by Ken Scholes
What would Jin Li Tam think of that? she wondered. She knew the woman was capable of killing. They’d danced with the knives each morning, and surely the movements of body and blades could be taught. Already, she felt competent. But could that redheaded courtesan spy turned Gypsy Queen and mother teach Winters how to kill?
It is not who I am. But maybe, she thought, it is who I need to be.
She forced her mind back into the gospel.
And in those days the birds of the sky shall betray and the darkness that masquerades as light shall be fully illuminated by the grace of House Y’Zir. The Usurper’s city will become a pyre and the Machtvolk will rise from their ashes and mud to make straight a path for the Crimson Empress’s advent. She thumbed the pages forward now, finding a less familiar passage. And behold, I saw those dwelling in the Beneath Places and heard these making their bargain with devils. Weeping, I watched them summon forth their abomination to damn and desolate the children of men by a song. And I wept not because of the sorrow of this, but because of the grace of the Crimson Empress, for even in this, she would prevail in joy, and heal our broken home.
She read it again, drawn in by the power of the words. She’d read as many books as she could get her hands on-Tertius had been particularly good at smuggling them in. She’d read most of P’Andro Whym’s gospels, but his were not so dressed in imagery, parable and prophecy. They were mostly admonitions and stories around the preservation of human knowledge and learning from the mistakes of the past.
But these writings, unlike the reason-based words of the Androfrancines, were not so very different from her own Book of Dreaming Kings, and she knew that this similarity was at least a part of its appeal among those of her people who now believed it. It was specific enough to give something of substance to cling to, yet vague enough to allow for varied interpretations.
And unlike the Book of Dreaming Kings, this gospel was something every family could sit with near the fire, read on a winter’s night and feel a part of.
Closing the book, she climbed out of her bed and put it on the shelf as far from her as the room allowed. She couldn’t bear to keep it any closer. Then, she settled back into the bed, savoring its warmth in the cool room. She dimmed the lantern and gave herself to rehearsing the steps of tomorrow’s knife dance. She’d moved through the dervish twice and started on a third, mentally noting each place she’d put her feet in the muddy snow, trying to block out the book.
When the dream fell upon her after so long away, it jarred her and she blinked at the suddenness of it. Sitting up in her Wicker Throne, she savored the sunlight that somehow found her and bathed her here in her subterranean throne room.
She felt a presence and spoke to it. “Neb?”
The only answer was the faint sound of clicking and clacking that drifted up to her from the tunnels behind her. Rising, she gripped the Firstfall axe tightly in her fists, wishing instead for scout knives, and made her way toward that sound.
Winters descended into the caves, passing her sleeping and bathing areas as she wound her way to the leagues-long cavern where she’d spent most of her life before leaving for the war two years earlier. As she drew closer, she heard the sound of a harp and for a moment recalled another dream from months before. She looked in the sitting area and was not surprised to see Tertius sitting there, his fingers moving over the strings and filling the room with music. The last time she’d seen him in this place, the Book of Dreaming Kings was burning as it was consumed by the light. This time, the dream was different.
Four robed figures stood facing the shelves of volumes that lined the walls, and she watched as metal hands moved quickly over the volumes, pulling down one here and one there. The clacking and clicking was louder, now, and punctuated by massive gouts of steam that burst from vents in their metal backs. And whatever books they pulled down did not get replaced, leaving gaps on the shelves, sockets empty of their teeth. She stepped toward them.
“Careful,” Tertius warned her, picking up the tempo of his song upon the harp. “They will consume you, too, my queen.”
She looked back to him but could not heed his warning. Instead, she stepped even closer and saw more clearly what they did.
Raising the volumes to their metal mouths, they bit into them with sharpened teeth and chewed the paper down, devouring the volumes as quickly as they could.
Her own voice startled her as she reached out a hand, laying it upon a wool-clad shoulder that was warm to her touch. “No,” she cried.
The metal man turned on her, quickly, a free hand suddenly flashing up to grab her wrist even as its eyes went bright yellow with alarm. “You do not belong here.” It looked to its neighbor. “The tamp is not holding.”
“We knew that it might not,” the other said. “Their very blood conducts the dream.”
“We may be seen,” another ventured.
All around her, the song swelled to a crescendo, and she struggled to look back toward Tertius and his harp, only now she could not see him. The metal men crowded her, their mouths opening and closing, no longer seeking the dream on paper as they instead sought it from her flesh.
As those mouths descended upon her, she heard a great shriek and knew that it was she who made it. She felt the teeth grinding over her skin, felt the hungry hands grabbing to hold her still that they might bite into her. She tried to raise the Firstfall axe in her hands, tried to swing it at the metal men, and suddenly there was another presence with her in this room.
“Neb?” she asked again.
“Peace, Winteria,” a voice whispered to her. “The dream tamp is merely failing. And as it is with dreams, this one is not as it appears.”
The metal men continued to crowd her, and she fell down to her knees beneath the weight of them. Beyond them, she saw wet bare feet that stood in silver puddles near where Tertius had played. Now, though, the harpist and his song had suddenly vanished. She felt a sob shudder out of her. “Who are you? Why won’t you help me?”
