A dozen steps farther on, my left shoulder brushed limestone and the floor tilted beneath my boots. I held Kade’s sword ahead in my right hand, its blue trace faint against the pale rock. Below, the webbed gallery stirred. Fibers tightened. Something shifted behind a curtain, then stopped.
I planted both feet and paused. The old instinct urged me across the open ground before anything could choose its distance. Kade had built that instinct with bruises and shouted corrections, but he’d built it for a body that hadn’t spent the last day being bitten, battered, and starved.
I slowed.
“You could offer something more useful than silence.”
Then stop moving as if you’re fresh.
The gallery widened around a stone column. Water had hollowed a basin beneath it, leaving a slick shelf on one side and a drop on the other. Layered web filled the far passage. Three taut lines converged near my boots. They weren’t random strands. They were tripwires.
I eased one foot back.
The air folded.
One spider stepped from the web without crossing the space between us. Pale, jointed legs appeared first, followed by its plated body, sliding into sight as if the cavern had remembered it late. A second shape shimmered behind me.
I turned toward the rear.
The first spider struck from the side.
Its foreleg drove me across the shelf. I caught the basin’s rim before my boots cleared the drop, Kade’s sword scoring a bright line through stone. The second spider appeared where I’d stood and came in low, closing the route back.
They’d chosen the ground before I knew there was a fight.
The nearer spider snapped at my face. I leaned away, took a fang across the cheek, and cut into its foreleg. Dark fluid sprayed the web.
It vanished before the stroke could carry through.
I slashed at empty stone. My balance followed the blade. The second spider hooked my ankle and dropped me to one knee.
The lines above the pact mark burned along my wrist.
I stopped hunting bodies. The spiders trusted the web to tell them where I’d be, so I watched the web instead. One strand twitched beside the column. I gathered Nightblade along Kade’s steel, dusk-dark power laid over the sword’s steady blue enchantment, and cut into the place the spider had to occupy.
The edge found it.
A foreleg spun away at the joint. The wounded spider recoiled toward the basin. I drove forward before it could disappear, forcing it across its own alarm lines.
The web behind me snapped.
I understood the pair a heartbeat too late. One retreated to hold my eyes. The other used the tremor I’d made.
Left.
I twisted, but the second spider’s leg struck my sword wrist. My hand opened. Kade’s blade skidded away across the shelf.
I lunged for it.
The wounded spider vanished. Its partner dropped between us and landed on my forearm.
My right hand flattened against the stone beneath its weight. Bones cracked together, several in one wet instant. White swallowed the cavern. I heard myself scream from somewhere inside it.
The spider shifted a claw onto my wrist and kept me pinned. Its wounded mate reappeared near the basin, blocking the only open edge. They’d stopped fighting me. Now they were arranging the meal.
Kade’s sword lay beyond the spider, blue light flickering through dust. I couldn’t reach it with the hand beneath the creature. The other hand was mine or I was dead.
Left.
This time I trusted the word before I understood it. I drove my left elbow against the limestone and rolled toward the drop. The spider moved to keep its weight over my arm. I kicked the wounded one into it, and their legs tangled for a breath.
That breath was mine.
I tore the ruined hand free, seized Kade’s sword left-handed, and threw myself over the basin’s edge.
The limestone vanished beneath me. I struck a sloping shelf and slid through a curtain of web. Silk caught my boot and jerkin. Above, the spiders hammered the rim, then began moving along routes hidden in the walls.
I cut myself loose with the sword. The slope carried me into a water-cut seam beneath the gallery, where pale shelves curled around a black channel. Mineral ribs striped the walls. Stone teeth broke the descent into narrow levels.
There was no room to stand. Only the slick incline, the channel, and a drop widening below.
I clamped Kade’s sword beneath my left arm, caught a limestone spur with my left hand, and swung over open space. Three broken levels descended beneath me, each crossed by remnants of masonry and silvered silk. The spiders flickered along the upper shelf, searching for an angle that put them ahead of me again.
