by Ken Scholes
When his first grandson, Mal Li Tam, had threatened the youngest children, he’d given himself over in exchange for their promised safety, and when he’d seen his opportunity, he’d taken it. Sometimes, at night, he still dreamed it.
The solid thud of Mal’s head striking the railing. The warm immersion chased quickly by the pain of salt water in his open wounds. His hands clutching at the throat of his first son’s first son as they went deeper and deeper.
And the light. It was blue-green, and it filled the deeper waters with song. He’d named his forty-second daughter for the d’jin that swam the Ghosting Crests without having seen one. But to behold it-if that indeed was what he saw there-was stunning. Buried in the pain of loss, he’d felt love from it, and when strong hands pulled at him a part of him wanted to be released, allowed to drown in that love.
Footsteps sounded on the dock behind him, and he knew them instantly. “I heard the bell, Baryk,” he said. “I’ll be up soon.”
The large warpriest sat down beside him. “How’s the fishing?”
Vlad chuckled. “The fishing is fine. The catching, not so much.”
Baryk also laughed; then his voice turned serious. “It’s good that you’re here,” he said. “I’d hoped to talk with you alone.”
Vlad turned and regarded the man. Baryk had married into his family, and though he’d always relied on the older warpriest, in the months since his daughter-Baryk’s wife-had died, writhing in agony as the blood magicks consumed her, he’d grown to see the man in a new light. He suspected that the ’Francis would say that the trauma of the loss they experienced together bonded them in a deeper way. With most of his oldest children now dead and buried here on the island, Vlad had learned to lean on Baryk for strategy and wisdom.
Now, the old warpriest looked worried and worn. “What’s on your mind, Baryk?”
He sighed. “I don’t think we’re going to learn any more from this place.”
Vlad nodded. They’d gone over every last bit of it. They’d found the bargaining pool and the blood-distillery within it, though the Y’Zirites who had fled Tam’s return had poisoned it somehow before leaving. “You think we should leave,” he said in a flat voice.
“We have four ships. We could hire more, step up our forays south and east.”
His eyes went once more to the water. “What about Merrique’s ship?”
Baryk shook his head. “Still no word.”
The old pirate had been out of touch a goodly while now, House Li Tam’s birds unanswered for nearly two months.
Vlad looked from the water to the island behind him. “This would be a logical point on the map to operate from,” he said. But before Baryk spoke, Vlad knew what he would say.
“It would,” the warpriest said, “but I think your family is restless. I think this constant reminder of loss is no longer sharpening your blade.” He paused. “It may even dull it.”
Vlad turned from the man and looked back to the water. “You may be right, Baryk. I’ll consider it.”
Baryk inclined his head slightly. “It’s all I ask, Father.”
He calls me father now. It stirred something in him, and he savored the meaning in it. He remembered the first time it had happened, the day they’d buried Rae Li Tam in the frozen plain of Windwir. Baryk had not done it in front of the other children, though. No, he reserved the title for the times they were alone, and Vlad understood that very well. He looked to his daughter’s widower and forced a smile. “You are a good man, Baryk.”
Baryk stood and returned the smile. “Shall I tell them you’re coming soon?”
Vlad nodded. “Soon.”
As the warpriest’s footfalls faded across the wooden dock, Vlad pulled in his line. The man was right, of course. They had learned everything they could from this place. And it was a reminder, a constant reminder.
One that I need, he thought, though as he thought it he also knew that perhaps what little remained of his family did not need such reminding.
I will grow my pain into an army. They were the words that had carried him through the worst of the cuttings, the worst of his children’s screams. And they were the words that his daughter had later given him with her final breath.
Perhaps it was time to leave after all.
He sat with the rod across his lap while the sky darkened and the harbor stilled. He sat until he lost track of time, and when a flicker of blue-green danced across the waters he felt his heart catch in his throat. He could hear the song, too, if he listened for it. If he could just listen for it. And somehow, that ghost could soothe him, could save him. But in the end, it was not the catch he longed for. No, it was simply the moon, rising up to lend its light to those quiet waters he contemplated daily.
