by Ken Scholes
Neb wondered about the girl. She must be the Marsh King’s servant. Perhaps even a daughter, which seemed odd to his sense of the world since the other armies would never think to bring children into the battlefield.
But she wasn’t quite a child. Probably within a year of him. Perhaps even a bit older.
Of course, these were Marshers. Perhaps she was here for darker reasons than he wished to imagine.
Neb followed her as she led him to a lean-to that sheltered a fire and a large steaming kettle of thick stew. She found broken bits of pottery to use as spoons and scooped two wooden bowlfuls out of the sticky mess. It smelled sweetly pungent beneath his nose.
Sitting in the mud beside the Marsh girl, Neb ate his stew and listened to the War Sermon as it bellowed out into the night.
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam listened to the voice on the wind and nodded slowly. “He preaches again,” he said. His aide brought a long match to the bowl of the ornate pipe, and Vlad Li Tam inhaled a lungful of the kallaberry smoke.
It cleared his head by slowing down his mind. It bolstered him in a warm sea of euphoria that kept him alive and gave him the edge he needed to do what must be done.
They camped in the open with nothing to hide-a small caravan of wagons ringed around their tents. He fully expected to parley with all parties involved excepting perhaps the Marsh King. House Li Tam had given up that part of the world long before Vlad’s time. He wasn’t sure how many sons or daughters of Tam had been sent north to buy their father’s way into that stunted place. None had been accepted. Some had been killed. At least three hundred years ago, they’d stopped trying. He’d read about it in the archives.
He expelled the purple smoke, watching it disperse into the night air.
“I will wear armor tomorrow,” Vlad Li Tam told his aide and his master sergeant. “And a sword.”
«v h Ro
They both nodded.
“I suspect Petronus will require his hand forced,” he said, looking at them both, his eyes narrow. “I suspect that I will betray my friend.”
“Hail the camp,” a distant voice called out. Vlad Li Tam looked up and nodded as his guards scattered to reinforce their positions.
“Hail, Gypsy Scout. What news do you bring?”
“Lord Rudolfo sends regards and will join your parley on the morrow.”
Vlad Li Tam nodded. “Excellent. Is my daughter with him?”
“She has returned to the Ninefold Forest with the metal man. Your presence here was unexpected. Otherwise, I’m certain she would have delayed her travel.”
Far better for her to stay near the mechoservitor. She could be trusted to watch out for it, to keep it from the wrong hands. It reminded him of another matter. “Tell your general that after the parley we will move quickly against the City States if they do not lay down arms. Our Pope will want the mechoservitors that Sethbert is holding. They are critical for the reestablishment of the library.”
“I will tell him,” the scout said, never staying still yet never entering the camp’s ring of light.
After the scout left, Vlad Li Tam called for a bird and laid his pipe aside to compose a message, coding it in double and triple Whymer loops that only an Androfrancine Pope could read. After he’d finished writing it, he went back over it, layering in yet more code in the slightest brush strokes of his pen, the seemingly hapless smearing of a letter here or there.
He tied it to his strongest, smallest bird and whispered the direction to its tiny head as it fluttered against his hands.
Vlad Li Tam tossed the bird into the sky, watched its wings unfurl as it caught the light breeze and shot east, flying low to the ground.
Chapter 20
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam rose early on her first morning back in the seventh forest manor. She slipped into plain cotton trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, pulling a light cloak over both to keep her dry in the cold autumn drizzle. In her absence, they had moved her into the room adjoining Rudolfo’s, outfitting it with everything she could p? keossibly need. She left her hair down and shoved her foot into the low doeskin boots the steward had provided.
In the hall, she paused at the door. Once more her eyes went to the children’s quarters, and she thought again about the one furnished room. Despite the early hour a servant passed, and Jin Li Tam reached out to touch the girl’s arm.
“What is that room?” she asked, pointing.
The servant shifted uncomfortably. “It’s Lord Isaak’s room, Lady Tam.”
