A Masquerade of Spiders

Chapter 29: Defeat

Chapter 29: Defeat

Pyren.

The village hermit who taught me knife tricks and how to earn the trust of honest people.

Who taught me the art of lies and the value of secrets.

He had died. He was a dead man.

A dead man stood before me, delighting in the spectacle that my face was making.

"Don't stop dancing now," he said, his voice with the depth of icy caverns hidden below ground. I was led through steps my feet could make only grudgingly. I was collapsing in on myself. I struggled for every breath.

Again and again, I saw in my mind's eye a corpse lying by a small clear stream that made its way along the rocky land, curling round the foliage.

With the smell of ash from the burnt cottage stinging my nose, I turned it over.

I turned it over.

I turned it over.

He was barely recognisable, but it was him.

It was him.

He was dead, from that day, to all days.

"How does a dead man dance, you wonder?" He grinned, proud and wicked. "It defines explanation, as does what you saw the night I took your sister."

Was I meant to see it? To see the power he had over spectres. I saw him, and knew him, but back then I couldn't fathom it was the same man as the corpse by the stream. I couldn't make the connection.

In my mind, I turned the corpse over to see its face. To see that scar on his arm, and all the details I came to recognise about him. It was him.

"Your memory is sharp, Yael. Very sharp. I've made many like you, and many in my service. But you are my sharpest creation. My most successful one. Allow me to sharpen your memory further."

He lifted his mask, just a fraction, and I felt a strange sensation brush my mind.

Suddenly, the details of the corpse I found washed away in my memory. There I was, by the burnt down cottage, by the stream, with an evening breeze ruffling my hair and making me cough on the ash.

There was a grand, mossy tree-trunk by the stream, cut to the size of a man. I believed it was a man. Even though my hands touched the rough bark when I turned it over, I didn't register the feeling.

Until now.

"There is no limit to my power," he said.

"Who sent you?"

"Yael, you know of my power, which is why you will be quiet now, and listen. I have your sister—"

"I want to see her." I missed the steps of the dance, but he dragged me on, my feet sliding over the floor. I never physically touched Pyren until today, and I was now confronted with how strong he was. He held up my full weight as if it were nothing.

"You are not in a position to make demands."

"I don't believe you have her."

"Then you and she both die because you disbelieve." I couldn't tell if I was bringing about one of his dark moods. When Pyren was just the hermit of my village, his moods were as obvious as day and night. But this person was a wall. The threat was delivered with the same measured syllables as he used with everything he said before.

"But I will take you to see her," he added after a long pause. "To quiet your need for rebellion. I don't like to be wasteful of an asset I invested in. There are many spies like you, but you proved to be a special opportunity. Did you know, I personally took care of your Afali problem? It was two birds with one stone, you see? House Aspertin lost a strong ally when the evidence of the murder pointed to Lady Golia."