by Ken Scholes
She vaguely recalled that Rudolfo had kept a small contingent of Gypsy Scouts at the walled mountain fortress until the work had been taken up by a handful of surviving Gray Guard just before winter fell upon them.
At the time, it had been sound strategy: The Foresters had their hands full at home and the Gray Guard were capable. No one could have foreseen this.
Her eyes moved now to Rudolfo’s message, and she read it again quickly. Beneath the casual wording of a personal message to her lay the coded script of a competent though worried general. Bring Aedric and party back, the note said. Send him west with the Wandering Army to honor our kin-claves.
But here she was faced with a hard choice, she realized. Rudolfo did not know about Neb and Isaak. And as highly as she thought of the boy-and having heard somewhat of his quiet romance with Winters the Marsh Queen-she knew that were it simply the boy, her decision would not be so hard.
Jin Li Tam had watched her father sacrifice the children he loved for what he considered to be a higher gain. She could sacrifice Neb, she knew, though it would break her heart to do so.
It was Isaak she could not give up, and for reasons only she and Rudolfo were privy to. In her early days with the Gypsy King, on the night they had fled the Summer Papal Palace and Resolute’s guards, Isaak had told her that he still retained Xhum Y’Zir’s spell, buried within his memory scrolls.
It meant that the most dangerous weapon in the world was fleeing for unknown reasons across the Wastes. And she could not abide that.
She looked away from the messages and rubbed her eyes. “How did you fare during the war?”
“My company took three Entrolusian battalions and two companies of Pylosian rangers,” he said. She looked to the scarf of rank, knotted around his left shoulder with multicolor threads woven in to signify battlefield accomplishments. She noted the pride in his voice.
Now a frank question for frank times, she thought. She met his eyes with her own. “Will you lead the Wandering Army under my direction or will that be. challenging for you?”
He paled, and she saw the sudden discomfort on his face. “Shouldn’t First Captain Aedric-”
“Aedric,” she said, “has other work to do.” Outside the room, she heard the movement of servants as the Seventh Forest Manor woke up and came to life. “When we’re finished here, send the birder in. I’ll send word to both Aedric and Rudolfo.”
At the name of his lord and general, she saw resolve take root in his jawline and his eyes. “I am honored to serve my queen.”
She nodded. “Good.” She paused a moment, trying out the next words in her head before speaking them. When she spoke them, they were solemn and clear: “Rally the Wandering Army to the Western Steppes. We ride for the Marshlands in two days’ time.”
“It will take four to reach their southern reaches. Seven to reach the Palace if we push hard.”
We won’t be going to the palace, she thought but did not tell him. “Yes,” she said.
Already, her mind composed the messages she would write and code. One to Winters to keep her army north. Another to Pylos and Turam to keep their armies south. Another to Aedric that he should find Isaak and Neb at all costs.
And last, a message to Rudolfo to let him know that Second Captain Philemus would lead the Wandering Army west, as Aedric was delayed in the Churning Wastes.
She saw no need to tell him that she intended to take their son and accompany his army with Lynnae and the River Woman in tow. It would add needless worry to him at a time when he needed his wits about him.
She forced her attention back to the present moment.
Jin Li Tam stood, and her mind wandered to the knives in Rudolfo’s desk drawer. I will take them with me.
She inclined her head to Philemus, and he returned the bow. She thought carefully about her next words and what they might mean for the tenuous bonds of kin-clave that loosely held the Named Lands together during this time of disconnection. There had been no open hostilities between the Gypsies and the other nations since Resolute’s so-called suicide. But with the assassinations, the targeting of refugee caravans and now this attack on the Summer Papal Palace, it was obvious that they were at war with someone.
The pattern was too perfect, and the strategy was better crafted than even her father could conceive.
She looked to the officer, and there was authority in her voice when she spoke. “Magick the Scouts,” she said. “Send two companies immediately to Queen Winteria’s aid. Send a company to the Keeper’s Gate with supplies for an extended search.”
“Understood, Lady Tam.” He bowed again and she returned the gesture.
After he left, Jin Li Tam opened the drawer to the desk and lifted out the old set of scout knives she’d been dancing with of late. Setting the belt aside but with within eyeshot, she took up the needle and started crafting her messages.
She took the longest with Rudolfo’s, and she was surprised at how badly she did not want to deceive him.
But more surprising than that, she realized, was how badly she did not want to disappoint him.
Still, despite her new life, she was the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam, and she was once more doing what she’d been made for.
Calling loudly for the servants, Jin Li Tam scooped up her knife belt and stormed into the corridor. Strategies of war and statecraft played out behind her eyes, and her stride was deliberate and brisk.
As much as she felt fear now buried deep within her, she felt something else as well. It shamed her to name it, because she knew how wrong it was to feel this while taking an action that put her son so blatantly at risk. She shuddered at it, but still she felt it.
It was exhilaration.
Chapter 16
Neb
Rufello’s Cave lay in stone foothills covered in gray scrub just beyond the forest of glass that had once been Ahm. From Neb’s position, it looked like a small crevasse in the side of the granite.
