It took Tif some time to extricate herself from Mervel and Tredu with their questions and insults. Apparently getting a spidra’s attention was no small accomplishment, and they wanted to know how she had managed it. Tif, however, wasn’t about to share the details of the intimate conversation she’d had with Dalia the night before with strangers, especially not those two.
Eventually alone and walking back to the encampment, Tif chatted with the only person she really wanted to have the conversation with: Pep.
“Maybe she just wants to say thanks,” Tif said, fingering the metal hilt of the dagger she had tucked into the top of her pants. Mervel and Tredu had insisted the gift meant Dalia wanted Tif to be her next bond-mate, and Tif could admit there was some sense to it--Dalia had just lost her previous one, after all. But their thinking struck Tif as too narrow, like assuming your das opponent would choose Gold as their patron simply because a lot of people did. “She might just be friendly. Or have too many daggers.”
Tif gave Pep a turn and then nodded. “You’re right. Nothing to do but wait and see. I’ll probably be gone before she asks anyway, if she’s even going to.”
If Dalia did ask though, Tif wasn’t sure what she’d say. On the one hand, she needed to get to Sah’Sah to find Udaru and the seller of Rof’s scroll, so she could clear her name in Lercel, and obviously, Tif couldn’t do that while playing pretend with Death. On the other hand, what might she discover about these people and how they warred if she was allowed to go where a spidra did? Surely she’d be exposed to information, tactics, and other important details that could be the edge the Lercel knights needed to throw Death back. Or what if being with Dalia somehow brought Tif in contact with the one who wore the Death crest? With a single strike of the dagger she now held, she could eliminate Lercel’s greatest threat, all by herself… Tif shivered. She had never killed anyone before. The closest she had come was her fight with the spidra warrior who she had held long enough for Udaru to make the killing blow--a fact that if these people knew they would almost certainly kill her for.
Tif saw Pep out of the corner of her eye and shrugged guiltily. “Sorry, yeah, I know. It’s just in my head now.”
The stakes of the encampment were only a few strides away, so Tif ended the discussion; it’s not like she could risk talking about escaping around Death troops. She still had much of the day, but what Oliak had said was true--her work with the Mark had drained her--so Tif decided to find the seeker’s tent and take a nap. As the big man had also said, people did indeed know where it was. She spoke to a group of humans doing laundry, each with their own water-filled bucket, who told her to follow the path called Edge to where it crossed another named Forge. Tif thanked them for the help and they all bowed their heads in what felt to Tif like an eerie show of respect. Knights were looked up to in Lercel, but this…this was a bit much.
On her way, Tif realized another thing that made her feel off about these people was how so many of them were outfitted to the teeth with armor and weapons, like they expected to be killing something the next time they turned around. Not to mention the lack of Aspects. In Lercel, the golden living statues were a source of comfort, a sign of the city's prosperity. You could only walk a few blocks in the mids before seeing one striding along or standing perfectly still, and in the highs they showed up even more frequently. Tif understood why Death Aspects couldn’t do the same--at their size they’d crush the camp and everyone in it! What she didn’t understand was how the people of Death failed to see how out of balance that meant their sacrificing was. After all, how did you connect with something whose eyes were over a hundred feet away?
Tif almost missed Forge, living in her thoughts the way she was, but the sound of hammering brought her up short. To her right, past a handful of tents with wood framing around their base, there was a slightly elevated platform where a number of topless spidra milled. Most held large hammers in three or four hands, which they brought down with great force on whatever they were crafting on their soot black anvils--probably more weapons. Some humans darted in between the forger workers with gleaming lengths of metal, tongs, and other implements Tif knew nothing about. Metal workers existed in Lercel, but not in the same way. What need was there for weapons when Gold knights could do what they could?
On the far left corner of Edge and Forge, there was a squarish tent of gray with slashes of red, just like she’d been told. Tif crossed the path and was about to enter the box-like structure when it struck her that this was probably the freest she’d ever be to see the enemy’s encampment. Tomorrow she might escape, and she was going to rest today instead of exploring? What was she thinking?
