by Ken Scholes
The metal dreamers.
The idea of the metal men dreaming intrigued him. He’d spent a good deal of time with Isaak during their early days at the Seventh Forest Manor. He’d found him different from the others, somehow set apart after his experience with the blood magicks at Windwir. Of all his kind, Isaak seemed the most advanced, and Neb had watched fascinated as the metal man became more and more human each day.
He had passed Isaak the scroll from Sanctorum Lux, and he believed that it was a copy of the metal dream. He wondered if the metal man had run the script. If he had, what had he seen?
And what about it brings these strangely carved women, hunting us in the Wastes?
His eyes went back to the box, and he glanced to the sleeping girl. He craved the song in its fullness, but knew if he used the crescent, the woman might hear it as well. And he could not trust her. Not yet. Certainly she’d seemed sincere in her effort to convince him to flee. And he believed her-believed his own ears, having heard them say so-that her sisters hunted him. Some small voice in the back of his head assured him that he did not want to be found by them.
Still, how could he leave?
It was a question for another time because there was time. Tomorrow, he would check her wounds and reassess.
He closed his eyes and called up a map of the Wastes by memory and recalled what geography he’d seen when he saw and heard the Blood Scouts. The closest had been the one at the well-at least a week by the root. But he could not be certain that the blood magicks didn’t cut that time drastically. Regardless, there was time. He could not afford to panic.
“Panic,” Renard had told him again and again, “is the Waste’s swiftest killer.”
They do because of what you are.
Her words were cryptic. How or why anyone could see him as an abomination eluded him, but nothing he’d experienced these past two years had made any kind of sense. Rationally or not, it was happening. Even his very father-dead now these two years-had cast his own warning.
Neb shook his head and moved his focus to the song. He could hear the crescent in its lockbox, and again he resisted the urge to open it and cradle it against his ear.
Outside, the kin-wolves broke their silence and bayed as the swollen stars guttered overhead. The canticle was indeed loud tonight.
Settling into his dark corner, thorn rifle laid carefully across his knees, Neb watched the night and listened for the dream beneath each note.
Rudolfo
They burned bonfires in the courtyard to illuminate the rubble, and Rudolfo paced and cursed as the rescuers dug the last survivors and bodies from the wreckage.
He stung from a dozen cuts and burns; he ached from the same number of bruises. His right arm hung broken in a sling, and his stomach clenched and unclenched as rage and anguish washed through him.
Be alive.
Twice, he’d tried to move past the Gypsy Scouts set to keep him from the wreckage. Both times, their hands upon his chest had been enough to subdue him, though the first time he’d raised fist to them before he caught himself.
Be alive, he willed again.
Once more his mind veered into that place he could not bear it to go. His first thought was of them when he first stirred to wakefulness in the medico tent, and he’d felt the world shift and slide when Aedric, battered, burned and bleeding himself, told him that they still hadn’t found his wife and child. Or Isaak.
How long ago had that been?
Hours.
A white bird flitted back from the blast zone and was caught in the catch net. He’d seen it happen three times now this night and had watched the medicos race out. He heard shouting, and a team set out even now at a sprint, carrying a stretcher between them.
He saw Lysias barking orders to teams of refugees as they moved books by wheelbarrow around to the entrances of the subbasements. He’d been told that the general’s men had extinguished the flames quickly, forming a bucket brigade within moments of the blast, even as the Gypsy Scouts took up a perimeter and rescuers began pulling out survivors. Of course, he’d been unaware of this, and he still felt the knot on the back of his head. As close as he was to the explosion, he had no idea how he had survived.
He also had no idea how it could have happened. After Ria’s infiltration, he’d doubled the watch. And still, somehow, someone had done this terrible deed. There were over thirty dead now and three times that number of wounded.
And still they dug. The entire roof and front portion of the wing had collapsed in the blast.
