by Ken Scholes
As he crossed the room, Petronus glanced once more to Erlund and saw the anger on his face again. He’d not expected this turn, and he resented the loss of control, both over his Council of Governors and over his trial. His apparent frustration did not rankle Petronus in the least. Erlund might not have fully anticipated Petronus’s strategy, but Petronus had certainly expected the Overseer’s anger over it.
But when his eyes next found the face of Erlund’s spymaster and prosecutor, he saw something there that he did not expect. It was brief and it was meant for Petronus alone, of that he had no doubt.
There, in that moment as Petronus passed by the bench, Ignatio offered him a slight and secret smile.
And above that smile, something satisfied and smug danced behind the man’s eyes.
It was the satisfied gaze of a hunter happening upon a sprung snare. The smug look of a fisherman hauling in his overflowing net.
Petronus shuddered and forced himself forward, but even late into that night, that smile and those eyes stayed with him and promised something soon coming that he could not quite place.
Chapter 20
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam hung limp in the cutting rack and stared down at the empty tables. The days and nights were a blur to him now, and more and more, he found there were vast patches of blank white in his sense of things.
But for now, they were finished with his children and his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. They’d hauled the last of the bodies away at some point, and from that moment, Ria had simply continued her work without them. Even now, as he hung there, her hands moved lovingly over his naked flesh, her fingers tracing messages into his back that he could not cipher as her other hand worked the salted knife.
He’d screamed himself hoarse at first, but now he simply breathed and lay still, watching the drool puddle on the floor beneath him. He felt the hot bite of the blade moving over his left buttock, slow and in a widening spiral that then moved up and into the small of his back. Exhaling, he forced the pain into the cave he had dug for it deep inside of himself. He forced it there and then stood guard over it.
I will grow my pain into an army. He would feed it; he would water it; he would keep it in the dark and secret places where pain can grow fastest and strongest. He would-
Chimes sounded-these louder than the one that summoned him from his makeshift nest of blankets in the corner of his suite. He felt the blade lift and focused on the warm blood that trickled down his side to be caught in the gutters and fed into whatever twisted repository they used for their dark purposes.
In saner, clearer moments he’d pondered their use of it. He’d not studied the resurgences that had gone before, but he’d known one truth-none of them had brought back the Old Ways with such elaborate care and attention to detail. These were not men and women hidden in the forests offering their glossolalia to dead Wizard Kings and cutting themselves to mingle blood over a campfire.
These Y’Zirites were different. Something darker, more sinister, more compelling than any resurgence he’d ever heard tell of. From their elaborate rituals right down to the genuine love and affection Ria held in her voice when she spoke tenderly to him about the kin-healing she now performed.
“We are saving you with agony,” she had said once, “and your agony, in turn, will save us all.”
As if summoned by memory, he felt her breath close upon his ear and smelled the cool apple scent of her mouth. “They’re here, Vlad,” she said. Her voice was heavy with something akin to ecstasy. “Your grandson has brought them home to you.”
He could not prevent the sob; it shook him, and as it did, fire spread across his back as pain raced along the intricate network of carefully carved words and symbols she’d written into him with her knives.
I will grow my pain into an army.
But some part of him knew it wasn’t true. There would be no army. He would watch his family die one by one beneath these brutal blades, and then, when all were gone and all of the youngest had taken their marks and boarded their ship for gods knew where, he would take his own mark and offer his throat for one final cut.
And some other part of him begged for that day to come sooner rather than not.
He heard soft footfalls behind him, and Ria kissed his cheek before turning away. “Are they landing, then?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Tell Mal that I would dine with him in my chambers once he has refreshed himself.”
“Shall I summon the Physician and prepare a batch for the tables?”
Vlad Li Tam felt the spasm and knew he’d sobbed again. He held his breath, fighting back the tears as he waited for her to speak.
“No,” she said. “I think we can give our honored guest time to meditate and prepare his heart for this last of our work together.” He heard the footfalls again, and once more she leaned over him. Now, she leaned before him and he forced his eyes away from the breasts that hung ripe and firm from within her open robe. He went to her eyes, but the love within those wide, brown windows confounded him and stirred something he could not let himself lay hold of.
I am growing to love her in some dark and poisonous way.
Of course, he’d heard of such things. He’d even used similar tactics with others, though it had grieved him. Pain was a powerful hallucinogen in the hands of a skilled manipulator.
He gritted his teeth and forced down his body’s unbidden response to the hand she laid upon his cheek. She brought her eyes close to his. “We are nearly finished here, Vlad. I wish that I could continue our work together, but I fear I will be called away soon to attend other matters.” She put her lips upon his and pressed her tongue against teeth he closed firmly against her. When she pulled back, she smiled. “But I have cherished our time together; healing your kinship with House Y’Zir has been the greatest honor I could know. at least until I see the Child of Promise with my own eyes.”
Vlad said nothing. Instead, he forced that part of him that ached for her also into that deep cave full of pain. It was not love, no matter how it felt or what he thought. It was something more fierce and terrifying than that and it also would grow his army very well.
