Along Came a Spider

In the total darkness of her cell, sound was the Spider’s only link to reality. There had been smells at first, but the human nose can become desensitized to even the most offensive odors, and her nose became as blind to them as her eyes to sight after the first few days. It was so dark that she stopped wondering if her eyes were open or closed. She had explored every inch of the cell with her fingertips, even climbing straight up the wall to the ceiling, which wasn’t very far. It was nothing like scaling the walls of a castle, as she had done the night she met Patience.

Patience.

No, that life was over for her. She didn’t want to think what these past few weeks had been like for the innocent, highborn girl. The accusations, the trial, the sentencing. Patience hadn’t been at any of them, so the Spider prayed Lord Muffet had shielded his daughter from all the ugliness. But was being kept in the dark any easier for her?

The Spider pushed it all from her thoughts. Memory had to go the way of sight and touch and smell in this dark place. As did hope. All useless.

That left only sound. She devoured it all like a starving man at a feast. The rhythmic dripping of water in the distance, the scrabbling and squealing of rats in the walls, the faint movement of air when a distant door opened, the clockwork delivery of her daily, tasteless meal.

Then, one day, a new sound.

“I wish to speak to the prisoner,” an unfamiliar voice, deep, and resonant, echoed down the passageway.

A mumbled response, the jingling of keys, and the screech of iron hinges. Then two sets of footsteps, one heavy and purposeful, the other tentative and shuffling. One a man of authority and the other the lowliest of servants. And a drunk one, judging by his fumbling steps. As they came nearer, the sputtering of a burning torch joined them. The footsteps slowed and stopped just outside the cell where the Spider crouched on the cold stone.

“Open it.” More jingling, and the scraping of the lock.

“Now leave us.”

“But m’lord,”

“I said leave us.”

The shuffling footsteps moved off, and it wasn’t until they were completely out of earshot that the heavy iron door swung open. The Spider closed her eyes so as not to be blinded by the torchlight after so many days in utter darkness. Still, the red glow of the torch filtered through her eyelids.

“Do you know who I am?” the deep, resonant voice asked.

The Spider considered. There were only two men with reason to visit her on the eve of her execution. This man was accompanied by a faint odor of pipe smoke, and Lord Brayden didn’t smoke.

“You are most welcome in my home, Lord Muffet,” she said. “I am afraid I am a poor host, for I have no refreshment to offer you.”

“I see you have not entirely forsaken your upbringing, Lady Spider. Or should I say Lady Arachson? Though I’m told you prefer ‘Kat’.”

The Spider made no response, so he continued. “House Arachson, a distant house, but an old one. Not many here would know of it. I believe the Arachson crest bears the image of a spider, does it not? They had a daughter, Katherine, who disappeared some years ago. Very sad. She would be, what, almost twenty now? Close to your own age. How interested the Arachsons might be in the story of a thief who calls herself the Spider and scuttles up walls, traverses the city by rooftop, and snares innocent young women in her web.”

Kat knew there was no use denying it. “What do you want?”

But the voice that had been so commanding a moment ago now only seemed weary. “I want to know your feelings for my daughter.”

Was this some kind of trap? A trick to get her to admit the truth? To what end? She was to be executed in a matter of hours for perversion, debauchery, and corrupting an innocent. What more punishment could they inflict on her? She saw no harm now in the truth.

“I love her, my lord,” was all she said.

“And you would be good to her? Take care of her? Provide for her?”

“I would devote my life to her happiness, my lord.”

He sighed heavily. “My daughter has said the same about you. She has refused Lord Brayden and called off the wedding. She tells me she will refuse any man I choose for her, and if I force her to marry, she will publicly decare her…deviant nature…and suffer the same fate as you.”

“What would you have me do, my lord?” Kat opened her eyes, and they slowly began adjusting to the light. “It seems my own options are fairly limited at the moment.”

“I love my daughter, Lady Arachson. And I do want her to be happy. She would have had a good life with Brayden. I think she would have found happiness in it eventually – in her children if not in her husband. But it seems that is not to be. So you will take Patience from the city. Tonight. You will book passage across the sea and make a life for yourselves in a place where I understand your kind are tolerated. I understand you have the means?”

“I do.”