I did not listen to her. Ria had warned him, and he’d not listened. Certainly, some part of him wondered if she herself hadn’t instigated this attack. And yet even as he thought it, he knew it couldn’t be. She would not put him at such risk. Despite everything, she had still spent tremendous resources to concoct Jakob’s cure-and he’d heard the reverence in her tone when she spoke of the Child of Promise, the Great Mother in their gospel. The very book itself lay open upon his desk, and already he’d marked passages that seemed to speak prophetically about his wife and son.
He looked to the pile of rubble, the devastated front third of the wing, and wondered again what kind of device could do this and how it could come to be here, in his forest.
A scout approached at top speed, his rainbow-colored uniform torn and smeared with ash. He inclined his head to Rudolfo and to Aedric, his face lined with worry. “We’ve found the mechoservitor.”
Rudolfo felt his heart race. “Isaak?”
The scout nodded. “He’s. nonfunctional.”
Rudolfo’s stomach fell away, and his head suddenly ached. “Nonfunctional?” He glanced to his left, where Charles labored under a makeshift tent, moving between two of the most damaged mechoservitors. Over half had been damaged in the blast, though most superficially. “Take the arch-engineer. Tell him it’s Isaak.”
The scout nodded and took off at a run.
Rudolfo sighed. “Gods,” he muttered.
“Or devils,” Aedric answered. “I have magicked the scouts, and they are scouring both town and forest, General. I’ll wager that Machtvolk bitch has something to do with it.”
Rudolfo shook his head. “I don’t think so, Aedric.”
But who? Whoever it was, he would find them and-
Another scout approached at full sprint. “We have them, Lord Rudolfo! They’re alive!”
Rudolfo felt the wind go out of him. The world slid away, and his legs went to water. Gravity pulled him down and he went to his knees. They’re alive. The building rage slipped from his clenched fist for just a moment, and he felt his face flush as tears threatened. He blinked them away and realized Aedric’s hand was upon his shoulder, firm and much like Gregoric’s had been so many times before.
He heard himself breathing, and each gasp seemed a sob. He swallowed against it and forced himself to his feet. “Take me to them.” He stared at his first captain, his grief suddenly frozen into resolve and anger.
Aedric opened his mouth and closed it. “Yes, General.”
They made their way around the edges and then down a makeshift path through the debris. As they walked, Rudolfo fixed his eyes ahead.
I did not listen. I did not protect them. It was sharper than any scout knife, and it twisted in him. She’d proven to him how vulnerable he was when she snuck into his forest, into his home, into the very room where he met with her evangelists. Before that, she had sent her kin-raven, beseeching her sister to bear warning to him.
Another path that eluded him.
He found his footing and increased his pace as Aedric guided him by his good arm. Ahead, he saw the men and women gathered around Isaak. The metal man’s head was twisted at an impossible angle, his chest cavity crushed and his left jeweled eye dangling free on gold wire. He felt another sob shake him. Then, he saw them lifting his wailing boy from the ruins, and Rudolfo faltered in his run.
The cry was wrong; it was agonizing pain. And the blood on Jakob’s blankets wrenched Rudolfo at so
me deep place in himself that he did not know existed until now. He pulled away from Aedric and then sprinted ahead.
Now hands were lifting Jin Li Tam from the rubble, and when she looked to Rudolfo, he saw wild panic and grief upon her face. Two medicos intercepted Rudolfo. “No further, Lord.”
“My son,” he shouted, pushing against them.
“A ruptured eardrum, I’ll wager,” the River Woman told him, placing a hand on his chest. “Lord Rudolfo.”
“I need to see them,” he said.
“They will be fine. They need to be cared for, and you have work to do.” Her voice was firm and it surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. She’d pulled him from his mother and into the world when she was a younger lass.
Rudolfo looked past her and the medicos. Jin was being forced into a stretcher, her hands stretched out for Jakob. The River Woman followed his eye. “Give the child to his mother-she’ll better soothe him until we can get the powders on him.” She gave the Gypsy King another stern look and went back to her waiting work.
