Chapter 5: The Spymistress's Web
The walls of Eldarov’s lower town smelled of wet wool and baking bread. The bell tower stood apart from the bustling market, a stern finger of grey stone against the bruised evening sky. They watched it for an hour from the leaky awning of a chandler’s shop, noting the patterns of the beggars nearby, the rhythm of the city guard’s patrol.
Mia finally moved, a shadow detaching itself from deeper shadow. “Wait here.”
“I should come.”
“You’re recognisable. I’m not. That’s the point.”
Sammy watched her cross the muddy square, not slinking but walking with a servant’s purposeful, head-down haste. She saw Mia pause to adjust a boot near the northeast foundation, a quick, fluid motion. Her hand disappeared into a dark gap between stones and emerged empty. A moment later, she was gone, melting into an alley.
She returned five minutes later, a small, oilskin-wrapped packet in her hand. They retreated to a derelict stable they’d scouted earlier, the air thick with the ghost of hay and manure.
Inside the packet was a slim cipher key, a scrap of parchment with a series of numbered lines, and a purse of mixed coin—payment for Goran’s last report. Mia smoothed the parchment on a broken crate. Her eyes scanned the codes, her fingers tracing invisible patterns. She’d found Goran’s last outgoing message, awaiting pickup.
“He confirmed our arrival in Raven’s Ferry,” she said flatly. “Requested instructions on ‘containment.’” She picked up the cipher key, a simple letter-shift device. “We use his hand. We report your death.”
Using the back of the original parchment, a stolen quill, and a tiny bottle of ink, Mia forged the message. Her handwriting was an eerily perfect match for Goran’s florid scrawl. Queen deceased. Complications neutralized. Awaiting instruction for succession protocol. She sealed it with a dab of wax, pressing it with a blank signet she produced from her own pouch.
“It’ll buy us a day, maybe two, before they send someone to verify,” Mia said, handing the note to Sammy. “Your turn. You know the drop. You do it.”
Sammy’s fingers were cold around the parchment. This was the first active step. Not running, not reacting. Attacking. She walked back to the tower, her hood pulled low, her heart a frantic bird in her throat. She crouched, feeling for the loose stone. Her fingers found the familiar, gritty edge. She slid the note into the dark, hollow space behind it. The stone clicked back into place.
It felt like sealing her own tomb.
They didn’t sleep in the stable. They moved to a different bolt-hole, a room above a noisy tannery where the stink was so overpowering it made them invisible. Sammy stared at the water-stained ceiling, listening to the drums of the tannery workers below. The plan was logical. Wait. Let the message do its work. Scout the bell tower for a response.
But logic had evaporated. A furious, impatient energy crawled under her skin. Every minute Vex breathed the air of her palace, sat in her study, offered false counsel, was a minute of betrayal she could no longer stomach.
“We can’t just wait,” she said into the dark, her voice tight.
Mia was a silhouette by the window, watching the street. “Waiting is the play.”
“She’s there. Right now. Drinking my wine, reading my reports, lying to my face.” Sammy sat up. “I need to see it. I need to know.”
“Sentiment.”
“No. Evidence. The letter you forged is a guess. What if there’s more in her study? Real names. Dates. The location of this hunting lodge.” Sammy’s mind was racing, fueled by a potent mix of rage and dread. “We get that, we don’t need to wait for a response. We can find them.”
Mia was silent for a long time. The tannery drums beat a relentless rhythm. “It’s a risk.”
“Everything is a risk.”
“If she’s there, she’ll have guards.”
“Then we don’t go if she’s there. We watch. We use the passage from the linen pantry. You know the one you used to case the palace last month.” Sammy was already pulling on her dark, nondescript tunic. “We just look.”
Mia turned from the window. In the faint light, her grey eyes were unreadable. “Just look,” she repeated, a quiet challenge.
Sammy met her gaze. “Just look.”
The postern gate by the kitchen midden was unlocked, as it always was until the head cook’s final round at midnight. They slipped through like sighs, into the familiar, sprawling underbelly of the palace. The warm, humid scent of steam and soup gave way to the cleaner, colder smell of stone and beeswax as they climbed the narrow servant’s stair. Sammy led, every creak of the wood a thunderclap in her ears.
The door to the linen pantry opened with a well-oiled hush. Sheets and hangings were piled high on shelves, smelling of lavender and sun. On the far wall, behind a tall shelf of pressed tablecloths, was a panel Sammy had shown Mia weeks ago, a forgotten access for chambermaids to move between floors without crossing the main halls. It opened into a cramped, dusty passage that ran behind the wall of the council corridor.
