Free The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin series) by Daniel Abraham Page A

they take arms? Or will they be like our guest?”
    Clara wished badly she’d thought to bring a pipe. The wine was warm, but too sweet. She wanted the feel of the stem between her teeth and the taste of smoke. “The court,” she said, “is unlikely to turn. The lords who were most prone to object to the priests rose already, my husband among them, and they’re all dead. Anyone disloyal to Palliako is dead or exiled or hung from the Prisoner’s Span. The fear he has built in these last years… No. I think they won’t rise up. Even if they know what the priests are and how they function. And after all, they think they’re winning.”
    “They
are
winning,” Tracian said, only of course that wasn’t true. None of them were winning, except perhaps Morade, thousands of years dead and still sowing chaos among the dragons’ slaves.
    Komme Medean sighed. “That’s the thing with these spiders, isn’t it? Even when the wolf’s at their door, they’ll
believe
they’re on top of the world and pissing down on the rest of us. You can’t change a man’s mind when he’s lost the capacity to see he’s wrong.”

Cithrin
     
    H ow long did you work with Karol Dannien?” Marcus asked. If she hadn’t known him for as long as she had, it might have sounded like an innocuous question. The Yemmu sitting across the table from them reached up and scratched at one of the great carved tusks that rose from his lower jaw. Since Cithrin was fairly certain the intricate whirls and images in the enamel weren’t capable of itching, she interpreted it as a sign of annoyance.
    “Three seasons, more or less,” Dantag Moss said. “Two in Borja when the council shat itself and Tauendak declared against Lôdi, and then a summer in the Keshet.”
    “Small unit work?” Marcus asked.
    “And some garrisoning. Elder Samabir up in Tauendak wanted his family to have the glory of the battle, so he set us up to stop anyone from looping around behind him.”
    Yardem flicked a jingling ear. “And you let him?”
    “Dannien let him,” Moss said. “I was tertian back then. Not going to dictate to my prime.”
    Marcus glanced over at Yardem, the two men conducting some tacit conversation over her head. Cithrin wished she had a tusk to scratch, then smiled, amused by the image. Around them, the common house was quiet. It was just after midday, and the streets were at their warmest. When the door opened, there was the smell of water and the soundof dripping snowmelt from the roofs. The winter sunset would come in fewer than three hours and turn it all back to ice. There would be time later to huddle together around the rough wood tables, but anyone whose work called them out into the city was hurrying now to get it finished before the dark came.
    Cithrin was comfortable where she was.
    “Fair enough,” Marcus said. Whatever test he’d been making, the mercenary had passed it, or near enough.
    Cithrin took it as time for her to take the negotiation. “How long before you could put your men in the field?”
    “Start of fighting season’s still six weeks out, if the weather’s with you. Nine if it’s not.”
    “Not what I asked.”
    “Then the answer’s going to depend on what your cold bonus is. Man loses a finger, it ain’t much comfort that it was frostbite and not an axe.”
    “Fair enough—”
    “And, ah, no offense, miss? Captain Wester? But hard coin. This war gold? It doesn’t do with the men.”
    Yardem made a low throbbing sound in his throat, something equal parts cough and growl. Moss’s scowl deepened, his lips flowing around the carved teeth. The only other Yemmu Cithrin had worked with was Pyk Usterhall, the bank’s notary lost in the flight from Porte Oliva. Seeing Pyk’s expression on the mercenary’s face left her melancholy. Cithrin took a long sip of wine to clear it away.
    “There’s a bonus for accepting war gold,” she said. “If you only take coin, it’ll be eighty on the hundred. And you’re going