Faella Maleneos's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Faella spread three maps across the war table and knew that two of them would kill a child. Somewhere across the poisoned sea, in the shadowed city of Asshai, the last heir of a fallen Dragonlord House waited alone. She had crossed oceans to find him. Now she had no idea where he was. The fortress of twelve spires stood cold around her. She had chosen it as her base because its towers looked toward Asshai, and because no one else wanted a ruin guarded by stone keepers who answered no living command. Rain leaked through the high windows. Her scouts had returned with rumors, not answers. A boy seen near the harbor. A boy seen in the ash markets. A boy seen leaving the city entirely, weeks ago. Three trails. One child. Follow the wrong one, and the true trail would go cold while the heir starved. "You're staring at the maps like they'll confess," Ulorys said. He stood in the doorway, hood up as always, the last son of a House the world had already buried. Faella had pulled him from death when he was five years old. She had raised him. He read her worry now the way she had once read his hunger. "Every rumor points a different way," she said. "I cannot chase all three." Ulorys crossed to the table. He did not reach for the maps. He studied them the way he studied everything, quietly, until the truth showed itself. "You keep asking where the boy is. Wrong question. Ask what's been protecting him." Faella looked up. "A child alone in Asshai for months?" Ulorys said. "Something kept him alive. Something the whole city fears. Find that, and you find him." He tapped one of the scout reports. A merchant's account of a great silk-spinner in the eastern quarter. A creature with a woman's face and a spider's body, whose threads were said to walk through dreams. Sailors avoided her street. Children who vanished near her lair were never mourned as dead. "The two false harbor trails were laid by slavers," Ulorys went on. "Bait. They want a heir's blood to sell. But the weaver isn't hunting the boy. She's hiding him." Faella felt the pieces settle. Certainty, at last, with a real cost behind it. "If you're wrong, the child dies while we waste days on a spider." "Then let me take the false trails." Ulorys met her eyes. "I'll chase the slavers south. Loud. I'll make them believe you fell for the bait. Every hour they watch me is an hour they aren't watching you." He almost smiled. "You always taught us. Draw the storm one way. Move quiet the other." She wanted to refuse. He was her first son, and he was offering to become the target. But he was right, and refusing him would cost the heir his life. "Go tonight," Faella said. "Ride hard. Be seen. And summon your siblings before you leave. I’ll need them all for this." Ulorys pulled his hood lower and left. Faella folded two maps and burned them. Only one trail remained now, and it led to the weaver's silk.