Rudolfo looked to Isaak. Charles had arrived and was running his hands over the metal man’s chassis and head, checking the limbs. He saw the matter-of-fact manner with which he did his work and marveled at it. If I were to look at it as such, Rudolfo thought, how would I behave now?
He pondered for a moment and looked up to Aedric. “Bring Lysias over,” he said.
Aedric gave him a puzzled look but heeded. He whistled to a scout and sent him careening through the rubble. Rudolfo knew the younger man wanted to ask-his father, Gregoric, most likely would have asked. And would’ve privately let Rudolfo know in clear words his opinions on the matter.
I miss you, Gregoric. Still, he saw his fallen friend in the face of Gregoric’s son, and he knew that the father’s strength was in Aedric.
Rudolfo looked to Aedric now. “How long to muster the West Brigade of the Wandering Army?”
Aedric’s eyebrows furrowed. “A day, maybe two.”
Rudolfo nodded. “Good. You’ll call them up tonight after I speak with the two of you.”
Even as he said it, Lysias approached. The general’s eyes were filled with worry and red from smoke. “Lord Rudolfo? Are they safe, then?”
Rudolfo shook his head. “None of us is safe, Lysias.” He paused. “General Lysias.”
He saw the look of surprise in the old soldier’s eyes. “Lord?”
“Swear fealty to me and mine, General, and serve my family and my people well.” Something caught in Rudolfo’s voice, and the words sounded foreign to him as he said them. “Build me an army to keep my borders,” he said.
“You have my oath, Lord,” Lysias said.
Rudolfo looked to Aedric. “Lysias will raise them up; the Gypsy Scouts will train them. Bear witness, First Captain.”
“Aye, General Rudolfo.”
“Until they are ready, the Wandering Army will watch out for us. I want the Western Brigade on the line in three days’ time.” Rudolfo wanted to close his eyes for these next words, but he knew he could not. It went against everything his people had believed these two thousand years in the forest, and he had to look them each in the eye as he said it.
“The borders of the Ninefold Forest,” Rudolfo said, “are now closed to passage. Send birds at dawn to all, kin-clave and foe.”
Aedric and Lysias exchanged glances. Aedric spoke first. “Are you certain, Lord Rudolfo?”
Am I certain? He heard the wailing of his son and the cries of the frightened and wounded around him. He heard Charles cursing and grunting as he manhandled Isaak onto the stretcher with the help of two scouts.
He remembered the anguish in Jin Li Tam’s eyes.
“Yes,” Rudolfo said, letting the wrath show in his voice. “I am certain.
Chapter 8
Vlad Li Tam
The sun rose behind him as Vlad Li Tam rowed the skiff into the harbor. Already, the scant remains of his iron armada built steam as they prepared to leave. Even in the dusky rose of morning, he could see the remnant of his family as they scurried along the upper and lower docks, moving the last of their lives back onto the ships.
Six months and so little to show for it. Yet, even as he said it, his heart felt full. These last nights, rowing out to where the ghost awaited, had added something indefinable to him-something he’d lived without for too long. The compulsion of it was frightening, especially given that this love he felt was for a twisting, writhing mass of tentacled light. Not for the first time, he wondered if perhaps something had happened to him those moments when he first encountered the d’jin, so fresh from his time beneath Ria’s knife, with his hands upon the throat of his first grandson.
He sighed and worked the oars, his shoulders creaking with his increased activity of late.
They’d found nothing here, but there were sure to be clues elsewhere.
After all, there had been those ships. And unfamiliar, dark-robed men. And now, though his heart drew him to sea for other purposes, his brain saw clearly that whoever was out there was not coming back to this place. And despite the strange feelings that now pulled him, relentless as a tide, Vlad knew that discovering the nationality of those ships and those men meant discovering the true hands behind the fall of Windwir.
And behind the surgery that cut my family from the world.
It wasn’t that these new sensations trumped that loss-or even mitigated it. No, the loss was there, and if his soul went to it he could feel the hollow ache, like a tongue to the socket of a lost tooth.
