Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

coins, came the unwanted knowledge. This was commerce, where the metal served as a memory for past services in some way, so that Lief’s historical actions were somehow remembered to the woman, to be rewarded with the two wooden mugs of Something Suspect that he had now been given. Nth struggled with the concept, trying to understand why it worked and whether anyone wanted the metal for itself, or just for what it represented. The thought reminded him irresistibly of his own predicament: a thing that had value to these humans without them finding in him any inherent worth. He was a cipher, a means to an end, to be spent and forgotten.

The one time he had tried to lead the fellowship across country, long before the Wood of the Spiders, he had managed to guide them into the same nest of troll-men three times, to the exasperation of all concerned, not least the troll-men, who had grown increasingly jaded about being set on fire and having their limbs hacked off.

“Look, I am not playing shoulder-to-cry-on for a man who can make whole villages explode. Just drink.”

she went to the sole tavern that the Heathen’s Quarter boasted, or at least confessed to under questioning,