She wished she could see the man’s face as he spoke, but already her eyes were closing involuntarily against the sudden pain she felt as their teeth rent and sundered her. “I cannot help,” the man said. “I can only observe. But you can help yourself. Give yourself back to the dream, child.”
I do not know how, she tried to say but couldn’t.
As if hearing, he answered her. “Give yourself to it. Lay down your axe.”
Taking a deep breath, she forced her hands to release the axe and gave herself over to their grabbing hands and biting teeth. She made herself breathe through it and felt the pain become a cool breeze scented with unfamiliar flowers and warm, salted air.
And suddenly, the hands and mouths were gone from her and she stood with a dozen mechoservitors-no, she realized, at least two dozen, maybe even an army of them-upon a massive white tower overlooking a blue-green ocean so clear that it hurt her eyes. Above her, a brown moon filled the sky far larger than any moon could be, and she remembered it from her dreams.
This is our home, she remembered telling Neb where they lay naked and sweating in an open-air bed that showed them that great moon.
All around her, the song rang out and the mechoservitors danced in time to it, forming a great circle that turned around her.
“It requires a response,” they sang in unison.
It was the sound of that great metal choir that jarred her from her sleep and caused her to sit bolt upright in her bed.
Weeping, Winters did what she’d done with every dream she’d ever remembered for as far back as she had memory. She went to her desk and, with shaking hand, lifted up her pen to write it down.
Chapter 13
Neb
Neb’s first awareness was a throbbing pain that licked at him, gradually building to a fierce, hot light that burned him as he forced his eyes open. A blue sky stared back at him, and he struggled to get out from under its brightness.
“He’s awake,” a woman’s voice said just outside his vision.
But when she leaned in, her face eclipsed that piercing sky and the shadow of it prevented him from seeing her. “Hello, Abomination.” The booted foot surprised him when it struck his side; he felt the wind go out of him. “That is for our sister.” The boot landed again, and this time he saw sparks of light behind his eyes and cried out from the pain. “And there are more to come.”
He winced and licked his lips. “I don’t-”
Another face eclipsed the sky, and now his eyes were adjusted enough to see the thirty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam. Only now, her face was puffy and bruised, one eye nearly swollen shut. “And I haven’t even begun with you, Abomination,” she said, her voice low and full of rage. “I will repay you sevenfold for every injustice you dealt me.” She leaned closer. “Every injustice,” she said again.
“You’ll have your time, sister,” another voice said. “For now, be grateful that you were correct about the thorns. If you’d been wrong, you’d be bound for the Imperial Cutting Gardens.”
When the thirty-second daughter spoke, her voice was assured. “I was never in doubt, sister. The scriptures are clear on this matter:
And the thorn shall not sting him, nor the beasts of the beneath rend him, nor the ghosts in the water flee him, for the Abomination shall beguile them all.
Neb opened his mouth to speak, turning and twisting. Only now was awareness leaking into him. His arms were stretched out and his wrists burned from the ropes that bound him to what he assumed must be stakes driven into the hard-packed ground. Similar ropes bound his ankles, and he was suddenly aware of his nudity. He closed his mouth.
Their voices shifted suddenly to a language he did not understand, and their faces withdrew from his sight. He lay there, slowly taking inventory of his senses and his questions.
What could he remember? He’d been holding the tiny kin-raven token, and then he’d been startled. It had made contact with his skin and he’d suddenly found himself pulled away again, similar to the time before.
What had he seen? He’d heard his father’s voice at some point, but the words seemed far away now. He’d seen Winters briefly, undressing, and then there had been a white tower and-
It requires a response.
Isaak was there with him and they were surrounded by the song, so loud it lifted the hair on his arms and neck and moved through the air around them.
He felt the hot stab of shame. I’ve lost it; I’ve lost the dream. The silver crescent was now in the hands of these women, and though he did not know who they were or what they intended with him, he did know they were his enemies. And they were enemies of the dream as well.
Neb tested the rope gently with his left arm, then his right. He did the same with his feet. It was tight enough that he doubted he could slip free, but even if he could, what next? There were at least three-perhaps four-of these women, and each, he assumed, was armed in much the same way as the thirty-second daughter had been when he’d found her.
The thought of her twisted that hot knife in him. He’d trusted her and she had betrayed him, delivering him over to her so-called sisters. He had saved her life, and from everything he could glean from her so far, she’d seemed sincere in her need to reach the Ninefold Forest with her message. She’d readily accepted his help, and then, the moment he touched the kin-raven, she’d turned on him and put him down with his own rifle, summoning her sisters to their location.
Or so it seemed.
Their leader was back now, crouching beside his head and leaning in so he could now see her. She wore dark silk trousers and a matching shirt, unbuttoned near the top to reveal the gentle curve of her breasts as she bent over him. Her face was seasoned by midlife, her hair gray and cut so short that it bristled. And like the other girl, her face and arms were latticed with symbols cut into her skin. Her blue eyes were piercing and cold even in this desert.