Hanging there made their method plain. They didn’t vanish at random. They folded from one anchored web to another. Cut the anchors, and perhaps the cavern would have to remember them honestly.
The discovery might matter, assuming I survived to use it.
I kicked away from the wall and let the first shelf catch me. It threw me onto the next. Web stretched beneath my weight, lowered me through a ragged opening, and tore only when the black cleft below rose near enough not to kill me.
I landed among wet strands and rolled beneath a low shelf. Above, one spider tested the descent. The other held the route back. Neither entered the cleft. Whatever patience governed them ended at its narrow mouth.
I waited with Kade’s sword in my left hand until the clicking withdrew.
Only then did I look at my right hand. The glove had tightened across fast swelling. Two fingers lay at angles they’d never chosen. I drew the arm against my chest and studied the cleft: water, old stone, no room for the spiders to phase beside me.
It wasn’t safety. It bought time to stop the broken bones from moving.
The thought was simple. My hand refused to cooperate.
I crawled deeper beneath the cleft until limestone enclosed me on three sides and the web overhead hid me from the gallery. Kade’s sword went beside my left knee, close enough to seize without crossing my body. Then I caught the glove between my teeth and peeled it from the swelling.
Two fingers hung crookedly. Their knuckles had disappeared into a purple mass that already looked borrowed from somebody else.
“That’s ugly,” I whispered.
My voice sounded thin in the stone pocket.
I tore a strip from my jerkin hem with my left hand and teeth, then unwound spider silk from the limestone. A single strand stretched farther than thread should before snapping. Twisted together, several became cord. The creatures had supplied the best binding in the cavern. Rude hosts, excellent stores.
The first loop slipped.
I caught it with my teeth and tried again.
Careful.
“I’m redefining the word.”
Cloth alone wouldn’t hold the bones. I dragged the salvaged quiver around, worked one arrow free, and pinned the shaft beneath my boot. The head snapped against the limestone. I wrapped the bare wood in the glove’s leather and set it along the outside of my hand.
That part would’ve made Kade laugh. He used to call arrows what happened when swordsmen stood too far from their mistakes.
Holding the splint with my teeth, I wound the twisted silk around wrist and palm. My injured fingers had one remaining duty: stay where I put them. I drew the binding tight once.
The cavern narrowed to white stone and my own ragged breath. When it widened again, the fingers were still crooked, but they no longer shifted.
It was a poor splint, also the best available. By my afternoon’s standards, excellent.
The phase spiders clicked somewhere above. One set of legs crossed the webbed gallery. A second answered farther down the slope. They were spreading out, looking for another anchor near the cleft.
I reached for Kade’s sword with my left hand, then stopped. The pact mark burned beneath the bandage, and the lines above my wrist answered.
“What haven't you told me?”
Many things.
“One of them. Start small.”
The mark cooled beneath the binding.
Survival isn't all I want from you.
Above us, a web anchor gave a faint musical twang.
“What else?”
Victory.
“Over the spiders?”
No.
That single word put more room around us than the cleft possessed.
“Over whom?”
Not while you can barely hold a sword and something above us is learning the shape of this hiding place.
“Convenient.”
Alive first. Angry afterward.
I listened to the clicking above. She'd answered enough to make the silence worse.
I listened to the two sets of clicking. Retreat meant climbing toward hunters that could fold between anchors. Ahead, the water channel continued beneath the old worked stone, and the nearest web there hung slack and gray.
I took Kade’s sword in my left hand, rose into a crouch, and chose the road the spiders no longer maintained.
When my knees steadied, I saw a cocoon hanging in a shallow niche below the shelf. It had split from throat to ankle around a dead delver. Silk draped the body in loose strips. One arm remained free, fingers curled around the strap of a pack cut open and abandoned. The torn strands still trembled.
Fresh enough meant the spider might return.
I sheathed Kade’s sword, slid down the limestone, and landed badly. Pain shot through my right hand. I caught myself against the wall with my left before I fell, then stayed there with my cheek against cold stone, breathing through my teeth.
“You’re doing beautifully,” I whispered.
Take what you need.