The crossing had been harder than he’d thought it would be, evidenced by his shredded uniform and the dozen or so cuts that covered him. Renard had tried to teach him how to move through the razor-edged forest without feeling the sting of salted glass, but as he himself had observed, it took practice.
“I cut myself for years,” he told him with a chuckle at one point when they’d stopped to bandage one particularly nasty gash in Neb’s thigh.
They’d moved slower after that, Renard never saying what Neb heard already from voices deeper inside himself. They’re slipping away from us.
Still, Isaak had left an intentional trail easy for them to follow.
Now, they had reached another stopping point.
Rufello’s Cave.
Of course, it wasn’t where Rufello had lived. Rufello had lived before the Great Migration, before even the Age of the Weeping Czars. He’d been a scientist-poet who had spent his life studying out the treasures, toys and tools of the Younger Gods, leaving behind his Book of Specifications that now only existed in fragments. According to Neb’s history lessons, the book was rare, and only scattered copies had remained past the Year of the Falling Moon-forbidden by the Wizard Kings once their thrones were established upon the earth.
The cave, according to Renard, was named for him because in it, the Androfrancines had found a cache of his drawings in a hidden library.
“When I was a boy,” Renard remembered, “my father was with them when they found it.”
They made their camp with the crevasse in view, and in the morning, they approached it.
Neb kept behind Renard as they drew closer and was surprised to see wheel ruts cut into the hard-packed ground. They stretched north and then east but did not continue south from there. They ended at the mouth of the cave. “They didn’t hide their tracks?”
Renard chuckled. “No need to. You’ll see.”
They picked their way across the rocky terrain, finally joining the wagon trail and following it the rest of the way in. The closer they came, the more
Neb felt dwarfed by the sheer size of it. The crevasse stretched much higher than he’d thought. When they finally stood in the shadow of it he saw the carefully built stone wall and the massive doors just ten feet inside. At four-span intervals, massive Rufello locks made of iron dead-bolted the door closed.
Or should have.
Renard must have seen it at the same time Neb did; the Waste Guide gasped. The door hung open. Not by much, just ajar really, but it was open nonetheless, and the locks were set with the dead bolts engaged so that the door could not be shut without the correct ciphers. When Renard stopped, Neb stopped, too. The gangly man drew out his thorn rifle. “What in the Third Hell is this?”
Neb found himself reaching for his knife, his eyes already going to the ground to look for tracks as Aedric had taught him during scout training. He felt the momentary tickle of fear along his spine and forced himself to breathe.
Renard moved forward now, cautious, his eyes moving to and fro. Neb followed.
They reached the door, and Renard leaned around to look into the dark, yawning mouth and pause. He raised his right hand, and when it moved into the Whymer hand language, Neb could not follow it. Still, he took the hint and waited.
Renard vanished into the massive cave, and Neb studied the locking mechanisms. The only larger locks he’d seen were on the Keeper’s Gate they’d passed through to come here-those were the size of hay bales easily. These were smaller but still easily the size of a large man’s head. The levers and dials on the locks were pitted with age and weather, but when he put a tentative hand to one of them, it turned easily and quietly.
Whoever had left the door open had done so intentionally and had the necessary ciphers to do so.
Renard whistled from behind the door. “Stay clear,” he called out.
Slowly, the great door swung open and let sunlight spill into the tunnel until the shadows swallowed it.
Still, what they could see was bare.
“There’s no one home. Even the lamps are gone,” Renard said. “We’ll need light.”
They made makeshift torches with dried branches hacked from nearby scrub and advanced into Rufello’s Cave. Occasionally, they paused to listen, and at least twice, Renard left Neb behind with the light to creep forward and scout the dark. At the end of the corridor, it widened into a large cavern.
But still, it was empty. Completely empty.
Renard scratched his head. “This makes no sense. There have been no caravans. They would have passed beneath my watching eye.”
Neb looked at him and saw the consternation on his face. “Who else knew the ciphers?”
“Me,” Renard said, reslinging his rifle. “My father, certainly. A handful of others. dead with Windwir, I’ll wager.”
Neb thought for a moment. “Could they have come by a different direction?”
“If someone with the ciphers survived?” Renard cocked his head. “Surely, but why? The Wastes stretch on and on and on all around us. The sea is ten days’ root-run to the south, though the salt dunes near her make for hard going.” He stretched out his hands. “They’d have needed wagons for all of this, and there’s no way to get a wagon through the dunes. Hells,” he said, “there were wagons stored here, but not nearly enough to haul the supplies they’d stockpiled.”
A thought struck Neb. “What else was here?”
Renard shrugged and started listing them off. “Everything. Clothing. Nonperishables. Tools. Weapons. Maps.”
Anything needed to mount an expedition, Neb realized. And someone had let themselves in and helped themselves to it. And not just some of it-they had emptied the place. Renard had told him just days ago that the most dangerous predator in the Wastes was still man. Neb found himself wondering if perhaps this was simply the work of common thieves, though it did not explain the lock. Rufello locks were nearly impenetrable. Whoever had done this either had the ciphers or somehow knew a means for puzzling them out-something Neb could not fathom. The cipher on one lock might be possible over a stretch of time, but not five or six locks. It would take a lifetime.
