by Ken Scholes
Winters
In the first days following the explosion at the library, the city of Rachyle’s Rest was awash with panic, and Winters did her best to stay out of the way and help where she could.
Most of that help was filling in for Isaak to keep the work of the library moving forward while at the same time launching repairs.
Charles had hidden himself away with the broken mechoservitors, rarely leaving his workshop. The metal men that remained were already doing what they could to replace the volumes lost in that brief blaze, and fresh crews of refugee laborers had already cleared the rubble and begun repairs to the damaged wing.
Of course, it did not surprise Winters at all that even as they worked, the skies above the Ninefold Forest broke open and the first of the rains began to fall.
And it also did not surprise her that her first summons to the Seventh Forest Manor after the blast came in the midst of that first deluge. Careful of the gathering puddles of water and the mud sucking at her boots, Winters ran through the downpour in the gray of midmorning.
As she ran, she watched the city around her. Soldiers from the local brigade of the Wandering Army stood at key locations or patrolled the streets. And as she approached the manor, she saw a half-squad of scouts administering their powders, fading into the wash of water as they raced for the woods. They were running the forest day and night now, she knew, enforcing Rudolfo’s new edict and looking for any clues as to who caused the explosion.
The rainfall lightened as Winters approached the gates to the manor, and she nodded to the guards as she passed. The massive house loomed ahead, rising above the rooftops of the city. Five minutes later, she was barefoot, dripping wet and standing outside the door of Rudolfo’s study, catching what water she could with a rough cotton towel.
The Gypsy Scout at the door ushered her in.
Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam waited in the sitting area with Aedric. Between them, a pitcher of wine and a platter of cheeses sat untouched. They stood as she entered, and Rudolfo gestured to an empty armchair near the fire.
She shook her head. “I’m soaked,” she said. “I’d better stand.”
“Nonsense,” Rudolfo said. “It’s only water. Join us, Winters.”
She paused, suddenly mindful of their faces. All of them were bruised or cut, and each had dark circles beneath their eyes. Rudolfo’s arm was in a sling, and he held the Y’Zirite gospel in his free hand.
Winters sat and looked to Jin Li Tam. “How is Jakob?”
She watched a mother’s sorrow flush the woman’s pale face. “He may lose some hearing from the ruptured ear, but otherwise, he’s fine.”
Winters nodded slowly and wondered why she’d been summoned. She suspected the book in Rudolfo’s hand had something to do with it.
Rudolfo cleared his voice and she looked to him. “We are at a difficult intersection,” he said, “and desire your input.” He held the book up. “You’ve read this?”
Again, she nodded. “I have, Lord.” She glanced quickly around the room and noticed with a start the look of subdued anger on Aedric’s face.
Rudolfo continued. “It appears that my wife and my son feature heavily in this elaborate mythology.”
“They appear to, Lord,” she concurred.
Rudolfo started to move his broken arm, winced, then put down the book. He stroked his beard. “I’ve new word from your sister,” he said. “A renewed pledge of aid and a. difficult. request.”
“Not difficult,” Aedric said, interrupting with uncharacteristic anger. “Unheard-of.”
Winters watched as the two men made eye contact, exchanging silent words between them. Aedric looked away first.
“Difficult,” Rudolfo said again with more firmness in his voice. He paused. “I’ve read it through three times and have reached the conclusion that if your sister truly believes this book she can in no way intend harm to me or my family.”
Now Jin Li Tam interjected. “Still, they could have engineered this event merely to convince us of this. They provide Winters a copy of the gospel along with a warning. And then shortly after they supposedly leave our forests, this”-Winters watched her reaching for the right word-“attack takes place.”
Rudolfo’s eyebrows raised. “This attack would have killed you both if Isaak hadn’t intervened.”
Winters started, looking up. “Isaak?” She’d known he’d been damaged heavily-perhaps irreparably, she’d heard-in the attack, but she’d not heard this.
