Author's Extraordinarily Exited Note: Aha, here we go! This is where it all appears, and we finally get it! Oh, I am brilliant! Oh, I can't wait people to review, and tell me what they think about the intrigue. This is so exciting, I can't wait for people to send reviews. Ooh…I'm going to faint, I know I never could wait in my life—my blood just boiled and sparkles in my vein, making any waiting physically impossible, so please, do review…

Chapter Eight

The Silhouette of a Trap

The following morning, Arach woke up at the sound of Hawkke's beautiful voice ordering roughly:

'Wake up, kid!'

Arach snapped sitting in her blankets and she mumbled, brushing her hair out of her eyes:

'I am not a kid, I'm an Alchematorian Apprentice and an Assassin…'

'Of course, of course, well, just hurry up,' he replied, pulling her by the arm out of the bed.

She shook him off her, while he said reproachfully:

'Look at your clothes, you stupid kid, all crumpled.'

'I don't like skirts,' she said, feeling more and more moody.

'Sorry, but you've got no choice, I girl is a girl, and girls wear skirts, and you are a girl.'

'Back at StonePort, I wore breeches like the men, and nobody said anything.'

'That was because there was always fog, so nobody could see you legs,' he said, frowning, turning her so that he could arrange her hair a little.

'That's a highly stupid thing to say. There wasn't any fog in the Alchematoria of Nariee, nor in the Dancing Tree, and nor in the Birds' tavern, and you know it,' she told him.

'Shut this sweet annoying mouth of yours,' he said, pulling a bronze hair pin in her massif black mane to keep away strands from her face.

'You don't talk to me like that!' she cried, 'And I want my clothes back.'

'You won't—'

'Right now!' she yelled, like a capricious child.

He turned her back to him, and slapped her across the face.

'Don't force me to hurt you,' he whispered, intently.

She pushed him away with both spidery hands, and said, smoothing her skirts:

'I ain't need you to look proper, hunter, so keep your hands away from me.'

He sighed, and threw:

'All right then, stop this nonsense and have your breakfast.'

'I've already eaten yesterday,' she said, tying the corset harder, and lifting the tunic higher over her throat.

He was looking at her piercingly, and he suddenly jumped to her, and said, seizing her arms:

'What was that on your breast?'

'What do you mean my breast! You churlish knave, you fat, cheeky pig, you filthy, disgusting cur—'

He grabbed the two sides of the tunic; and pulled them apart, as far as the corset could permit. She yelled, while he watched the thing he had seen at the top of her young, hard marble breast. It was what looked like a star, a black star with eight legs. Like a spider.

'Only Lords of GreenLands have got this kind of sign,' he said, looking up at her livid face.

Her eyes were shining so brightly, so hatefully he stepped back, and her lips seemed like a bleeding wound, ruby red in her face as pale as death.

'What is the matter?'

'Take your hands off me this second,' she said, slowly, lowly, with so much calm fury that he immediately released her.

'Else you let me go, else I kill everybody in this castle, including you and your guests,' she went on, still staring right at him, with her glittering, gleaming eyes burning his to the soul.

'Oh it was nothing, just a little peep, don't get in moods,' he said shakily, and then he suddenly retrieved his confidence, to her great anger and disappointment.

She hadn't been able to stop herself from shivering when his long, slender fingers had touch her skin, and the shiver was still present in her mind, and she hated herself even more than him for this shiver, for it was not of disgust, but of something else, she couldn't even brought herself to think about.

'Eat,' he added.

'I told you I have already eaten yesterday,' she snapped, pulling her clothes back to place.

'Today is another day, if this isn't too much for you to understand, stupid kid.'

When they finally left the chamber, Arach following Hawkke in the dark corridor already filled with busy people, it was a furious looking girl that appeared, and a greatly amused hunter. Her hair was now long and silky in her back, a bronze pin adding elegant wilderness to it, and her clothes were suiting her very well. The men, and also the women and young girl, turned their head at her passage, for they all thought she was the Master's new mistress, and they all were eager to see what she looked like. Mostly thought she wasn't so very well chosen, yet a few could nevertheless catch a glimpse of her hidden beauty.

The great Hall was already bursting with people. At the tables, some children were eating like starved dogs, while young girls were preparing the food for the great feast that was coming, peeling and washing huge mountain of vegetables, laughing and gossiping with each others, while the men were preparing to go hunting, or heading to the smith, butcher, builders, to their work, to their usual life, all looking merry and happy, all chatting and laughing, all beautiful in their gold and black. It irritated Arach to see just happiness and lightness, she longed for the sad mists of StonePort, longed to kick some miserable, measly dirty beggars in the roads, longed to be able to snap insults at someone, longed to kill, to sneak, to feel money in her pockets, longed to be dressed like a man, and longed to be back at the Alchematoria. Her face was dark with fury and irritation, and if she could have, she would stick a dagger right in Hawkke's chest, and kill everybody in the hall, and finally be killed, because as every assassin, she was curious and avid of death, murder, blood and doom.

'Here, kid, let me introduce you to someone.'

Hawkke's voice snapped in her morbid daydreams, and she focused her eyes on the man he was talking to.

'Lord Drymarchon, meet Arach. Arach, here is Lord Drymarchon, master of the very well-known famous castle Serpent Stone, friend and relative of the Spider's Web's master.'

He grinned as he saw the colors drain from her already pale face, and her eyes flicker with a tiny fire of anguish.

