The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

the flames spread and smoked, the light in the chamber grew brighter. Benches lined the walls, and a dais stood in the room’s center, but nothing made from wood was near enough the oil to catch fire. Ancient markings in white and red filled the walls.
    “Sorry about that,” Marcus said, lifting the lamp away from the flame.
    “About what?”
    “Killing your old friend,” Marcus said.
    Kit nodded, then shook his head.
    “We weren’t close. I think he’d have been just as pleased to kill us. And look.”
    Marcus turned to the body. At first he didn’t see anything, just an old man in a pool of blood that seemed to echo the burning oil. Then, as the flame brightened for a moment, the tiny spiders that boiled up out of the old man’s wound were visible. Tiny black bodies whirling in mad distress, pulling hair-thin legs tight to pinpoint bodies. Dying. Marcus handed the still-lit lamp to Kit, took the sword by its hilt, and pulled it free. The blade glittered green and red and a black as dark as a starless sky.
    “Good to know it works,” Marcus said. “We should hurry.”
    The temple reached deeper into the mountain than Marcus had imagined. The great carved arches drank in the light from their little lantern and spat it back in the browns of sand. Marcus followed along after Kit, his blade ready. The old actor’s steps rarely faltered, and when they did, only briefly. Once, they heard distant voices lifted in song, the echoes making any sense of direction impossible. But the voices faded, and Kit motioned him forward.
    There was something else, something eerie, about the place that for a time Marcus couldn’t quite put his hand to. At first he thought that there was something off about the angles of the spaces, as if the stones were set in some subtly wrong way. But in truth it was only that he had never seen anything so ancient that had no dragon’s jade to it at all.
    The great chamber was a vast darkness that swallowed the light. Marcus could only judge by the hushed echoes of their footsteps that the space was vast. As they moved quickly, almost silently, between two huge pillars of beaten gold, Marcus looked up to see the vast, shining body of a spider above him, the pillars its legs.
    “Come along,” Kit hissed, and Marcus realized he’d stopped in his tracks, overwhelmed by the size of the thing above him. As he followed Kit’s silhouette down the dark passages, the fear grew in his belly and thickened his throat. He didn’t let himself think, only willed the numbing terror to be exhilaration instead. This was no different than charging into battle or holding a wall against a hundred siege ladders. At worst, it was death.
    Kit stopped at a wide black door. The black wood shone in the madly flickering light. A wide bar in iron brackets as thick as Marcus’s leg kept it closed.
    “Here,” Kit said, and the dread in his voice was unmistakable. And behind that, a deeper sound like a vast, rolling exhalation. The breath of the goddess. Marcus smiled.
    “Well then,” he said. “Help me with this bar.”
    It took both of them to lift it, and Marcus was sure that the noise would bring the priesthood running in alarm or startle the beast on the far side of the door. But no one came, and the vast sound of the goddess didn’t alter. Marcus steadied himself. The blade was longer than he usually liked, but nicely balanced. He didn’t have any armor, not even a thick jacket. Speed and surprise were his only hope. And the poison of the blade.
    He closed his eyes. He knew any number of men who made peace with their God before they went on the field. He thought of his family. Merian and Alys were waiting there, cut into his memory like scars. He felt the old love and the old pain again, the way he always did. Maybe this time , he thought. Maybe this time it’ll be the last. For a moment, Cithrin was there too. Cithrin who might be alive or dead. Cithrin, who wasn’t his daughter, but could have been. He opened his eyes. Master Kit was looking at him nervously.
    “It’s been good working with you, Kit. I’ve enjoyed your company.”
    “I’ve also enjoyed traveling with you. I think you are a genuinely good man.”
    “You think a lot of strange things. Open the door.”
    Kit pulled on the bracket. The door inched open, a ruddy light spilled out, and the sound grew louder. Marcus steeled himself, then ran through, knees bent and body low. The chamber had high stone walls with a dozen braziers