Jin Li Tam looked away, her voice quiet. “He put himself between us and the blast, then shielded Jakob and me from the falling stonework.” When she looked back to her husband, her eyes were hard and narrow. “But it still could be a clever machination. Something intended to bring us to this very moment.”
“This is my concern, as well, Lady,” Aedric said.
“We are all concerned about this,” Rudolfo said, “and yet.” He paused, took a deep breath. “I think she is sincere. Gods know I might be wrong, but I suspect this new threat rises in the south, not the north. Esarov and Erlund have honored kin-clave with investigations of their own, cooperating fully with our own intelligence efforts. Pylos and Turam have not responded to our requests, but we did not expect them to. And Ria’s newest message claims her scouts have taken three prisoners, magicked and fleeing across our Prairie Sea.”
Machtvolk scouts in the Prairie Sea? She studied Rudolfo’s face, knowing this could not possibly please him. Still, all she saw was a wash of weariness and something she thought might be resolve. Winters blushed when she realized their eyes had met and held for a moment. But when she looked away from his, red-rimmed and dark-shadowed, she realized in hindsight the other emotion she’d seen there. Fear.
The room became silent and Winters shifted uncomfortably in the chair, still feeling the water from her hair as it traced its way down her shoulders and back underneath the dress she wore. She wondered if she should say something, but even as she pondered, Rudolfo spoke again.
“We’ve called you here to ask two questions of you, Lady Winteria.”
He speaks formally to me now, she noted. “Yes Lord?”
He took a deep breath. “I know your people have changed; I know your sister is a largely unknown factor. But I need to know: Do you believe she or her Machtvolk would do harm to my family?”
Winters thought about it, remembering the look of adoration upon Ria’s face when she first laid eyes on Jakob those months ago, and the same look upon the evangelists’ faces when their Great Mother and Child of Promise entered the room during Rudolfo’s audience with them. Then, she pondered the words of the gospel. When she looked up to meet Rudolfo’s eyes again, she hoped her answer was true. “I do not believe they will harm you or your family, Lord Rudolfo. In this matter, I think their attempts to help are genuine. But I could be-”
He raised his good arm. “We all could be wrong,” he said. “I only look for your sense of it. Of all here, you understand the more. metaphysical. aspects of your people.”
She heard Aedric shifting and looked over to him. The man’s knuckles were white on the arms of his chair, and she could see the care with which he guarded his facial expression. She looked back to Jin Li Tam and then Rudolfo. “Why do you ask, Lord?”
More furtive glances between the husband and wife. “Because,” he finally said, “they’ve invited my wife and child to participate in a diplomatic mission behind their borders until such time as this new threat is identified and eradicated.”
She felt the color drain from her face as her stomach lurched. “You’re going to send them?” Now, Aedric’s anger made sense to her, and she saw clearly how much more grave this moment was.
Rudolfo sighed. “If Lady Tam concurs. I’ve read the gospel. And though your people have been twisted into something very different from what you’ve known, I trust your judgment of them.” He looked to Aedric, then Jin Li Tam again. “And we are uncovering evidence of a new, less careful network emerging from the war-ravaged s
outh.”
“I still believe this is folly, General,” Aedric started, but Rudolfo cut him off with a hard look.
“Can you keep my son safe here, Aedric?” he asked, leaning forward suddenly. “Can you?” Winters heard the anger rising in the Gypsy King’s voice, and it startled her. When the first captain said nothing, Rudolfo settled back into his chair. “I do not doubt for a moment that the Machtvolk are a threat to the Named Lands. But they do not at the moment appear to be a threat to us. Somehow, my house is tangled in their house and in their so-called gospel of a new Y’Zirite age.” He paused. “And,” he said, “their borders are secure. Their blood magicks are formidable.”
Jin Li Tam looked to the two men. “It could not hurt for us to have a better sense of what is happening behind those borders.”
As the woman spoke, Winters saw the careful mask she wore. She is mistrustful. “Then you will go?” she asked, her breath catching for a moment in her words. “You will take Jakob with you?”
Jin Li Tam nodded. “Aedric, too, along with a company of Rudolfo’s best and strongest scouts.”
