by Ken Scholes
By noon on his second day alone, he skirted the ruins of Y’leris, a scattering of mounded wreckage and glass that had melted and then cooled in twisted, razor-edged hills.
He would have kept south if it weren’t for the commotion.
At first, he thought it might be kin-wolves hunting, but that made no sense. They hunted only at night and slept by day unless something disturbed them. Renard had shown him-very carefully-how to look for the spoor and avoid the dens of these fiercely territorial predators of the Churning Wastes. And with the sun at its highest point and the sky ribboned with waves of heat, he knew they could not be hunting.
He stood at the edge of the ruins and listened to the howls and snarls warble through the glass-and-steel Whymer Maze. He hefted his thorn rifle and felt the bulb for freshness. He frowned at what his fingers felt and quickly wet a small cotton wad with water, then pushed it up into the bottom of the thorn bulb. Then he dug into his pouch to find one of the vials of kin-wolf urine he and Renard had traded for last month.
Their snarls intensified, and one kin-wolf yelped.
What are they up to? He counted four distinct wolves. And they were perhaps a league or two into the heart of the city. Neb tried to shake off his curiosity, bending his mind to the south, where the shell of Sanctorum Lux and Rudolfo’s expedition of Gypsy Scouts awaited.
But the girl’s scream, blood-chilling and long, clinched his decision. Neb swallowed the bitter root juice, raised his thorn rifle, and ran into the ruins toward the sound.
His feet moved easily over the debris and scattered stones. Overhead, the sun beat down; and within the city, the varied colors of twisted glass threw a rainbow of light against the shadows, lending it an unearthly quality. Even as he increased his speed, Neb’s nostrils flared and his eyes moved over the ground ahead of him, looking for sign. Still, he didn’t need it. The noise of the commotion deeper in the city was enough to guide him true.
When he came upon the makeshift camp, strong with the scent of kin-wolf urine, he stopped and drew his vial. It took only a few drops, but once this new aroma found the wind, it proclaimed a rival wolf laying claim to this marked territory. He sprinkled the drops and moved forward slowly.
The camp was in shambles. The blanket was shredded, the small cooking pot overturned and the remnants of a smallish fire scattered. Quickly, his eyes took in what they’d been trained to take in. A sling lay discarded amid a scattering of silver bullets, and a knife belt, its sheaths empty, lay near a pair of small boots made from the skin of some kind of lizard or snake.
No time to linger here. Neb skirted the camp, the snarls louder just to the west of him. As he drew closer, he also heard the ragged rasp of labored breathing.
Now, he moved slowly, the rifle up and ready. A hot wind picked up behind him. It would carry his scent forward to the pack, but this didn’t alarm him much. It would also bear the markings of the white kin-wolf.
There were four of them-one male, two females and a pup. They circled a low mound of rubble, growling and snapping at it. Beneath the rubble, Neb saw occasional flashes of light as a knife blade darted out. Just as the kin-wolves stopped and looked in the direction of the breeze, Neb raised his thorn rifle and sighted in on the largest of them. He flexed the bulb and heard the slight cough as the needle-sized thorn launched from the long lacquered tube to bury itself in the right shoulder of the male kin-wolf. He squeezed again and put another in its side as its yelp became a snarl and the wolf launched himself at Neb.
Fire and flee. Renard’s words from months of hunting the Wastes came back now, and Neb embraced them. The snarl of the wolves and the sudden smell of them, heavy and sour, brought the taste of copper to his mouth and threatened his balance. Still, he moved as quickly as the root would allow him, all the while counting the seconds. Spinning, he fired another thorn at one of the females now also in pursuit, but the shot went wide and the thorn clattered off a bent wave of purple glass.
He saw a mound ahead and gathered speed to leap for it, glancing quickly over his shoulder. Behind him, the male was already faltering as the thorn’s sap worked its way quickly into his bloodstream. And only one of the females pursued; the other stayed near the pup and cornered prey.
Neb leaped to a round boulder of black glass, then scrambled onto the mound of rusted steel and spun around. The female was close behind him. Firing blindly, he put three thorns into her face and breast as she pounced for him. Behind her, the male had collapsed into a whimpering, twitching pile of matted fur.