If she was going to look around, Tif needed something to perk herself up with first, so she followed her nose toward the loud metal workers and soon found a man roasting sticks of meat on a grate above a low fire. As she watched, he took what looked like a paint brush, dipped it in a ruddy saucy, and then spread it across the meat chunks, one way and then the other. The aroma coming off of them gained a touch of sweetness, making her mouth water--she was completely awake now.
“Two, please,” Tif said, remembering too late that she didn’t have any of her supplies, including her money.
He didn’t even ask though, quickly putting his brush away and handing her two, steaming sticks.
“I’m sorry I don’t have any flats,” Tif said, a chunk of meat already in her mouth--it was so good, smokey and tender with that touch of spicy sweetness just like she had smelled.
The man looked at her as if was apologizing for not having any sunlight to give. “Live to serve, seeker.”
For a moment Tif thought it was the word flats that had confused him but then she took a closer look at the hips of the various people passing by and discovered a surprising fact: none of them were wearing money pouches.
“How do they buy things?” Tif hissed to Pep. Surely everything couldn’t be free for everyone, could it? Trying to imagine a world like that had to be stranger than anything else she had seen from Death, and she couldn’t stop wondering: “Without money, how do people bet?”
The meat was soon gone but Tif liked keeping the sticks in her mouth, waving them around with her lips like the big insect she had seen in the forest. Many of the people she passed nodded to her, some even saying, “Seeker,” with clear deference. Tif desperately wanted to ask them what exactly a seeker was, but she knew that doing that would just give her away, so she bit her tongue and wagged the sticks back.
Near the tower, she saw her first spidra and human connected by a wrist-thick line of Death ris. At first Tif thought that maybe the two were practicing a deep sort of Marking like delving, but when she saw a second pair and then a third, Tif quickly puzzled it out: the rope of gray ris was surely what connected a spidra to its human bondmate. She wondered who had to maintain the thick weave, which was no doubt exhausting, or if they somehow shared the burden. In the end, she decided it was probably the spidra who had control since injuries flowed from its body to the human’s. Considering what the spidra gained from the exchange, it was a small price, but Tif wouldn’t want to be in either position.
The discovery also meant that everyone she had met so far wasn’t bonded, like Mervel and Tredu, and even Oliak. It also explained why Mervel and Tredu had wanted information from her so badly.
“That’s good,” Tif heard someone say in almost a cooing voice, like they were talking to…
Tif made it past a wall of cloth and found herself looking at an open, tent-polled structure with multiple small cushions on the ground, each occupied by a young human or spidra. There was also an older spidra standing in front of them all, one set of hands clasped behind his back, the other in front.
“Why are children here?” Tif whispered to Pep in alarm. It was a war camp, not a place for kids to be. But Pep reminded her how built up the various structures were, with wood bolstering the cloth. The encampment seemed more a town than a temporary spot, and Tif could agree that she hadn’t seen anyone packing things up to leave. If anything, more had joined. Is this what Death did? Find a spot, claim it, and grow there like a fungus?
“...and Gold,” Tif heard the teacher say, which was all he needed to to get her attention. “What is their sin?”
“They value things more than people,” the group of young voices chorused.
“We absolutely--” Tif cut off when all eyes turned to her: the teacher’s, every child, and even a few passerby. “Need more soldiers, so keep up the good work.” She added an enthusiastic grin to hopefully make their eyes go away.
The spidra teacher raised two eyebrows at her, both on the right side, but then looked back at his charges.
“That’s correct. They’re killing their people and destroying the land in their greed for mere rocks. And those who aren’t forced into the dark, dangerous mines, are valued not by their deeds but by how much they possess.” The spidra shook his head in clear disgust. “It is up to us to save them from their terrible obsessions, for none others can.”
Tif quickly stomped away, almost putting her hands over her ears to stop herself from hearing anything else he might say. Gold killing people? When Death used actual death to power their ris? She knew that if she had stood there a moment longer, she would have tackled that instructor. How could they be teaching such…lies and to children!
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Tif headed back to the seeker’s tent--she’d seen more than enough, thank you very much. The problem was she didn’t know if the path she was on was taking her closer to Edge or Forge, so she tried listening for the forge itself, but the sound of hammering she ended up finding was on Glint, not Forge.
