by Ken Scholes
The small bundle in her arms shifted slightly, and Jin Li Tam looked down at the tiny face. A light coat of reddish hair, the slightest button of a nose, eyes squeezed shut as the small mouth took nourishment from her. She shifted her hand beneath the blanket that wrapped her newborn son and felt the soft, clammy skin of the back of his neck and head.
My father has killed my son, she thought, but before she could carry it further, the truth of it settled in. She could have refused-she could have left the path she’d been groomed for all her life-but blind obedience to House Li Tam had kept her on the road that brought her to this place. I have done this myself.
Over the course of those days since her father left, Jin Li Tam had spent much time thinking. Every man she’d taken to bed in order to better move the Named Lands along the course her father prescribed. Every man she’d killed for the same reason. Until she met Rudolfo, she realized, her entire life had been in service to this. But something in the Gypsy King’s eyes, in his flamboyant poise and his careful words, had put light on a hollowness she did not know she harbored. And though her father had planned her pairing with Rudolfo for years, had planned the heir that would tie their houses together, once she had given herself over to the Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, she had done so with an abandon that had nothing to do with Vlad Li Tam and his spider’s web of manipulation. It was a new thing that moved her.
Love.
Perhaps, she thought, her father had intended that as well. If so, she wondered if he knew now, wherever his iron armada had taken him, how much her love for Rudolfo had birthed her hatred of her father and his dark work in their New World.
She lightly stroked the back of her infant’s head, holding him close, willing her body’s warmth to lift the gray pallor and clamminess of his skin.
What now would this new love birth in her?
She realized with a start that the River Woman had spoken and she looked up. “I’m sorry, Earth Mother?”
The old woman smiled, and her eyes smiled, too. “We will do all that we can. He is a beautiful baby, Lady Tam, and you are a beautiful mother.”
The tears returned and she forced them away, swallowing hard. “Approach this girl on my behalf and arrange for us to meet in the morning,” she said. “Speak to Stewardess Jessa and have her prepare a room for this woman in the Family Wing. If she has any kin in the camp, arrange for their care as well.”
The River Woman inclined her head and stood. She placed the small pouch on a table near the bed. “One day on and one day off,” she said. “No more.” She went to the door and paused. “Shall I speak with Lord Rudolfo?”
Jin Li Tam shook her head. “No. I will do it.” This is my grief to bear him.
“As you wish, Lady.” Bowing slightly again, the River Woman left, and her girl returned.
When the young apprentice came to take the baby, Jin Li Tam bid her wait. He’d finished nursing now, and she held him to her shoulder, rocking him and patting his back lightly. She did so longer than she needed, willing the tears away but failing utterly at it.
My sister Rae, she thought. She will know what to do. Disguised as a young male acolyte and placed by their father, she’d studied the Androfrancine alchemy as a girl and had practiced it for nearly half of a century. But her sister, along with the rest of her siblings, had fled the stage her family had so long set with their careful props and practiced deceptions.
Jin Li Tam gave over her baby to the waiting girl and settled back into her bed, but no sleep came to her when she closed her eyes.
Instead, her mind went unbidden to the dream that seemed so long ago and so real.
“Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,” the kin-raven had told her. “Fortunate are you among women and highly favored is Jakob, Shepherd of the Light.”
Perhaps I misspoke. Perhaps the kin-raven’s message is more welcome than I thought. She played the words out again and again.
Strange that those dark words, with their promise of a future for the frail life she’d made, should now become her truest source of hope.
For the longest while she lay there, listening for the noises her child might make and acutely aware of the gentle rustlings of the young apprentice who tended him. But it was a divided awareness. No matter how hard she tried, she could not erase the blasted plain of Windwir and its crimson sky from that dark space behind her eyes. And when she finally drifted off, the smell of ashes and blood followed her into that restless sleep.
Lysias
General Lysias of the United City-States waited by the door for Erlund’s aide to announce him. The hunting lodge was stirring to life. An early-morning bustle of servants and guards flowed around him as they went about their routines, and he watched them, their faces drawn and their eyes hollow from too many nights with little sleep and too many tasks for the people at hand. They lost more and more each day as the staff either fled farther south on the Delta to join the Secession-ists or fled the Delta altogether for a new start in one of a dozen demesnes willing to host the ragged refugees.
At least, Lysias thought, Erlund was more thoughtful than his late uncle when it came to these matters. Still, he realized it would not be enough. When the former Overseer had learned of soldiers deserting their posts during the War of Androfrancine Aggression, he’d maimed their family members as an example to others. Erlund at least had the sense to let them go.
I should join them, Lysias thought, but shook it away as a reminder of how little sleep he’d had of late. Dereliction of his duty was not an option. He would stay in his uniform, by the side of the Overseer, until the very end, no matter how bitter. Even, he knew, if it meant facing the axe of these so-called revolutionaries. He’d helped install the current Overseer and had helped bring down another to do so.
I will not make that mistake again.