He felt the hands upon him now. He felt them working the buckles and straps, lifting him again as they had so many times before. And he felt his eyes rolling and his tongue lolling about in his mouth, felt the deep and salted fire roiling over his body, over the thousand cuts that made and unmade him.
Tomorrow, he knew they would start again. Tomorrow, a fresh batch of his tribe would be laid out upon the altar of his heart to have poetry cut from them amid their cries for him to help, to save them from this darkest nightmare they had fallen somehow into.
I will grow my pain into an army, he thought, and I will take this island in my wrath. I will end you. You will burn beneath the fury of your very knives.
But even as he thought it, he heard the mocking laughter of a thousand dead and once more found himself weeping where there were no tears left to weep.
Neb
The farther east they raced, the hotter the days and nights became. Neb tried to mark his surroundings but found this new means of transportation wasn’t conducive to charting his present path.
Of course, he wasn’t confident that he would necessarily need to know his way back-despite this supposed authorization he enjoyed this side of the D’Anjite’s Bridge.
When Neb regained consciousness that first night, he’d opened his eyes upon a star-strewn night sky, the blue-green moon swollen and heavy as it prepared to sink beneath a purple ribbon of horizon. When his demands to be put down were not heeded, he squirmed and twisted, surprised that his best efforts did nothing to put the mechanical off its footing. Those first struggles were met with firm metal hands that forced stillness into him as he rode the swaying metal shoulders.
Finally, he’d settled into the ride, shifting himself to minimize the bruising where the hard steel pushed into his flesh.
When he didn’
t drowse, he spent the time letting his mind wander across the vast landscape of questions that stretched out before his inner eye. Much had transpired in such a short time, and he still reeled from it. And the only words the mechoservitor had offered him had been the brief exchange that first day when he’d asked about Isaak and Renard.
“They are operational,” the mechoservitor answered. “The damage is minor but sufficient to prevent unauthorized travel.”
A thought had struck him then. “Couldn’t I have authorized them?”
Neb felt the hot steam against his side as it hissed out of the exhaust grate below him. The mechoservitor’s voice sounded reedy as its bellows worked. “Authorization may only be granted by sign and seal of the Office of the Holy See or by Papal Designee under Holy Unction of his Excellency, Introspect III.”
Beyond that, Neb’s questions remained unanswered as they lurched swiftly across rocky terrain. Still, he played them out behind his eyes and used what Franci meditations and ciphers he could to make sense of them.
Somehow, he’d been authorized to be here where the others had not been. Renard had run these Wastes his entire life, and the metal man had named Isaak “cousin”-odd that they would not be permitted to pass. Obviously, the chasm marked some boundary, for the mechanical had led them a merry chase for days-or was it weeks now? — until suddenly stopping at that point to draw its brutal line in the dirt of that place.
And both the mechanical and Renard had made the same assertion that Winters had made over a year ago now when she’d acknowledged him as the Homeseeker. It boggled him that anything Androfrancine would acknowledge the prophetic trappings of Marsher mysticism, though now he felt the call of that title even more so. It was as if even dreamless here, the hope and promise of Home twisted and writhed like a sleeping snake. Something in this wasted land summoned him.
And where have my dreams gone? He felt that pang of loss again. No, he thought. The dreams were but a vehicle. The real question, not so very far beneath the surface, made his stomach ache.
Where had Winters gone?
His last dream of her had been the night she camped beneath the spire, preparing to make her final ascent and declare herself to be something that she did not feel ready to become. He’d seen those questions and fears within her dreams and was certain she’d seen his own because of the way their sleep touched. And the dreams felt so very real. He could carry the smell of her with him for days from just a few moments near her in the middle of the night. He missed the comfort it gave him, and once more it raised the question: Why could he not dream in this place?
It neared sunset on the fourth day when they finally stopped running and the mechoservitor placed him upon his feet. They stood in a hollow bowl of stone. Set directly in the center of it was a round slab of dark metal bolted into the granite by a series of Rufello cipher locks. It was weather-pitted, but the stone around it had worn more than that ancient metal had. Around them, bathed in the scarlet light of the lowering sun, jagged glass mountains bent like bladed waves.
The familiarity of it struck him as he stretched and looked around. I’ve been here before. Of course, it wasn’t possible. But even the dry, powdered-bone smell of the place resonated with some deep-seated memory. “Where are we?” he finally asked.
But the metal man paid him no mind. Instead, it stretched out upon its stomach and placed its ear to the ground. Then, it surprised Neb by what it did next.
The metal man sighed, and it sounded like a sigh of contentment. “Here it is,” he whispered, and his voice made gooseflesh rise on Neb’s neck and arms. “Listen for it, Nebios.”
Neb looked around them again, then cocked his head toward the ground. Faintly, he heard the song. He moved a step closer-it was faint and tinny, and he realized that he didn’t so much hear it with his ears as he felt it. The slightest vibration of notes. It pulled him another step and he knelt.
It was a mournful sound, and it came from beneath the steel cap. “What is it? Why do I know this place?”