She could have asked directions again, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that, not after hearing what these people believed. Only a touch further down Glint though, and Tif saw something that made her heart skip a beat: an elderly man and spidra playing das.
There was a small group around the pair, but when those people realized that Tif wanted to be closer, they quickly made room for her. She drank in the sight of the board with its two rows of figures carved into the likeness of the five aspects and the square tiles the two players held. With all the other differences in this strange place, she expected something to be off with how they played the game, but everything seemed identical to home, from the ordering of the aspects to how they watched each other closely when laying each tile, often changing it because of the smallest perceived reaction from their opponent. And even with all the metal in the encampment, Tif could tell the board and pieces were painted wood, sweet simple wood.
The familiarity of it all filled her with pure joy.
What’s more, after watching two games, both of which the spidra won, Tif started to feel the itch to have a go at it herself. How long had it been since her last game? Weeks? A month? She used to play multiple times a day and found herself wanting to feel the edges of the tiles in her hand and see her opponent tilting their aspects over in defeat.
“Who’s next?” she asked a woman about as old as the man playing. Perhaps they were even married.
“Tarow, myself, Neese,” she said, but then blinked when she saw the ris on Tif’s hand. “You seeker, of course,” she said, bowing her head.
Tif ducked down so she could look the woman in the face. “I can wait my turn. It’s no trouble.”
The woman paled. “Oh, no, seeker. That wouldn’t be right.”
“I insist,” Tif said. Not only did she want to be fair, but she wanted time to learn the tells of whoever was winning.
The woman actually started wringing her hands. “If you are sure…” not sounding sure at all, but Tif’s attention was already back on the board.
The man lost another game after that and got up, his seat quickly filled by a stick of a boy, who placed his tiles nearly as fast as Tif did. Unfortunately for him, he lost nearly as quickly. The older woman Tif had talked to fared a touch better, and it was during those matches that Tif noticed the spidra liked to rub his thumb and forefinger of his upper right hand together when he was thinking. Tif hadn’t determined what exactly he was thinking in those moments, but it was something. Next was an even older woman, who bent so far over the table her chin almost touched the pieces. She also played with agonizing slowness, which thinned the people watching to just Tif and the woman she had spoken to when she first arrived.
It was because of the fewer people that Tif saw him: a young man, striding down Glint, wearing the black armor the spidra did. That alone would have been odd enough to make Tif wonder, but it was the countless ropes of smokey gray ris that stretched out from his front, shoulders, and back that widened her eyes. There were more of them than she could count, like an impossibly long cloak of woven braids, and they all arched in the sky to some unknown point because as far as she could tell he traveled alone.
People nodded deeply as he passed, confirming his importance, but no one stared after the lines, unlike Tif who found it impossible not to.
“It’s your turn, seeker.”
Tif glanced at the table, seeing the seat across from the spidra now empty, but a look back down the path showed the armored man was getting away from her. She had explored the camp to get more information, and she wasn’t sure what a clearer sign of that could possibly be. Even so, she let out a pained whimper as she left the das table behind, going after him.
He walked quickly so she had to half jog to make up the distance and when he went around a rather large gray tent Tif sped up even more to make sure she didn’t lose him--though she could probably find him anywhere due to all the ris coming off of him.
The added speed made it all the harder to come to a flailing stop when she found him waiting for her, arms crossed. With the cold demeanor he directed at her, she expected him to pair the look with a weapon, but Tif realized she saw no hilts or scabbards anywhere on his dark armor. In fact, he might be the only person in the camp she’d seen without a weapon--even the washer people had carried knives.
“Why are you following me?” he asked.
His voice was smooth, impressively so without Gold ris, and he was much more handsome than she had expected. Tif found herself looking at the well-formed lines of his face bordered by high shoulder plates rather than answering his question.
“You,” he stepped closer. Tif thought she saw his eyes move left to right, and she also thought that there was some ris between them now, but it was so hard to tell with so many gray cords swaying around him. “You are not of Death.”
Tif didn’t even bat an eye. She supposed she had been playing das for awhile now after all.
“Of course, I--”
He held up a hand, and the abruptness of the move stopped her.
“You are from…the north, so Lercel.”
