by Ken Scholes
Just days on the heels of Jin Li Tam and Jakob’s departure, his second captain, Philemus, had brought word of what his scouts had found after days of chasing the metal men. He’d been sipping a pear wine that was nearly too sweet for his palate and pushing his fork through a rice-and-venison dish that seemed flavorless when the officer was ushered into Rudolfo’s private dining room.
“We’ve found where they were running,” he’d said. And even in that moment, Rudolfo could see on the man’s face that he would be packing and riding out himself. The next day, under the cover of a training exercise with Lysias’s army, he and an elite squad had set out for the far northern reaches of his territories.
Normally, Rudolfo relished those times he spent away from the manor. He’d always equated it with freedom, but lately he’d found himself counting security as a higher value than liberty. More and more, his guarded manor and his Gypsy Scouts felt safer to him than the wide open expanse of the forest his forefathers had claimed for their people two millennia ago. And everywhere he went, he carried a knot in his stomach and the dull ache of tension behind his eyes.
Picking his way carefully across the new-fallen snow, he tried to find solace in the morning but found worry instead. True to her word, Ria had welcomed his family into her lands-her entire people had welcomed them, it seemed. And she’d also sent what fruit they’d harvested in their investigation. Scraps of intelligence, cut no doubt from the prisoner they’d taken, that pointed south to the coastal nations. The War for Windwir had begun that strain, and then the events last winter-the assassinations and the resulting Council of Kin-Clave-had further eroded their relationship with those nations. The Delta continued a kin-clave on paper, largely forced by Esarov and his compatriots there in the Governor’s Council. But it was becoming clear that the attack upon his family and his library was a well-orchestrated operation by allies now become enemies in the madness of these dark times. And he could see why these friends had become enemies. His family and people were the only ones to have profited from the desolation of Windwir, and the rise of the Machtvolk and their demonstrated kin-clave with the Gypsies surely pointed toward collusion. The clear evidence that it was all the product of a carefully crafted Tam intrigue, right down to the Y’Zirite resurgence with its gospels, shrines and evangelists, was not enough.
Closing his borders and raising the army would not be enough, he realized, and that truth frightened him.
He heard a low whistle behind him and turned. Philemus slipped from a darker patch of the forest. “The scouts are ready, General.”
Rudolfo sighed and forced his mind back to their present dilemma. Mechoservitors passing through his lands. and what his scouts had uncovered far to the north, at the foot of the Dragon’s Spine. “Very well,” he said, turning back to the camp. “Let’s ride.”
They rode out before the sun rose, their horses magicked for speed and strength, hooves muffled by the River Woman’s powders. His arm ached with each passing league, and the air grew colder as they climbed the wooded foothills at the base of those impenetrable mountains.
By the time they arrived, the sun was a white disk veiled in gray and the snow had let up. They left their horses behind with a handful of scouts and slipped into a narrow canyon only marginally hidden by drifts of fallen pines and displaced rock.
The lieutenant whose men had pursued the mechoservitors to this place led the way, with Philemus and Rudolfo close behind. The uneven ground and the patches of ice made it slow going, especially with only one hand to steady himself. Rudolfo noted that the officer was careful to match his pace to that of his king. He smiled at this.
As they made their way deeper into the canyon, the walls narrowed, blocking out the white sky above. The ground sloped downward as they went, and the temperature dropped until Rudolfo saw crystals of ice forming and his feet found slick patches. The narrowing corridor twisted and turned until it finally spilled out into a large cave lost in shadow. One of the scouts lit a watch lantern and unshuttered its light.
Rudolfo didn’t realize he held his breath until he released it and saw it clouding the cold air. In the center of the cave, he saw something out of place, and it took a moment for him to place it.
It was a large, round steel door set into the floor and propped open. Shattered fragments of granite lay around it, and it was obvious to Rudolfo that the hatch had been closed and hidden away beneath the rock floor of this place until recently.
