn about Death ris. However, surely someone called a commander or a lieutenant would be like a knight in Lercel and thus have multiple seals. So why weren’t one of them doing it?
The new spidra faced her fully, and Tif let her questions go. Instead, she watched him closely so she could try his technique in the future. He brushed his thumb across his forehead, which she almost clapped about--a sure sign he was using his first seal, or at least she hoped it was. But then, instead of sliding his thumb through the air toward her, he placed his thumb in the middle of her forehead. A numbness slowly suffused her brow, the telltale sign of Death ris she was getting more used to by the day. However, she could still feel the pressure of his thumb pressing against her skin and skull, and suddenly Tif remembered she was naked, which immediately felt much more uncomfortable than it had a moment ago.
They stood that way for a time, him with his eyes closed, which Tif thanked the Aspect for, and then, without warning, he turned back to the older spidra he had named commander.
“She doesn’t have a bond-mate and hasn’t had one recently.”
“No bond?” the commander mused. He crossed his lower set of arms while rubbing his chin with both his upper. The combination made him look very contemplative but also rather silly to Tif. The important thing though was that he wasn’t immediately calling for her to be killed, and she had discovered something that this delving could search for. Now she just needed to figure out what a bond-mate was…
“I don’t sense any other ris on her,” the unranked spidra continued. “At least not in the last week.” He removed his thumb from her skin after that and stepped away, the delving apparently complete.
It took everything in Tif not to breathe a deep sigh of relief. After managing to sneak away from Lercel’s wall without the guards spotting them, she and Plumya had spent a few relatively peaceful nights in the wilderness. If she had run into the Death troops right away or had spent less than a week with her parents beforehand, the spidra might have found her out. But they hadn’t, and her hope was confirmed: the Mark did have other uses, and what an unexpected use it was, seeing the history of a person’s ris. Now that she was aware of the ability, she wanted to know more than ever exactly how he had done it. Tif traced the young spidra’s face with her eyes, memorizing it, so she could find him at some point to ask.
“She could still be from the Blood Plains,” the female spidra said. Tif started to slowly put her clothes back on, which were laying on the ground around her, and no one moved to stop her. If she needed to make a getaway, she didn’t want to do it naked. “Our ris is on her hand of all places. It’s obvious.”
Tif flinched while tugging her breeches on and hoped no one noticed. That was much too good a point for her comfort.
Shockingly it was the thin-faced spidra who came to her defense. “Death ris is on six different parts of her body. That is not how a Blood warrior would take if they were going to.”
Tif remembered all too clearly how hard it had been to stay connected at so many points to the Death warrior she had faced. Doing so had lost Tif her Gold ris, and her citizenship, but in this moment she was glad she’d managed it--anything to sell the story that she was one of them.
“It could have been done purposely…” the female spidra said but she didn’t sound as convinced as before.
“And she gave up her Blood ris before coming here? Why?”
“To be the perfect spy,” the female spidra answered, regaining some of her surety. She even spread her arms out as she said it, and Tif was put in mind of a bird puffing its feathers.
The other lieutenant shook his head though, apparently fully convinced now that Tif was a legitimate member of Death. “If she was coming from the Blood Plains we’d have found her to the west, not here.”
Tif noticed that the youngest spidra, Cardas’Shu, didn’t offer a comment, clearly letting his leaders do the talking. Likewise, the commander just watched, continuing to hold his chin two-handed. Perhaps he thought one of his lieutenants had the answer, or he just found hearing their thoughts helpful to form his own.
“She knew we’d think that,” the female spidra countered, “so she went around us at first.”
“To appear to come from Lercel?” the thin-faced spidra scoffed. “How does that benefit her?”
“To create confusion, obviously, which she is succ--”
The commander raised his two upper arms and both of the lietenants stopped their banter. “The more you need to convince yourself of a truth, the less likely it is to be one. The Great Shu gave us his words for a reason.” He turned to the female spidra. “Forget them at your peril.”
“Yes, commander,” she said with a tight-jawed dip of her head.
Tif didn’t know who the Great Shu was but if he was there and it wouldn’t have given her away, she would have hugged the snot out of him.
“And that means we have offended a seeker,” the old spidra said, sounding tired. “My apologies.” He surprised Tif by bowing to her, as deeply as the young spidra had done to the lieutenants.
“It’s okay,” Tif said, straightening a shirt she had just gotten back on, for some reason feeling more nervous than when they hadn’t believed her. “Like I said, I don’t remember.”
The commander nodded at her words when he straightened. “I’ve read of head injuries and how they can cause such troubles. We’ll take you to our holding, and the menders there will see to you.”