'Well met, Lord, I'm pleased to meet you, I am…'

She bit her lips to blood, trying to take hold on herself; they mustn't know.

'Arach, you said? Well, Lady, f I was to give you a name, I would call you Black Widow. You look more like a black widow than a young girl.'

Drymarchon was indeed very handsome. Snake like, tall, slim, with an olive skin, pale silvery blond hair, he was standing gracefully balanced, with a chilling smile at the edge of his mouth. His voice was cold, but low, and sounded sneaky, and the glittering green eyes he was lowering to her made her shiver. As soon as she would be able, she would fly from this damned Manor, and try to kill its owner, this Hawkke that had brought her in the same place as this cursed man.

Arach was just a hasty, childish short for the noble name Black Widow Arachna. The girl was born in the manor of Spider's Web, the daughter of the immensely powerful Lord Araneus and graceful Lady Micrathena. She had grown in the magnificence of a majestic castle, in the company of Ladies and Lords that bowed to her like slaves, brought up by the splendidly beautiful governess Seashell, and the terrible preceptor Snakehiss. Her favorite was certainly the dark, aggressive preceptor, and spending all her time in his poisonous company, she had grown up savage, rebellious and ugly. One day, she spat at the face of Spider Web's neighbor, Whitedeer, and it had caused so much troubles in the lands that her father, possessed by the famous fury of the Spiders, had pitilessly dragged her in the middle of the courtyard, called everybody, Lords and Ladies of the highest ranks, Barons and Baronesses, Dukes and duchesses, servants and cooks, alike; and he had beaten her with a long wood stick, leaving on the white skin naked by the ripped dress long, painful red marks. And she had slipped away from him, grabbed his stick away from it, coldly snapped it in two, thrown it in her father's face, and nimbly leapt on a horse that had just come in the courtyard, after having unceremoniously pushed it rider on the floor. So she had fled, and the only man she had ever regretted was the beloved Snakehiss, to whom she had given her last smile before she fled, sending a loving glance to him as he smiled, leaning against the arcade of a window, in his tower. She had also abandoned him her poor heart. She had fled to StonePort, and had lived for four years there; entering at the Alchematoria, where she had been agreed even thought no woman was allowed to, because of her incredible abilities to master chemical powers. And she had become an assassin. Meanwhile, what she didn't know was that her parents were having many troubles. They were growing old, and she was their only heir, and they had lost her, to their bitterness and sorrow, for they indeed had loved her beyond anything she could have expected. But there was also a faraway cousin who had entered the matter. He had decided that if he married Arachna, and brought her back to her parents as his bride, he would inherit the immensely colossal fortune of the Spiders, and become Lord of two of the most powerful Houses of the GreenLands, Spiders and Snakes; so he had send for one of his many friends, a handsome, habile Lord-Hunter named Hawkke. And together, uniting their cleverness together, they had built a plan.

'What is the matter, Arach, do you feel sick?' asked Hawkke, smiling down at her ghastly face.

She was enraged. She knew she was being tricked, and could do nothing about it, and her face was so pale Hawkke almost feared she would become a ghost, or just vanish, like that, because there was no more color left for her body. But her eyes were gleaming and her mouth twisting as she forced a smile, that she wanted elegant and nonchalant, but appeared cold, and horribly calculating.

'Of course I am not sick,' she said, and turning with a canine smile, 'So, Lord Drymarchon; you are one of Lord Araneus's relative, as I understand,'

Quick, astonishing, the way she recovered at once from her wounds. Again she was this cold, clever, calculating, nonchalant assassin, and both the men were stunned by her skills.

'I am, Black Maiden, but alas, he is not in state to acknowledge me,' Drymarchon replied, as quick as her to catch the thread.

'I can understand it. After all, a daughter like this…Who would be happy to have been treated in such a way?'

'You know about Black Widow? Black Widow Arachna?'

'Of course, I met her once, and you remind me of her when you said that you would have certainly have called me Black Widow. She once told me that I looked like her and that if I wanted, I could go back to her Castle, pretend I am her, and inherit from her parents. Little did she know me.'

That left them stunned a second time. Both had expected a lie, false ignorance, but no, she was talking about this like that, simply, like she would have talk about anybody else in the world, handling words and events in hands lethal as poisonous spiders, and threading her net with dexterity. If Hawkke hadn't seen the spider on her throat he would have hesitated to do the next part of the plan, but this girl was without mistake the Black Widow Arachna. He thought about that. Widow from the moment she was born, she would be widow all her life. Or would she? She wasn't Black Widow for him. She was simply Arach, a tiny, heedless assassin that had tried to kill him and got tricked, and to whom he was slowly, unconsciously and grudgingly growing fond of.

'So, you have met this poor Black Widow, eh?' went on Drymarchon, playing the game.

'I have. And she possessed things I had not.'

She said this with emphasis, looking at the green eyed Lord with piercing eyes. And her fiery look seemed to break against the polished emerald of his look, and a strange battle, to which Hawkke was assisting with great curiosity, engaged. The girl and the Lord, face to face, were talking in a tight conversation, and their word seemed like arrows they were throwing at each other. Finally, Hawkke muttered about going to do something, and discreetly took leave of them.

Author's Over-Anxious After-Note: Aha! So! I bet you never saw it come! Clever, innit! Superb! Grand, Magnificent! I am so self-proud! Ooh, I feel I am going to drink a whole bottle of coke! C'mon guys, review, please, and review, and tell what you thought about THAT!