Moving forward on careful feet, he leaned in and let his eyes follow the limited reach of the lantern’s illumination. Stretching below, lost in shadows, a steel-lined well penetrated the cave’s floor. Rudolfo squinted at strange shadows, realizing suddenly that they were rungs set into the side of it, vanishing down into shadows.
“Gods,” he whispered. And the well swallowed his words, the echo of them drifting back to his ears.
He’d wandered these hills since early childhood and had probably stood on this very spot.
Philemus looked from Rudolfo to the scout who had led them in. “You tracked the mechoservitors here?”
The lieutenant nodded, and in the lantern light, Rudolfo noted the blush rising to the man’s cheeks. “We did.” His eyes darted to his king, then looked away. “We could not keep up with them. They were gone by the time we reached the cave.”
Rudolfo nodded, then stooped to pick up a loose chunk of granite. Stretching his hand out over the well, he released the rock and leaned in again, cocking his ear.
Silently he counted the seconds until far below he heard the muffled clatter. Then, he crouched and looked at the rungs set into the side of the shaft.
Philemus crouched beside him. “Does it lead where I think it leads?”
Rudolfo turned to his second captain. “I suspect it does.”
An underground route to the Marshlands. He knew that the Dragon’s Spine was laced with caves, but this was different. Someone had built this passage. Someone had hidden it here beneath the stone long ago. The metalwork of the hatch and walls was of a kind he’d not seen before, and he stretched out to touch it. Warm to the touch and pitted from time.
“This,” Rudolfo said to Philemus, “may be an unexpected gift.”
“It could be,” Philemus agreed. “If they really were bound for the Marshlands.”
But Rudolfo doubted they would lie about that. Even the book they’d given Isaak pointed to the Marshlands. Tertius was the renegade Androfrancine scholar who had educated Winters.
“I’m certain they were.” Rudolfo touched the metal surface once again, surprised that it was so warm despite the cold of the day.
An unexpected gift indeed. But what to do with it?
Suddenly, he remembered the first time he’d discovered one of the many secret passages and rooms scattered throughout the nine forest manors he’d grown up in. He’d been six and playing spymaster with Aedric’s father, Gregoric. He’d leaned against a section of shelves in his father’s library, discovering a knot in the pine that seemed out of place, one that moved to his touch and unlocked a hidden panel in the wall. He’d spent an entire summer finding every door, every passageway, every hidden ladder and stairwell he could find.
Rudolfo smiled at the memory.
This is not so very different. He looked at the men who stood with him. “This remains secret,” he said in a low voice. “I want a perimeter kept at all times and guard stations at and in the cave. Use magicked scouts. Bring Lysias in and show him; I want a training ground for the new army established nearby and two companies of scouts deployed to assist.” He slowly raised himself to his feet, his eyes never leaving the well. “I want couriers to the mines in Rudoheim and Friendslip-five seasoned men from each.”
Philemus raised his eyebrows. “Miners?”
Rudolfo stroked his beard and nodded. “And I want two of Isaak’s mechoservitors brought up. If they do not have cartographic and geological familiarity then Charles should script them for it based on whatever we have in the library cat
alog.”
The Second Captain nodded, and Rudolfo saw the understanding dawn in his eyes. “Aye, General.”
“I want a half-squad assigned to each miner,” Rudolfo continued, “and I want mapping shifts around the clock. “If this is a gift-if it truly does give access to the Machtvolk Territories-I want to know everything about it.” He paused. “And I want our neighbors to know nothing.”
“I’ll see to it, General,” Philemus said, inclining his head.
The others left first until only he remained, with the scout who bore the lantern.
Rudolfo looked down the well once more, then turned away from it. There was a day, he realized, when he would have stayed and commanded this effort himself. He’d have even climbed down the well and set about exploring what lay below with his men. But something had changed. He wished he could say it was the investigation into the attack on his family, but it would only be partially true.
After half a lifetime of security, I no longer feel safe.
