"I don't understand it," Spyder said quietly as he sipped wine and stared outward toward the harbor. "I was sure they would arrive today. But you both kept watch, and I made what inquiries I safely could without arousing suspicions among the customers. No one has seen a Vasalan ship for a week.
Aaliyah reached across the table and touched his hand. It was meant to reassure him, but he could feel the tension in her touch. She was as worried as he was. More so, for she had more at stake-He met her gaze. "No, I can't be wrong," he insisted, answering her unspoken question. He raised his face toward the full moon that hung low and golden on the eastern horizon. "The eclipse is tonight or tomorrow night. They must perform the ritual before it's over, or all their hopes are lost."
Rising from her seat, Aaliyah came around the table and took his face in her hands. Her eyes were storms of anger, pain, fear, and doubt.
"Silivren mi akare, Shahana," he said, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her head to his shoulder. "I will not let that happen! They will not take Lisoh from you, I swear!"
Swallowing, Aaliyah nodded and returned to her seat. They resumed supper, though neither ate much. Their eyes watched the harbor—and the rising moon.
When the meal was done, Spyder leaned on the rooftop parapet and stared impatiently outward. Aaliyah paced back and forth, her tread soundless, her eyes wild with worry and torment as the night grew later. Ronal was gone; Spyder had sent him to the wharves to learn what he could and to keep watch from there.
A light wind stirred Spyder's short-cropped hair and played on the back of his neck as he folded his hands together and leaned on the rough stone. The moon and the night mocked him, he thought. The streets, indeed the city as far as he could see, was a maddening patchwork of shadows lit only by Sabellia's wan smile and the occasional flickering torch.
The bay and the sea beyond were a silvery mirror where nothing moved. Merchant ships rested in their slips for the night; fishing boats bobbed lightly on their lines at the docks.
He had chosen these apartments just for this view. Jamasharem would be interested in the comings and goings in this city's harbor. The Rankan Empire yet regarded Sanctuary with suspicion, and in truth, even fear. Too much had happened here. The place was strange. Enchanted, some said. Cursed, said others. Whichever, gods and sorcerers and demons had left their marks here as they had in no other city.
So he was Spyder, a man without heritage, without a nation.
And yet, for reasons he couldn't fully grasp, he served the Rankan emperor. Some lingering ember of loyalty still burning in his breast? Some minuscule hope of restoring the honor of the Vigeles?
It embittered him to deny his true name.
Aaliyah touched his arm, and he turned to her. Filled with a sudden need, he drew her close and pressed his head down upon her shoulder. The smell of her hair, the feathery brush of her fingers on his bare back—whether by his action or hers, his kilt fell away as their lips met. She tasted of honey and mint, sweeter and more intoxicating than the wine in his cup.
On the couch beside the table, in the open night, they made love. The soft illumination from the alabaster lamp highlighted the con-trast between their bodies and charged the air with an eroticism and sensuality that, for a time, allowed them to forget Sanctuary and danger, bitterness and fear. For a time, they had no other mission, no other purpose, but each other.
Afterward, they lay side by side watching the moon. Spyder felt Aaliyah's breathing, the soft vibration of her body next to his. He knew that she was changing his life in a way that was both fantastical and disturbing. There was no room in his life for the feelings she stirred in him, and yet already in the short month since he'd found Aaliyah, he couldn't imagine being apart from her.
He kissed her mouth, then rose from the couch. The sesame oil burning in the lamp was beginning to smoke, so he sprinkled a few grains of salt in it to stop the smoking. As he did so, something in the flame caught his attention. He stared with puzzlement as a blood red shadow touched the edge of the flame and slowly engulfed it, turning blacker and blacker.
Spyder jerked his gaze away and rubbed a thumb and finger over his eyelids. Then he shot a glance at the moon. It floated in the sky over the harbor, effulgent. Next, he noticed Aaliyah. She stood at the parapet, her attention riveted on the moon, her fingers curled like claws on the stone, her body rigid, and her head thrown back.
The braided flax wick in the sesame oil crackled suddenly, drawing his attention once again, and the flame was just a yellow flame. But he knew, without understanding how, that he had seen a vision of the coming eclipse in that small lamp light, and that Aaliyah had shared that vision, or at least, in her own way, that she had sensed something.
He caught her shoulders and drew her against him. Her face was a mask of panic and desperation. He studied the harbor again for the Vasalan ship, then slammed a palm down on the parapet in frustration. Though it had only been a small vision, it had to mean something!
"Prepare yourself, Shahana," he said, leading her to the staircase.
"They're here. They've gotten by us somehow. Now we have to find them."
They descended to their separate apartments. Spyder quickly donned garments of black leather and threw a cloak about his shoulders. From a chest at the foot of his bed he took a double-edged sword of medium length. The scabbard, though sturdy, was unremarkable, but before he strapped it on, he grasped the hilt and exposed a few inches of the blade. The candlelight in his room gleamed on fine Enlibar steel. To this, he added a plain dagger, and closed the chest once more.
But Aaliyah had reacted, too. Something had plainly agitated her.
He hurried downstairs into the darkened shop and let himself out a side door into an alley that was barely wide enough for two men to pass through shoulder to shoulder. He followed it, pausing at the opening to stare both ways down Face-of-the-Moon Street. A few torches burned here and there. One burned in a sconce before the entrance to The Black Spider.
With his hood up and his cloak drawn close, Spyder moved into the street. He kept to the shadows and the dark places as he made his way down the Hill, his footsteps silent, his movements swift and stealthy. A gang of rowdy bravos passed him without so much as noticing his presence. A pair of customers stumbled arm in arm from a tavern almost into his path with no more awareness.
Once, a low animal growl caused him to pause in mid-step. With narrowed eyes, he searched the street and the darkness around him for some sign of danger, one hand going carefully to the hilt of his sword. Behind the poorly fitted shutters of a nearby shop he noted the furtive movement of faint light, a candle or perhaps a shaded lantern, which was odd at so late an hour. Thieves, he suspected, but it was no business of his.
As he neared the bottom of the Hill, he heard the rapid clip-clop of horses' hooves and the creak of wagon wheels on rough cobbles. From the shadowed recess of an alley, he measured its approach. As it rounded a corner, the moonlight fell full upon both wagon and driver. As it passed his hiding place, Spyder leaped aboard.
The driver, Ronal, jerked hard on the reins with his left hand. At the same time, he launched a backfisted blow toward his uninvited passenger's face. Spyder caught his arm before the blow could land.
"Such a swift ride must mean you have news," he whispered as he settled on the buckboard beside his friend.
Ronal's breath hissed between his teeth. "Damn it, you nearly gave me heart failure!"
"You've a stouter heart than ten men," Spyder answered, letting go of Ronal's arm. "To the point. The ring is here—I'm certain of it."