“What are you doing here?” Kai asked.
The spider reared on its hind legs, spindly limbs and body’s bulk silhouetted against the green moon. The form folded and unfolded at once, arms melding as the body slimmed and the head bobbed on an elongating neck. The body assumed a semblance of a thin woman in a black suit, but the head remained a spider’s, outsize fangs dripping poison. “I’m looking for a friend of yours,” Ms. Kevarian said. She placed her hands beneath the spider head and pushed; at first, Kai thought she meant to tear her head loose, but the spider-seeming came off like a mask, revealing Ms. Kevarian’s face beneath. The Craftswoman tucked the spider head under one arm, summoned a mirror from dreams, and checked her hair. Nodding, she dissolved the mirror. “And I noticed you looking for her, too. I thought we might chat, here, unobserved.”
“You want to torture me,” Kai said. The spider may have vanished, but the silk remained. She was balled in the center of a web, bound to herself by strands that stretched but would not break.
“Torture you.” Ms. Kevarian smiled. The effect was not reassuring. “This is your nightmare. I can do nothing here that does not come from your own mind.”
“My mind scares me.”
“You’re a wise woman,” she said, and set the spider head down beside her. She sat, though there was no chair in the dream, and leaned forward, elbows on legs, so her face was level with Kai’s. “You have no Craft to speak of.”
“Not everyone who matters does.”
“But most people who use the nightmare telegraph do. Craftswomen are warded against the nightmare’s dangers in ways ordinary people aren’t.”
Kai pushed against the spider silk again. It did not give. “If you don’t want to hurt me, why not set me free?”
“This is your fear,” Ms. Kevarian said, and raised a cup of tea that hadn’t been in her hand before. “Everything here comes from you. I’m just an echo of a dream.” She stood, and approached Kai. Her body passed through the spiderweb strands as if she were a ghost. “Would you like some tea?”
“How can an echo of a dream offer me tea?”
“I can manipulate unimportant aspects of your dreamspace, so long as you don’t fight back. The color of the moon, say.” She snapped her fingers three times, and the moon changed from green, to silver, to purple, and back to green again. “Or the presence or absence of a cup of tea.” She took another sip. “But those bonds are not a detail. They’re the substance of this dream. I can’t break them. Only you can.” She held the mug to Kai’s mouth. “Would you like some? I’m not physically here; you don’t risk catching my germs.”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Ms. Kevarian walked away. “So. You want to find your friend Mara. And you were desperate enough to seek her through nightmares, even though you have no power here. What made you so desperate?”
“You were waiting for me.”
“Hardly. I also seek your friend, as I said. Our paths crossed.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“I have been unable to contact Ms. Ceyla. You are also, apparently, disturbed by her absence. If you have anything to share, I hope you will tell me. Perhaps I can help.”
“This is a trap.”
“Life is a trap,” she said. “As you have learned this evening.”
“I didn’t do this to myself.”
“Who did, then?”
“I can think of a likely candidate.”
“I have nothing against you personally. And if you care for your friend enough to seek her in dreams you are unprepared to face, then perhaps you might wish to cooperate with someone else concerned for her well-being.”
Kai pushed against the web again. It did not give. “What do you want with Mara?”
“We met yesterday. She cut our conversation short. She planned to speak with me again, but I have not heard from her since.”
“I saw you with her last night.”
“Ah. Yes. I thought I saw you, vanishing into simulated time. Ms. Ceyla claimed she had information to share with me; she presented the outline of her argument, but left before we could discuss specifics. I thought you scared her off. Hence my surprise to find you scraping dream-paths searching for her.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Not here, perhaps,” Ms. Kevarian said. “But in a Court of Craft, you may be so required.”
“You won’t get me to betray my people.”
“I was hired to uncover the truth behind the death of my client’s idol, and to take action if called for. I have uncovered a series of artful stories, and you—the piece of the puzzle that does not fit. Plagued by misplaced loyalties to superiors who have sidelined and betrayed you.”
“They saved my life.”
“They stopped you from saving a life. And when they tore you from the pool they did you more harm than good. You could have healed your injuries if you remained within the water.”
