by Ken Scholes
The branches unfolded further until slender fingers reached from the end of slender arms. Jin also noticed a scar roughly her own length.
Now Administrator Gras stood back and watched, a blue stone in her hand. They were too far away to hear exactly what the mouth murmured, but it sounded like a litany.
May I bless the children, Mothers? Jin nodded, her attention completely taken by the wooden fingers that stroked the top of her son’s head. The branch encircled his waist, the hand holding up the back of his head, and she felt him being lifted. Her first impulse was to hold on, but from the corner of her eye, she saw Amara lifted up as well.
Do not be afraid, the Grandmother Tree whispered in her mind. Jin watched as a seam of light opened in the side of the tree. The bark peeled back like lips, exposing a cavity in the tree that was too pink for wood.
Gently, the branches carried the children into that opening, and when it sealed behind them, Jin’s breath went out in a gasp. “What is she doing to them?”
Administrator Gras stared slack-jawed at the scar in the side of the tree. “Something we’ve never seen before,” she said.
From inside the tree, Jin heard muffled laughter, and it soothed her suddenly twisted stomach.
Mama tree good. Where Papa?
The voice filled her mind, and she felt her eyes go wide. Jakob?
Now the laughter was inside her, and she found herself stifling a laugh of her own even as her eyes filled with tears she couldn’t attach a feeling to.
The seam of light was back now, and slowly, the branches drew the children out. Deep inside the open tree, hazy and lost in red shadows, Jin thought she saw a massive, beating thing. And then, before she could see much more, Jakob was laughing and wrestling in her arms.
The Terms and Conditions of Frederico’s Bargain, the ancient voice intoned, are nearly fulfilled. Their children will need neither blessing nor baptism to remind them of their birthright.
And as the Grandmother Tree spoke, the earth shook again and the light grew dim once more as a cool wind moved over them. And Jin Li Tam held her son in wonder, tears flowing down her cheeks as he wailed at the groan of pain that filled their minds to overflowing.
Rudolfo
Throughout the unexpected parley Rudolfo found his eyes returning to the ship or at least where it should’ve been. Once it was tied off, there had been a hum and then a pop before the vessel vanished. Still, he saw men and women emerge as if from nowhere.
The historic nature of it all had trumped protocol, and Orius had brought Hebda and Tertius out for the parley, releasing them into Rudolfo’s custody. They sat and listened to the airship captain’s introductory remarks, their eyes also going to where the magicked vessel was tethered.
He’d found it all quite implausible but could offer no other explanation. For two millennia, the Androfrancines had believed and taught that the Named Lands was the last pocket of survivors. The Empire of Y’Zir had surprised them all, and now another hidden pocket of survivors stood before them with a hard tale to swallow.
Orius was not budging, keeping the camp at second alarm and the visitors under guard, though they walked about unarmed and with no clear hostile intent. “I find it all quite difficult to believe, Captain,” he said. “And if your council were truly our ally, why would they wait and come forward only now, after we’ve won our own war?”
“For precisely that reason, General Orius,” the young man said. Rudolfo studied his face. He had red hair, though of a more copper variety than the Tams. “The council’s work of tending and gathering is built upon anonymity and noninterference. Frederico tasked us to watch, wait, and leave an accurate record of the Last Days of Lasthome.”
“So if the Y’Zirites had won you would be in parley with them?”
He shook his head. “We’d likely continue on as we have for thousands of years, General. Unless they’d managed to open the Seaway and recover the staff. Then we would have been forced to make contact.”
If the young man spoke the truth, his sister was working with Petronus on the moon. Millennia of gathered history and art and other bits of light were being moved into a library there the size and scope of which made Windwir’s Great Library look like a grain of sand upon a seashore. And they had Neb and Marta and Isaak.
And the shaking of the earth was the work of Vlad Li Tam.
Orius looked to Rudolfo and Lysias. “You two have been quiet. Do you have any thoughts on this matter?”
