Marcus ran his fingers through the beard that had grown during his captivity. His skin was crawling, but he kept his voice steady.
“This is the thing you were talking about. The evil that got loose in the world. It’s you?”
“It’s men like me. The taint in my blood is the sign of the goddess, but it isn’t her power. Her priesthood is given gifts by her. We are the masters of truth and of lies. I told you once that I could be very persuasive and that I was very difficult to lie to. It is this way with all of us. Tell me something I couldn’t know. Tell me true or lie. It doesn’t matter.”
“Kit, I don’t think that parlor tricks—”
“I don’t think you’ll find this a cunning man’s small magic,” Kit said.
“All right. Ah. I stole honey stones from my friend when I was a boy.”
“You did,” Kit said. “Try again.”
“The first battle I was in, I lost my sword.”
“You didn’t. That’s a lie. Try again.”
Marcus frowned. Something was shifting in the pit of his stomach, and it took him a moment to recognize it as fear.
“About a month ago, I found a silver coin in the street outside the counting house.”
“No.”
“It was copper.”
“Ah. Yes. So it was.”
Marcus let his breath out.
“That’s a good trick,” he said. “Could see how a man might be tempted to use that.”
“I don’t think it’s the worst thing I can do. I find the spiders can make me impossible to disbelieve. With time and repetition, I can make anyone believe anything. However ridiculous or absurd or dangerous. If it were in my interest, I could convince you that you were a god. Or that your family was still alive but hiding from you. Even if you knew better, even if your mind knew better, your heart would lead you wherever I told it to go. I can do that, and so can they.”
“And they’re in Antea?”
“And very close to the throne.”
Marcus sat for a moment, considering it. The corruption of kings and princes was nothing new. The twist-minded cunning man was a standard character in a thousand songs. And still, there was something about the tiny spider birthing itself out of Kit’s skin that made Marcus shudder.
“What do they want?”
Kit considered his thumb. The cut was already closed, neither blood nor spiders leaking out of his body. His voice was almost contemplative.
“When I was there, I was taught that the goddess would return justice to the world. We were to keep faith and wait for the day when she would send us a sign. A leader whose Righteous Servant we would be, and through him, the goddess would free the world from lies.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“Probably, yes, but I also decided it might not be true,” Kit said with a smile. “I was a very junior priest when I left. Many of the menial, small tasks fell to me. One was to be sure the temples were swept. I didn’t actually sweep. There was an old man who did that. I don’t even remember his name now. But I asked him one day whether he had swept, and he said yes. He had. And he was telling the truth. Do you see? I felt it in my blood, just the way I did with you. Only he was confused. He was mistaken. He thought he had. He was certain he had. He hadn’t.
“And so I fell from grace.”
“Over an unswept floor?”
“Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably. Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren’t. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it.
“One day the high priest came to me. He had found a remedy to my unfortunate predicament. I was to be taken to the goddess herself. Deep in the temple, through the secret ways, to her holy cavern. Only the high priest was ever allowed to commune with her directly, you see. But now I was to have that honor.”
The doves shifted, as if made uneasy by Kit’s voice.
“Didn’t like what you saw of her?”
“I ran,” Kit said. “He told me that no harm would come to me, and I believed him. I knew he was lying to me, and I believed him anyway. I told myself that no harm would come to me. That she wouldn’t harm her own. I had faith that what they were doing came out of love for me. As long as I had faith in her, she would not hurt me. And then, like a reflex in my mind, I thought probably. Probably she won’t. But she might. And as soon as that doubt was there, I saw how likely it was that I was being sacrificed. I found I wasn’t interested in finding religious completion. So I left.”
“I get the feeling it wasn’t as straightforward as that.” “It wasn’t. I’ve spent years, decades now, in the world we never saw. It is more complicated than the priests of the goddess taught. Truth and lies, doubt and certainty. I haven’t found them to be what I thought they were. I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it isn’t. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain.”
“And what’s that like, then?”
“It’s like pretending something, and then forgetting you were pretending. It’s falling into a dream. If justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible. We’re seeing the first of them now. More will come.”
“Probably,” Marcus said, and Kit’s laughter startled the birds into flight.
“Yes,” Kit said as a dozen small feathers floated down around them. “Probably. But it seems likely enough that I feel obligated to stop it. If I can.”
“And you’d do that by… ?”
“There are swords. Dragon-forged and permanently venomed. We had several at the temple, but I have found the location of another. I believe that with it, the goddess can be killed, her power broken. And so I am going to find it and go back to my home. And I will go to that sacred cavern at last.”
“That’s a stupid plan,” Marcus said. “It’s more likely to get you killed than anything else. How am I supposed to fit into this?”
“As my sword-bearer. The spiders in me dislike the blade. I don’t believe I could carry it all the way back myself. I think you could. Of all the men I’ve met in my years after the temple, I believe that you particularly could.”
Marcus shook his head.
“It all sounds a bit overheated and dramatic, Kit. The paired adventurers rushing to find the enchanted sword? Are you sure this isn’t an outline of some old play about defeating a demon queen?”
Kit chuckled.
“I have spent a certain amount of time onstage. My perspective on the world may come from standing on the boards. But I believe I’m right all the same,” he said. And then, gently: “Come with me. I need you.”
“You’ve got the wrong man, Kit. I’m not some sort of chosen one.”
“Yes you are. I’ve chosen you.”
The excitement—the joy—that woke in Marcus was like being pulled by a wave. It was what he’d wanted, what he’d been wordlessly longing for all the dire, grinding weeks in Porte Oliva. And now God was giving it to him on a gold plate. He dug in his heels.
“I can’t. Cithrin’s in Camnipol. I have to protect her.”
“Do you think you can?”
“Yes,” Marcus said.
Kit raised a finger. His smile was gentle, half amused and half sorrowful.