“Strike a man with it, and he will die,” Kit said. “Strike a man like me with it, and all the spiders within him will die as well. We had blades like it at the temple to purify the unclean.”
“Meaning kill people like you.”
“Meaning that, yes.”
“And stick it in a goddess’s belly, and we save the world,” Marcus said, reaching for it.
Kit stopped him, the old actor’s hand on his wrist.
“What’s the matter?”
“This is an evil thing. An evil object.”
“Come a long way for second thoughts now,” Marcus said.
“I know that. I agree with you. But I brought you here, and I feel wrong letting you take this without being certain that you know what you are sacrificing. What I am asking of you … I think I am asking a great deal of you, Marcus. And I consider you my friend.”
Marcus tilted his head. Kit’s face was somber. The grit and dirt of weeks had ground itself into the man’s pores and the greasy wires of his beard and hair. Kit swallowed.
“This weapon is poison,” Kit said. “I believe that the cause we carry it in is just, but that will not protect you. It is not only death to those whose skin it cuts; it holds a deeper violence within it. If you carry it—just that, carry it and nothing more—the poison will still affect you. In time, you will grow ill from it, and eventually, inevitably, it will kill you.”
“It’s a sword, Kit,” Marcus said, lifting the green scabbard from its place. “They’re all like that.”
Cithrin
The market houses of Suddapal sat at the edges of the wide, grassy commons. Pillars of black wood carved with delicate whorls and spirals marked the corners of every room, and wall hangings of rich green felt hung where Cithrin would have expected tapestries to be. Where the Grand Market of Porte Oliva assigned stalls to merchants and let the buyers move between them, everything here was in flux. Halfway through a negotiation, some third party might intrude with a better price or an accusation of poor quality, and this was true whether the issue hinged on the price of a single apple or a shipping contract worth half the value of the city. Nor was that the only aspect of the market that left Cithrin feeling at sea.
Her youth had been spent in the Free Cities where Firstblood and Timzinae had lived and worked in very nearly equal proportion. If asked, she would have said that she was perfectly comfortable with the race, with any of the thirteen races of humanity. The market houses of Suddapal showed her that that was not perfectly true. Walking through rooms and corridors filled almost exclusively with the dark-scaled bodies and twice-lidded eyes, she felt conspicuous. She was aware of her slight frame and unscaled, pale skin in a way she had never been before, and she disliked the feeling. And while no one was cruel to her, she could not help noticing that she was watched, considered, and commented upon. By stepping on a boat in Porte Oliva and stepping out in Suddapal she had become an oddity, and she didn’t know how to play the role.
Adding to that was the depth of family connection and history that seemed to inform every negotiation. In her first hour, Cithrin heard reference made to the marriages of cousins three generations dead, to favors done by one man’s uncle for another’s niece, to shelter given by one family to another during the flood of a river whose course had shifted twice in the century since the kindness was offered. The same care and analysis that concerned the noble houses of Birancour or Herez applied to everyone here, and Cithrin despaired of ever mastering it.
Though Cithrin didn’t complain, Magistra Isadau seemed to recognize her discomfort. The older woman introduced Cithrin as the voice of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, gave Cithrin what context she expected her to need before they entered a negotiation, and explained any obscurities that came in once the discussions were over. Isadau never spoke harshly, never condescended, never reminded Cithrin through word or act that one of them was the master here and the other an apprentice in all but name. She didn’t need to. The resentment that Cithrin felt came from being aware of her failings already.
“Oh no,” Magistra Isadau said, smiling as if she were sad and shaking her head. “We can’t accept last year’s terms again.”
The man across the table from them chuckled. Even seated, he was half a head taller than Isadau. The chitinous scales on his neck and face had begun to grey and crack with age. Cithrin sipped at her tea and smiled politely.
“You don’t do yourself any favors gouging us when we’re low, Isadau,” he said.
“You aren’t low. You’re at war.”