They emerged behind a tapestry depicting the Founding Battle. Sammy peeked through the moth-eaten gap. The corridor was empty, lit by flickering sconces. Lady Vex’s study was three doors down.
They listened at the polished oak. No sound from within. No slice of light under the door.
Mia produced two thin tools from her sleeve and worked the lock. It clicked with a sound like a falling coin. They slipped inside, closing the door silently behind them.
The study was a landscape of organized cunning. Neat stacks of reports, maps pinned to boards with threads of different colors tracing networks of influence and suspicion. The air was layered: old paper, dried ink, the faint, floral scent of Vex’s perfume, and beneath it, something colder. Metallic. Like a knife left on a desk.
Sammy went straight to the vast, leather-inlaid desk. Her hands trembled. This felt like a violation, even though every book, every paper in this room was technically hers. It was Vex’s mind laid bare, and it was a trap she’d willingly walked into for months.
She began sifting through the neat piles. Intelligence from the southern border. Grain yield reports. Nothing damning.
Mia moved to a sideboard, her fingers gliding over rolled maps, checking drawers with silent efficiency.
“It wouldn’t be out,” Sammy muttered, more to herself. “She’s too careful.”
She tried the single drawer on the desk. Locked. Mia was beside her in an instant, tools already in hand. This lock was finer, more complex. It took thirty seconds of careful, silent probing before it yielded.
Inside were not state documents. There was a jewelled necklace Sammy recognized as her mother’s—a piece reported stolen after the funeral. A chill that had nothing to do with the room settled in her bones. Beneath it lay a folio of plain, unmarked parchment.
Sammy lifted it out, her breath catching. The top sheet was a half-finished letter in Vex’s precise, angular script.
…confirmation from the Ferry is expected by dawn. If the complication is resolved, we can proceed to the final consolidation at the Lodge. The Thornwood provides the necessary privacy. I will ensure the queen’s schedule keeps her occupied with the merchant delegation, granting us the full three days required. The vote on the mining grants must pass before she can…
The letter ended abruptly, mid-sentence.
The Thornwood. The Lodge.
It was real. It was all real. And Vex was planning to keep her busy with some fabricated crisis while the Concord met to finally, fully carve up her kingdom. The mining grants. Her father’s legacy, the very thing that got him killed.
“Got it,” Sammy whispered, the parchment crackling in her tight grip.
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Not from the hall. From the interior door that connected to Vex’s private apartment.
Sammy spun, the letter still in her hand.
Lady Vex stood in the doorway, backlit by the lamplight from her rooms. She was dressed not for court, but for comfort, in a deep blue dressing gown. Her grey hair was loose around her shoulders. She held no weapon. She didn’t need to. Her expression was one of mild, profound disappointment, as if she’d caught a favourite pupil cheating on an exam.
“Your Majesty,” Vex said, her voice a dry rustle of parchment. “I had a feeling you might bypass the bell tower. You always were impatient in your lessons.” Her eyes flicked to Mia, who had gone perfectly still near the sideboard. “And you’ve brought the stray. I did warn Aldric she was too sharp to leave wandering.”
Sammy’s throat clenched. Every comforting word this woman had ever spoken curdled in her memory. “You.”
“Me,” Vex acknowledged with a slight, weary nod. She stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind her with a soft, final click. “I did hope, you know, that it wouldn’t come to this. That you would be… manageable. Grief is a wonderful silencer. But you have your mother’s stubbornness along with her hair.”
“You killed them.”
“I facilitated a political necessity,” Vex corrected, moving slowly to pour herself a glass of amber liquor from a decanter on the map table. She didn’t offer any. “Your parents were beloved, but they were naive. The Concord is reality. It is the mortar between the stones of kingdoms. We prevent wars. We ensure prosperity. Their sentiment threatened to crumble a system that has kept the peace for a generation.”
“You stole my mother’s necklace.”
Vex glanced at the open drawer. A faint smile touched her lips. “A memento. A reminder that even the brightest lights can be extinguished with the right pressure.” She took a sip. “Now. You have my letter. You know about the Thornwood Lodge. It changes nothing. The guards outside this door are mine. The captain of the palace watch is on my payroll. You are, effectively, already dead. The message from the Ferry will simply make it official.”
She looked at Mia. “As for you… Aldric will be disappointed. He saw potential. But potential is just risk that hasn’t yet failed.”