He slowed his rowing and watched the sun lift up from the ocean.
Then, he looked back over his shoulder to the docks, adjusting his pull on the oars to line up with where Baryk stood waiting.
As he slid alongside, the old warpriest grabbed the rope Vlad tossed and tied the small boat off. “We’ll be ready to sail in two hours,” he said. His brow furrowed. “Is it still called ‘sailing’ when there are no sails involved?”
Vlad shrugged and stood carefully, grasping the edge of the dock as he climbed out of the boat. “How are spirits?”
“Fine. Nervous. Excited.” Baryk’s chuckle was more of a bark. “Should I ask you that question?”
He’d told the warpriest about the ghost, uncomfortable with the telling but even less comfortable with leading his family off to follow such a flight of fancy without speaking to someone first. Someone he trusted; someone who would not think him utterly mad. And Baryk was a metaphysick, though moderate in his beliefs. The city-state he hailed from-Paltos-was one of few in the Named Lands that not only allowed but encouraged a religious system, the people worshiping a loose pantheon of the more benevolent Younger Gods. When the Androfrancines had been in power, they’d avoided that corner of the Outer Emerald Coast and had encouraged others to do the same.
“We know their ghosts are in the waters,” Baryk had said. “I’ve not seen them myself, but I’ve heard the sailors tell of it. Your own daughter is named for them.” Then he’d offered a reassuring smile. “Who am I-and who is anyone else-to question what you’ve seen or experienced?”
Vlad had been comforted by the man’s response.
Now, he returned the chuckle. “It was a good night. But she was restless. I think she’s eager to leave.”
She. How did he know this? He blinked at his own words and bit his lower lip. He did know it. And not for the first time, he realized there were many ways of knowing a thing. He stood and stretched on the dock.
Baryk studied him. “You know that some of the older children are whispering about this. They know something is afoot. They’ve watched you watching the sea, and now these midnight rowings.”
Vlad nodded. He did know this and he’d expected it. “Let them whisper. They will still follow.”
“Aye,” Baryk said, “they will, though they may quietly think you mad.”
I think myself mad. But he didn’t say it. He held that in and turned it over and over like a Rufello puzzle. It was possible-even likely-that h
e saw nothing at all there in the sea. Perhaps something had broken in him during his time of captivity and kin-healing. Perhaps he’d concocted a beautiful singing spirit to pull him away from his pain and into the deep waters where he could find some kind of peace. Perhaps he was in love now with the notion of forgetting beneath the waves. Regardless, he knew the power of perception, and if somehow he was wrong in what he saw and experienced, that would work its way out as he pursued it. He vaguely recalled a Francine arch-behaviorist who’d written a slender volume on the subject of hallucination as a means of the psyche healing itself.
“What they think,” Vlad Li Tam said, summoning firmness to his voice, “is what they think. We leave as soon as the ships are loaded.”
Baryk nodded. “I’ve seen to your things. They’re in your cabin on the flagship.”
Vlad forced a smile. “Thank you, Baryk. I’ll be in the temple until we leave.”
Baryk clapped Vlad on the shoulder. “I’ll see to the ships.”
Vlad left his son-in-law and climbed the stairs slowly, inclining his head to those members of his family who passed him. He reached the top of the low bluff and climbed the marble steps up into the white building.
Once inside, he made his way to the top of the building, entering the large domed observation room on the fourth floor.
He walked to the railing and looked down, expecting vertigo and a memory of screams to overtake him and drive him to his knees.
Neither happened.
Vlad Li Tam stood still and listened. Outside, he heard the first whistles of those ships that were loaded and ready to depart.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly to the ghosts of his family.
Then he stood silent and listened for absolution in the stillness of the room. He waited, not even able to find his tears, until Baryk’s runner found him and told him that the last longboat awaited him.
Then Vlad Li Tam turned his back upon those ghosts and gave himself to the chasing of another.