Rudolfo stroked his beard. “I think they approached us under the colors of our kin-clave. And if they’ve come to take Winters to her new home, it solves one of your problems, General. The question is: Shall you also let it solve your others?”
Orius’s single eye burned hot with anger for a moment. He nodded to Tertius and Hebda. “These two are yours to do with as you please. Winters as well.” Then he looked to Endrys Thrall. “You and your people are somehow transcribing this occasion?”
He nodded and held up a blue stone. “This captures my full experience.”
The general stood. “Then you can bear witness to the execution at sundown. I’m sure you’ll want that in your lunar library.”
Winters stood, and Rudolfo admired the fire in her eyes. “But General—”
“You are leaving with more than I would normally grant you, Lady Winteria. You may certainly wait aboard the ship if you don’t wish to bear witness with the rest of us.” He inclined his head to Captain Thrall. “Your people are welcome to our mess hall. Sunset is about an hour away.” He smiled. “With the cloud cover lifting, it’s going to be quite fetching.”
After the general walked away, Rudolfo looked to Winters. “She has earned the axe,” he said, “though Orius has made it about far more than justice.” He looked to the captain. “Will you or your people intervene in the matter?”
“Only if we’re not allowed to leave with Lady Winteria and whichever companions travel with her,” Captain Thrall said. “With Lord Tam’s activities in the southern hemisphere, time is especially of the essence. It is a two-day flight to the Seaway; our vessels are designed for stealth, not speed.”
Rudolfo was confident that Orius wouldn’t interfere with their departure if they didn’t interfere with his execution. And he was also confident that he would need to implement his plan to remove Orius from power sooner rather than later. The arrival of the New Espirans had merely delayed what was coming.
Rudolfo sighed and then found Winters’s eyes upon him. “There is other news for you, Lord Rudolfo, though you may wish it in private,” she said.
Rudolfo glanced to Lysias. “I think here is fine.”
Then the Gypsy King looked from Winters to the young captain and could tell that this news was not a burden upon them. Still there were already tears forming in the young Marsh Queen’s eyes.
“Your son, Lord Jakob, is alive and well, Lord Rudolfo,” Captain Thrall said. “As is Lady Tam, the Great Mother. It was a ruse staged by her father to undermine the Y’Zirite faith.”
Rudolfo felt the wind go out of him as his knees weakened. He was glad in that moment that he was sitting. Otherwise, he’d have surely collapsed. As it was, he felt his heart burst even as his eyes filled with tears. “My son is alive?”
The young officer nodded. “They are in New Espira. Arrangements will be made for their swift return once it is safe to do so.”
It was as if he couldn’t hear it. Or maybe that he couldn’t hear it enough. “My son is alive?”
Winters’s face was already wet, and she nodded. He felt Lysias’s hand clap his shoulder, and for a moment Rudolfo lost himself in the transformation that overtook him. Then he paused and his eyebrows furrowed. “What proof do you have of this?”
Captain Thrall held up the blue stone. “Here. Hold it with me and I’ll show you.”
Rudolfo stretched out a tentative hand and felt the weight of the stone as it settled into his palm. Then Endrys Thrall put his own hand over the top of it. “Close your eyes.�
�
There was mumbling and the smell of the forest and a vast tree, and Jin Li Tam stood with another woman, and each of them held a child up to branches that reached for them, and Jakob laughed and—
He opened his eyes. “Where was this? When?”
“An hour or so ago.”
Rudolfo remembered clearly the moment his life changed profoundly when Jakob had come sick and gray into the world on the heels of the Firstborn Feast massacre. And he remembered also the profound moment of change when the kin-raven arrived bearing its dark tidings of loss. And now, this change as hope once more washed out the despair and his lamentation became a hymn. He felt his knees weaken.
My son is alive. Rudolfo met Winters’s eyes and then the New Espiran’s. “And you intend to bring him home?”
The captain nodded. “Yes. Once it is safe.”