“I’d love to. My hand has become particular about the process.”
I reached the body and used my boot to roll it away from the pack. The delver had been dead long enough for the face to lose its shape beneath the silk, but the leather armor remained mostly intact. Smoke-gray panels covered chest and shoulders, thin and close-fitted, with narrow strips sewn to flex beneath the arms. A small maker’s mark sat near the collar, though grime hid its shape.
The armor looked weak. Better than cloth, worse than confidence.
I cut the remaining straps with my belt knife. One-handed work turned every buckle into a little enemy. I pinned the armor beneath my knee, dragged the first fastening loose with my teeth, and nearly reopened my hand when the leather snapped free. White burst across my vision.
I stopped, swallowed, and made myself start again more slowly.
That was slowly.
I could still have gone slower.
I scowled at the knot and kept working.
The old armor came away in pieces. I fitted the smoke-gray leather over my shirt, lifting my right arm as little as possible while my left hand pulled the straps across my ribs. The final buckle sat beneath my injured wrist. After three failed attempts, I hooked the clasp with my knife point and forced it shut.
The leather settled against my ribs, light and responsive. It did nothing for my hand, but covered my chest without stealing my balance. I could move in it. Cold moved through the pact mark, then answered from the little maker's mark near the collar.
Silkward.
“The armor?”
The enchantment remembers its name.
Silkward. I tightened the last strap and hoped it remembered how to keep someone alive.
Something clicked beyond the niche.
I froze.
Not close. Stone carried sound strangely here. It might’ve come from the gallery above or one of the unseen hollows below. I held my breath until my lungs burned. No second click followed.
My body wanted to crouch beside the dead and wait for certainty. Certainty hadn’t been especially generous with me today.
I searched the pack.
Most of it’d been ruined, but a narrow inner pocket remained sealed beneath waxed cloth. I drew it open with my knife and found a small clay pot wrapped in oilskin. Its lid bore a faded red stripe. Antidote paste, if the delver had known what he carried. Otherwise, I’d acquired expensive red mud.
I tucked it beneath the armor against my left side.
At the bottom of the pack lay a crystal the length of my thumb. Pale-blue light glimmered inside, dim but steady, like winter sky trapped beneath the surface. I closed my left hand around it. Cold reached through my palm without biting.
“Useful?” I murmured.
Stored light. Cold, but no poison that I can sense. I don’t know how long it’ll hold.
“Your confidence is a comfort.”
It wasn’t offered as one.
The delver’s weapon rested beside the body, half buried beneath a fold of silk. A short hand axe, dark at the head and marked with fine runes along one cheek. The haft had been worn smooth by use. I picked it up with my left hand and tested the balance.
The axe settled against my palm as if it’d been waiting there.
Kade’s sword hung at my hip. I’d already proved I could swing it with my left hand. That wasn’t the same as wielding it well. The grip sat on the wrong side of every habit Kade had beaten into me, my recovery came late, and each parry asked my off hand to remember years learned by the other. My right fingers twitched against the splint when I tried to close them. The motion ended in a hot, sickening throb.
The axe offered no miracle. It was shorter, easier to recover, and less likely to bury its edge in stone or web when the walls crowded my shoulder. A strand above the niche snapped taut. Something moved beyond the limestone, close enough to shake dust across the dead delver’s boots. The axe was useful. It didn’t make my left hand into two.
“You’re not helping,” I told the sword.
It offered no opinion.
I hooked the axe through the belt beside my buckle, haft angled where my left hand could reach it after I sheathed the sword. Then I reconsidered the niche around me. It was too narrow for a full sword cut, but the short haft and close-set blade could work there. I put Kade’s sword away one-handed and kept the axe.
The cocoon shifted behind me.
I spun too quickly. My shoulder struck the wall, jolting my injured hand until my teeth clicked. The corpse hadn’t moved. A loose curtain of silk had slipped from the niche roof and settled across its chest.
My breathing came fast. I hated that the body had frightened me. I hated more that the spiders had taught me to distrust harmless motion.
Then the silk above the gallery drew tight.