No, he remembered, not quite half a lifetime. He reached back and took hold of that first day he truly felt unsafe, there on the grass as he held his dying father while Fontayne’s mob of insurrectionists shouted curses upon his family.
Even then, he’d laid hold of every resource, every possible tool or weapon to root out the insurrection that House Li Tam had sown among his people. He had not stopped until every last bit of that vile weed was eradicated from his forest. And he’d watched every last one of them find redemption beneath the blades of his father’s Physicians of Penitent Torture. Each penitent named three more, and in the end, peace and order returned to him and to his father’s lands.
Rudolfo had not stopped until he felt safe again.
As he left the cave and started his slow climb back into a snow-flurried day, the Gypsy King knew it would be the same this time as well. Because they’d tried to take his family from him for a second time, and it sparked something deeper than the loss and fear. It sparked anger.
I will not stop until I feel safe again.
And for just a moment, Rudolfo thought he smelled salt and blood upon the wind.
Neb
They ran beneath a crescent moon, its dim blue-green light wavering over ridges of molten glass and gray barren slag. Neb steadied the girl as they forced their legs to carry them, powered by the root they chewed. They’d be out of root soon, he realized. With the two of them chewing it, his supply was running dangerously low.
They ran by night, hiding themselves by day as best they could, finding the ruined pockets in the ground or hills where they slept fitfully before waking to run again.
They pressed westward, zigging and zagging across the landscape.
As they ran in silence, Neb tried not to admire his companion’s graceful stride. He’d tried to bring more conversation out of her, but she’d been close-mouthed since that afternoon they’d set out. He’d not even been able to wrest her name from her.
A pack of kin-wolves howled a league or two north of them, and Neb steered them south. He could feel the strain of the run in his feet and calves, the solid jarring of his lower back as each booted foot found its purchase in a long and stretched-out stride. He glanced to the woman again.
She ran with her head up and moving slightly side to side, and if her shoulder pained her, she didn’t show it. Her long legs stretched out beside him. She wore her pack high on her shoulders, cinched down for easy running, and if she’d had her iron knives upon her narrow hips, she’d have looked the part of a scout.
They put three leagues between them and the wolves before he whistled them to a stop near a patch of scrub they could use as cover. Neb drew his canteen and passed it to her first, admiring the long line of her neck as she tipped back her head and drank from it.
I cannot take my eyes off her. It stirred something in him-guilt, he thought. He’d tried to hang on to the image of Winters with her freshly scrubbed face and her clean dress, but he couldn’t lay hold of that dream. He tried to draw from memory the last time he’d stood close to her, felt her hands and mouth upon him, but it had been most of a year since he’d kissed her good-bye there in Rudolfo’s garden. And this thirty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam was here with him now, her face and form filling his eyes and the sweet smell of her sweat in his nose.
The thought of her made him blush, and he cursed himself for it, hoping she would mistake the red in his ears for exertion.
Behind them, the wolves howled again, and Neb turned his thoughts away from the girl and to their westward flight. There was only so much care they could take along the way. But he’d killed prey and left it where he could, hoping the blood would draw kin-wolves to cover their flanks. He’d also poured taint-salts into the scarce watering holes they passed. Anyone who drank from them over the next three days would find themselves incapacitated by dysentery. Even the girl proved her craft, giving him tips on how to quickly erase the evidence of their passing every ten leagues or so. “But understand,” she had said, “that my sisters will also know these tricks and will know to look for them.”
He looked behind them, watching the blue-green as it danced over glass and stone. “We should cover our tracks and turn south for a bit.”
She passed the canteen to him. “I agree.” Her brow furrowed, and when it did, her scars shifted.
He lifted the canteen to his lips and took a long swig of the tepid water. It tasted like copper in his mouth, and he tried to remember that last cool, fresh drink he’d taken. It had been months ago, when he’d been recovering with Renard’s people. Even then, it had not been the sweet, cold water of the Ninefold Forest.