The metal man’s eye shutters flapped open. “This is the source of the dream.”
Dream. He remembered. When his father had visited his dreams he had seen the metal men all in robes at a dig. It was this place. They had discovered this place. “The source of the dream is a song?”
“The dream is ciphered into the song. The song is a conduit. Listen.”
Neb stretched out and pressed his ear to the cool metal. He could hear it, still far away, but he could make out each note. He recognized it and associated his recognition with a harp-only then the song had been played too fast and there had been fire and smoke and-
“Winters’s dream,” he said. “I know it from her dream.” And more than that: He knew this place from a dream as well. More vague images of metal men in robes digging.
Steam hissed from the mechoservitor’s exhaust grate. “It is ‘A Canticle for the Fallen Moon in B Minor’ by the Last Czar Frederico, from before the Age of the Wizard Kings.”
“Am I authorized to know this?” Neb thought he must be or the metal man would not freely offer the information.
“You are early,” the metal man said, “but you are authorized, Nebios Homeseeker. We found the source during the construction of Sanctorum Lux. We decrypted the locks and made a thorough study of the artifact. Under the Holy Unction of Papal Designee Hebda, it has been replaced and resealed for your arrival. Mark this place and know it well; the dream awaits you here. In the appointed time you will bear it to my cousin and you will both join us in the work.” He paused, his mouth flap moving and his eyes flashing. “The song compels a response.”
Neb’s mind spun, and he willed it not to. Papal Designee? His father had been an archaeological technician; he’d heard nothing about a designation from the Office of the Holy See. Of course, he’d seen his father infrequently. The man had spent most of his life in the Churning Wastes, making a point to visit Neb in the orphanage whenever he was back in Windwir between assignments. Was it possible that his father had served in some capacity Neb had been unaware of? It certainly seemed to be the case.
The metal man’s other words struck him. The song compels a response. He strained his ears to capture the melodic lines of the song. Yes, he thought. It does, but how could he know that?
He heard the clicking and clacking, the sounds of metal groaning, as the mechoservitor stood. “The moon rises,” the metal man said. “It is nearly time for your sleep cycle to commence, but our destination is nearby. Are you functional for running?”
Neb nodded, climbing to his feet. The song held him, compelled him to stay and to listen, to work its Whymer Maze of notes and find and offer whatever it called for. It summoned him, held him, would not release him. But he forced his attention away, shuddering at the force of that haunting music. He looked around again, noting his surroundings as best he could. Beside him, the metal man took those first long strides and broke into an easy run. Neb pulled a bit of the black root from his pouch and put it into his mouth.
Then he ran, too, away from that buried song that beckoned him. As he ran, the bitter juices from the root flooded his mouth, and his legs stretched as the air around him took on a buzzing quality. Behind him, the canticle called. He forced his eyes onto the metal man he followed.
At first, the song faded and he found his focus again, but it was short-lived.
When the moon rose, swollen and low as it filled the horizon, it cast a blue-green shine across the Churning Wastes. When its first light peeked over the jagged teeth of the eastern mountains, Neb thought the song, fading behind him, grew suddenly louder. It filled the night sky as if the moon itself sang them onward. The Old World had become, for him, an amphitheater filled with music as he and the metal man raced across its vast stage.
The sadness of the melody pulled tears from Neb’s eyes. The delight of it made him laugh out loud.
As the black root took hold and his legs caught him up to his metal companion, he realized that he was not alo
ne in his response to the song.
The metal man ran laughing and weeping in complete abandon to the canticle beneath a pregnant moon that echoed and enhanced its strains.
Matching his stride to that of the Androfrancine machine, Nebios ben Hebda gave himself to the song and first felt its whispered call toward Home.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo paced his narrow cabin and waited for the longboat they’d sent to return with news.
The Kinshark finally lay at anchor after nearly a week of pursuit, magicked and nestled in a cove on the southern side of the island that the iron armada had eventually led them to. It lay south of the horn and well beyond the normal shipping routes, a day’s sailing into the haunted waters that were anathema to most New World sailors.
He’d seen the island from the deck earlier that day. It was large enough to boast craggy hills that stretched up from the jungle that blanketed it. And its white beaches were wide, inviting and deserted.
That is, until they reached the southern facing. There, they saw upper and lower docks with both iron and wooden vessels either tied off or anchored in the deep, natural harbor. Squatting above it, a massive building of white stone-built along a rocky ridge-reached up into the sky.
He’d watched silently at the rail as the ships they followed disembarked their cargo. He didn’t need to see his knuckles to know they were white from their grip as first the children and then the adults from House Li Tam shuffled down the gangways, tied to one another in a long string and herded by dark-robed men with short swords.
After, they had circled to the other side of the island and sent out their scouting party. Rudolfo sent his two Gypsy Scouts along with Rafe’s men and then gave himself to the arduous work of waiting. The scouts would assess what they were up against and bring back their report. After that came the decision as to what they actually could do. Rudolfo was skeptical-they were one wooden vessel against an iron fleet. Gods knew exactly what kind of military personnel augmented the small navy.
