by Ken Scholes
They’d started practicing together in those early days after Winters had first settled into the Forest life, but they’d stopped for the wedding and the royal family’s tour of the Ninefold Forest. Getting back to the knives-and out of that basement-would be good for the girl.
And, Jin realized, it was good for her to have someone to teach. “So tomorrow morning, then?”
Winters offered a weak smile. “Tomorrow morning.”
Jin Li Tam inclined her head. “Good. And don’t fret about the boy.”
Inclining her own head, Winters turned and moved in the direction of Library Hill. Jin Li Tam watched her go. Then, she set out for the manor.
She had told Winters that in time, the young, deposed Queen would find an appropriate response to what had happened to her last winter. On that day that Winters lost everything, Jin Li Tam had bargained with a devil and saved what mattered most to her.
Like Winters, she could not fathom what her response might be, and now, with the anger burned away, her fear moved toward sadness she could not afford to feel, and she tried to keep it at bay. Focus on what you have gained, she told herself. Life for your son.
She paused at the hidden entrance and the series of narrow passageways that would take her to Jakob’s room and then to her own bathing chambers, and turned again to take in the nightfall.
She tried not to think of her father and the scars that covered him, or of the mass graves she’d never seen upon that distant island, or of the orphaned children now nearby who bore the scar of Y’Zir over their hearts. She tried not to think of them and failed.
For all that I gained, I’ve lost as well. And for that, a response was certainly called for. But what response?
Wiping a stray tear from her cheek, Jin Li Tam begged an answer from the first star that poked its light through the dusky canopy of sky.
Then, she slipped into her home and pushed her fear once more aside.
Chapter 6
Winters
Winters undressed by moonlight, her bare skin noticing the slight chill of her basement bedroom. She hurried into her sleep shift and then scuttled into bed, pulling the covers up quickly and gasping at the cool of the sheets.
Lady Tam had surprised her; she’d thought she was alone in the gardens but for the scouts who patrolled it. But she was glad to have seen Lady Tam and spoken with her, however briefly. She’d missed her and Jakob especially while they were off touring the Ninefold Forest. Rudolfo had offered to bring Winters along, but she had preferred the library.
Hiding underneath your mountain of books. Perhaps, she thought, but no more. Now, she knew that something had to be done. The light of blind, loyal faith in those evangelists’ eyes. And the self-assured tone that masqueraded as love, dripping from their voices. Her people were beset by wolves, and it seemed Rudolfo’s were now, as well.
He’d told her of Ria’s visit, and she’d felt her own mouth drop open in surprise. Then, he’d shared her message of the impending threat. Now she understood something that had perplexed her.
Ria had been in the Ninefold Forest when she sent the kin-raven. The violation of Rudolfo’s borders and home were handled with discreet precision. She’d even kept it from Winters, having her dismissed from the room with the others. If it had not been for Rudolfo’s trust in her, Winters might never have learned of her sister’s visit. Something about that bothered her.
Because of the message. Come home to me and joy. If she felt so, why not ask herself?
She felt the slightest breeze and started. The hand fell over her mouth quickly before she could cry out, and a calm voice whispered at her ear. “Be still, little sister.”
Winters struggled against the hand, then stopped.
“Much better,” Ria said, lifting her hand.
Winters waited, surprised at how unafraid she suddenly felt. She simply breathed, in and out.
“I wanted to see you before I left,” the woman said. Winters lay still, unable to find words. I must say something.
Winteria the Elder continued. “You would not recognize the Marshlands. Towns and schools are being built-each with its own Council of Twelve. Children are being taught the oldest ways and taking the mark. Settlers are moving into the river valleys around Windwir, and shrines are being built in the villages that were already there.”
She thought of the Tam children and their scars and imagined the same upon the mud-and-ash-rubbed skin of her people. Finally, she found her words. “You savage my people with heresy.”
“I restore our people to their prideful place as servants of the most high. And I meant it, Little Winteria: Come home to me and share this joy. Home is for the taking, and the advent of the Crimson Empress is at hand.”
Winters wanted to rage. She wanted to scream at this woman, lash out at her with fists and feet, but once more calm asserted itself in her and she poured herself into each breath she drew in, each she pushed out.
Winters said nothing.
After a minute, she felt the breeze again and saw the window open. Ria’s voice drifted across the room to her. “I’ve brought you a present. It’s beneath your pillow. Perhaps it will change your mind.”
Winters resisted the urge to reach beneath her pillow. Instead, she waited a full three minutes. Then, she crawled from the bed and closed the window, locking it. After, she lit her lamp and carried it to the table beside the bed. Reaching out a tentative hand, she lifted her pillow.
A small book lay beneath it, bound in leather. The cover bore no title, but it did look old. She put her pillow down and took up the volume.
Opening the book, she saw the title and remembered it instantly from the audience earlier. The Gospel of Ahm Y’Zir, Last Son of the Wizard King Xhum Y’Zir.
She read the first paragraph. The print was too consistent for a scribe and the pages too small for a printing press. Still, it was a familiar style to her, though the age of the paper made it seem highly unlikely.
This gospel, she strongly suspected, had been scripted by a mechoservitor.