Victorious, the stars at last poked through a dark velvet veil of sky, and Vlad Li Tam sighed at them. Perhaps tomorrow, he thought.
He rose, turned his back to the Ghosting Crests and made his way up the hill.
Chapter 3
Charles
Charles spun the gears and listened to the low groan as the mirrors around his workroom moved on their tracks and bent more light onto the object upon his table.
The moon sparrow lay disassembled, its various pieces laid out for examination with the magnifying lens he held before his eye.
When Jin Li Tam and Isaak had awakened him just after sunrise, he’d thought perhaps one of the mechanicals had broken down during the night’s work. He’d pulled on his robes and met them at the locked door of his subbasement workroom.
He wondered now, hours later, if they had seen his face grow pale when he saw the little messenger. Or if they had noticed a catch in his voice. Or the trembling in his fingers as he sought the tiny reset switch beneath that one small feather that felt slightly rougher than its other silver companions.
Fortunately, their questions had been few and he’d managed to deflect them under the guise of getting to work to find answers for them.
Charles lifted the tiny firestone that powered the bird. It was the size of a grape, burning white but without heat that he could feel through the thumb and forefinger that gripped it and held it beneath his eye. With his thumbs, he carefully pressed it into the bird’s silver chassis and used tweezers to carefully hook the long golden wires that led from it to the memory scroll casing. The casing had been punctured by what he assumed must be the kin-raven’s talon or beak. It was a small puncture-and precise.
Where have you been off to? Biting his lower lip, he found the switch and moved the bird’s wings and feet farther from its torso and head, as if somehow it might reattach them itself when it saw that it could not flee. When his callous fingertips found it, the bird’s tiny red eyes flickered open and it started humming in the palm of his hand.
When the hum reached its highest pitch, Charles held the bird even closer to his face and whispered into its small audio receivers. “Authorize, Charles,” he said, “arch-engineer, School of Mechanical Studies.” He listened to the chirruping and waited until it subsided. “Report, scroll unwind five oh three. Backtrack flightpath to point of origin for confirmation of navigational accuracy.”
The small beak opened, and a voice trickled out. It was his own, from years ago, and it caught him off guard. Though certainly, he remembered the days he’d spent speaking to the little birds they’d found within their little cages, giving them a language they had not previously known. “Report unavailable,” his own voice told him, tinny and sounding far away.
“Confirm authorization,” he said, feeling his brow furrow and feeling his curiosity melting into something more pronounced, more anxious. These birds had not required much in the way of maintenance. Androfrancine archaeologists had dug them out, still functioning in their cages, from the ruined subbasement of one of the Wizard King’s palaces in the Old World. But still, they were complex mechanicals of a time that dated back beyond even the Age of the Wizard Kings. He’d learned what he could of them and had even found obscure reference to them i
n Rufello’s notes on the golden birds that ancient scientist had managed to bring back into the world.
It had taken Charles years, but he’d learned enough about them to eventually offer them up to the Office of the Holy See as an improved means of communication, particularly in the Churning Wastes where the living message birds lost their magicks and their direction.
“Authorization unconfirmed.”
Unconfirmed? Charles let his held breath out through his nose, watching the force of his exhalation move the moon sparrow’s soft silver feathers. He could remember establishing the authorizations for these particular messengers. He’d updated them just months before his apprentice betrayed him and destroyed Windwir. He paused a moment, trying to reach back into his memory to find the correct query language. “Emergency protocol, unwind scroll four, six, two: Destination?”
With the slightest pop, his voice vanished and another-this one reedy and metallic-slipped out of the bird’s open beak. “Mechoservitor Three, Ninefold Forest Houses, Seventh Forest Manor, Library.”