The movement traveled in a clean line from the upper ledge to the niche mouth. One strand pulled, then another, then another. Not wind. Not settling stone. Something had touched the webwork beyond my sight, and its message was coming toward me.
I was out of time.
I shoved the pale-blue crystal into the armor’s inner pocket. The strap across my ribs tugged. My right hand flared when I steadied the antidote, and I nearly dropped it. I caught the clay pot with my elbow, pinned it against my side, and forced the last buckle closed with my left thumb.
The silk at the niche mouth tightened again.
I backed toward the lower shelf, axe raised, the dead delver at my feet and the cut-open cocoon stirring faintly in the draft. Beyond the limestone, something moved across the web. I couldn’t see it yet, but strands drew taut one after another, and the route behind me began to close.
I moved, but not quickly. Quickness belonged to people with two working hands and a clear idea where their feet would land. I kept the axe raised in my left hand and edged along the shelf, placing each boot where the limestone looked least powdered. Feeding chambers opened below, each crowded with remains that had once struggled. Bones lay bundled in silk. Carapaces cracked beneath translucent layers. A furred limb protruded from one hanging parcel, and I looked away before my mind decided what animal had owned it.
The webs carried movement from below. A tap sounded far off. Another answered behind me. Three quick strikes followed to my left, then one from the depths.
I stopped breathing.
The pattern repeated, never with the same spacing. One section of silk trembled, and a spider shifted beneath it. A second tremor crossed the ceiling. They weren't reacting to noise at random. They were passing something along.
I waited.
With my back against the stone, I waited while sweat cooled beneath Silkward. My bound hand stayed against my chest and out of the way.
A spider descended into the chamber below.
It didn't see me. Its legs tested the strands, then paused beneath a web bridge while another creature crossed above. The first tapped once. The second answered twice. Both turned toward the same distant passage.
There it was again. The same answer, the same direction. A command given and repeated.
“They’re reporting,” I whispered.
Yes.
That single word settled worse than any threat. A wild nest could be predicted by hunger, territory, and panic. This had sentries, routes, and a way to tell one chamber what another had found.
Kade had made me read ground until a bent stem or a bad post confessed. Web spoke differently, but it spoke.
I moved when the two spiders moved, keeping their bodies between me and the open span. The axe dragged at my left shoulder. Kade’s sword remained usable at my hip, but changing back meant finding room to belt the axe and make an awkward off-hand draw. The short haft fit the ledge. I kept imagining the axe slipping into the gulf and leaving me to attempt that exchange while the web moved beneath my boots.
Two blades, one hand, and no clever way to hold both. I’d always wanted to be remarkable. This wasn't the method I'd chosen.
The feeding chamber narrowed around a collapsed ledge. Another delver lay beneath it, wrapped from boots to throat in gray silk, the third body I’d robbed since morning, and I’d stopped apologizing to them out loud. His pack had split against the stone. I crouched beside him, eyes fixed on the web bridges, and worked it open with my teeth and left thumb.
The first glass bottle rolled against my wrist. I caught it against my knee. A second followed, then a third, all stoppered with wax. The first two held clear amber-brown liquid. The third had clouded into something thick and green.
“Healing draughts,” I murmured. “Two of them.”
I took the two good bottles. A small leather purse lay trapped beneath the dead delver's hip. I cut the cord and shook nine gold coins into my palm.
Gold was absurd down here. Then I pictured hot food, a room with a door, and daylight I could spend it in. I put the coins away.
The hand axe stayed in my left grip.
Drink one now.
“I was planning to leave them for the spiders.”
She didn't answer. She let it stand, which from her was nearly generous.
I wedged the axe head beneath my knee and pulled one stopper with my teeth. No sensible man found medicine while half broken and saved every drop for a more dramatic death.
The draught tasted of bitter roots steeped in old copper. Heat followed it down my throat, spread through my chest, and found every place the spiders had opened. I dragged my collar aside. The shallow cut across my left shoulder drew together while I watched, wet edges tightening into a narrow pink seam. The bruise down my arm faded from black to purple, and the joint loosened enough for me to lift my elbow without wanting to vomit.
