The King's Blood

I can do. I find the spiders can make me impossible to disbelieve. With time and repetition, I can make anyone believe anything. However ridiculous or absurd or dangerous. If it were in my interest, I could convince you that you were a god. Or that your family was still alive but hiding from you. Even if you knew better, even if your mind knew better, your heart would lead you wherever I told it to go. I can do that, and so can they.”
    “And they’re in Antea?”
    “And very close to the throne.”
    Marcus sat for a moment, considering it. The corruption of kings and princes was nothing new. The twist-minded cunning man was a standard character in a thousand songs. And still, there was something about the tiny spider birthing itself out of Kit’s skin that made Marcus shudder.
    “What do they want?”
    Kit considered his thumb. The cut was already closed, neither blood nor spiders leaking out of his body. His voice was almost contemplative.
    “When I was there, I was taught that the goddess would return justice to the world. We were to keep faith and wait for the day when she would send us a sign. A leader whose Righteous Servant we would be, and through him, the goddess would free the world from lies.”
    “That’s a bad thing?”
    “Probably, yes, but I also decided it might not be true,” Kit said with a smile. “I was a very junior priest when I left. Many of the menial, small tasks fell to me. One was to be sure the temples were swept. I didn’t actually sweep. There was an old man who did that. I don’t even remember his name now. But I asked him one day whether he had swept, and he said yes. He had. And he was telling the truth. Do you see? I felt it in my blood, just the way I did with you. Only he was confused. He was mistaken. He thought he had. He was certain he had. He hadn’t.
    “And so I fell from grace.”
    “Over an unswept floor?”
    “Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably . Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren’t. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it.
    “One day the high priest came to me. He had found a remedy to my unfortunate predicament. I was to be taken to the goddess herself. Deep in the temple, through the secret ways, to her holy cavern. Only the high priest was ever allowed to commune with her directly, you see. But now I was to have that honor.”
    The doves shifted, as if made uneasy by Kit’s voice.
    “Didn’t like what you saw of her?”
    “I ran,” Kit said. “He told me that no harm would come to me, and I believed him. I knew he was lying to me, and I believed him anyway. I told myself that no harm would come to me. That she wouldn’t harm her own. I had faith that what they were doing came out of love for me. As long as I had faith in her, she would not hurt me. And then, like a reflex in my mind, I thought probably. Probably she won’t. But she might. And as soon as that doubt was there, I saw how likely it was that I was being sacrificed. I found I wasn’t interested in finding religious completion. So I left.”
    “I get the feeling it wasn’t as straightforward as that.” “It wasn’t. I’ve spent years, decades now, in the world we never saw. It is more complicated than the priests of the goddess taught. Truth and lies, doubt and certainty. I haven’t found them to be what I thought they were. I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it isn’t. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain.”
    “And what’s that like, then?”
    “It’s like pretending something, and then forgetting you were pretending. It’s falling into a dream. If justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible. We’re seeing the first of them now. More will come.”
    “Probably,” Marcus said, and Kit’s laughter startled the birds into flight.
    “Yes,” Kit said as a dozen small feathers floated down around them. “Probably. But it seems likely enough that I feel obligated to stop it. If I can.”
    “And you’d do that by… ?”
    “There are swords. Dragon-forged and permanently venomed. We had