The storm had cleared and the skies were an untamed blue—clear enough that they only needed to circle the western outcropping of the Ruhnns once before Manon spotted what she’d been looking for. Not just bones, but trees shrouded in dusty gray webs like mourning widows.
It wasn’t spidersilk, she saw as Abraxos swooped low, gliding over the trees. These were only ordinary webs.
If you could call an entire mountain wood shrouded in webs ordinary. Abraxos growled every so often at something below—shadows or whispers she couldn’t see. But she did notice the crawling on the branches, spiders of every shape and size, as if they had all been summoned here to live under the protection of their massive brethren.
It took them half the morning to find the ashen mountain caves hovering above the veiled wood, where bare bones littered the ground. She circled a few times, then set Abraxos down on an outcropping of stone at one of the cave mouths, the cliff face behind them a sheer plunge to a dried-out ravine below.
Abraxos paced like a mountain cat, tail lashing this way and that as he watched the cave.
She pointed to the edge of the cliff. “Enough. Sit down and stop moving. You know why we’re here. So don’t ruin it.”
He huffed but plopped down, shooting grayish dust into the air. He draped his long tail along the length of the cliff ’s edge, a physical barrier between Manon and the plunge. Manon stared him down for a moment before an otherworldly, feminine laugh flittered from the cave mouth. “Now that beast is one we have not seen for an age.”
Manon kept her face blank. The light was bright enough to reveal several ancient, merciless eyes looming within the cave mouth—and three massive shadows lurking behind. The voice said, closer now, pincers clicking like an accompanying drum, “And it has been an age since we dealt with the Ironteeth.”
Manon didn’t dare touch Wind-Cleaver as she said, “The world is changing, sister.”
“Sister,” the spider mused. “I suppose we are sisters, you and I. Two faces of the same dark coin, from the same dark maker. Sisters in spirit, if not in flesh.”
Then she emerged into the murky light, the mist sweeping past her like a pilgrimage of phantom souls. She was black and gray, and the sheer mass of her was enough to make Manon’s mouth go dry. Despite the size, she was elegantly built, her legs long and smooth, her body streamlined and gleaming. Glorious.
Abraxos let out a soft growl, but Manon held out a hand to silence him.
“I see now,” Manon said softly, “why my Blueblood sisters still worship you.”
“Do they, now?” The spider remained motionless, but the three behind her crept closer, silent and observing with their many dark eyes. “We can hardly recall the last time the Blueblood priestesses brought their sacrifices to our foothills. We do miss them.”
Manon smiled tightly. “I can think of a few I’d like to send your way.”
A soft, wicked laugh. “A Blackbeak, no doubt.” Those eight massive eyes took her in, swallowed her whole. “Your hair reminds me of our silk.”
“I suppose I should be flattered.”
“Tell me your name, Blackbeak.”
“My name does not matter,” Manon said. “I’ve come to bargain.”
“What would a Blackbeak witch want with our precious silk?”
She turned to reveal the vigilant Abraxos, his focus pinned on the massive spider, tense from the tip of his nose to his iron-spiked tail. “His wings need reinforcement. I heard the legends and wondered if your silk might help.”
“We have bartered our silk to merchants and thieves and kings, to be spun into dresses and veils and sails. But never for wings.”
“I’ll need ten yards of it—woven bolts, if you have them.”
The spider seemed to still further. “Men have sacrificed their lives for a yard.”
“Name your price.”
“Ten yards . . .” She turned to the three waiting behind her—offspring or minions or guards, Manon didn’t know. “Bring out the bolt. I shall inspect it before I name my price.”
Good. This was going well. Silence fell as the three scuttled into the cave, and Manon tried not to kick any of the tiny spiders crawling across her boots. Or look for the eyes she felt watching from the nearby caves across the ravine.
“Tell me, Blackbeak,” the spider said, “how did you come across your mount?”
“He was a gift from the King of Adarlan. We are to be a part of his host, and when we are done serving him, we will take them home—to the Wastes. To reclaim our kingdom.”
