13 Web in the Ashes
“Situated in the Drust Mountains, the Am Semni Institute is one of the Clan’s lasting achievements.
Built after the monarchy’s end, the Institute was an attempt by the Clan to hold on to power by moving to a different source: medicine.
Within its white-tiled hallways, healers undertook some of Ur Dinyé’s boldest experiments, delving deep into the minutiae of tree, root, and herb, in an attempt to better fill the divide between healing magic—only ever capable of mending or tearing—and the irreplicable effects of analgesics, stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens.
Clan Am Semni might have met great renown had they chosen to share these gifts with every Urd for moderate coin. Instead, they chose to do as the Clans always have—build walls and shutter the Institute to all but the wealthiest.
It’s no wonder, then, that their power waned as the south boomed with commerce. No coin-heavy southerner was willing to make the trek to the Institute to pay for the hoarded knowledge of a long-dead monarchical vestige. And few northerners had the coin for it.
Thus, knowledge died a silent death, with no poultice or concoction to save it.”
—excerpt from The Am Semni’s: Desert Horsefolk to a Deserted Hall by former Tetrarch Othus
Homecoming was a bitter thing.
Eleven years ago, he had left the north not yet a man, and yet with more knowledge of that rigid world than others his age could profess.
Atop the Drust Mountains and under Clevsin’s ruthless hand, he had learned power, control, and cruelty.
In Edessa, those tools had raised him above his peers, brought him wealth and acknowledgment. The same past trapped him now.
Cato frowned. “I said, “there’s a Bridger outside the tower.” She says that Sarai’s waiting for you in Sal Flumen.”
Kadra’s hand clenched around the neck of his wine bottle before he carefully set it down.
The port town was a healthy distance from Komis.
There was no reason that anyone there should recognize him after over eleven years.
Yet, he had the fleeting sensation of a death knell echoing in the back of his mind.
He had incurred a debt to the truth for over a decade.
He doubted that the past would be merciful about payment. Would Sarai?”
“Praise the Elsar, she must have found something!” Cato threw himself onto one of the couches with a relieved sigh.
“Bring this to an end quickly, Drenevan. Over two thousand dead and nearly twice that madness-struck now. Sixteen days of no one allowed into or out of the city! You can cut the tension on the streets with a knife. I don’t know how long it’ll be before they all revolt.
” An uneasy look crossed his face. “The Order’s been suspiciously quiet too.
By Truth, any more stress and my heart’ll give out… ”
The words dulled. A strange cold spread through to the tips of Kadra’s fingers, slowing his movements.
Dread. It bewildered him even as it sank deep, because he had known this would happen.
Had vowed to give Sarai the truth, while knowing that she would likely leave him for it, and had watched her enter the north’s icy embrace with the knowledge that it might tell her everything before he could.
“Drenevan?” Cato began to look alarmed. “Are you well?”
Kadra drained his wine bottle in response, spine burning at the too-swift motion. “Stress,” he said, more grimly than intended.
Oblivious, Cato sighed. “It’s alcoholism, Drenevan. Take better care of yourself. You have Sarai now.”
Therein lay the trouble, Kadra reasoned, taking the stairs to his room. He had known from the night he had sat across her in a garden folly that he wouldn’t be able to have her for long.
The turn of the hour found him packed and a parting missive slipped under the door to Cassandane’s tower, indicating that he would be absent for as long as it took to investigate Sarai’s leads and trace the whitesleep manufacturer that had infested the city.
She’d undoubtedly be highly displeased but would make full use of the optics of his departure to sell a story of national unity.
By his estimation, Edessa would tolerate it for two weeks at most before formally calling for their beheading. He and Sarai were running out of time.
The last of the light dragged its nails over the Academiae’s high walls and dappled it crimson as he approached the Aoran Tower Gate where the Bridger waited.
She acknowledged him with a wary nod, seeming ill at ease in his company as she offered her summation of the new wounds Arsamea had dealt Sarai and the murders that preoccupied the upper-north.
Unease gathered like stones in his gut. The matter of sentencing those responsible was easily solved, but the connection troubled him.