She felt herself frown. “I don’t understand. Why would Isaak need a child’s room?”
The girl blushed and stammered. “Not for the-” She struggled, looking for the right word. “Not for the mechanical,” she finally said. Her eyes wandered the hall, only pausing to meet Jin Li Tam’s eyes for the briefest of moments. “I’m not sure it is proper for me to speak of it. You should ask Steward Kember or perhaps Mistress Ilyna.”
Jin Li Tam nodded. “Very well.”
Looking to that closed door one more time, she turned and moved down the hall, her soft boots whispering across the carpet. She took the stairs two at a time, springing lightly, and nodded to the Gypsy Scouts that waited for her at the main doors. They fell in behind her, and she smiled beneath her hood. She’d grown familiar with the half-squad Rudolfo had assigned to her, and most of her life she’d had guards of one kind or another. Sethbert was the first to not assign an escort to her, and she knew it had more to do with the message he sent to her father-like his insistence that she be considered a consort and nothing more.
They were very different men, Sethbert and Rudolfo. Rudolfo carried a certain ruthlessness about him, but it was the carefully chosen path that blended menace with charm in order to achieve a goal. Sethbert’s had been more the meanness of a large bully accustomed to imposing his will for the pleasure it brought him more than to any purpose.
Rudolfo, as she had observed before, was more like her father. Prepared and cautious, but with an aloof and light touch.
Even the men he’d chosen for her escort showcased this. They followed, often just one or two, but they stayed far enough back to not invade her privacy.
As she passed through the gate, a movement on the hill outside of town caught her eye. A lone figure moved along the top of that cleared surface and she knew it was Isaak, pacing out the space there. The structure would be massive and for a moment, she stood still and took it in. How would this sleeping town respond in the shadow of this undertaking? Certainly, Rudolfo had considered this. She was too new to the Ninefold Forest to know what it would mean when the libraA wh inry opened its doors and became the centerpoint of the Named Lands, so far from the centers of commerce and statecraft.
Of course, that was the first vision of the Androfrancines. And though Windwir was easily the most powerful city in the world, it had never been the largest. The children of P’Andro Whym, with help from their Gray Guard, had kept it to a size that they could manage, turning away the universities that sought to locate near that vast receptacle of knowledge. Instead, they’d allowed small groups of students to visit in shifts throughout the year, mostly the children of nobles. And Androfrancine scholars traveled out to the schools, carrying what knowledge the Order deemed appropriate.
She found herself wondering how this new library would work. The Order’s back had been broken and it would not soon come back. Two thousand years of careful growth had made them insular as it was. But now, with possibly only a thousand Androfrancines left in the world-one percent or less of their former numbers-she did not see the Order coming back into its strength any time soon.
She resumed her walk, glancing over her shoulder to be sure the scouts were following.
The town stirred to life, a few women out to the bakery and a few hunters gathering outside the locked tavern, waiting for the owner to throw open the doors and feed them before they went after their game.
A carpenter worked beneath a canvas canopy, plan
ing a length of wood in long, slow strokes.
Jin Li Tam moved through the streets until she reached the narrow river that ran through the center of town. She followed the river north until the rest of the town fell away to a scattering of houses and huts. The steward’s wife, Ilyna, had told her where to go. There were never any signs but most towns had at least one apothecary.
She’d sent a bird to her oldest sister on the outer shores of the Emerald Coasts, now the wife of a Free City Warpriest, and the finest apothecary House Li Tam had ever produced. She’d studied at the Francine School disguised as a young man and fooled those old monks for three years. Much older than Jin Li Tam, Rae Li Tam had lived a lifetime making potions and powders for their father’s work, and her medicines, magicks and poisons were legendary.
She had replied to Jin’s note immediately, and the coded recipe waited for her when she and Isaak and their half-squad arrived at the seventh manor the night before. Jin had translated the recipe into a common script late that night, working by candlelight and feeling the knots in her stomach as she did so.