Yelping, she scrambled over the glass, then onto the mound itself, her teeth bared. Neb smelled the carrion on her breath. Kicking out with one booted foot, he discarded the rifle and drew a single scout knife from his belt. He felt his hands slick with sweat, and though the black root increased his strength and stamina, he could hear his own ragged breathing as it reverberated through the desolate city.
The kin-wolf threw back her head and howled, eyes wild, and launched herself at him anew. She caught his boot in her mouth and wrenched his leg, knocking him over with enough force to drive the wind from him, but even as she climbed over the top of him, he slid the knife into her soft underside and twisted, forcing her snout away from him with a forearm against her matted throat.
Neb withdrew the knife and stabbed again, the sharp teeth closer and closer to his face as the sheer weight of the beast crushed him. He felt the claws moving over him, tearing his clothing and skin, as the kin-wolf scrambled to regain advantage. Eyes wide, Neb felt his bladder threatening to cut loose and felt the sticky wetness of blood. Still, he stabbed again and willed the sap to do its work.
Finally, the kin-wolf slowed and then became still, her wheezing and whimpers all the fight that remained in her. Neb crawled from beneath her, recovered his rifle, and climbed down to what had once been a street. Quickly, he checked himself, and when he saw that most of the blood was from the wolf, he released a sigh that felt more like a sob. Then, he tipped back his head and voiced the howl that Renard had taught him. The sound of it raised the hair on the back of his own neck.
When he reached the other mound, the remaining kin-wolf snarled at him, sniffed at the blood upon the wind, and turned suddenly to flee with her cub following after.
“They’re gone now,” he told the mound. “You can come out.”
He heard words, quiet and mumbled, but could not understand them. Drawing closer, he lowered his rifle again, pointing it loosely toward the mound. The Wastes were not a place for trust.
“You’re a long way from home, whoever you are,” he said again. This time, there was silence.
Moving in, he saw a still form wedged tightly into a crack in the mound. A long, slender arm hung loose, a bloody knife dangling from limp fingers. Crouching, he approached until he could see the rest of the woman. She wore tattered silk clothes and was barefoot. Her left arm was bloody and mangled from the shoulder to the wrist where the wolves’ teeth had ravaged her in an effort to drag her free. And her high cheekbones and close-cropped red hair carried a familiarity that he could not place immediately in context. Her small breasts rose and fell with her ragged breathing, and her eyelids twitched.
Neb noticed all of this, but he also noticed more, and it both surprised and frightened him with its sudden intensity after so long away from home.
She was beautiful beyond measure.
Kicking her knife aside, he set himself to pulling her out of the shadows and into the light of the afternoon sun, where he could better see her wounds.
There, the light did its work and Neb gasped at the fine lattice of scars that spiderwebbed her alabaster skin.
Old scars forming old symbols more terrifying to him than an ocean of kin-wolves.
Rudolfo
The invitations went out quietly, and one by one, Rudolfo’s guests slipped into the private dining room of his Seventh Forest Manor. It was a comfortable room, paneled in dark oak offset with silk tapestries from the Emerald Coasts and carpeted with the finest Pylo
sian rugs. The fireplace lay unlit but ready. The long table filled as Jin Li Tam, Aedric and the others took their places at it. Most, including Isaak, were frequent guests here-nights spent with laughter and wine-but tonight was a night for quiet conversation.
The moon was up, and if the windows had been open, they’d have heard the frogs of second summer. But they were closed, as were the doors, and Gypsy Scouts had been posted to assure that no ears could hear this private dinner.
Rudolfo waited until the house servants replaced the cheese platters with bowls of steaming roast duck, wild rice, forest mushrooms and fresh carrots. Then, after the wineglasses were refilled, the servants left and pulled the doors closed behind them. He looked to Winters and then to Isaak. “We have guests coming from the west and from the east?”
