The Iron Ghost (9 page)

Minh’s favourite time of the day was the very early morning. As he made his way down to the spider enclosure in dawn’s first light, the forest would be just waking up, and the relentless sun had yet to turn the air between the trees into a humid fog. He would listen to the birds and the shriller calls of the bats, a great invisible world beyond the leaves that he only caught the occasional glimpse of, and for a little while he would feel at peace. Later, Tunhi and Balje would be jabbering in his ear again, fretting over the price of silk and how much stock they would have for that day’s market. They would pick over what he had collected and tut at it, running their fingers over the silvery strands and shaking their heads, regardless of the actual quality of the silk. Minh would stand and wait patiently for it to be over so he could retire to the dye shed and spend the rest of the day mixing powders and ignoring them.

Sisters. Who’d have them?

The webs were also at their most beautiful in the early morning light; dew sparkled on each strand like a string of diamonds.

‘Ah, you have been doing fine work, my friends!’

The enclosure itself was a loosely constructed circular fence that surrounded seven tall trees. The spiders had industriously covered the entire area in huge, glistening webs. Minh stood for a moment admiring them, until a flurry of movement in the undergrowth caught his eye.

‘Up early today, my friend?’

The spider was roughly the size of a dog, its abdomen covered in thick brown fur. Muscular purple legs churned up the grass as it came, and behind it were three more spiders, almost identical.

‘You just want to see what’s in my bag, don’t you?’

Minh dropped his pack and pulled out a small hessian sack. Ignoring the smell, he reached inside and drew out a handful of dead baby rats, which he threw up into the collection of webs. Some missed entirely, but most hit the thick sticky strands and stuck there, sending vibrations into the trees. The spiders scurried back to their webs, and for a while Minh just stood and watched them work; maybe this was his favourite part of the morning after all. There was something oddly soothing about watching his spiders package up their food.

When they were done, he walked into the centre of the enclosure, taking care not to disturb the webs. Reaching into his pack again he took out a fat paper bundle shaped like an onion, and using his pocket flint, he lit the top and set it down on the ground. Once he was sure that the bundle was producing enough of the thick black smoke, he stepped hurriedly away and waited outside the fence until he heard the soft thump of spiders falling from their perches.

The smoke bomb burnt itself out soon after that and Minh ventured back in, the spider-spindle in one hand.

‘Harvest time, my friends. Let’s have your best, shall we? It would be good to see my sisters without sour faces for once.’

The first spider he came to lay on its back with all eight legs in the air. It was still alive, and if he looked closely he could see the shiny black eyes quivering, but for him to collect the silk, the spiders needed to be asleep. With the ease born of long practice, he pressed the spider-spindle to the spider’s spiked rear end and caught the first glob of pearly web. Once that was caught it was simply a case of turning the spindle, and within a few moments there was a thick ribbon of silk shining on the wooden slats. He turned it sharply to one side, cutting the thread, and began to pick his way through the undergrowth, looking for more spiders. They weren’t difficult to find.

Dimly, Minh was aware that some people might have been unnerved by his job. He had once visited friends in the distant city of Relios, a beautiful place of red brick and holy temples, and whilst staying in a friend’s house he had watched with polite shock as the children shrieked over a tiny spider in their washbasin. It had been a minuscule, baby thing, no longer than his smallest finger, and Minh had picked it up with his hands and taken it outside. That night he had been jokingly declared the hero of the house and they’d drunk several glasses of wine in his honour.

Imagine if they found you in their washbasin
, he thought as he rubbed one spider’s furry belly.
They could not wash you into the gutter.

When he was done he had six full spindles, and a quick glance told him that this was a fine harvest that should fetch them a great deal of coin.
Perhaps,
he reasoned,
if my sisters did something about their sour faces at market, we would make more money.

He emerged from the trees so deep in thought that he almost didn’t notice the solemn young woman standing there; she was a patch of shadows hidden amongst the tall trunks.

‘Can I help you, miss?’