Safe. Rudolfo’s stomach sank, and he glanced to Lysias and Orius quickly before looking back to Captain Thrall. “What about the pathogen?”
The New Espiran opened his mouth to reply but was cut short when an explosion shook the ground and a patch of sky where the vessel had stood magicked burst into flame and light. The blast knocked Rudolfo over along with the others, tumbling the chairs and table to the tarp-covered ground.
Rudolfo climbed to his feet, his ears still ringing. He scanned the wreckage and saw flaming figures running about in the midst of it, but he couldn’t hear the screams. He could see Lysias’s lips moving and it took him a moment to register the hands pressing into his shoulder.
Are you injured?
He shook his head. “No,” he shouted. Then he turned back to the burning ship. Endrys Thrall was running to the fire now, Winters and Hebda close behind him. Renard was running toward them from the mess hall along with a handful of other soldiers.
He took a step to follow the captain and then stopped when something large crawled out of the wreckage and roared. The sound of it cut through the cotton that filled his ears and chilled his blood. Rudolfo drew his knives and whistled for his scouts, though he doubted there was much they could do.
It was larger than a wagon, with four sets of wings folded back and away as it moved quickly on its six legs, tail thrashing and scattering burning debris. There was another flash, and suddenly a girl stood before the beast.
She was young—not much older than Winters—and her hair was long and golden as straw. Her bright blue eyes shone, and as she stretched out her hands, the silver robe she wore shimmered and then closed in upon her to form a skintight sheath that glowed. “I have come for Winteria bat Mardic,” she said. Her eyes fell on Winters. “The Elder. Also known as Ria. Do not interfere with me, Downunders.”
She sniffed the air and then looked at Winters again. “You do not belong here either. But you stink of them nonetheless.”
Rudolfo saw a look of comprehension register upon Winters’s face. “They are my people,” she said.
The woman stared at her with a look of bemused disgust. Behind her, the massive creature stretched out its wings and roared again. Captain Thrall and the others had stopped. “Guard me,” she told the beast, and it growled.
Then she moved into the camp faster than an unmagicked person should be able to move. “I know she is here.”
Rudolfo saw Orius now. He had made it to the door of his cabin and now watched the woman move through his camp with a look of rage upon his face. Whistling the men to third alarm, he advanced on her.
Laughing, she tossed him into the air. He landed heavily with a grunt. She moved on. “Where are you, Child? Where are you, Ria?”
My people will come for me. Rudolfo did not know who this woman was, but Ria had been truthful. And whoever this was had come with fire and a silver beast the likes of which he’d never seen.
He watched as she strode to the building that served as the stockade. She ripped the door off and threw the guard that waited inside out into the mud.
When she came out she held Ria in her arms, cradling her like a child. “Now tell me which one of you is Orius?”
The Gray Guard general groaned from where he lay, and she followed the eyes of his soldiers as they settled upon him. The woman smiled. “Can you stand for me right here?” she asked Ria. Ria nodded.
Then the woman wrapped in silver light approached Orius and scooped him up by the collar of his uniform. “Our conversation will be brief and effective,” she told him. “Where is the Firstfall Axe you intended to murder my cousin with?” She followed his glance back to his cabin. “Thank you,” she said.
She held up a hand, and Rudolfo watched as the silver of her suit spread out to wrap it in light. Orius screamed when she plunged the hand into his chest. After pulling it out, she dropped him and dropped his beating heart into the mud of Windwir’s grave.
Rudolfo’s eyebrows furrowed as she took the axe from the cabin. Then the woman spit on Orius’s twitching body, gathered Ria back into her arms, and vanished into light as the beast swallowed them, launched itself into the air, and pounded sky for the south.
The look of dread upon Endrys Thrall’s face as the captain watched them fly away was enough to raise the hairs on Rudolfo’s neck. Still, despite that and despite the screams and the flames, Rudolfo only saw his son held aloft by branches and only heard his laughter on the evening air.