Smoke trickled from the small ramshackle hut, and an older, plump woman squatted at the river, her head inclined toward the water. “Aye,” she said without looking up. “Dark times indeed.” Then, as if finishing her conversation, her head rose and her eyes met with Jin Li Tam’s. She blushed. “Lady Tam, an unexpected grace.” She bowed.
Jin returned the bow, inclining her head and offering a smile. “I have need of your services, River Woman.”
The River Woman smiled. “Magicks for the Lord’s new Lady? Or will it be powders of another sort? Whatever my Lady needs, I’m sure we can find it in the elements given.”
The Gypsy Scouts lingered at the edge of the clearing, waiting. Jin Li Tam bit her lip. There was still time, even after this, for minds to change. But her father’s strategy seemed clear to her. “I doubt you’ll have seen this particular powder,” she said quietly.
“That will be quite unlikely,” the River Woman said. “But let’s discuss it over tea.”
She led Jin into the small hut and put water onto the stove. The River Woman’s home was crowded with cats and books and jar upon jar of herbs and powders, dried mushrooms and berries, crushed leaves and lengths of root. The house smelled sweet and bitter at the same time.
Once the tea was poured, Jin Li Tam slipped the recipe from her belt purse and palmed three square House Li Tam coins. She passed the recipe across the table, and the River Woman studied it, her eyes narrowing and widening intermittently. When she finished, she pushed it back to the center of the table. “You are correct. I’ve never seen such a thing. How did you come by it?”
Jin Li Tam shrugged. “The Androfrancines guard their light.” She waited, willing herself to ask the question. “Do you have the ingredients to make it?”
The River Woman nodded. “Aye. Or at least, I can. I may need to send away for some. Caldus Bay may have what I lack.”
Jin Li Tam brought the three coins out and placed them on the recipe. “I will require your utmost discretion in this matter.”
“You shall have it. A woman’s body is a temple of life, and she must open or close that gate as she pleases.” The River Woman glanced at the recipe again, clucking at it. “And you think this will work?”
She smiled. “We will see for ourselves soon enough.”
“Finally, an heir,” she said. The old woman chuckled. “You know,” she said, “I delivered both of Lord Jakob’s boys to him.”
Jin Li Tam leaned in. “Both?” The room, again, with its small boots and its small sword hanging on its wall.
“Lord Isaak and Lord Rudolfo,” the River WomA; tighan said. “Both strong, beautiful boys.” She must have seen the realization dawning on Jin Li Tam’s face. She blushed. “No one’s mentioned Lord Isaak to you?”
Jin Li Tam shook her head. “I did not know Rudolfo had a brother.”
“A twin brother,” she said. “Just two hours older. He died rather… unexpectedly… in his fifth year.”
Jin Li Tam felt something she could not name. It pulled at her, and she felt the knots in her stomach tighten. “How?”
The River Woman looked around as if there might be other ears within hearing. Her voice lowered to nearly a whisper. “They said it was the red pox that took him. They cremated him immediately.”
It wasn’t uncommon, though it was unnecessary. They’d had the red pox powders for over a thousand years now. Still, some children did not respond to the powders and, of course, they weren’t available to all children. Just to children of privilege. But the River Woman’s tone suggested doubt. “You do not believe it was the red pox?”
“I do not. I gave him and Rudolfo both the powders. I do not think it likely that it would work on one but not the other.” She paused, looking around again. “I think he was poisoned. Though I know of no poisons that hide behind a mask of the pox.”
Her stomach clenched again, and she wrestled to keep her composure. She looked at the recipe again and thought of her elder sister.
She felt a shadow stirring in her heart, and wondered how deep the layers of her father’s strategy might go.
Petronus
Petronus’s bellowing nearly drowned out that of the Marsh King and his War Sermon. “I will not,” he roared, shaking his fists at the west.