Minh was not alarmed, only curious. It wasn’t unusual to come across travellers in the Silk Woods, although most foreigners were unnerved by the giant spiders and moths that made their homes here.

‘This is most fascinating.’ The young woman came out of the shadows, barely making a noise as she stepped through the undergrowth. ‘These are your spiders?’

‘Yes, miss.’ Minh slipped the spindles back into his pack. ‘My family have worked this part of the Silk Wood for seven generations.’

‘And they do not wander off? Make webs elsewhere?’ The young woman was by his side now, staring up into the trees where the spiders were beginning to climb back to their webs, still slightly sluggish.

‘Oh no, we feed them well. Every other morning I come down here and I stock up their webs for them. They could, of course, survive elsewhere in the forest, but why would they move when their stomachs are always heavy with food? Besides, they know me, and I know them.’

‘You said your family work this patch. What do the rest of the family do?’

Minh pressed his lips together, considering his next words. He did not wish to speak ill of his sisters to a complete stranger, but it was rather fine to stand here while the forest warmed up, chatting idly for once. Tunhi and Balje had no time for idle banter.

‘I have two sisters, miss, and once we have woven the silks and dyed them, it is their job to take them to market. Mostly, I believe, they gossip while they are there and do very little selling, and then they have the cheek to blame our poverty on our spiders’ silk.’ He paused, and cleared his throat. ‘If you would like to buy a sample of our wares – a silk scarf perhaps – then go to the market and ask around for Tunhi Ariani. She will give you a good deal, no doubt.’
Certainly she will
, thought Minh,
when she sees your face. You will be the prettiest woman at the market, and Tunhi can hardly resist that.

‘Thank you, I shall do that.’

For a moment Minh thought he was suffering a heart-storm, like that which had taken their father from them, but when he looked down he saw a short bone handle protruding from his chest. He was sure the young woman hadn’t moved, and yet there it was. His hand fluttered up to it and he felt his own blood flooding through his vest, obscenely hot.

‘Why?’ He looked up into the young woman’s face – there was no anger there, no murderous intent, only the same polite curiosity. ‘I would have given . . . given you the silk, only . . .’

‘Do not worry yourself.’ The young woman put a hand on Minh’s shoulder and gently pushed him to the ground. ‘I am just an unexpected mishap. The predator in the woods.’

Minh sank to the floor, the smell of the earth and his own blood mingling in his nostrils. It was warm now, and would only grow warmer. He did not want to die in the heat.

Siano stood and watched the man bleed out into the dirt, before leaning down to force some of the blood into one of her vials.

‘Your sisters next, then,’ she said to the corpse. ‘They should be easy enough to find. Thank you.’

There was a chittering from the trees ahead of her, and as she watched several of the huge fat spiders slid down from the webs on long rope-like threads. Their mandibles were flexing excitedly, and belatedly Siano wondered if they could smell the blood, and what they made of it. She took a few hurried steps backwards and drew a thin-bladed short sword from the concealed sheath on her back; a last resort weapon this, for when all hope of secrecy and striking in the dark were lost.

The first of the spiders reached the fence and skittered over it, perching on the top and watching Siano with glistening black eyes. It raised its front legs slowly, an unmistakably hostile gesture, and three of its fat brothers followed suit. Siano tensed, considering running for it rather than taking on four dog-sized spiders with one slim sword, but the idea of having these creatures at her back was even more unnerving.

There was a long, slow moment. Siano could hear birds in the trees, and there was sweat on her brow.

And then the first spider crawled down the fence and over to the body, where it began to tear long strips of flesh from the dead man’s face. After a moment or so, the creature’s brothers joined it and began to do the same.

Siano watched them for a moment, fascinated by the industrious flexing of legs and mandibles, and then she put her sword away and walked back through the forest.

Looking back on his journey through Ynnsmouth with the brood sisters, Sebastian would come to decide that the girl had been a bad omen. He should have known from that moment that only grief and disaster awaited them in the mountains, that the only sensible option would have been to turn and flee, but there is nothing as stubborn as a man whose self-righteousness is born of guilt.