To show her eagerness to follow their plan, she marched forward in the direction she thought the Death troops were headed. Barely a handful of steps later, Tif could tell that she had already done something wrong. Looking back, she saw the commander and lieutenants right where she had left them.
“What are you doing?” the old spidra said, looking almost scandalized. “We don’t expect you to seek now, not in your condition.”
“Ah, right…” Tif said. “Of course not. I’ll just…”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Join the bonded,” he said, motioning to the human Death troops behind them.
Tif nodded vigorously, not trusting herself to speak. Halfway through jogging to where the humans were, she realized that she probably shouldn’t be moving so quickly while claiming to have a head injury, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She’d just have to remember for next time.
Like other human Death troops Tif had seen, the ones she fell in with wore boiled leather of a dull brown and carried either bows or crossbows. She found a spot somewhere near the middle among them and smiled at the odd looks she got but didn’t try to pick up a conversation. Similar to when she had pretended to be from Blood Tribe, the more she did or said, the more likely she was to show them all that she didn’t really fit in. Best to stay quiet and hopefully be forgotten.
The group finally did move, and Tif did her best to keep pace with them without comment. There were maybe around fifty people, and due to their size, they made noise as they trudged through the flourishing green wilderness. Surrounded beside and behind by human Death warriors, and armed spidra in front, Tif did have a moment of doubt. For all the commander’s apologetic words, she could be marching toward her own execution. She kept going though because she mostly doubted it. If they had wanted to kill her, they could have done so easily already, or at least tried to, but they hadn’t. Of course, maybe they wanted to sacrifice her dead body to their enormous Aspect, and she was doing them the favor of walking her soon to be corpse to where they needed it to go. Tif looked up, seeing the giant grey Aspect still over the treetops but closer, and an involuntary shudder ran through her. There was something holy when a Golden Aspect allowed a piece of gold to enter its being--a rightness, as if two things that should be one were being made whole. However, the idea of her dead body being consumed by the Death Aspect’s foot--because she doubted it would do her the courtesy and bowing down a hundred feet to scoop her up--sounded utterly terrible.
“Let’s not be foot food,” she said to Pep.
“What was that?” the soldier to her right growled, the act of speaking pulling at a scar on his lip.
“Uh, really nice day out,” Tif said. It wasn’t her best reply, she knew, but with the leather all the human troops wore, she thought the light breeze and slightly cool air would be pleasant for them.
He gave her a long look. “You expect me to act as if that sounds anything like what you first said.”
“Ummmm,” Tif answered, the man’s steady stare not softening. “I think I’m going to slow down,” she said. “For my head and all,” Tif added with a sheepish grin. She made her steps half the length they had been a moment ago and she soon fell behind the main body of soldiers.
At the back of the group were a handful of younger troops, some boys, others girls. One and all they were packed down like mules with water skins, folded tarps, and long poles that wobbled a good five or six feet over their heads, and as she watched, continually caught on the branches.
Tif shared a knowing look with Pep: no wonder they brought up the rear.
A boy near her was struggling to unlatch one of his poles from a spindly tree with forking branches. It only took a moment to reach him, and a quick tug removed the pole from the wedge in only a small shower of leaves.
“Tough job, huh?” she said.
He shrugged with one shoulder, his other arm busy trying to get the newly freed pole in line with the other two strapped to his back.
“Latrines are worse,” he said. “No contest.”
Tif nearly rapped herself on the head. She had just decided not to talk to anyone and here she was doing it again. Now she needed to say something, something Death-tribey.
“I meant…the waiting,” Tif said, recalling how when she and the knights had fought the Death warriors, striking a spidra transferred their wound to a human they were connected to. She could only imagine what it would be like to put in a position like that--completely powerless. “Waiting back here to get hurt.”
“The ones in front protect us with their armor,” he answered carefully, giving her Death ris looks. “You trying to test me? Even a recruit fresh out of Cradle knows that.”
Tif shared a look at Pep. He couldn’t mean they started training at birth, could he? The boy saw the face on her palm and took a clear step away from her.
“You’re cracked,” he said, shouldering his sack closer and pushing forward. He bent at the waist to keep his poles more horizontal with the ground than up and managed not to get caught again, at least not for the time Tif watched him go.
It was only after he was gone that she realized that no one was really near her anymore. Couldn’t she just…go? The thought was certainly tempting, particularly with the leafy green ferns scattered throughout the underbrush that would be so easy to hide in. However, Tif also realized that her forehead was still numb, which meant…she looked up and sure enough, spotted a line of smokey grey ris going from her head back toward the spidra. It was very thin, which was why she hadn’t noticed it before, but it was definitely there and certainly a continuation of the Mark Cardas’Shu had used to delve her. The spidra probably weren’t reacting to her dipping to the back because she was still within the area, but if she moved beyond that, they’d sense it and chase. If they caught her, she’d never be able to convince them again that she was one of them. No, better to run when it was a sure thing and after she had learned more of her ris and their ways.
