varys the spider

Progress and Poison

Dawn in Myr arrived not with songbirds, but with the clatter of looms and the hiss of molten glass. Varys woke as he always did—swiftly, silently, blades already in hand. The bedchamber of his manse was spare, stripped of Lysene decadence. A drow needed no silken excess; only space to move, to *breathe*.

He began with the spear.

The Valyrian steel sang as he spun it through the forms of Menzoberranzan's *khalress*—a dance of thrusts and feints meant for narrow tunnels and wider wars. His body, lithe and fourteen years young, remembered Valas Hune's centuries of muscle. The spear's edge split the air where a duergar's throat might have been. *Left pivot. Reverse grip. Strike.* Shadows clung to him, the *piwafwi* cloak discarded but its memory etched in his bones.

Sweat-slicked, he shifted to the shortsword—a Myrish blade of folded steel, inferior to adamantine but serviceable. Here, the dance turned intimate. Slashes became caresses; parries, whispered threats. A drow did not duel. A drow *ended*.

Only when his muscles burned and breath came sharp did he cease.

---

The bathhouse was a vaulted chamber of veined marble, its pools fed by underground springs. Varys plunged first into the ice cistern, water biting his skin like a frost wyrm's kiss. The shock purged weakness, the mortal stench of sleep. Next, the hot spring, steam curling around him as he scrubbed with black soap scented with pine. *Luxury as discipline,* he mused. A lesson Lys had failed to learn.

Dressed in a tunic of gray samite, he broke his fast in the rooftop garden. Figs, goat cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and a pot of bitter Myrish coffee—a bean he'd imported from the jungles of Sothoryos. His chef, a former slave with scarred hands, had wept when Varys handed him the recipe for "espresso." Now, the man seasoned eggs with smoked paprika, another novelty.

"The Guildmaster of Glassmakers requests an audience," murmured Selwyn, his steward—a gaunt man with a knack for silence.

"After the warehouse," Varys said, sipping coffee. Knowledge, like poison, required precise dosing.

---

The walk to the warehouse took him through the Street of Lensgrinders, where apprentices polished glass with raw thumbs and merchants hawked "Arachne's Spectacles" in shrill tones. The poor squinted through cheap wire frames; the rich preened in gold-leafed sunglasses. *Clarity for all,* he thought, *and a web of dependence for me.*

The warehouse loomed, its doors emblazoned with the spider sigil. Inside, a dozen craftsmen bent over benches, grinding lenses, while scribes inked ledgers. But the true marvel stood shrouded in the back—a hulking beast of oak and iron.

"M-My lord," stammered Joram, the head printer, a man whose fingers were perpetually stained with ink. "The press… it's ready."

Varys yanked the tarp aside.

Gears. Plates. A bed of movable type forged from hardened steel. Not the crude woodblocks of Qohorik scribes, but precision. *Revolution.*

"You've tested it?"

Joram nodded, lifting a freshly printed page. The letters were crisp, uniform—a treatise on optics Varys had penned under a false name. "Five hundred copies. In a day. The Glassmakers' Guild is already demanding a monopoly, but the Loremasters' Society—"

"Let them feud," Varys interrupted. "Knowledge is a river. Dam it, and it drowns you."

In truth, he savored the chaos. Let the Citadel choke on their parchment scrolls. Let the maesters scramble as their precious hoard of learning flooded the streets. Every printed book was a stone in the Spider's new foundation.

---

By afternoon, he'd reviewed the trade manifests. Coffee beans from Sothoryos. Cacao from the Summer Isles. Yerba mate from the Mountains of the Moon. Even qat and pistachios, preserved in wax-sealed tins via a method he'd "dreamt" of—boiling and brine, a trick from Marcus's world.

But the crown jewel? A crate of dried coca leaves, labeled *medicinal tonics*. Lys would pay its weight in gold for that euphoria.

"The Myrman's Fair is in a moon's turn," Selwyn said. "The magisters expect a spectacle."

Varys smiled. "Give them one."

---

Dusk found him in the vault, the Bregan D'aerthe insignia warm in his palm. Still silent. Still dead. He traced the spider sigil, wondering if Lolth watched from some void. *Let her.* His new web was spun with mortal threads—trade, vice, the addict's ache for clarity and cocaine.

He poured a thimble of espresso, laced with coca extract. The bitterness danced with the sweet, a stolen moment of vice. Outside, Myr's glass towers caught the last light, bending it into prisms.

*Soon,* he thought. The Free Cities would sip his coffee, snort his powder, read his books. And when the Great Other stirred, when winter came howling, they would look not to maesters or mages, but to the merchant-prince who'd armed them with lenses and lies.

A spider need not be feared. Only needed.

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