They had been moving down through the lake-duchies of Ynnsmouth, skirting those places at the very edge of the lakes where settlements tended to grow like mould, and staying as far out of sight as they could. Sebastian walked at the head of their group, his own hood thrown back so that anyone approaching could see his face, while the rest of the brood sisters kept theirs hidden. He had refused any requests to send scouts forward, wanting to keep everyone where he could see them – perhaps, he’d reasoned, people would see their travelling group from a distance and assume they were a company of unknown mercenaries on the move, and therefore best not approached.

It was a cold, bright day, sunlight covering the lakes in a film of gold. The girl came running down the rocky path to their right, arms pin-wheeling to keep her balance, and for a few seconds Sebastian was too shocked to react – seeing her was like a memory suddenly come to life.

She wore the traditional scarlet-hooded cloak of girls training to be lake-singers, the hem dotted with creamy white pearls, the back stitched with the leaping shape of a trout. It was a lake-singer’s job to sing the men out on their boats every morning, and sing them safely back in again in the evening, and when Sebastian had been small, three or four of the girls in his village had taken up the vocation. He remembered so clearly the scarlet blaze of their hoods, and how they had become so mysterious to him then; they had joined some exclusive club that was closed off to boys and men, and when he saw them, their heads would be bent together in whispers. They had to embroider the fish on the cloak themselves, Sebastian remembered, but their mothers sewed the pearls. That was how it had always been.

Stumbling onto the grass in front of them, she looked up and caught Sebastian’s eye. The sight of the girl, red hood flapping and a simple wooden flute clutched in her right hand – it was, he remembered, the first instrument the lake-singers learned to master – surprised a grin out of him, and any trepidation the girl might have had at the sight of this rag-tag bunch immediately vanished. She grinned back at him.

‘If you see my da, don’t tell him I came this way,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. Turning back to Sebastian, she adjusted the line of her scarlet cloak. Underneath the hood her hair was a mass of dark brown curls that hadn’t seen a brush for some time. ‘I’ll go back in a little while, I just wanna practise by myself.’ She held up the flute as if that were explanation enough.

Behind him, Sebastian could feel the brood sisters grow still, waiting for him to make the first move. The girl hadn’t taken any notice of the figures behind him just yet, but that could all change in a moment.

Keeping his face as open and friendly as possible, Sebastian bent his knees, resting his arms on his thighs so that she could see his hands were empty. It seemed important to do that.

‘You have a testing soon, lake-singer?’

Her face brightened at the use of the title she had yet to earn. ‘This evening, when the boats come in,’ she said, her gaze not moving from his face. ‘Da wants me to go back and have an early bath,’ she rolled her eyes at this, ‘and brush my hair out and all that, but I just want to go through my songs one last time without Ma giving me the eyeball.’

Sebastian smiled and nodded. Behind him he heard one of the brood sisters moving from foot to foot. He could feel their anxiety like a tremor in his blood. They wanted to know why they did not just move on.

‘Lake-singers must always have clean faces, I remember that much,’ he said. The girl looked pained at this, so he winked at her. ‘Tell you what. Play the boatmen a verse of “Kaylee Catch Me Calling” this afternoon, and I won’t tell your father a word.’

She smiled again, and nodded. ‘I know that one, it’s easy,’ she said. She turned to go, her eyes already set on the silvery lake that spread beneath them, lazing in the summer light. ‘I’ll be back in plenty of time to wash—’

There was a shout from above them and a thickset man with a dark beard and a bald head appeared over the top of the low hill. His cheeks and ears were red with exertion.

‘Denia, what do you think you’re playing at?’ he bellowed, chugging down the slope in a slow jog. Belatedly, he spotted the group beyond his daughter, and that was where it all went wrong.

‘Good sir,’ Sebastian straightened up and immediately approached the man, hoping that his open face, so stamped with the lines and tones of Ynnsmouth, would put him at his ease, ‘many apologies for waylaying your daughter on her way back to you, but it has been many years since I heard a lake-singer practise her craft, and—’