Winters felt fear for them, cold as the rain that soaked her clothing despite the fire’s warmth.
“This brings me to my second question for you, Lady Winteria,” Rudolfo said. “I will be frank. Your sister has asked that you accompany them. I believe you would be invaluable to them, but I could never command such a thing of you.”
And now she felt the fear herself, remembering that day Seamus made his sobbing confession to her and revealed the mark upon his breast. And that later day when she raised the Firstfall axe to Ria, losing it and her people. He wants me to go.
“I concur with my husband,” Jin Li Tam said. Winters looked up. The woman inclined her head, her red braid shifting across her shoulder. “Your aid would be indispensable. You know the territory, the people.”
Winters took a deep breath, feeling the weight of this new information as it settled onto her shoulders. It brought back memories of the Wicker Throne she’d carried to the Spire the day she had announced herself as the Marsh Queen. She remembered its weight, remembered the blood she’d shed for it through those biting leather straps.
In the end it was not hard at all for her to decide. That memory pulled her shoulders straight and she sat up. Her eyes met Rudolfo’s, and she inclined her head slowly toward him.
“Of course I will go,” Winteria bat Mardic, queen of the Marshfolk, said.
Petronus
Petronus whistled his horse faster and blinked the sweat from his eyes. They’d pushed the beasts to keep up with Geoffrus and his ragged band of root runners, remagicking the horses at least twice now for speed and stamina as they rode east in search of Neb. If they didn’t slow soon, they would kill the beasts.
He watched the ease with which Geoffrus took the terrain in a long-legged lope, wondering how long the man could run like that.
The scattered platoon of Gray Guard rode hard with the half-company of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts, the rainbow uniforms of the scouts contrasting with the ash-colored guard against the drab desolation of the Churning Wastes. The sun was high now, and it glistened off the glass hills and razored dunes of the decimated cities that once covered this land. It approached winter just two hundred leagues east, and here, the sky blistered at noon.
It had been years since he’d been in the Wastes, and there was a tragic beauty in it that he did not miss. It was a stark reminder of the Wizard King’s wrath but also a reminder of the strength of those scattered survivors, gathered together under the leadership of P’Andro Whym to dig what could be saved from the ruins and ride west with it to the New World behind the Keeper’s Gate. Both human achievements-a penchant for self-destruction and a tenacious will to survive that penchant.
He heard a whistle and looked up. Geoffrus was slowing and motioning for them to do the same. He pointed north as he did.
Petronus slowed his horse and looked. There, across the landscape, four robed figures moved, tossing dust or steam up behind them as they went. They moved fast, faster even than the root moved Geoffrus and his men. They were perhaps a league away, and he realized suddenly where he’d seen that loping run before.
Mechoservitors. Running in the Churning Wastes. Running toward the Keeper’s Wall.
Instinctively, he raised an arm, but they paid him no mind.
He’d read the preliminary reports on the findings at Sanctorum Lux and knew about the metal man who had deactivated itself-the remains had been gone when the landing party of Tam survivors and Gypsy Scouts reached that burned-out ruin. And he’d heard about their so-called dream, though he wasn’t clear exactly what they meant by it.
Somewhere in the Wastes, Charles’s first generation of mechoservitors worked at something secretly, and he suspected that this strange figure, Hebda, knew more than he’d revealed in the hallucinations Petronus had experienced. As Pope, Petronus had made it his business to know every office and every ministry beneath his sanctioned oversight, and he’d heard nothing of this Office for the Preservation of the Light.
But he’d known Hebda’s name, though he could not remember why he did.
The farther he moved away from the Wall, the more clear his memory became, though it still confused him. And even as his memory cleared, the dreamlike episodes ceased. He’d experienced neither vision nor dream since leaving their camp. Still, he knew enough. They’d charted his course, and something inside of him strongly believed that Arch-Behaviorist Hebda spoke the truth-Neb was in danger, and Petronus was compelled to act.
