“I. . . Please,” the boy said, “I have done nothing unjust to deserve this. The council must see that I am—”

“It is not for you to dictate what the council must do to preserve order,” Shai shouted, cutting the human short. “In the end, justice is merely the by-product of order.”

“It is?” Marvel asked in mock interest.

Silencing Marvel with a glare, Shai returned to the boy, who went completely still from her rebuttal.

“Boy, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you’re going to answer them all truthfully,” Shai said. Her voice chilled the captive’s spine, though it could just be the coldness. “No tricks and falsehood can hide the truth. We know how to wrench everything out of your heart.”

“We do?” Marvel interrupted again. Shai was about to outright ignore her when she added, “I don’t know about you, but I can merely detect falsehood, and it hardly takes any heart-wrenching effort.”

Marvel seemed to regain her cockiness after Shai’s brilliant counselling. She would let the spider be cocky for now. Better than her self-pitying self, she supposed. Marvel was far from being unbearable, and her abilities made her invaluable.

“First question, do you understand what I said?” Shai asked.

“Yes, Um. . . High Lady,” the captive said.

“What is your name?” Shai asked.

“Javi. Javi of House Ramone.”

“Javi,” Shai repeated, wittingly ignoring the house name even though it sounded important. Well, the boy thought it was important, that was all the reason she needed. “Are you aware of the chaos you created?”

“I. . .” the boy stuttered. “I didn’t know. . . It wasn’t my intention. I merely. . .”

“Wanted to help,” completed Shai. She wished she could be playful all the way as she went deeper into the matter. In a way, she was acting as the judge for his life. If she deemed him guilty, or an evil person, his life would be forfeited. That was a lot of pressure on a small hatchling.

As those thoughts swirled inside her head, the first thing Shai perceived was that she didn’t like judging other people. But it is what it is.

It didn’t take long for Shai to get the gist of the story from Javi. The boy wasn’t evil as far as she was concerned, just stupid and eager to prove himself in front of others. That eagerness led him to his current circumstances. Not just him, his stupidity involved a few more bystanders to their deaths and even led his half-sister to fall within the grasp of those mercenaries.

Shai assumed he was talking about the people those men were looking for.

Apparently, it was Javi who hired them at the beginning to help his way through his half-sister. How could the young scion know that mercenaries’ only loyalty lies in coins? Although he had given them sufficient coins and promised more, the mercenaries didn’t take long to act on their interest. Even the name of House Ramone couldn’t budge them once they decided to turn on him.

Foolishly, Javi led them to his sister, unaware of the conspiracy brewing within their ranks. They had poisoned his half-sister almost to her demise. The only reason they left him was because they believed him to be harmless.

The trust between the siblings was already thin before they came to this expedition. His sister became completely distrustful of him after the incident. In the end, Javi used himself to give them a chance to escape. Or at least, that was what he told himself, a larger part of the escape attributed to the elf companion his sister had befriended, whom he didn’t like as much.

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The rest was pretty clear to Shai. Javi was captured by those men—she discovered that first-hand—but when the elder spiders attacked, those two mercenaries had no choice but to leave him to the spiders’ mercy.

“Still, something doesn’t add up,” Shai said. “It wasn’t unheard of for humans to act in their interest, but there should be a motive behind what the mercenaries did.”

“House Ramone has many enemies within and outside the empire,” Javi said, somehow sounding a little relieved after spilling out his misdeeds. “There are many people who wouldn’t mind the fall of our house.”

“Just great,” interjected Marvel. “If you have known that, shouldn’t you have thought twice before hiring suspicious people behind everyone’s back, dumb human?”

Javi was about to burst into an apology, but Shai stopped him, asking another important question. “Why do you feel the death of two members of a house will lead to the fall of your house?” she asked, adding unmasked scorn in her tone. “Boy, you’re only copper ranked, and so was your sister. Isn’t it a little presumptuous for of your level to assume so highly of yourself?”

After what Shai experienced, Copper ranked seemed to be the bare minimum to flee from them, and that too, if luck played in their favour.

“You don’t understand. . .” Javi’s voice trailed off as a couple of grumping “humph” entered his mind. “Excuse me, High Lady. I. . . It was presumptuous of me to believe you aren’t aware of the chaos brewing in our state. Men die every day, as the scourge breaks through our border. Somehow they have taken control of a beast tide and pillaged the state, and feasted upon honest men. If they aren’t stopped, I fear the whole empire will suffer, not just our state.”

Shai exchanged a look with Marvel, who was just as oblivious as her. Well, considering how unaware Marvel was of the corruption growing in the place she called home, Shai wasn’t surprised. It appeared only the upper echelon of the spider clan knew about these things, and they dutifully decided to leave the rest in the dark.

“And you feel you’re the solution to this chaos?” Shai asked scornfully.

“I’m not.” Javi ignored her scorn, wallowing in guilt. The scorn of some high lady was the last of his concerns. “But Isla, she’s different. She might, no, she must be the one.”

“This human has gone nuts,” Marvel said. “He mentioned his sister is merely a high copper, and as we know it, she might have already fallen to those mercenaries.”

Javi gritted his teeth, but Marvel’s words sunk in soon enough. There was a time when Shai was as big a sis-con as this boy, but she learned her sister was but a single person, powerless against the multitude will of the mass. It is what it is.

There were two possibilities here. Either Javi was a fool, as Marvel mentioned, or they were missing something. While the chances of it being the latter were low, she couldn’t discard it.

“So, what do you think?” Marvel transferred privately.

“Still doesn’t add up,” Shai said, racking her small brain to connect the strings. “If their state is under chaos, what are they doing here? Javi believed he was working towards saving his home. Is there something here that will lead them to believe that?”

Marvel thought for a moment to dismiss her conjecture. “Who cares? Isn’t your interrogation to find out whether he’s guilty or not?”

Shai cringed at the realisation. They had wasted enough time already. It was about time she came to a decision.

“It might sound a little wrong to you,” Shai said, “but I don’t think he’s evil, or guilty. He might feel guilt for his foolishness that led to devastation, but his intention wasn’t bad. He merely wanted to help, like you... like me.”

Marvel was prepared to interject, but she cowered after Shai finished.

Is it enough if our intentions are right? Shai wondered. Even when the results are devastating?

“Perhaps not,” Shai said, “but I can’t decide now.”

“Hmm, then what should we do about him?”

“I don’t know,” Shai said. “But if what you said is right about this chasm...”

“So we are just going to leave him to die?”

Shai nodded in agreement. Yeah, I know it’s a stupid thing to do, but I cannot help it.

Shai was grateful that Marvel said nothing about her stupid decision. Sometimes even an eight-legged monster can be more understanding than a human.

“Umm, Honoured High Lady?” Javi’s voice echoed in her mind as she was just about to depart. He sounded terribly nervous again. “So, what did you decide? Will you help me? Our state, our people, need it more than anything. The council must know this...”

A sense of guilt washed over Shai as she realised what she had done. She had given the young human false hope—hope she couldn’t fulfil. She had no clue how it became like this.

Shai only personified to intimidate the human, not to give him false hope.