He thought about asking again, thought even that perhaps he could find other hidden paths within the Whymer Maze of its tiny memory casing. Some back path that might tell him where the bird had come from. They’d used moon sparrows as a part of the Sanctorum Lux project, along with other similar endeavors that required something more reliable than an organic bird or a person. The birds were small, fast and-until now-had not encountered anything that could successfully stop them.
Charles heard the heavy footfalls outside his door, heard the slightest wheeze of bellows and hum of gears from where the mechoservitor waited. He put down the small mechanical and stood from his stool, stretching the muscles that threatened to knot his shoulders and neck.
He was opening the door just as the robed mechoservitor raised a metal hand to knock. “Good afternoon, Isaak.”
Isaak’s eye shutters flashed open and closed. Steam slipped out from the back of his robe, where he’d carefully cut away the fabric around his exhaust grate. “Good afternoon, Father.”
Father. Until recently, Charles had never considered himself truly a parent. Certainly, he’d joked often enough about his mechanical creations and re-creations being his children, but he’d come to the Order as a young zealot from the Emerald Coasts. At that age, with the precepts and gospels of P’Andro Whym so near his tongue and matters of the flesh so far out of mind, he couldn’t even comprehend the act that might lead to fatherhood. And throughout his tenure in the Order, he’d stayed that course.
Now, however, a machine he had built, assembled based on Rufello’s Book of Specifications, had grown unexpectedly into something capable of regarding him as its father. The notion of it staggered him, though if he were completely honest, there were also days he still doubted it despite his own experience.
“Good afternoon, Isaak,” he said, inclining his head toward the metal man. He’d told him many times that he could call him Charles or even Brother Charles if he preferred. Each time, Isaak had suggested that his preference was to call him Father.
For a moment, Isaak stood still and the awkwardness of the moment played out. Finally, his amber eyes flashed again. “May I speak with you?”
Charles motioned for him to come in. “I’m nearly finished with our little friend.”
Isaak entered and waited while Charles closed the door behind him. Then, he followed the arch-engineer back to the workbench and watched over his shoulder while he took up the magnifying glass once again. The bellows filled, and Isaak’s reedy voice resonated in the room. “Were you able to learn anything about its point of origin or the message it bears?”
Charles shook his head. “I’m. unauthorized for those things.” The word felt distasteful in his mouth. “But Lady Tam is correct: Its message is for you.” He looked back to Isaak.
The mechoservitor blinked, turning its head slowly to the left and right. Charles had noticed that Isaak did that when he was accessing deeper lines within his memory scrolls. “There was a matter of authorization prior to your arrival in the Churning Wastes,” Isaak said. “At the bridge where we encountered the mechoservitor that later ended his operational effectiveness.”
“This is the instance where the boy, Nebios, was authorized access but you and the Waste guide were not?”
“Yes, Father.”
Charles moved the magnifying glass, shifting so that the metal man could see him but also so that the towering figure did not block his light. “More of the mystery,” he said. “But we’ve had a triple helping of mystery. Do you want to hear your message, instead?”
Amazing, he thought, how easy it was to see the mechanical as a child of sorts. He heard a child’s hesitation now in the whine of the mouth flaps as they opened and closed. He waited until Isaak finally spoke. “I would like to ask you a question first.”
Charles put the bird down and turned to face the metal man. “Ask, Isaak.”
“What level of malfunction would be necessary for a mechoservitor to practice active deception, and can it be corrected?”
The spell again. Rudolfo had briefed him early on about it, of course, and Charles understood why. The spell trapped inside of this device could, in the wrong hands, bring down the world around them. It had razed Windwir. Two thousand years earlier, Xhum Y’Zir’s death choir of similar mechanicals had sung the spell and brought about the Age of Laughing Madness and the end of the Old World. And as much as he understood why Rudolfo had made him the third person-the fourth if they counted Isaak-to know that the spell had survived, he also understood why Rudolfo had warned him to let Isaak bring the knowledge to him in the metal man’s own time.