Whitesleep production at this pervasive intensity spoke to distribution far beyond the middling networks, rife with infighting, that he had kept an eye on in the years after leaving Komis.
It bore the stamp of the vast, centralized mycelium that his Clan had maintained for centuries prior to Clevsin’s end.
Every trail led back to Komis. The cold that had spread questing fingers through him solidified into ice. Over eleven years later, had Noceo and Dalvia finally made their move?
A Bridge split the air before him. Snow and salt blew in from the open portal, rimming his eyes and catching on his air.
Docks. He had known this mix of salt and wood rot in his youth during frequent trips to the Chaboras River where he and Noceo had loaded crates of illegal blazeleaf and more onto smuggling boats bound for the south.
Preoccupied, he took little notice of the north’s aching cold striking at his flesh when he entered.
Rivulets of agony ran down his back. They stood upon the port opening to the Occidens Sea.
Ice floes groaned at the northern mouth into Ur Dinyé.
Water heaved then folded to strike the boats tightly moored beside them.
Glazed by moonlight, rowboats packed with overeager adventurers floated further north on the Occidens’s sunset-pinkened surface.
And something in him knew that he should have returned sooner.
Closing the door on his past didn’t mean that it had closed the door on him.
Apologies and halting speeches formed in his mind as he walked toward the town square where his Petitor waited.
If his suspicions proved true, then he could get ahead of the bitter reveal.
He would tell her tonight, he decided, nervous in a way that he hadn’t known since before his first taste of Clevsin’s beatings with a poker.
Her figure came into view, then the back of her braid, more loosely knotted than usual.
Anticipation heated him until she turned.
Wan and hollow-eyed, Sarai nevertheless beamed upon seeing him.
The same genuine smile she gave him no matter how badly she was hurting.
His resolve melted. He couldn’t heap more on her.
Inclining his head warmly in greeting, he took his place at her side, stifling the urge to hold her.
“As promised, Praetor Florus, we’ll see to your matter of judgment. Will you be able to convene a suitable venue soon?” she asked.
Florus, who rather put Kadra in mind of a better-groomed version of Tullus, rubbed his hands with evident excitement.
“Petitor Sarai, the town will be out in minutes when our bell rings.” He turned to him and folded forward.
“Tetrarch Kadra, you honor us by—” he froze, eyes going from curiosity to startled recognition.
Fuck. Dread moved like an ice cube down Kadra’s burning spine even as he nodded to the Praetor. “It is no honor to learn that I have lost my constituents’ faith, Florus. Allow me to restore it.”
The older man’s mouth opened to release a puff of air. He stared between Kadra and a mercifully oblivious Sarai before giving a quick jerk of his head. “Yes,” he stammered. “Of course, if you’d follow me to the prison, perhaps you’d like to speak to the guilty parties.”
Kadra had the grim feeling that he had now joined that dubious group. He took Sarai’s elbow and led her a distance away. “Will you see that everyone assembles in the square?” he asked gently.
“Gods, yes.” Her sigh held both exhaustion and relief. “I know what you’re doing, Kadra. But I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the prisoners’ eyes change either. I’ve had a little too much of unexplained phenomena.” She looked up at him expectantly. “You’ve a way out for them, don’t you?”
He slanted a dark glance at her. “Is that doubt I hear?”
A huff of a laugh. “I wanted to hear you say it. You never lie.” Some of the anguish faded from her eyes. “You don’t know how much of a comfort that is.”
An icepick found his heart and cut deep. “They have a way out,” he assured her and was rewarded with a brilliant grin before she headed toward Sal Flumen’s bell tower, winding up a shoulder in readiness to ring it.
There was a time for the truth, and he was only just realizing that he had missed it.
Kadra’s walk to the town’s prison with Florus was as excruciating as he had expected.
The other man glanced at his profile, then opened his mouth and shut it in a pitiable impression of a trout.
An interesting shade of green suffused his lined features before he released a sound, like a goat being strangled mid-bleat.
“Ask,” Kadra finally ground out.
“Are you—”
“Yes.”
Florus’s face ran the gamut from white to blue. At this rate, they’d end up at a healer before the prison.
“Does she know?” the Praetor croaked after another moment.
Kadra didn’t answer.