“Well then,” he was commanding once again. “Take this.” He held out his hand, and she saw that he held a dart. One of hers. One scratch from that dart would put her assailant into a sleep so deep they wouldn’t remember the encounter when they awoke.  She took it warily as she began to see his plan. Lord Muffet took off his coat and put it around Kat’s shoulders.

“You’re tall,” he observed, “and your shoulders are broad, which helps. You are adept at disguise, I presume, or you would have been caught long ago. The jailer is a drunk and a dolt. With any luck he’ll be asleep, and you can slip out unnoticed, but you’ve still got to get out of the city.”

“Once I’m out, where will I find her?”

“Take the road south. About a mile outside the city, there’s a small hill. She’ll be there, waiting for you with horses and supplies.” He locked eyes with the Spider. “In choosing you she has sacrificed everything – her family, her friends, her future, children – all hopes of a normal life. I trust you to remember that, and to spend every day of her life ensuring she does not regret that choice.”

Kat gave a single, solemn nod of acceptance.

“Now here,” Muffett held out his arm, sleeve rolled back to the elbow. “Stick me with that thing and get moving. It’ll be light soon.”

Kat gripped his forearm and looked him in the eye. They were almost the same height. “Thank you, my lord. I know what this costs you. We are forever grateful. Oh, and it will look more realistic in the neck.”

“Wha-” before he could finish the word, she jabbed the dart into his neck, and he dropped to the floor.

Kat retrieved the dart, slipped out of the cell, and ran lightly down the corridor. The guard was, indeed, asleep at his post, and she slipped easily past. From the guard room, a spiral stair led up to street level. Time was against her, and she wanted to dash up the stairs, but she couldn’t risk meeting someone coming the other way. Running was the surest way to draw attention to yourself. She pulled the hood of the coat over her head, tried to appear as big as possible, and began marching up the stairs, mimicking Lord Muffet’s purposeful stride.

Still, every second she wasted grated on her nerves. It was true what Lord Muffet had said – she was a wealthy woman. But that wealth wasn’t exactly liquid and would take time to collect. She had some private emergency funds stashed throughout the city, but most of her earnings were handled by the Thieves Guild and stored in their secret vault, one of the many benefits of membership, right alongside not being murdered in your sleep for thieving outside the guild. Among the other benefits was legal representation in court – assuming your crime was related to a guild-sanctioned job.

Apparently stealing a lord’s daughter most definitely did not fit the bill. She’d been left with a pauper’s attorney, which wasn’t much better than no attorney at all. Worse in fact.

She reached the street without incident and took to the rooftops at the first opportunity – a stack of crates piled beneath a rain pipe providing easy access. From there it was all too easy to make her way south to the edge of the city. Retrieving her gold would have to wait until she knew Patience was safe.

Leaving the city, she avoided the road. If they were already looking for her, or if this was an elaborate trap, the road would be guarded. Cutting across country meant she couldn’t be sure where she would intersect the road, but she would have to trust her instincts. Afterall, they had gotten her this far in life, despite a few close calls.

*             *             *\

“Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,” the Spider called out as she climbed the hill and saw it was indeed Patience waiting at the top and not a battalion of guards.

Patience leapt to her feet and threw her arms around the Kat’s neck.

“Kat! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she choked back a sob.

“Shh, I’m here now,” Kat reassured, holding her close. “It’s going to be alright.”

Patience pulled back and wiped her eyes.

“It’s pronounced Moo-FET,” she teased, their own private joke.

“Ah, but then it wouldn’t rhyme. ‘Little Miss Moo-FET sat on a Too-FET’ just doesn’t have the same ring.” They both laughed, more at the utter failure of the attempt to lighten the mood than at the joke itself.

“Your father loves you very much,” said Kat finally.

“What my father loves is the family name,” Patience said with an unladylike snort. “He can make up a story about innocent little Miss Muffet who was so frightened by the depraved Spider’s escape from prison that she had to run off and live with cousins in the country. What he can’t abide is depravity in the family. No, my father did this for himself and his precious family name.”

“You forgot ‘curds and whey,’" the Spider quipped. "The key to a good lie is including just a bit of the truth. Everyone knows it’s your favorite breakfast. To make it a believable story, your father must include the curds and whey, or no one will believe it was you.”