Mia hadn’t moved. Her stormy eyes were fixed on Vex. “You talk too much,” she said, her voice quiet. “It’s a weakness.”
Vex’s smile widened. “Is it? Or is it because I know my walls are soundproofed, and it will be several minutes before my men outside grow concerned?” She set her glass down. “There is another option, Samantha. You are not your parents. You could still be brought into the fold. A younger, more pragmatic perspective. The Concord adapts. Your… fervor could be useful. Lay down the letter. Send your pet away. We can forget this unfortunate lapse.”
The offer hung in the scented, treasonous air. It was a trap, of course. Every word of it. But for a fraction of a second, Sammy saw the path it offered. Survival. Power. A seat at the table where her parents had been murdered. The sheer, monstrous practicality of it was almost as horrifying as the betrayal itself.
She looked at the half-finished letter in her hand. The Thornwood provides the necessary privacy.
She looked at Mia, who waited, a coiled spring in the shadows.
Sammy crumpled the letter in her fist.
“No,” she said.
Vex sighed, a sound of genuine regret. “A shame. Truly.” She raised her voice slightly. “Sergeant.”
The door to the outer corridor began to open.
The door to the outer corridor began to open.
Mia grinned, a flash of white in the shadowed room.
She hadn’t told Sammy. From the moment their boots had touched the palace’s dank inner passages, her magic had been quietly working, whispering into the mortar and the gaps in the floorboards. She’d woven subtle triggers—pressure, motion, intent—into the architecture of their path, a net of dormant violence.
The sergeant, a broad man with a thick mustache, stepped across the threshold. His boot came down on a specific, unremarkable stone.
The air in the doorway condensed, thickened, and snapped downward with the sound of a giant’s palm slapping stone. An invisible column of pure force hammered him from crown to heel, driving him into the floorboards with a wet, crunching finality. He didn’t scream. He simply ceased to be a man and became a broken, still shape in a suddenly concave floor.
The guard behind him froze, eyes wide. Then instinct took over. He lunged sideways into the room, trying to flank them, his sword clearing its scabbard.
He took two rushing steps past a heavy tapestry. A silvery filament, thinner than a spider’s web and glinting for just a fraction of a second, parted against his thigh.
A soundless, contained distortion erupted around him. The space he occupied seemed to twist. There was a horrific, wet rustling noise, like a butcher emptying a sack of meathooks. He fell, but not in any recognizable human arrangement. What hit the carpet was a grotesque, inverted tangle of uniform and glistening viscera.
The smell of copper and bile flooded the study.
Mia blinked, her head tilting. “Oh.” She peered at the second guard’s remains, then back at the tapestry hook where the filament had been anchored. A faint, almost embarrassed look crossed her features. “Probs should have not done that one. My bad.”
Lady Vex’s porcelain composure cracked. Her mouth hung open, the calculated warmth in her eyes extinguished by pure, primal shock. The glass of liquor slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, the sound absurdly small.
Sammy couldn’t look away from the carnage. The first trap had been brutal, clean force. This was something else, an artwork of visceral horror. Her stomach lurched. She’d asked for a weapon, but she hadn’t understood the toolbox. “Mia, what did you…”
“Later,” Mia said, her voice all business again. She was already moving toward Vex, a thin blade appearing in her hand from nowhere. “The noise will bring more. Different noises.”
Vex backpedaled, hitting her desk. The fearless spymistress was gone, replaced by a terrified old woman cornered by a natural disaster. “You can’t… the palace is surrounded…”
“By your guys,” Mia finished. “Yeah. I met a couple.” She grabbed Vex by the front of her dressing gown, the silk bunching in her fist. “The Thornwood Lodge. Where is it?”
“You’re monsters,” Vex whispered, her gaze darting to the doorway.
Sammy found her voice, steel clattering behind it. “We’re the ones still breathing. The location. Now.”
Footfalls pounded down the corridor outside, shouts coalescing. Mia didn’t even glance back. She pressed the point of her blade just under Vex’s jaw. “I’ll ask once more, then we leave you for them. You think they’ll promote you after this mess?”
A drop of blood welled around the steel. The fight drained from Vex’s frame. “Map. Left drawer. Grid seven.” The words tumbled out. “Red ribbon.”
Sammy yanked the drawer open. She found the map, unrolled it on the desk. It was a detailed survey of the Thornwood. A red silk ribbon marked a lodge nestled in a high valley, labeled Hawk’s View. She memorized the landmarks—a triple-forked stream, a lightning-blasted oak.