Then the warmth reached my right hand. Swelling receded around the splint. Torn skin tightened. The crushed bones underneath remained exactly where pain said they were, and two fingers still sat wrong against the arrow shaft.
Of course. Magic could be useful without being courteous.
I tucked the empty vial into the ruined pack and slid the last draught beneath Silkward. The splint stayed. My shoulder moved freely enough to matter.
Something clinked beneath the dead man's shoulder. I hooked it free with the axe tip, a fistful of coppers, green with damp and not worth the bending. I left them where they lay and took a narrow iron tube from beneath the pack's frame instead.
Inside lay a short, thick torch wrapped in waxed cloth. Its wick was black, its body marked with slow-burning salts. I struck it against the stone.
Flame caught reluctantly, then steadied into a low, stubborn glow. It reached beyond the little flame I'd carried before, revealing web ladders, feeding pits, and narrow shelves stitched into the cavern walls. An iron clip along the casing caught Silkward’s shoulder strap. I fixed the slowburn above my left shoulder, angled the flame past my cheek, and freed my only useful hand.
Far above, something tapped three times.
The nearest spiders froze.
I flattened myself beneath an overhang as bodies shifted across the web bridges. One after another, the creatures turned from my chamber toward the same distant opening. None rushed. None searched. They obeyed the signal and left me behind, which frightened me more than pursuit would have.
When the last pale back vanished, I slipped beneath the overhang and followed the chamber's edge. The slowburn torch showed what my first light had hidden. Silk lines ran from every feeding pit toward the deeper cavern, gathering into thick cords before dividing toward other chambers. A message could travel from the outer ledges to the depths without a creature crossing the open spaces.
At the far end, the cavern widened.
The floor dropped beneath a natural arch, and the torch flame leaned toward the hollow beyond. Pillars rose through the gulf like pale ribs, carrying webs that vanished into the heights. The structures were too large for an ordinary nest. Bridges crossed distances I couldn't judge. Basins hung between stone columns. Cocoon clusters swayed in layers, each tied to the cords spreading through the feeding chambers.
A strand pulled taut far below.
Every web answered.
Spiders turned in unison across the cavern: scores in the torchlight, more shifting beyond it, all facing the same point beneath the arch. The last signal drew the silk taut and lifted the hanging basins.
Something ahead commands it.
My grip tightened around the axe.
Below, the web basin sagged. A plated curve rose through it, broad enough to eclipse the torchlight. Another jointed, pale section followed between the pillars while the cavern drew tight around its ascent.
One amber eye opened beneath the web canopy.
The silk above it lifted on a head broad as a wagon bed.
Web bridges tightened from the outer ledges inward. Bodies shifted along every bridge my torch could find.
Not toward me.
Toward her.
Spiders lowered themselves against the silk as she rose.
The pact mark beneath my left bindings cooled.
She commands them. She’s the reason they move.
“The whole nest?”
Every strand I can feel.
I swallowed. My mouth tasted of iron and old dust.
The Queen rose another pace.
Her body emerged from the basin in a slow, terrible ascent, displacing the webwork instead of climbing through it. Pale plating along her abdomen caught the torchlight in broad, curved bands. One segment passed behind a pillar, and the pillar vanished from view. Web structures stretched across her back and clung there, built into the cavern’s supports as though generations of silk had grown around her.
A second amber eye opened.
Then a third.
The bowing spread outward in a perfect ring. Bridges dipped. Cocoon clusters swung. Far above, hidden bodies pressed flat until the cavern became a pattern of pale silk and waiting legs.
The road beyond Brookhaven had led me to a kingdom of silk, and every subject had bowed for my execution.
I raised the axe, though my shoulder shook with the effort. The blade pointed toward the basin. Kade’s sword knocked once against my hip, a small, familiar sound that tightened my grip.
The Queen’s head turned toward it.
Her mandibles parted, and thousands of web lines snapped tight at once, pulling the whole Maw into a single answering shudder.