Intrigued, she went back to the place her thumb marked and continued reading. Hours later, when she finished it just as her lamp guttered, Winters understood why her people had been so easily swayed. There was a beauty and a power to the story, made even more compelling by the miracles clearly predicted that she herself had borne witness to.
This gospel, she realized, was carefully crafted. A snare carefully set for her people. She had talked with Rudolfo enough to know about House Li Tam’s involvement in this, the secret network Vlad’s father had put into place, operated by his grandson.
Not just my people. The realization struck her hard, though she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t realized this all along. This snare caught them all. It took down the Androfrancines. It shattered the trust between the nations of the Named Lands. It created a strong, unbeatable army on the flanks of the New World and set Rudolfo and his family apart.
The age of the Crimson Empress was indeed at hand, and it was not a gospel that required faith. It was a message of something dark and terrible coming regardless of whether or not she believed it.
Tomorrow, she would take this book to Rudolfo. He would understand the rune marks of House Y’Zir, she suspected. And he would want to know what was coming. He would want to do what he could to prepare for it.
When Winters did finally slip into light slumber, she found her dreams were full of Neb, though he would not look at her or acknowledge her when she called out to him.
“He is in grave danger,” she thought she heard a voice whisper into her dream.
Alone in the Churning Wastes, her white-haired boy fled just ahead of those ravening kin-wolves that hunted him.
Powerless to help, Winters watched.
Petronus
Petronus paced his study and tried to shake the sense that something terrible was coming on the wind. Each time he looked out the window at the spires and towers of the Great Library and the massive city that spread out from there, he
saw brief flashes of a plain littered with skeletons and felt the bite of blisters in his hands. He heard the distant sound of pickaxes and shovels working frozen ground and vaguely remembered a boy beside him, one with hair shocked white at the desolation he’d witnessed. But what desolation? Where?
Why can’t I remember?
There was a knock at his door and he looked up. The gaunt Androfrancine stood in the doorway. “The time for subtleties has passed,” he said. “The boy is in grave danger.”
“Which boy?” But Petronus already reached into his memory, and a name drifted into reach on the tide of that vast ocean of things he could not remember. “Neb?”
The man nodded. “Aye, Father.” He walked farther into the room, and Petronus noted that he carried a rolled-up chart beneath his arm. “There was an incident earlier. He broke through the mechoservitors’ dream tamp-something he should not be able to do without a conduit. Still, he’s done it and he’s announced himself loudly. He’s also revealed the canticle.” The man did not wait for Petronus’s invitation. He went to the sitting area, spread his chart upon the table there and took a seat near the wide fireplace. “Sit with me, Father.”
Petronus walked to the empty chair facing the man and sat. “Do we have any expeditions nearby? Do we have time to get a contingent of the Gray Guard to him?”
The man sighed. “You are disoriented still. The stone has that impact. We’re still new to it and haven’t learned the more subtle nuances of using it.”
Nothing this man said made sense. Petronus leaned forward. “Stone?”
His companion nodded. “I’ll show you.” Then, closing his eyes and furrowing his brow, he groaned and Petronus felt the vertigo seizing him. His study fell away, as did the city of Windwir, and a chill took him. He stood on the shore of an underground lake of quicksilver, and at the center of the lake, set into the silver water as if it were a setting in a ring, rose a large, smooth black stone. A man lay sprawled over it, facedown, and in the distance, Petronus could see the man’s lips working in a whisper.
But the voice was clear in his ear. “We do not know exactly what it is, and we are only now discerning exactly what it can do. Some artifact of the Younger Gods buried and forgotten in the Beneath Places.”
Petronus looked around the cavern, trying to memorize it, but before he finished, he was once again in his study, sitting across from the man. “I will not remember this when I. ” He could not find the right word and finally settled for the closest. “. return?”
“You’ll remember more than the times we’ve spoken when you were awake,” the man said. “It seems to work better when the receiver is asleep. We think the Younger Gods intended it to affect dreaming.”
Petronus nodded though it made no sense to him at all. An island that let a man speak into the dreams of another? “And this boy you speak of, he somehow is using it, too?”
“No. Neb isn’t using it. The stone is under constant guard, and the boy is here.” The man lowered his finger to the chart, and Petronus saw it was a map of the Churning Wastes. “The runners are here, here and here.” More pointing. “And to the best of our knowledge they are under blood magicks.”
A question found Petronus. “How are you tracking them?”
The man looked as if he wanted to say more but then thought better of it. “It is best not to share too much with you. Regardless of how Neb has accessed the aether, all of the blood-affected are vulnerable when he does.”
Blood-affected. A distant memory of an earlier conversation pried at him behind his eyes. “You said the blood magicks made me sensitive to the dream, like Neb.”
The man nodded, his face tightening with worry. “But we will not discuss the dream here now, Father. Circumstances have changed, and the dream is in jeopardy until Neb is safe.”
“And who exactly is hunting him?” Petronus was certain that any answer provided would slip away from him, but he asked anyway.
“Enemies of the dream,” the man said. “Enemies of the light.”
Petronus willed his eyes to harden along with the line of his jaw. “That is no answer.”