The sun gradually set as Tif followed on the heels of the troops. The giant Aspect seemed to trail them for a time but then gradually went on its way, and Tif was left to wonder where. Mostly, she was glad to be rid of it, and she felt nearly the same about Plumya who never resurfaced. As the forest purpled with the waning light, they entered a clearing that bustled with activity, black and leather armored spidra and humans moving to and fro, shouting brief commands to each other, and all in all working with what struck Tif as rigid efficiency.
Following along after the young pole bearers while trying to look everywhere at once, Tif saw that, unlike the brief camping she had done with the knights, the Death troops seemed entrenched. They had sharpened stakes ringing the wide camp and many of their tents had foundations of wood. There was even a wooden high tower, three stories up, dominating the center, with a collection of dark shapes atop it. Entering the barricade through a cart-sized gap, Tif discovered where all the logs had come from: this wasn’t a natural clearing but instead an area of felled trees, their stumpy remains poking up between tents and cookfires. Despite those shorn mounds, the camp seemed more permanent to Tif than some parts of the lows she had been in, with well worn lanes between structures and even some poles with signs that named the paths.
She was at the corner of Ash and Blade, trying to figure out how all of the people she had come here with seemed to have mixed in with those who were already here without her noticing when a voice spoke beside her.
“This way, seeker.”
Tif turned to find the young spidra, Cardas’Shu, beside her, motioning down Ash with both his right arms.
“I knew you could find me if you wanted,” Tif said triumphantly.
“Indeed,” he said, looking at her only briefly. Tif noticed that her awareness of the Mark seemed to heighten slightly as he did, a flutter across her forehead. Was he doing another sort of delving?
She didn’t get to ask him, or anything else she wanted to, since he walked away entirely too quickly, staying a full body length in front of her. By the time she finally caught up with him, he had stopped in front of a grey tent with blue slashes. A female spidra stood outside of it, wearing a robe of the same colors, and Cardas’Shu quickly explained to her about Tif’s memory trouble before departing without so much as a look at Tif, the thin line of ris between them vanishing as if it had never been.
The mender, Tif remembered the name the commander had called them, opened the tent flap and gestured her in with a gentle smile--not the sort of look Tif ever expected to see on a spidra. Inside, there were a number of bedrolls lining both walls of the tent, reminding Tif a great deal of the challenger's tent she had slept in when trying to become a knight. However, these beds had no frames and each had a cone of thin cloth suspended over it, providing an added layer of privacy, Tif supposed. They didn’t seem to need it now though, as the room looked almost empty.
The mender led her into the back of the long tent, past two hanging lamps, which a sweet sort of incense poured out of the bottom of in rolling waves of smoke, to a bed second to the back, next to the only other person who seemed to be there. Tif wasn’t sure why the spidra had chosen it, what with all the space, but didn’t want to raise any more alarms in her captors and so accepted it without complaint.
The spidra told her to rest, apparently one of the best cures for head injuries, and when she woke she’d be fed and questioned. Before leaving, the mender also showed her a metal bell the size of an acorn connected to the corner of the bedroom. Shake that, she was told, and someone would come see to her needs.
Sitting on the bed, enshrouded by the curtain that fell around her in a circle--the spidra had lifted it over her so she could get in--Tif decided that the space felt more like Jer’s small tent than the one for the candidates. Of course, this time he wasn’t there to talk with and calm her like he had before. But that had been a plot to kill the Archon, while this was just fooling the most feared tribe in all the lands--Tif could do it, especially since she still had Pep.
Tif glanced over at the lump next to her. With the thin cloth and the low light of the lamps, they were little more than an outline despite the small distance that separated them. Watching it though, she was almost sure they were shaking.
“Excuse me,” Tif asked her neighbor, “are you alright?”
The outline of the person stilled and then in a soft voice said. “I’m sorry, I thought I was being quiet enough. I won’t bother you again.”
“It’s okay,” Tif said, flipping onto her belly and putting her nose up against the thin curtain. She had half a mind to use her arms to pull it all away, but that might be considered rude so she laid on them instead so they wouldn’t get her into trouble--that meant she was laying on Pep, too, but that was okay, sometimes Pep needed a break. “I’ve got nothing to do but listen.” It was true, she wasn’t escaping tonight, not when there would be food in the morning.