Isaak’s eye shutters flapped. “Not guests as such, Lord Rudolfo-”
Before he could finish, Rudolfo raised his hand, cutting him off. “I’m being facetious, Isaak.” He looked to the metal man and let the frustration show in his voice. “And you released this so-called moon sparrow without first consulting me?” He’d never felt disappointment toward the metal man before now. Still, alongside that disappointment, a suspicion nudged him. Something about the code in the message had brought about this reaction in Isaak. It had to be so. Isaak would not do such a thing of his own volition.
A machine with volition. After two years of. what? He struggled to find the word. Friendship. After two years of friendship with the mechoservitor, Rudolfo was surprised. Regardless, once he’d turned the bird loose with his reply, the metal man had immediately sought audience with his Gypsy King.
“I did. I do not know what came over me. I felt compelled.” Isaak hung his head. “I’m sorry, Lord Rudolfo.”
Rudolfo felt a stab of guilt at the sight of the metal man’s remorse and looked to Charles. “Could the code have compromised his scripting somehow?”
The old man nodded. “A code within the code, I suspect. Something to compel response if the message was received.”
Rudolfo stroked his beard. A message, given by a metal bird to a metal man, that could compel behavior? This was alarming. And equally alarming: Some or all of the mechoservitors who had fled Sanctorum Lux were even now approaching from the east, requesting his aid. He imagined them moving across the Churning Wastes, steam billowing from their exhaust grates as they ran at top speed, amber eyes bobbing like fireflies in the night. “What do they seek?”
He’d asked the question more to himself, though he knew their stated purpose. But Isaak still answered. “They seek sanctuary and safe escort to the northwestern edge of the Ninefold Forest,” he said. But he rattled and hissed when he said it, and Rudolfo glanced quickly toward Charles. The arch-engineer stared, tight-lipped, at his creation, and Rudolfo noted that he would need to ask about that look when he and Charles were next alone.
“And from our western neighbors?” Rudolfo looked to Winters. He’d seen enough of her these last few months that the mud and ash she once wore upon her face was a faded memory. Now, she was a young woman of coltlike awkwardness and uncomfortable silences, pretty but unaware of her prettiness at this intersection between childhood and womanhood. “Your kin-raven prophesies danger against Jakob and claims Machtvolk ambassadors are en route to warn us and offer aid?”
She glanced to Jin Li Tam and Jakob in the corner of the room. “It’s what the bird said. Yes.” She dropped her eyes. “I do not trust it.”
Rudolfo chuckled, but there was no humor it. “I suspect none of us do. Trust is not a commodity we can afford in our present economy.”
Machtvolk ambassadors, renegade mechoservitors and Y’Zirite evangelists in the Ninefold Forest. Rudolfo felt the stabbing ache of a days-old headache revisiting his temples. “What are we doing to prepare?” As he asked, he took up a piece of warm bread and broke it open, finding no satisfaction in the smell of it, and turned to the first captain of his Gypsy Scouts.
Aedric cleared his voice, putting down his wineglass. “I’ve tripled the watch on the manor and stepped up scout recruitment. We’ve been thinned by war, by maintaining the gate, and now this work in the Wastes. Have you considered calling up the local regiments?”
Rudolfo nodded. “I have. and will if necessary.” But he did not wish to if he could avoid it. Twice in as many years, his Wandering Army had surged forth from their forest homes. Fathers, sons, brothers all leaving their families behind to serve their king.
And their queen, he thought. While he’d scoured the sea to find her family, Jin Li Tam had become the second queen in Forester history to raise the Wandering Army and lead them into war. “I would prefer not to call them if it can be avoided. They’ve spent too many months away from home and hearth these two years.”
Rudolfo looked to Lysias and saw the storm brewing on his face. He wants to speak but is choosing not to, he realized.
In the past months, the man had proven invaluable to the Ninefold Forest. Initially, Rudolfo had felt skeptical about the man’s loyalties, having fought against him in the war that followed Windwir’s fall. But the general’s daughter, Lynnae, had served as Jakob’s nursemaid during his illness, and from the time Lysias first sought asylum with the Gypsies, he’d given himself fully to whatever task fell to him. Most recently, he’d organized the Refugee Quarter and had devised a system of employing and housing the sudden influx of residents in the various towns of the Ninefold Forest and had created a constabulary among them. “What are your thoughts on these matters, Lysias?”