The man regarded him and sighed. “We are still uncertain beyond that, Father. But they are behind the fall of Windwir, ultimately, and behind the Y’Zirite gospel that called for your execution and resurrection. We know the Tams were involved, but not to what extent.”
Execution and resurrection. Fall of Windwir. These sounded familiar to him, just as the boy’s name did, but he could not place any of them within proper context. But he did know the name Tam, though he could not fathom why Vlad’s family would be involved in something like this.
But how could Windwir be fallen if he sat within that great city now?
As if to reassure himself, he looked around his study and took in another lungful of the summer scents that drifted in from the open windows. He looked back to the map and to the chart on the table. “Nothing you say makes sense to me.”
The man nodded. “I know it seems that way. I’m still unsure of the casting. Finding Neb is far simpler. At least it was before the dream tamp. But he’s different. He-” But the man cut himself off now, looking away. “When you go farther into the Wastes, I won’t be able to reach you, either. But it seems Neb can reach me. Don’t let him try until the threat is dealt with, Father. Too much is at stake.”
A hundred questions swam his mind, each looking for access to his tongue. Finally, one broke through. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Enlist the aid of the Gypsy King. Find Neb. Do not fail, Father, or the light is gone forever.”
Petronus opened his mouth to speak again, but the vertigo gripped him and that roaring took him yet again, pulling him into a brightness that burned as it penetrated him. He forced his eyes to stay open, and though it took every bit of effort, he kept them upon the map, memorizing the geography nearest to the man’s pointing finger. He opened his mouth again and pulled in a great lungful of the white, hot soup he now swam in. “Who are you?”
He could no longer see the man. He could no longer see the chart. But a distant voice reached him even as the roar died out and the light faded into the quiet midnight he suddenly found himself in.
“I am Arch-Behaviorist Hebda,” the man whispered, “of the Office for the Preservation of Light.”
That voice still whispered in his ear when he leaped from his cot, pulled on his robes and went out into the moonlight to find Grymlis and ready a bird for Rudolfo.
Yes, Petronus thought. I remember.
Charles
Charles cocked his head and bent the light from his reflector deeper into the mechoservitor’s chest cavity. He stretched nimble fingers up and in, reaching for the slipped memory scroll.
“He should be fine now,” he said, withdrawing his hand and firing the metal man’s boiler as he did.
“Thank you, Father,” Isaak said.
Charles chuckled. “You don’t have to thank me, Isaak. It’s my responsibility.”
Isaak’s eye shutters opened and closed. Gears inside whirred and clacked. “I suppose it is a part of parenthood.”
Now it was Charles’s turn to blink. Yes, it was. “And you provided this care before I turned up, didn’t you?”
They’d been discussing the various aspects of love for the better part of an hour. Isaak had brought it up, and lately it was less and less surprising to Charles. The mechoservitor was full of questions, and it seemed that the more Charles answered, the more Isaak asked. Now, Isaak hissed steam as if surprised by his answer. “I did provide that care. But I was instructed to do so. By Lord Rudolfo, of course.”
Charles’s fingers found the sequence of hidden buttons and switches and pushed them. The mechoservitor he’d been repairing shuddered to life. “Be still,” he murmured, and it did. He looked up to Isaak. “Yes, he did instruct you to. But if he hadn’t instructed you to do so, would you have done it anyway?”
Isaak shrugged, and Charles chuckled. He even learns our gestures from
us.
Isaak’s voice lowered. “I do not know.”
“You would have.”
Isaak’s amber eyes glowed brighter. “How can you know this?”
“Because,” Charles said, “I am your father and I made you to be logical. It is logical to preserve your kind.”
Isaak nodded. “It is.” Then, the metal man did something surprising. He hesitated. “Father?”
Charles looked up. “Yes?”
“You made us. I want to ask you a question about how we were made.” His tone betrayed how serious his question must be.
“I built you from Rufello’s Specifications and from scraps dug out of the Wastes,” Charles said.
“No,” Isaak said. “Not how we were made.”
Charles leaned in to the mechoservitor on his worktable and whispered into its ear. “Return to task, Mechoservitor Twelve.”
“Returning to task,” the mechoservitor said as it stood and left the room.
Charles turned back to Isaak and wiped his hands clean on a nearby rag. “What do you want to know, Isaak?”
Isaak paused, and a wisp of steam leaked out from the exhaust grate in his back. “I want to know why we don’t dream.”
Charles scratched his head. “I don’t think you were meant to dream,” Charles said, picking his words carefully. “The Franci believe that dreams are where the basements of the brain work out the hidden fears and hopes of a man’s life.”
Isaak blinked. “Surely women dream, too? The library certainly references-”
Charles laughed, interrupting him. “Yes. And children. And dogs, even.”
“But not mechoservitors?”
Charles did not like the direction the conversation moved in. Even he was unsure of Isaak’s status-he was clearly sentient. And he was learning. At a rapid pace. But what was he? “I don’t know,” Charles said. “It wasn’t in Rufello’s Specifications. I suppose a dream could be fashioned. It’s not much more than a memory scroll, though the random nature of dreaming would be hard to-”