The shape rolled over, and Tif had the impression of the woman hugging herself with not one but two sets of arms. Not a woman, a spidra. “They killed her,” she whispered.
“Who killed who?” Tif asked, instantly on alert. It had been a number of days back when she and Udaru’s patrol division had fought Death troops and none of the spidra or humans had survived but that was no guarantee a connection didn’t exist. If this spidra somehow knew her…
“A bald human boy with Gold and Life ris,” the spidra said, finally some heat entering her voice. “There were keshe with him of course, but it was his strike that killed her.”
Tif’s eyes widened in recognition, and she was glad of the cloth that separated them. That sounded like Tad-Soo from the challenges. Was he patrolling to the south now? If so, that meant Udaru’s division had been reformed. Too late, Tif realized that she should be saying something. “Oh.”
The spidra turned to her, but Tif couldn’t see the details of her face or even that she had an extra set of eyes. “It was my first,” she said, her words back to a whisper, as if she was confiding some sort of secret.
“First what?” Tif said.
“The first bond-mate I’ve had die. I felt it. Felt the Life ris cut through my armor into my chest; I swear I felt it spit my heart. But then the feeling was gone, and I knew. I knew that was the moment she died, taking my death from me.” The spidra barely got the last few words out before curling into a ball and weeping in quiet gasps.
In any other time and place, Tif would have been through the gauzy barrier in a moment to give comfort, but this was a spidra. Instead, Tif stayed where she was, trying to convince herself that she was doing the right thing.
When the tears had finally run their course, her neighbor slowly picked back up, as if she had never stopped talking. “I knew Moli’Sha before the Cradle. We did everything together, and I was the better for it. How can I replace her as I must? By the Aspect, I don’t know how the battle lords with their hundred bonded do it.” She breathed out. “It was my fault. The ris was on his face, curse him. I should have expected such an attack. If I had, Moli…” The soft crying started again, muddying her words.
Tif nearly told the spidra that it wasn’t her fault, but Death had brought this war to Lercel’s doorstep, not the other way around. Tif had to do something though, offer some sort of balm, it was killing her not to.
“I hear in Sah’Sah they use a cloth, a cloth they call a sah to fill with the tears of those they’ve lost. You could try that.” Tif was glad the piece of yellow fabric had been in her pocket, and still was, instead of her bag. She could never have faced Udaru if she had lost his sah.
The spidra had paused in her weeping Tif could tell, but she wasn’t answering, which was starting to make Tif nervous again. “I’m Tif, by the way. Tif’Shu,” she added quickly, remembering how the spidra had addressed each other. “And you are…?” Maybe giving her name wasn’t the smartest, but Tif didn’t know what else to offer to create trust between them or at least distract the spidra from what she might be thinking.
“Dalia’Shu…You should not speak of such things, Tif’Shu. You know as well as I that the practices of other tribes must not be discussed since such things are surely what led to each of their corruptions.”
Tif had to pull Pep out for that one. Corrupted? What was the spidra talking about? “Of course,” she answered, still sharing looks of bewilderment with Pep as she tried to figure out what to say next. And then she realized she was staring right at it. “It doesn’t have to be a sah,” Tif said, her own voice getting quieter for once. “It’s about remembering. Remembering someone you loved and finding a way to never forget them, to always have as part of you. You can do it however you like, but that’s the important bit. That’s how you carry on without them, because if you do it right, they’re never really gone.”
When Tif finished speaking, Dalia’Shu remained quiet, like she had before. Tif didn’t care this time though. Instead, she looked at Pep until she realized that she had her own tears to wipe away, and when she moved to do that, Tif also realized that Dalia’Shu was talking to her again.
“--trained us in the opposite, saying that letting them go was best, but I think…” Tif heard her take a breath, “...I think I might try what you say, for a time at least, just while I need.”
“I hope it helps,” Tif said and found that she meant it. If this spidra had been charging at her with swords raised or breaking into Lercel to slaughter her people, it would be different. But she was just someone suffering, and no one should have to do that alone.
“Thank you, Tif’Shu. I think I will try to sleep now.” So saying, Tif saw Dalia turn away from her, and it wasn’t long before she looked and sounded like she had succeeded in drifting off.
The rhythm of steady breathing, even coming from a spidra, was comforting, and Tif soon discovered that she was more tired than she realized. This certainly wasn’t how she had expected to end her day, but all in all, it was actually rather nice and a site better than sleeping on the lumpy ground like she had been planning. In the lows, you never knew when a boon might come, so you learned to enjoy those few that did. Tif burrowed into the flat pillow, her thoughts jumping from what these odd people might teach her to how she was going to escape from them as she found her own peaceful slumber.