“See?” Mia said, not easing the pressure. “Cooperation feels better, doesn’t it?” She looked at Sammy. “We go out the way we came. She leads.”
They hauled Vex toward the interior door to her apartments. The pounding on the main study door turned to cracking wood. Mia shoved Vex through, Sammy followed, and she pulled the door shut, engaging a simple bolt.
“They’ll be through that in seconds,” Sammy breathed, the map clutched in her sweating hand.
“Then we don’t have seconds,” Mia said, pushing Vex ahead of them through the lavish sitting room. “Pick up the pace.”
They burst back into the cramped servant’s passage behind the tapestry, dragging a stumbling, silent Vex with them. Behind them, through the stone, they heard the final splintering crash of the study door giving way, followed by shouts of confusion and raw horror.
Behind them, through the stone, they heard the final splintering crash of the study door giving way.
The shouts that followed were not orders.
They were short, wet sounds of disbelief. A choked gag. A raw, wordless exclamation that cracked into a scream. The sergeant’s crushed body and his companion’s horrifying geometry were now center stage. Horror and confusion washed back through the doorway, a tangible wave of delay as the new arrivals processed the impossible slaughter.
“What in the hells—”
“Don’t touch it! Don’t touch anything!”
“Find her! Find the queen!”
The moment of stunned shock bought them ten steps down the dusty passage. Mia shoved Vex forward. “Move or I leave you for them. They look jumpy.”
They scrambled through the tight darkness, the sound of their own breathing loud in the confined space. The lavender scent of the linen pantry hit them as Mia shouldered the hidden panel open. They tumbled into the orderly shelves, their boots scuffing the flagstones.
From the direction of the study, down the main hall, running footsteps now converged, the temporary paralysis broken. Orders were barked, overlapping. “Check the apartments! Secure the corridor!”
Sammy’s heart hammered against her ribs. The map of the Thornwood was a crumpled prize in her fist, its ink smearing with her sweat. Vex stood shivering, her eyes darting around the pantry as if seeing it for the first time. The reality of her situation, of the two eviscerated men in her study, seemed to finally sink past her political calculations. She looked frail.
Mia was already at the pantry’s main door, listening. She cracked it open a sliver. The kitchen hallway was clear, still buzzing with the mundane clatter of late-night cleaning. The real storm was brewing two floors above them.
“We can’t go back through the midden,” Sammy whispered, her mind racing over palace layouts. “They’ll cover all the exits onto the grounds.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Mia said. Her voice was calm, but a fine tremor ran through the hand holding the blade. That much magic, that precisely triggered, had a cost. Sammy could see it now in the tightness around her storm-coloured eyes. “There’s the old bolt-run. From the silver vault.”
Sammy remembered. A narrow, steep tunnel, stone steps worn smooth by centuries of panicked footsteps, leading from the vault to a concealed grate in the outer curtain wall. It was a relic, last used in some forgotten siege. “It’s sealed at the bottom. An iron grate.”
Mia just looked at her. “Yeah. I know.”
Right. Of course she knew. Mia would have mapped every possible inch of this place the moment she took the job.
“You,” Mia said, jerking her head at Vex. “You’re going to get us into the vault. You’ve got the override seal for audits.”
Vex nodded mutely, any fight leached out of her by the sounds of her own men retching. Mia pocketed her blade, took a heavy rolling pin from a nearby kitchen table, and pressed it into Vex’s trembling hands. “Look like you’re escorting prisoners. You see a guard, you tell them you’re taking us to the vault for ‘secure questioning.’ You sell it.”
They moved into the hallway. The air was warmer here, smelling of roast and rosemary. A scullery maid carrying a stack of copper bowls eyes widened, but she dropped her gaze and scurried past at the sight of the Spymistress. Vex walked stiffly ahead, the rolling pin looking absurd in her grip.
They reached the fortified oak door of the silver vault, its surface studded with iron. A guard stood watch, his posture bored until he saw the trio approaching. His hand went to his sword hilt.
“Lady Vex?”
“Open it,” Vex said.
Her voice was a papery version of its usual authority, but it held. She lifted her chin. The seal she produced from a pocket within her silk gown—a smooth, grey stone etched with a crown—was genuine. The guard knew it. He saw the queen beside her, face pale but set, and the strange white-haired woman with dead eyes. This was above his pay. He complied without another word, hauling the heavy door open on quiet hinges.