Renard had hunkered down in thought, but now he straightened. “I want to give this a closer look.”
They started a new torch and went to opposite walls. Then, they walked slowly, shedding light onto the floor as they went, and Neb saw that the cavern wasn’t quite as empty as they’d perceived. Here and there, he saw spilled nails, splintered wood from crates now vanished, and at one point, even found a tattered robe wadded up and discarded. Still, nothing useful.
They moved slowly, methodically covering every span of the room, and just when they reached deepest, darkest corners, Neb came across the flour sack.
It had been dropped, apparently, and had burst, coating the floor with a quarter inch of fine white powder. When he came upon it, he nearly stepped into it but caught himself. Squinting, Neb looked down.
There in the flour, a footprint. He crouched and leaned over to examine it. “I’ve found something.”
He heard Renard coming and blinked again, cursing the guttering torch for toying with his eyesight. The dancing flames gave the footprint an inhuman cast-a shape like no boot or foot he’d seen. Except.
Neb’s brow furrowed. “A mechoservitor was here.”
Renard approached and crouched himself, studying the single footprint. “The Whymers don’t bring their toys into the Wastes,” he said.
Still, there it was, and Neb thought about Isaak and the others he’d spent so much time with these past seven or eight months. He recalled the flashing eye shutters, the hiss of vented steam, the pens flying across the paper, clutched in metal hands. “A mechoservitor could cipher the locks.”
Renard chuckled. “Why would a mechoservitor need supplies?”
It was a good question. “How many of these caches are there?”
“At least a dozen,” Renard said. “Scattered strategically, all under lock and stone.”
Neb nodded, suspicion growing within him. He was willing to wager that were they to find the others, they also would be empty of anything useful. He thought of the metal man that Isaak now pursued. It had run into the Wastes with purpose, moving as if it had a destination in mind. Moving too fast for men but not too fast for its own kind.
“There was too much here for one mechoservitor,” Renard observed. “It would’ve taken years to empty this cache.”
“Then it had help,” Neb said. Already, his brain stretched into speculation, but he couldn’t find a satisfactory reason why.
Renard shifted and extended the torch farther, the metal footprint taking on deeper shadows as he did. “It would’ve needed all the help it could get.” He stood. “Still, there was enough here to supply multiple expeditions. What use could a mechoservitor have for foodstuffs and tools?”
But Neb wasn’t convinced at this point that the supplies had been taken in order to use them. Another idea brewed beneath the surface, and he vocalized it in a quiet voice. “Maybe it didn’t need the supplies. Maybe it just needed us not to have them.”
But not us specifically, he realized. The Androfrancines or whoever else might come wandering into the Wastes relying on these caches to survive-and work-in this hostile place.
Still, for now there was no answer and nothing of use to them here in Rufello’s Cave.
But somewhere a day or two ahead of them, Neb suspected, the answer raced across the broken landscape, its bellows wheezing and its metal legs pumping.
“We should get running,” he said to Renard. “We’ve time to make up.”
Renard smiled, and for a moment, in the dancing light of their dying torches, Neb saw traces of a kin-wolf’s ferocity in the man’s eyes and teeth.
“Let’s run then,” Renard said.
And they did.
Vlad Li Tam
He lost all sense of anything but anguish, hot and white. He was not even sure of his own name until she called him by it.
“Vlad,” Ria said. “You closed your eyes.”
&nbs
p; She leaned over him with a knife, and he started. The words that came out of him were a garbled shriek, snot and spittle flying. His beard was wet with tears.
Smiling, she withdrew. “No matter. We’re done for now.” She looked over the railing, but now that her knife was down, he looked away. He could not bear it. Still, her voice was full of pride. “Eight today, Vlad.”
Their victims were getting younger and younger. This last batch had just barely left their teens.
He felt a howl rising, but some part of him reasserted itself and forced it down. “The children, too?” His voice cracked.
She laughed. “No, Vlad. Do you take us for monsters? Those below the age of reason will take the mark of House Y’Zir, just as we all have.” Here, she opened the top of her robe and revealed her breast to him. There, over her heart, he saw the cutting and knew it from some distant memory of a life before this island, this room, this bloodletting.
I am your Kin-healer, her voice echoed in his memory.
She continued. “You’ll take the mark, too, before it’s finished.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Dear Vlad, we’ll cut the children and then we’ll send them away.”
His eyes moved toward her, and again he felt himself stirring to life. Where? He heard his voice croak the question.
She stroked his hair. “Someplace where they will learn a new way.”
An Old Way, he thought. Vlad Li Tam was back for just a moment. long enough to file that knowledge away.
Then, he hung limp in the harness. Strong hands held him up while strong fingers worked the buckles. The robed men lifted him and carried him the seventy-three steps back to his room, depositing him on the floor there.