“Ah. And is the curse broken?”
“Not yet. But when we find the Crochan who can undo it . . .” She would enjoy that bloodletting.
“Such a delightfully nasty curse. You won the land, only for the cunning Crochans to curse it beyond use. Have you seen the Wastes these days?”
“No,” Manon said. “I have not yet been to our home.”
“A merchant came by a few years ago—he told me there was a mortal High King who had set himself up there. But I heard a whisper on the wind recently that said he’d been deposed by a young woman with wine-red hair who now calls herself their High Queen.”
Manon bristled. High Queen of the Wastes indeed. She would be the first Manon would kill when she returned to reclaim the land, when she finally saw it with her own eyes, breathed in its smells and beheld its untamable beauty.
“A strange place, the Wastes,” the spider continued. “The merchant himself was from there—a former shape-shifter. Lost his gifts, just like all of you truly mortal things. He was stuck in a man’s body, thankfully, but he did not realize that when he sold me twenty years of his life, some of his gifts passed to me. I can’t use them, of course, but I wonder . . . I do wonder what it would be like. To see the world through your pretty eyes. To touch a human man.”
The hair on Manon’s neck rose. “Here we are,” the spider said as the three approached, a bolt of silk flowing between them like a river of light and color. Manon’s breath caught. “Isn’t it magnificent? Some of the finest weaving I’ve ever done.”
“Glorious,” Manon admitted. “Your price?”
The spider stared at her for a long time. “What price could I ask of a long-lived witch? Twenty years off your lifespan is nothing to you, even with magic aging you like an ordinary woman. And your dreams . . . what dark, horrible dreams they must be, Blackbeak. I do not think I should like to eat them—not those dreams.” The spider came closer. “But what of your face? What if I took your beauty?”
“I do not think I’d walk away if you took my face.”
The spider laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean your literal face. But the color of your skin, the hue of your burnt gold eyes. The way your hair catches the light, like moonlight on snow. Those things I could take. That beauty could win you a king. Perhaps if magic returns, I’ll use it for my woman’s body. Perhaps I’ll win a king of my very own.”
Manon didn’t particularly care about her beauty, weapon though it was. But she wasn’t about to say that, or to offer it without bargaining. “I’d like to inspect the silk first.”
“Cut a swatch,” the spider ordered the three, who gently set down the yards of silk while one sliced off a perfect square. Men had killed for smaller amounts—and here they were, cutting it as if it were ordinary wool. Manon tried not to think about the size of the pincer that extended it to her. She stalked to the cliff edge, stepping over Abraxos’s tail as she held the silk to the light.
Darkness embrace her, it sparkled. She tugged it. Flexible, but strong as steel. Impossibly light. But—
“There’s an imperfection here . . . Can I expect the rest of it to be similarly marred?” The spider hissed and the ground thudded as she neared. Abraxos stopped her with a warning growl that set the other three coming up behind her—guards, then. But Manon held up the swatch to the light. “Look,” Manon said, pointing to a vein of color running through it.
“That’s no imperfection,” the spider snapped. Abraxos’s tail curled around Manon, a shield between her and the spiders, bringing her closer to the wall of his body.
Manon held it higher, angling it toward the sun. “Look in the better light. You think I’m going to give away my beauty for second-rate weaving?”
“Second rate!” the spider seethed. Abraxos’s tail curled tighter.
“No—it appears I’m mistaken.” Manon lowered her arms, smiling. “It seems I’m not in the bargaining mood today.”
The spiders, now standing along the cliff ’s edge, didn’t even have time to move as Abraxos’s tail unwound like a whip and slammed into them.
They went flying into the ravine, shrieking. Manon didn’t waste a second as she stuffed the remaining yards of silk into the empty saddlebags. She mounted Abraxos and they leapt into the air, the cliff the perfect takeoff spot, just as she’d planned.
The perfect trap for those foolish, ancient monsters.