He could tell by the bird’s markings that it was a Tam courier. And by the fact that it came straight at him to drop lightly onto his shoulder with a chirrup, in the dark of night, as he patrolled the outskirts of the city for the boy.
If you do not declare publicly, I will declare you myself in three days’ time.
It was code within code buried in the text of a message regarding a House Li Tam donation of foodstuffs for the gravedigging effort.
Buried alongside the coded threat, there was another message. A generous petition from Lord Rudolfo to assist in the establishment of a new liAentes brary using the memory scripts of the mechoservitors in Sethbert’s camp to rescribe as much of it as was stored within their scrolls.
But not even that was enough to hold his anger at bay.
If you do not declare publicly, I will declare you myself.
He bellowed again, his fists clenched, kicking at the ground. “Damn you, Tam,” he shouted.
Of course, he’d known he would have to. There would be no getting around it. Nothing would be left if he stood back. And if his suspicions about Vlad Li Tam’s strategy were true-and he did not doubt them-he did not know if he could be a part of that game of queen’s war. But he had no choice now, and he’d known that it would come to it when he’d written the proclamation.
You’ve done this to yourself, old man.
Yes, he thought. Yes, I have. And he would pay the price for that and come back from the dead because it was the only honest thing he could do. But he would name the time and place.
He drew his needle and ink and wrote his reply on the back. I will do it myself in my own time and if you do not honor this, you do not honor me or my house.
He tied the message to the bird and threw it at the sky.
As he walked back to the city, he heard the War Sermon and listened to the Marsh King prophesy about the dreaming boy. He finally calmed enough to think about the other aspects of the message. Rudolfo’s petition intrigued him. The idea of the Great Library-or what could be saved from it-sparked a hope within him that he had not expected. He’d remembered that first mechoservitor, and wondered if it was possible that they had come so far as to remember an entire library? It might be possible. But it didn’t seem likely. There would be the vaulted knowledge-everything that had already been cataloged, translated and cross-referenced against other fragments.
But how much of the library could they bring back?
Anything that they could build would be a miracle more than he had expected. And positioning it in the far north put it out of reach of the masses, kept it safe. Its only nearby threat would be the Marshers, and recent even
ts suggested an unexpected alliance there. And it was not too far from the upper gates of the Keeper’s Wall, beyond which lay the Churning Wastes. It made far more sense than the Papal Summer Palace, where the first Popes had thought to build their library, huddling against the Dragon’s Spine as far from the Named Lands as possible. It had not worked then and it would be the same now. The bitterly cold winters precluded any commerce whatsoever for a large portion of the year, and they were quickly realizing that a waterway would be necessary if they were to trulyAy w pr shepherd the Named Lands through its sojourn in the New World.
He had no difficulty agreeing to the petition and issuing an order for Sethbert to surrender the mechoservitors in his care. But he could not do this without proclaiming himself, and he was not ready to go back to honoring that lie on behalf of a backward dream.
Ready or not, Petronus knew he did not have much time.
Neb
After they ate their stew, the Marsh girl led Neb back to the Marsh King’s cave. She passed him a pile of tattered blankets and pointed to a corner in the damp, earthen room. He rolled himself up into the corner and watched her do the same thing across from him. The idol glowed dully in the dark, offering light and heat. From where he lay, he saw that the idol clutched at a mirror, the face of P’Andro Whym contemplative as he modeled self-examination.
Once she was beneath her blankets, she propped her head up on one hand and looked across to him. “I can’t imagine what it was like,” she said in a quiet voice.
He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he had an idea, and he swallowed back the sudden terror that gripped him. He felt a lurch in his groin, a squeezing ache that made him want to throw up.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry, Nebios ben Hebda. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Nebios ben Hebda. A Marsher name. “It’s fine. I just can’t talk about it yet.” His stomach lurched again. “You don’t think the Marsh King will make me talk about it, do you?” Suddenly, he wanted to run as far from this camp as he could.