Charles sighed and wondered if real children had better-timed curiosity than their mechanical counterparts. “I think it depends upon the deception. Not all deceptions are a result of malfunction. Some may be a highly analytical outgrowth of careful thought regarding the better choice when no choice is truly optimal.”
He watched Isaak now while the metal man thought about this. “But wouldn’t that contradict a mechanical’s scripting?”
Charles shrugged. “It could. But other scripting could call for that contradiction-or untested circumstances could alter the scripting in some way.” He paused. “And I know it seems incorrect on the surface, but sometimes deceptions are carried out for love, for safety, for any number of noble purposes.”
“I can see logic in that,” Isaak said, his tinny voice taking on a matter-of-fact tone. “Still, it perplexes me.”
Tell me. He bent his will toward the metal man. He would not ask the reason why. But in the end, he did. “What brings this question about, Isaak?”
Now watch, Charles told himself.
A gout of steam shot from Isaak’s exhaust grate. Deep in his chest cavity, gears whined and springs clacked with enough violence that his metal plating shook for a moment. A low whine built, noticeable, but quieter than the last time Charles had heard him lie. “I was simply curious.”
Charles bit his tongue and turned his gaze back to the moon sparrow. He attached first one wing, then the other. “Well, I hope your curiosity is satisfied.”
The next sound from Isaak made Charles jump. It sounded unnatural, but it was obvious. Isaak had chuckled. “I doubt my curiosity shall ever be satisfied, Father.”
Now it was Charles’s turn to chuckle. “I think you may be right.” Then his thumb found the switch beneath that out-of-place feather. “But for now, let’s bend our curiosity towards your message.”
The bird fluttered to its feet. Its small beak opened, and the tinny voice of a faraway mechoservitor echoed into the workroom. “Addressee,” it said, “Mechoservitor Three, Ninefold Forest Houses, Seventh Forest Manor, Library.”
Charles looked to Isaak. “I am Mechoservitor Three, also called Isaak,” the metal man said in a quiet voice. “Chief Officer of the Forest Library.”
The tiny bird twitched slightly in his cupped hand, and when the stream of numbers hissed out they were
too fast for Charles to identify them. Their pitch and tone warbled, and the old arch-engineer was impressed with what that told him. Numeric code with inflection markers to show emphasis and vary definition. When he was younger, if he’d had the luxury of months, he might’ve parsed out the code with a forest of paper and an ocean of ink. And yet, he watched Isaak’s flashing eyes and saw his fingers spasm as he deciphered the code as it was given.
It was a mighty thing, Charles decided, to watch something he had made with his own two hands do something in seconds that he would need most of a season to accomplish.
Isaak looked to the bird and then to Charles, his mouth flap opening and closing as if he meant to say something.
Then, the metal man snatched the moon sparrow from Charles’s fingers and fled. In his haste, he tipped over a chair and forgot to close the door behind him. All the while, he whispered to the bird, cupping it near his mouth.
Charles leapt to his feet and ran into the hall, his heart hammering in his temples. The last mechanical he’d seen move this fast was the one he’d scripted to escape from Erlund and bear his message to the Order. Both times, he tasted fear at the daunting machinery he had constructed. “Stop him,” he cried.
But before anyone could react, Isaak had thrown open the doors and flung his silver messenger into the sky.
Then, Isaak turned to Charles, bellows chugging with grief and surprise.
“I’m sorry, Father,” his metal child said.
Neb
Neb ran though the rest of the day and long into the night before he made camp to give his body at least a few hours of sleep away from the black root that fueled it. As he ran beneath the moon, he heard the crescent’s song increase in volume, and he bent his mind to that cipher. As he slept beneath that same moon, he cradled the sliver of silver to his ear to dream music and numbers and light.
At one point, in his deepest dreaming, he thought he heard his father’s voice calling to him beneath the melody of the canticle. He stirred, cast about for some memory of Winters with her long, dirty brown hair, her muddy face with its big brown eyes. But when he found nothing, he let the song enfold him and carry him back down into sleep.