Quietly, he cursed Sethbert’s folly, though he knew he was as much to blame as the other generals who listened to the madman’s ravings and agreed to the war in the first place. In the end, he’d helped the old Androfrancine captain set things right, watching while Grymlis helped the pretending Pope, Resolute, step down by way of suicide. And he had personally led the party of guards to arrest Sethbert for the crime of genocide, based on Resolute’s suicide letter. The very letter he’d received from Vlad Li Tam himself, along with the ancient hand cannon, in the secret parley that removed Sethbert and installed Erlund with House Li Tam’s help.
He’d seen that it was the best path for the Delta, and he had taken it in the hopes that it was not too late.
He’d been wrong.
Now civil war swallowed the Entrolusian Delta, with three of its city-states now pitted against six that remained loyal to the old ways and the line of Overseers it had produced in its thousand years of unity. Soon, another would fall to the idealists and their rhetoric.
And two nights ago, they had gone too far.
They had hired Marsher rogues to assassinate the Overseer.
The ornate double doors to Erlund’s private office opened, and the aide stepped out. Like all of the others Lysias had seen, the young man looked haggard. “The Overseer will see you now, General Lysias,” he said, holding the door.
Lysias nodded curtly and entered, his boots whispering across the thick carpet that marked the end of the wide hall and the beginning of Erlund’s private study. The room was lavishly furnished. Mahogany paneling and framed oils of Erlund’s predecessors and their families gave the room a broad, warm atmosphere that was more a ruse to lull the unsuspecting than any real gesture of comfort. A wide oak desk carved from the old-growth timber of the Ninefold Forest occupied the center, and behind it, heavy curtains sealed out the light from a window that would have normally afforded a view of the private forest that served as the Overseer’s hunting grounds. At the desk, the Overseer himself sat at breakfast amid a stack of papers. The youngish man looked up.
He’s aging fast. But that did not surprise the general. Erlund was a di
fferent generation than his uncle, and he’d inherited a nation ravaged by his predecessor’s greed and paranoia. Had Sethbert managed his planned annexation of the Ninefold Forest and inherited the Androfrancine’s holdings through his cousin’s contrived papacy, it might have been different. But now the Delta died slowly, and the rest of the world followed after in the aftermath of the Desolation of Windwir. And this young man carried the weight of that upon his shoulders.
Because this new breed cares, Lysias thought.
Erlund looked up, and the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out from a pale face. “Good morning, General.”
Lysias inclined his head. “Lord Erlund.”
Erlund gestured to a leather-backed chair before the desk, and the general sat. “Have you learned anything further?”
Three days ago, they’d received an anonymous note by way of an unmarked bird. The message warned of an assassination and bore evidence of a deal brokered between the revolutionaries and what appeared now to be Marsher skirmishers under some kind of new scout magic. They’d had just enough time to hide Erlund away safely at sea in his yacht, replacing him with one of the half dozen doubles they’d employed from time to time as precaution during these troubled times.
And two nights ago, an invisible and razor-sharp storm had breached the estate’s perimeter, leaving a shredded, bloody mess of all who stood between the attackers and their target.
“The Delta Scouts found them a hundred leagues north late last night,” he told the Overseer. “They were dead. Six of them.” He paused. “He’s confident that it’s all of them.”
Erlund looked surprised. “Dead? Our best scouts couldn’t touch them. How is this possible?”
Lysias shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the captain that served as his aide had awakened him with the note. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve dispatched a wagon to bring the bodies back. They were Marshers, just like the letter indicated. They died on their feet, and according to Captain Syskus they are uninjured beyond minor cuts and scrapes.”
Erlund thought for a moment, his spoon pausing midway to mouth. “I will want the House Surgeon’s thorough report,” he said.
Lysias nodded. Perhaps that crafty old cutter could find some trace of whatever magick the assassins had employed. He’d seen nothing like it in all his years, and it hearkened back to ancient history lessons in the Academy, tales of yore from the days before the Age of Laughing Madness when the Wizard Kings ruled the Old World with their Blood Guard and their spells of dark power, brokered in the Beneath Places under the earth. “You shall have it, Lord.”
“Good.” The Overseer spooned the gray, steaming oats into his mouth and chased it with what looked like honeyed lemon beer. “When do you think it will be safe to return to Carthos?”
Lysias had thought about this, knowing the answer he was about to give would not sit well. “I don’t,” he said. “I think staying here is more defensible.”
Erlund shook his head, putting down his tankard. “I’ll not hide here much longer, Lysias. Esarov and his intellectual troublemakers need to know that they have failed and that the Delta’s Overseer is very much alive and in power.”
In this, he is like his uncle. Lysias felt frustration brewing within him and forced his voice not to show it. “It is not prudent, Lord. The city-states are no longer safe for you. At the very least, have Ignatio put another double in your palace until we know more of the nature of this threat.”
Erlund’s eyes narrowed. “General Lysias?” he asked, his voice low.
Lysias met his eyes and held them. “Yes, Lord?”
“When have you ever been able to sway me from what I considered to be the right path?”
Lysias finally looked away and in doing so, accepted the rebuke. “Never, Lord.” But it may yet be your undoing, he thought. It had certainly undone Sethbert.