“If I survived long enough. They wanted to help me.”
“You claim they did. Mind their deeds, not your generous interpretation of their motives. You think because my clients are strange and wicked people that I mean you ill. But my clients have never set foot on your island. They have not injured you and yours. Their murders and vices are strictly onshore. They are not the source of your misery.”
“You’ve trapped me here inside my mind to interrogate me, and now you ask me to trust you.”
Ms. Kevarian rubbed her temples. “You tax my patience.”
Kai hung immobile in the web, and traded gazes with the Craftswoman in the stretching silence.
“What was Mara trying to tell you?” Kai said at last.
“We discussed discrepancies in the Seven Alpha records, before she left.”
“You called her a liar.”
“On the contrary. She was the one who expressed the initial desire to talk with me. She ran when she saw you.”
Kai blinked. If Mara hid the records in the first place, why tell Kevarian? “If Mara ran when I arrived, why do you think I might help you find her?”
“You hunted for her unprotected, in dangerous territory.”
“Maybe I wanted you to see me looking.”
“Perhaps. But if you had a choice, I imagine you would have warded yourself for this journey. Besides, I hold you a person of grave conscience. Such people commit atrocities, of course, but they suffer for them. Yet your nightmares are old: fears of being trapped, and devoured, and contained. I can taste their age, like that of a fine wine. I do not think you have killed a friend in the last forty-eight hours.”
“Killed?”
“Nothing I have said so far would stand as evidence in any court, but one of the few advantages of private contemplation over the paid variety is that I am not compelled to present my logic in court.” She sipped her tea, again. “I have been honest with you. More honest than with many in similar circumstances. Do you trust me?”
“No.”
She nodded. “I doubted you would. A colleague … a friend once accused me of using people, of manipulating them without their knowledge. She did not understand, I think, how difficult it is to convince others you have their best interests at heart.”
Kai could not break the web. But she refused to hang here any longer, listening.
The silk was her dream. It bound her, but bonds were clothing of a kind. Perhaps the silk that caught her body was in fact a dress, the silk around her hands spun to gloves. The spider gown cascaded, shimmering. She stood; her feet touched a floor of no texture.
Ms. Kevarian saluted her with raised teacup. “Well done.”
“I don’t know what Mara wanted to tell you, but Seven Alpha’s death was completely aboveboard. Mistakes happen.”
Ms. Kevarian’s teacup disappeared. She brushed off the front of her suit, though as far as Kai could see the fabric was black and unstained as the space between high stars at midnight. “Two points worth considering, Ms. Pohala. First. I do not believe your idol’s death was a mistake. You would not have jumped into the water beneath the world to save a flawed product. You jumped because you thought there was someone in the water who should not die. And second. The nightmare in which I found you was not your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. This dream is yours: the spider, and the silk. The one from which you entered this place was not.”
“Why would I have someone else’s nightmares?”
“A good question,” Ms. Kevarian said. “I do not envy you, Ms. Pohala. You have, I think, convinced yourself that a spider’s web is a silk dress.” From her pocket she produced a business card and flipped it in Kai’s direction. The card floated through the air, spinning slowly, ignorant of gravity. Kai caught it in one hand. “I sympathize. I wish I could help, but I can give you little assistance so long as you feel you require none. If you tear this card in half, I will hear you. If need be, I will come to your aid.”
“And if I don’t want your help?”
“We make our own choices. If we are lucky, we last long enough to live with them.” Ms. Kevarian opened a door in the dreamspace, into a rippling emptiness. She stood edged against the deep. It burned and chewed her outline. “Be well. And be careful.” The door swung shut behind her, and vanished with a click. Kai remained, alone in her dress in the empty room. Green moonlight bloomed on the spider-head hat, glinted off faceted eyes.
Kai tried to approach the hat, but her legs would not lift, her arms would not reach. The spider head twitched, and rose, topping a body of suggestion and fear. It scuttled forward. Fine-furred forelegs touched her neck. Its mouth sang triumph, and Kai cried out and woke in her own bed, where her arms were pinned to her sides and a sliver of steel rested at her throat and a woman’s voice said, “Why shouldn’t I kill you now?”