Lysias looked around the room. Rudolfo watched the older man make eye contact with Aedric before speaking.
When he looked back to the Gypsy King, his eyes were hard. “I intend no disrespect, Lord Rudolfo, but your world has suddenly changed, and you have not changed quickly enough to keep up with it.”
Rudolfo raised a glass of chilled pear wine and paused midway to his lips. “Explain.”
Lysias glanced around the room and put down his own glass. “The days of riding your forest circuit of houses have passed. Your seventh manor is now your capital, home of the new library and the center of the Named Lands. The days of being overlooked and unnoticed are behind your people. Refugees roll in from neighboring lands in disarray and you do not turn them back. Laborers and students and wayward scholars follow them, hoping to build a better life near this new light you cast-you do not turn them back, either.”
Rudolfo swallowed his mouthful of wine. “We will not turn them back,” he said, feeling his earlier frustration build toward anger. “The Ninefold Forest has ever been a haven for those who’ve sought it.”
Lysias locked eyes with him now. “You could not turn them back even if you wished to, Lord. You have no real control of your borders. Scouts on broad patrol, scattered watch posts poorly manned. These evangelists slip in through the gaps. These metal men”-here he looked to Isaak-“they will come and go as they please as well. As will anyone else who wishes.” He lowered his voice. “You have enemies, Lord, who can place their so-called Blood Scouts any place at any time, and as good as your men are. they are not good enough. More than that, you’ve heard it from Tam himself and that fox Petronus-there’s more trouble on the rise, and I fear it’s looking for us. We’re being hemmed, Rudolfo, with wolves on the prowl beyond our ken.” Lysias reached for the bread and tore off a piece, holding it up. “And already, your resources are stretched like a thimble of butter over a mountain of rye.”
Aedric’s face was red with anger, and he started to stand. “You can’t-”
Rudolfo raised his hand. “It’s fine, Aedric.”
He knew the words were true. Certainly, his Wandering Army was the fiercest group of fighters in all the Named Lands, but these were men with homes and farms and families to tend. They were never intended to maintain borders or operate in a constant climate of vigilance and conflict. He looked at Lysias now with narrowing eyes. “You would not say this if you did not also have a solution.”
The old
general nodded. “It is time,” he said, “for the Ninefold Forest to join the rest of the Named Lands.” And Rudolfo knew the words that were coming; he dreaded them and winced as Lysias spoke them. “It is time for you to outfit a standing army and establish a firm and permanent presence both within the forest around your assets and along your borders.”
Rudolfo glanced to Jin Li Tam where she sat. She looked away, but not before he saw agreement in her eyes. She’d suggested the same to him not long after they’d returned from the Council of Kin-Clave, and it had led to the first strong argument in their marriage. Her mouth was tight now.
He looked from her to the child in the built-up pine chair beside her. He, too, wore his green turban of office and his rainbow-colored scarves of rank.
Change, he remembered, is the path life takes. But at what point did that change rob life of its value? A standing army in the Ninefold Forest? A kept and guarded border? It was far beyond the life he’d inherited from his father and his father’s father before him. It smacked of everything they’d disdained about their joyless neighbors, everything they’d vowed they would leave in the Old World when they’d left its ashes and madness behind them.
What are you inheriting, my little late-coming prince?
Rudolfo sighed and finally spoke. “I do not wish it-and I do not accept that it is the only answer.” He paused, stared at the food on his plate that he knew he would not eat. When he looked up again, he glanced first to Aedric. In the young captain’s fuming, Rudolfo saw the boy’s father, Gregoric, in the tightly clenched jaw and the narrow eyes. Then, he turned to Lysias. “Draw up the plans for it. But it is to be kept secret at all costs. Our kin-claves are tenuous at best, and this is not the Gypsy way.” Even as he spoke, his hands moved in the sign language of House Y’Zir. Work with him, Aedric.