They covered their trail a half league behind them, established a false trail northwest and then turned south, chewing yet another bit of the root to carry them forward. As the juice took hold, Neb felt the elation seize him and gave himself to his pumping legs.
When the morning slipped upon them, they hid themselves in an abandoned Waste rat warren tucked in a crevice of pockmarked ancient stonework. The woman curled up and fell instantly asleep, and Neb watched her for a while, pondering her. She wasn’t a Marsher, despite her use of the blood magicks. Her accent betrayed her even as her posture and appearance betrayed her kinship with House Li Tam. He dug into his pouch and withdrew the phial, opening the lid and sniffing the foul contents. Somehow, she was able to survive her use of them-unlike the Marshers, if what he’d heard in the Gypsy camp near D’Anjite’s Bridge held true.
His eyes caught her again where the blanket fell free, exposing her bootless calf and foot. He forced them away again and tried to conjure up Winters’s face.
I cannot remember her. After so long sharing dreams with her, she’d become a constant companion. Yet so quickly, she faded. He found the fickleness of his memory frustrating. He replaced the blood magicks, and his fingers lingered over the cloth-wrapped kin-raven. He pulled it out, careful not to let it touch his skin.
Holding it in the palm of his hand, Neb let the cloth fall away, exposing the black stone carving. He’d thought of it often since his first experience with it but had not let himself even bring it out.
“What are you doing?”
Her voice startled him and he jerked, spilling the kin-raven from the cloth and onto the floor. Without thinking, he snatched for it even as her hand found his wrist.
She cried out. “Don’t-”
But the rest of her words fell away as his skin brushed the dark bird. Suddenly, he spun away and found himself in a darkened room that smelled like lavender. Winters stood at the foot of a bed, unbuttoning her dress and lifting it up over her lithe form. Her breasts had grown larger and her hips were more pronounced, and Neb found himself suddenly-
— in a great white tower high above a deep blue sea. An enormous brown moon filled the sky, and beside him, Isaak clacked and clicked in time to the song that surrounded them, his eyes flashing bright and then dull. Neb felt the reverberation of the canticle lifting the hair on his arms and neck.
> “Neb?” the startled metal man asked. His eye shutters flashed, and before Neb could answer, he stood on a hillside, looking out over a sea of glass. The thirty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam stood beside him as winds from the north and east rushed down upon them and-
— his father cried into the black stone he lay stretched out upon. “Hold fast, my son,” his voice rang out. “Petronus rides for you.”
A sharp pain in his wrist caused him to cry out, and he released the kin-raven. He looked up and locked eyes with the woman, his mouth falling open. Her face was washed clean of any expression, but her eyes were fierce. She twisted his wrist again, and he tried to twist himself with her. As he did, her other hand shot out and snaked the thorn rifle from the loose grip of his left hand.
She moved fast, and he found himself suddenly falling backward as she raised the rifle and pointed it at his chest. He saw her fingers stroke the thorn bulb, and he suddenly realized by the way she held it that she knew the weapon even better than he did. The bulb undulated beneath her touch, and before he could say anything, she squeezed two thorns into him.
“What are you-?” His tongue filled his mouth even as his arms fell heavy to his sides and the sudden weight of his body dragged him to the ground. She blurred ahead of him, her face still a mask, her eyes now shining emeralds so sharp that they could shred him at a glance.
“I’m sorry, Nebios,” she said as the venom took hold and pulled him down toward thick, warm darkness.
The last thing he saw was her hand stretching out to take hold of the tiny black token. And the last thing Nebios Homeseeker heard before that dark swallowed him was her voice, low and suddenly sounding relieved.
“I have the Abomination right here for you, my sisters,” she whispered to the kin-raven. “Come to me.”
Chapter 12
Charles
Charles put down his screwdriver and lifted the tubelike monoscope by its leather harness. Outside, a steady snow fell, and the afternoon light that struck his work mirrors was barely enough to see by.