“Do not disturb us,” Vex added as they passed inside.
The vault was a cold, silent cube of shadows stacked with locked chests and sealed strongboxes. The air tasted of old coin and dust.
“You’re taking me with you,” Vex blurted, the door thudding shut behind them, sealing them in. “You have to. They’ll kill me. Aldric… the Concord. I failed. They’ll make an example.”
Sammy stared at her. “You think that’s my problem?”
“I know things! The Lodge isn’t the only place. I know the players in three other kingdoms. I’m more use to you alive.” The words tumbled out, desperate. She was bargaining with her life now, and they all knew it.
Mia was already across the room, shoving a heavy cabinet away from the far wall with a grunt of effort. A low, arched opening was revealed, cobwebs stretched across its yawning darkness like ancient lace. The bolt-run.
“She’s not wrong,” Mia said, barely audible. She pulled the cobwebs aside. “She’s a liability either way. Our call.”
Sammy looked at the woman who had helped plan her parents’ murder, who had patted her hand and called her ‘child’ while plotting a coup. The rage was a cold, heavy stone in her gut. But the map in her hand was just one piece. Vex’s mind was a ledger of traitors.
“You breathe a word I don’t like, you take a step out of line, and I let her have you,” Sammy said, jerking her head toward Mia. “Understand?”
Vex nodded, a frantic little bob of her head.
Mia lit a small witchlight, its blue glow pushing back the absolute black of the tunnel. “Then let’s go. They’ll check the vault eventually.”
The steps were treacherously steep, descending in a tight, suffocating spiral. The air grew damp and frigid. They could hear nothing from the palace above, only the scrape of their own footsteps and the ragged pull of their breath. After what felt like an age, the stairs ended at a solid wall of rusted iron bars. The grate was set deep into the foundation, the courtyard cobblestones visible beyond.
Mia handed the witchlight to Sammy. She placed both palms flat on the center of the grate. A sharp, brittle cold blossomed from her hands, creeping across the metal like hoarfrost, spiderwebbing with audible cracks. The iron groaned, then shrieked as it contracted, twisting and pulling away from the mortar at the edges. With a final, resonating ping, the grate shattered into a dozen frozen fragments, clattering onto the stones outside.
They emerged into the shock of cool night air, behind a thicket of ornamental nettles at the base of the outer wall. The stars were brutally clear above. The sounds of the alarmed palace were a distant, muted clamour, contained within its walls of stone.
Mia sagged for a second, bracing herself against the cold wall. She wiped a trickle of blood from her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Yeah. Okay. That’s done.”
Sammy scanned the dark manicured lawns, the silhouettes of far-off patrols. The gatehouse was a hundred yards of exposed ground away. “Now what? We can’t scale the main wall.”
Vex hugged herself, her dressing gown sheer against the night. “There’s a postern. By the falconry. The groundskeepers use it. It’s barred from the inside, but the watch there is light. They might not have the alarm yet.”
Sammy and Mia looked at each other. It was the only play.
They kept to the deep shadows of hedges and outbuildings, their progress a silent, hurried scramble. The falconry loomed, smelling of meat and feathers. As they rounded its corner, the small, wooden postern gate came into view, lit by a single torch. Only one guard. He was leaning on his spear, yawning.
He never finished the yawn.
Mia was a blur of muted sound. Her arm hooked around his throat from behind, a sharp squeeze, and his body went limp. She lowered him quietly to the ground, relieving him of a ring of keys. She found the correct iron one, slid it into the gate’s hefty lock. It turned with a clunk that sounded like thunder in the quiet.
The gate swung inward, revealing the freedom of the darkened city slums beyond the wall.
They slipped through, into the warren of stinking alleys. The door shut behind them, locking the palace and its chaos away.
They stood in the sudden, profound darkness of the outer city, the three of them: a queen with a crumpled map, a spymistress in a silk gown, and a killer wiping blood from her face. Somewhere in the Thornwood, a cabal was waiting. Somewhere in the palace, guards were staring at gutted comrades. The night was large and cold around them, and every shadow seemed to hold a new kind of threat.
Mia broke the silence first, her voice rough. “We need a horse. And some real clothes. And about five hours I know we don’t have.”
She glanced at Vex, then at Sammy, a question in her exhausted eyes. It was no longer about stolen notes or secret meetings. It was about what they were willing to become to survive the dawn.
Sammy straightened her shoulders, the parchment of the map crisp in her grip. “So let’s get moving.”