He’d not talked to the boy since that last day he’d seen him, there in the crowded silk pavilion of the last Androfrancine Council, Neb shaking with rage as Petronus called for an Androfrancine to take Sethbert’s life and thus claim the ring and robes of office. He’d known the boy would’ve stepped forward-the Overseer had killed Neb’s father when he brought desolation to Windwir-and Petronus had taken lengths to spare him that vengeful path. He winced as he recalled the day he excommunicated Neb, after months of faithful service leading the grave-digging of Windwir with the grace and care of an academy general.
It broke me to break him. Petronus swallowed the pain of that memory, trusting that he was right in the end-that the boy was made for more than backward dreaming.
Geoffrus and the others were speeding up now, and Petronus felt the heat of his horse between his thighs. Still, he whistled the roan forward and leaned low into the saddle.
As the landscape flashed past, he wondered what exactly they would find in the far east where these mechoservitors had run from. He wondered about the runners and he wondered about the mysterious man who doled out hallucinations and dreams like candies from a dark and hidden pocket.
And most of all, Petronus wondered if they would reach Neb in time for whatever it was that he smelled coming on the dead winds of the Churning Wastes.
Chapter 9
Charles
Charles blinked into his magnifying glass and bit his tongue as he worked the tweezers, inwardly cursing the clumsiness that age brought to his fingers.
He’d lost track of time now, these past days blurring into scattered hours of sleep here and there and meals taken hurriedly to the side of his workbench and the metal body stretched out upon it. Rudolfo occasionally stopped in to ask after Isaak, and at least once, Jin Li Tam had also snuck in, magicked scouts warbling the air around her as they shadowed her every movement. He remembered that they’d asked questions of him, faces lined with worry; but he couldn’t remember what those questions entailed now, nor could he recall the short, sharp answers he’d provided.
Initially, he thought he’d lost the mechoservitor. Now, he was convinced that the metal man would function, though he’d cannibalized the two others in order to accomplish even that much. The gears would whir. The bellows would pump. All of the mechanical parts would do their work.
But would it still be Isaak?
The fine, narrow strips of ancient paper-thin st
eel that comprised Isaak’s scripting scrolls had confounded him with its twisted tangle-along with what else he discovered there.
Somehow, they had fused themselves around the sunstone that powered his boiler, and it was not a new development-it appeared to be the result of past trauma, perhaps left over from the Seven Cacophonic Deaths. That made the most sense. Until now, Isaak had refused Charles-and anyone else-access to his inner workings. He performed his own maintenance, using mirrors and tools from the pouch he kept nearby at all times.
It made sense. I would trust less, too, if I’d been used in such a way.
And now, with the work just moments from being complete, Charles wondered if his metal child would be. himself. when he fired the boiler and powered the scrolls. He frowned at the thought, exploring the odd emotion that snared him. He’d spent days bent over this mechanical, his back and legs and arms aching from too long on his feet, hunched over the work. Why? He’d not spent so much time over the others. Indeed, he’d scrapped them as needed to bring back this one.
Because Isaak is. special. This machine had wept for a ravaged city and had put himself in harm’s way to save the lives of his-Charles reached for the word and found it-of his family.
He blinked again and suddenly realized his eyes were wet.
And now, if Isaak truly did still remain in that tangle of metal and wire, he would have to give him difficult news. And pass that same news to Rudolfo and the others.
The fused memory scrolls were functional, though Charles was uncertain exactly how that was possible. But the sunstone they were fused into now pulsed on borrowed time. There was no way to repair the hairline fracture Charles found there. And there was no way to replace the metal man’s heart without also replacing the memory scrolls.
Sighing, Charles fired the boiler and waited for the steam to build. When Isaak whistled and hissed, he held his breath and hit the switch.
The bellows pumped, and the amber eyes fluttered open, rolling a bit as the shutters worked. The mouth flap opened and closed and the ear flaps bent. Closing the chest cavity, Charles spun the dial on the Rufello lock he’d installed there. He’d repaired all but the limp, and he’d added nothing extra but the lock. Knowing what this mechoservitor guarded so near his broken heart had compelled him.
