–9. Vermis

vermis ~is, m.

1. a worm

On his thirteenth birthday, the discarded boy with spun-gold hair was given a name by his father—Rain.

It was a word with a strange sound, and so the boy asked what rain was, and his father answered, “A thing that falls but never breaks.” It was their own private name—the children in the assassin guild called the Spider’s Hand went by colors and numbers or, if they were particularly close to one another, “sister” and “brother.” To his siblings and his instructors at the assassin’s guild, he was Violet-Five, but to his father—in the quiet moments they met for further training—he was Rain.

It was strange that Rain was getting extra training at all; his brothers and sisters were allowed to sleep at ten. He asked his father about this one night, and the old man put down the dagger he was polishing.

“The archons have high hopes for you.”

The archons? The nine determiners of the Spider’s Hand’s every move? “Why? I’ve done nothing special. Green-Seven has completed far more contracts this year, and Red-Twelve took a baron last week—”

A flash of old fingers, and the dagger slashed past Rain’s ear and into the center dot of the burlap target thirty feet behind him. His father looked to him, mouth wrinkled and dour.

“An assassin’s worth is measured in neither quantity nor quality; it is measured in potential.”

Rain only began to understand what his father meant two years later. What few contracts he had came sporadically and very…specifically. There seemed to be a particular noble House his killings were serving. Which House was not clear, but it had to be a powerful one—the sort that could keep an assassin of the Spider’s Hand on permanent retainer.

He was jealous of his brothers and sisters at first—of their constant contracts and victories and stories of the hunt—until the funerals began. Green-Seven was riddled with holes by his prey’s hard-light pistol. Red-Twelve miscalculated maintenance routines and was vented into space as she hid in the walls of a debris compactor. Every month brought a new accident, a new death. Every month brought a younger spider to take their place, just as Rain and his siblings had taken another’s so long ago.

He was seventeen when the youngest of them, Yellow-Eight, died. Blood streaked down the hall of the bunker, still wet from when the webmakers brought him in on the stretcher. It was strange to see—not the blood of prey but from one of their own. Rain stared at it for many long minutes, at his reflection in the wetness, until a webmaker shooed him away.

His sister Violet-Two found Rain in the canteen, sitting alone at a table. She touched him on the shoulder, her gaze misty.

Fearing he wouldn’t be able to control himself in front of her, he tried to get up, but she plunked down a glass of ale and a cup of their daily pills. Her eyes darted to the instructors eating and the webmakers posted along the walls, and he understood—as one spider understood another—that she wanted to tell him something, but the adults hated it when they speculated, and it didn’t help that everyone in the Web could lip-read.

Slowly, he downed the pills and took a sip of ale, and Violet-Two didn’t speak until the last instructor in the canteen looked away from them. Then she muttered into her own ale, “Everything’s changed.”

“Changed how?”

She wiped foam off her lips. “Yellow-Eight died under a strange contract. It’s not just nobles killing one another anymore. It’s not even rival merchants or corporate interests. They’ve started taking out contracts against commoners—well-armed commoners.”

“How well armed?”

Violet-Two shook her head, and that meant very well. She took another slow sip. “You and the other House spiders are the only ones doing noble jobs anymore. The rest of us are being sent all over the substations to pick off…resistance. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

“Who are the prey?”

“Unionizers, philosophy parlors, Under-ring gangs, cults and atheists and black-market medics—anyone beyond the grip of the king and the church. Red-Ten and I compared notes; they all have ties to a group calling themselves ‘Polaris.’ Green-One thinks it won’t be long until we see them on the Station proper—Under-ring first, then Low Ward.”

Rain gnawed on his lip. Green-One was the best of them—the oldest, the smartest. If he said it was so, it would be so. But confusion still tore at him. “Why now?”

“I’m not sure. Green-One says they’re too well organized. That someone has to be helping them.”

Someone with money, she meant. No, more than that—influence and schooling, too. Someone…noble.

“Which House?” he asked.

Violet-Two shook her head again, but this time it was slow and fearful and unknowing.