“Who are you?” he managed to croak.
She chuckled. “I am one who saves us all from the Abomination and his dream.” She held up a long silver knife. “And I’m nearly ready to begin that saving.”
He looked at the blade; it wasn’t a scout knife. It was more delicate, its edge crusted with salt, and he felt his stomach twist. “What do you want?”
She grinned. “First, I want you to know how serious I am. Then, I want you to tell me where you’ve hidden the artifact and show me where the mechoservitors are.”
Hidden the artifact?
The thirty-second daughter appeared above and behind her, and he squinted through the sunlight to make out the expression on her face. For just the slightest moment, he thought he saw fear there. Then, the mask was firmly in place again and she spoke. “I request the first cut, sister.”
The woman with the knife cocked her head, considering Neb. “It is a reasonable request given the price you’ve paid to bring us to him.” She held the knife up, and after the girl took it, she stepped back. “First blood is yours.”
The girl moved in to crouch beside him, then leaned over him so that her face was near his. “You’ve brought this on yourself, Abomination.” And as she said it, her hand pressed at his shoulder even as she turned her body so that it was between them and the other woman. It took him a moment to pick out the message in her fingers. Stupid, silly boy-you left me no choice.
It was the subverbal of the Gypsy Scouts, a language of touch and hand-signs he’d only barely begun to learn before leaving his training as an officer in Rudolfo’s Ninefold Forest.
He tried to mask the recognition in his face, and even as he did, he felt the cold edge of the blade moving over his body, a slender fang looking for the right place to bite. Be strong, Nebios, the one hand told him.
Then, the other began its darker work, opening a cut that ran from his collarbone to his navel, and Neb tried with every bit of his resolve to not scream at the sudden, searing pain of it as he bucked against the ropes that held him.
He failed utterly.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo scanned the message again, his eyes finding each smudge, each slant to a letter or space between. After reading it for the second time, he cursed again, this time more loudly.
“When did this happen?” he asked, letting the anger show in his voice.
“Five nights past,” the courier said.
Rudolfo could imagine it. Some kind of distraction to get his men to open the gate. And then a quick skirmish. Certainly his Gypsy Scouts had done their best, but they were no match for their blood-magicked opponents and the element of surprise.
I am infiltrated on my most protected border. The Keeper’s Gate was the only access point to the Churning Wastes unless one was inclined to sail around the horn-something a few men like Rafe Merrique had been known to do. Rudolfo’s men had guarded it since Petronus deeded the Androfrancine holdings to the Ninefold Forest before dissolving the Order. And truly, he’d not expected to be guarding it from that direction. They held the gate to keep the Churning Wastes closed to the rest of their neighbors.
But now, a small band of blood-magicked scouts ran his forests.
Why? And who are they? They couldn’t be Machtvolk unless they’d somehow sailed the horn, which he found unlikely.
He’d read Petronus’s notes and had talked with Vlad Li Tam about his father’s slender volume that outlined a strategy for the fall of an order and the changing of an age. He’d read the new gospel of the Y’Zirite resurgency, written by Ahm Y’Zir, the seventh son of Xhum Y’Zir, and seen his own family somehow written into this story.
He thought back to his time on the island of the Blood Temple during the rescue of House Li Tam. The remnants of that family had seen unfamiliar vessels in the water there, and that took doing, given that Vlad Li Tam’s family had been the premier ship-builders in the Named Lands before turning to banking. If they did not recognize them, then these vessels had not sailed the Emerald Sea of the Named Lands. They were foreign, and this pointed in a direction that piqued Rudolfo’s curiosity and whispered third alarm along his spine
.
For over two thousand years, they had lived in these lands and believed they were alone in the world but for a few scattered people in the Wastes.
But what if we were not alone?
He forced himself back to the courier scout who stood waiting for a reply. He looked to Philemus. “What do you think?”
“Double the guard upon the Wall and upon the manors, General,” the second captain said.
Rudolfo nodded, feeling the weariness settling into him. The command tent was suddenly cold. “I concur,” he said. “I will return to the Seventh Forest Manor and continue the investigation.”
Philemus blinked. “There isn’t much you can do in the investigation, General.”
Something stirred in Rudolfo at the second captain’s words, and it felt like anger. He’s right, of course.
And more importantly, Rudolfo realized, Philemus was surprised.
Philemus was a savvy soldier turned scout. He’d held the same captaincy under Gregoric for a dozen years and had personally requested that Aedric be promoted to the position his father vacated. An older man, he’d still distinguished himself in the War for Windwir and wore his scarf of rank knotted to show his accomplishments in battle. But more importantly, he’d known the Gypsy King for most of Rudolfo’s life.
“I’ll have a squad ready to escort you,” Philemus finally said. “And I will keep courier lines open between our new interests in the north and your office in the Seventh Forest Manor.”
Rudolfo inclined his head. “Excellent, Captain. I think I will also-”
He heard running feet and an excited whistle outside the tent. They both turned toward the flap as it opened for the officer of the watch. “We’ve found something. unusual, Captain Philemus.”