Ria
It was like no other experience she’d had—the sense of flight—and Ria found herself suddenly drunk on the freedom she felt.
More than freedom, she felt the wind upon skin that she knew wasn’t hers. And she smelled the forests, wet with the winter’s runoff as the snow gave way to spring. She had no control, but she felt the wings as they beat against the sky to move them at an extraordinary speed—so fast that she could already see the farmlands and cities of the Entrolusian Delta stretching out ahead before the beast cut to the east and climbed even higher. The Keeper’s Wall, an impenetrable range of mountains running north to south, filled her eyes, and the air grew colder.
I found you, Cousin. The voice was warm, and she tried to answer but found her mouth wouldn’t reply. Now we can set things right that have been wrong for far too long. But rest now.
She forced her mind into the words. What will we do first?
The warmth was back, only now it flooded her, fogging the edges of her vision. The pain she’d grown so used to living in was gone now. And the emptiness was filling up with something else. And now the woman’s voice sounded far away as the light faded around Ria. First we will make you whole. Then we will do what others have lacked the will or means to do and make things right.
Ria didn’t know what any of that meant. She only knew that she wanted to sleep, and when she drifted off, she dreamed of being held in the arms of a warm and loving beast who understood what it meant to have everything that she believed in slowly fall away and become false.
* * *
When she opened her eyes, Ria blinked and wondered if she’d dreamed about flying. She stood in a field, though it was different from the one she’d seen in the other dreams. The tree here was massive but misshapen, twisted, its bark mottled gray with time and disease. It stretched up into hazy mist, its top lost to sight. Around it, ponds and brooks of silver burbled. And before it, she saw the Great Mother and the Vessel of Grace both offering up their children—the Child of Promise and the Crimson Empress—and the tree took them and opened its pink maw to swallow them whole.
Ria screamed and fell into the arms of the woman who suddenly stood there with her. The slender arms enfolded her, and she felt belonging in them as she sobbed.
I don’t understand what is happening.
I will show you. She held Ria a moment longer and then released her and stretched out a hand. A blue, round stone sat in it. “I took this from one of the men at the Androfrancine camp. It shows that you’ve been lied to by the same man who lied to me,” she said. “Vlad Li Tam.”
The name was a knife in Ria’s heart, the source of her shame and her failure. She looked bac
k to the tree. Everything had frozen. The two mothers were staring fearfully at the branches now disappearing into the trunk of the tree.
Now she found her voice. “I don’t understand.”
“He did not kill them. He hid them away with others of his ilk. He deceived all of you. But he was not the first to deceive you.”
The tree was younger now but still mottled. The disease was less pronounced. And now, a stump of a man lay against the tree. He had no legs, no right arm, no left eye. And as he lay, his lips moved as if he talked in his sleep. “This one also deceived you. He took his stories from the same well of lies that the others did and fashioned them into a gospel of vendetta and blood.” The voice grew soft. “What would your life have been without Ahm Y’Zir’s lie?”
The tree was even younger now. A willowy man dressed in black stood beside a large mechanical spider made of glass and steel. A large bearded man stood beside the tree now, holding the Firstfall Axe and a large silver goblet. He raised it to the tree and then drained down its silver contents. “Or this lie,” the voice continued. “The one that Shadrus drank there at the execution of Frederico’s Bargain? The one that has haunted your father’s line for so long now?”
The question had weight, and she felt it. What would my life have been? But another question took preeminence. This woman who had been in her dreams and had promised to come for her had come. And had killed Orius and taken her flying and—
She touched her face where it should’ve ached. It was no longer puffy and tender. And healed me in the belly of a monster.
The tree was gone now, and so was the clearing. All that remained was a large, round hatch in the bottom of a cave dimly lit by the glow of the woman’s silver robes.
“Who are you?” Ria finally asked.
“I am Amylé D’Anjite,” she said. “I am what your people call a Younger God.” Her smile broadened. “And you, Daughter of Salome, are my cousin. My father would have been your uncle.”