“Very well.” The Overseer then changed the subject deftly. “And what news from the cities?”
“Samael and Calapia are stabilizing with the increased troops enforcing martial law,” he said. “Berande will secede within the month, regardless of what we do.” Erlund looked up at this, his eyes betraying his question before his mouth could speak it. Lysias continued. “The governor there has no will to resist, and the people are calling for elections, echoing the Reformist rhetoric about the original Charter of Unity and the Settlers’ original intent.”
When those first founders had established their cities, they’d formed a document that, as everything else, had evolved into something entirely different. Of course, these were the early days when the Androfrancines were a fledgling company with its ragged ash-hued army carving out a fortress in the deep woods of the Second River’s isolated valley. Every noble on the Delta learned that charter inside and out from boyhood.
Erlund growled. “Idealist rubbish. This unrest is not about liberty or enforcing some naive interpretation of a charter intended for another time.” Anger flashed in the Overseer’s eyes. “This unrest is a looking backward to better, simpler times in the face of economic decline and abject poverty.” He waited a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say what was on his mind. Then, he said it. “My uncle brought this about when he destroyed Windwir and took us into war against the Gypsies and the Marshers.”
There was a light tap at the door, and Erlund tapped a small brass bell. It rang clear and the door opened. His aide stepped inside. “Lord Erlund, your next appointment is here.”
Erlund nodded and leaned forward. “Ignatio,” he said. “With his intelligence briefing.”
Another similarity to Sethbert, Lysias thought, keeping the military and intelligence compartmentalized. Erlund was brutally careful in this, so much so that if the bird hadn’t come directly to Lysias with its warning, he had no doubt that Erlund’s man, Ignatio, would have handled the evacuation and the manhunt. Erlund would have insisted on it.
“Thank you for your time, Lord Erlund,” he said. As he turned to the door, he saw the dark-robed spymaster. Ignatio was Erlund’s own man. He’d had Sethbert’s spymaster killed early on, not trusting him to take well to the new administration. Ignatio was the illegitimate son of a Franci arch-scholar, and it gave him an edge. Even now, his eyes moved over the room and over Lysias. And as Lysias moved past him, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“General Lysias,” he said. “I heard your men found the attackers. That is most excellent.” It was a message, Lysias realized: I heard.
Of course you heard it, Lysias thought. But he smiled. “It is fortuitous.”
Ignatio bowed slightly and entered the room, taking the seat that Lysias had stood from. Lysias left, making his way through the wide hallways of the hunting lodge until he found the landing and the staircase that would lead him to the front doors. He had a desk covered in reports waiting for his review, and he made mental note to have his closest officers cull the ranks again for any of Ignatio’s spies. They would be shipped out to enforce martial law, and some night in the weeks ahead, they would go out on patrol and not return.
Ignatio was shameless in his espionage, and try as he might, Lysias was unable to even those odds. For the past seven months, there had been strange goings-on between Ignatio and Erlund. Lysias had glimpsed it again and again. An entire basement had been quickly absorbed by the intelligence officer’s men, and a week ago, six of those men had been killed, their bodies hauled out beneath blood-soaked sheets to disappear wherever it was that Ignatio had made a hundred other bodies go. And as much as it had distressed the spymaster, it enraged Erlund. Lysias had reports of black-cloaked riders sent out from Erlund’s private guard, spies that hunted north, west and east. Those that rode east had still not returned.
As he left the hunting lodge and made for the nearby barracks, Lysias tried to look at the sky and find something beautiful in the crisp winter day. It had rained, melting the last night’s snow quickly, and the morning smelled like pine needles and loam.
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nbsp; Maybe I am too old for this work now. He hadn’t felt that way before Windwir, and especially before leading those guards into Sethbert’s bedchambers to arrest the madman. He’d felt it then, the weariness creeping up on him; he had not equated it with age. But the capstone was when his own daughter took up with a Secessionist librarian, fleeing with him to Parmona when that city threw down its governor and his brigades. That was the day he first felt old. And the look in her eye that last time he saw her, so much like her mother, sparked another feeling within him that he desperately wished to misplace. But these days, he carried it around with him and it weighed him down; he could not defeat it despite the strategy and forces he mustered.
I have helped to make this happen.
Pushing back that sudden stab of guilt, General Lysias grabbed hold of what had always sustained him in times past.
He was, after all, first and foremost a man of duty.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo stood in his dressing room and let that moment of silence and stillness wash him. He’d spent much of the day dispatching birds and discussing his investigation strategy with Captain Philemus. Sometime in the night or early morning they expected return birds as they probed the Forest Gypsy’s slight but effective network of spies and informants elsewhere in the Named Lands. He anticipated their news, but there were other birds coming-birds that he did not look forward to once Turam’s ailing king learned of his only heir’s demise.
Between the birds and Philemus, he’d also managed to sit long enough to hear the Physician’s report on his autopsy of the one Marsher already cooling in the ice house. It was perplexing news.
“I’ve seen nothing like it,” the Physician told him, and the River Woman next to him nodded her agreement. “His heart gave out, along with the rest of his organs.”