Tif just shook her head, like he was making a joke, though her blood had turned cold. Luckily, people were giving them a wide berth, probably because of the man’s obvious rank, but that was the only scrap of good Tif could find about the moment.
“I don’t know why you lived with Blood ris so long,” he continued with bone chilling certainty, “but your skin has known the touch of Gold, there is no doubt.”
Tif knew a losing round when she saw one and tensed to run. If he was that much better at delving than the young soldier from yesterday, not even needing to touch her, she didn’t want to find out how much better at predicting he’d be than her, especially since he had the advantage of already having her Marked.
He proved her right with his next words. “There’s no need to flee,” he said, obviously reading her intentions. But then he confused her by taking a long step back, giving her space. “You are in no danger from me.”
She stared at him, trying to piece together his moves and coming up frustratingly short. “Because you want to question me?” It was the only thing that made sense, but it didn’t explain why he had stepped back
“The Great Host has no need for more information. Our coming to your walls and victory will be as inevitable as the seasons.”
Tif didn’t like the sound of that one bit, especially since he said it without threat or bluster, just a simple fact.
“But you,” he continued, “are obviously here to spy, so do so. See our troops, see their training and dedication. Report all this to your keshe masters, and though I know they value humans little, perhaps you will be able to convince them to surrender instead of resisting us.”
He had said so many things wrong, but the image that formed in Tif’s head was Sur-Rak or Jer kneeling before someone like this. “They’ll never agree to that.”
He surprised her again by looking sad for a moment, gazing up at the sky. “Perhaps not. But there is only one way to find out.” His eyes found hers again and then he was turning away.
“You’re just going to let me stay?” Tif said incredulously. She even took a step toward him, which she quickly backed off of as soon as she realized what she had done. “What if I’m here to kill someone?”
He had stopped his turn halfway and so faced her sideways. “You wouldn’t be following me if that was your goal. Unless it was me you meant to kill, and if that was true, you would fail.”
“You seem awfully sure of a lot of things,” Tif said. The multitude of threads around him continued to drift one way and then another like they were being blown by an invisible breeze. Maybe…maybe this was what a crest looked like, and she could see it because she had a Seal of Death. Maybe that’s how she had looked to other people of Blood. Maybe that’s why the cyclops had been after her in Sah’Sah.
Again, he seemed to read her plans, facing her fully. “Do it,” he said, putting his hands behind his back. “Use that steel, taken from my people, against me.”
“I didn’t steal it,” Tif said, her grip tightening on the dagger. She thought of how brokenhearted Dalia had been at the death of her bond-mate, while he stood there calmly--his face was pretty but cruelty lived behind it. “You would let someone die for you? On a whim?” Tif felt sickened.
He never wavered in the slightest. “You could plunge that blade through my eye, and two hundred people would feel little more than a headache.”
Tif glanced at Pep. Two…hundred? Was that what all those threads were? But if that was true, where were the people they were connected to? And how could he give the wound to all instead of just one? He couldn’t be that much better at delving, predicting, and bonding, could he?
He stood there a moment more, letting her think on his words. “Lercel’s resistance is as futile as you trying to kill me,” he finally said. “Make them believe it, and you will be their savior. I doubt anyone will celebrate you for this, but when you die, as we all must, what sort of mark do you wish to leave behind? Ask yourself this, spy of Lercel, and I hope you will find the right answer.”
He really did go then, the threads that trailed after him passing through Tif with a sharp tingle before she got out of the way. She looked at where they stretched off into the distance, tempted to run them down. They couldn’t be that far off, could they?
By the time she looked back to him, he was gone. Tif chewed her lip, thinking again about slipping out of the encampment. It was still light enough that her departure shouldn’t be questioned, and though this man had certainly Marked her, if his words were true, he wanted her to escape back to Lercel. Tif also had to consider that the longer she stayed, the more likely she’d be caught by someone who wouldn’t let her go like he just had.
Leaving made sense, but she didn’t like the move; it felt like playing not to lose, which from countless das games Tif knew wasn’t the same as playing to win. She had more to win here, she could feel it.
“One more day,” she said to Pep. Surely it couldn’t be any stranger than this one.