Canticle poi-2

by Ken Scholes

  Jin Li Tam

  Jin Li Tam fought her queasy stomach and kept herself low in the saddle. She’d completely underestimated the impact of Jakob’s powders on her sense of balance and movement. The horse threatened the light lunch they’d taken an hour earlier.

  Somewhere behind her, Lynnae fared no better. She rode with Jakob now in the carriage, a company of Rudolfo’s most decorated Gypsy Scouts assigned to their protection. It was her turn with Jakob, though by rights, she’d been taking longer shifts to accommodate Jin’s meeting schedule with the captains of the Wandering Army.

  Still, it was good to be on horse back again, to feel the cold wind on her face and the solidness of the horse beneath her. The sounds and smells of an army on the march had filled her ears and nose the last several days after rallying in the foothills that ringed the Ninefold Forest. And the nights spent huddled for warmth in the wagon with Jakob and Lynnae awakened something within her that had slept for what seemed so long now.

  How long had it been? She thought perhaps it was the time she and Rudolfo had toured the other eight houses, introducing her to the stewards and people in each of those major towns that had sprung to life where Rudolfo’s family had built their manors. Before that, it had surely been the war.

  She heard a fluttering and a thud to her right. She looked over to see a small brown bird caught in the Second Captain’s catch net. Philemus reached down with gloved fingers to pick the bird out and pull a knotted string from its tiny foot. Pulling off the glove, he felt the raised bumps along the string and passed it to Jin. She read it quickly with her fingers.

  It’s started ahead. She looked up, eyes squinting into the gray, over-cast day. Somewhere, ahead of them, the fighting had begun. They’d been monitoring the progress of Pylos and Turam’s armies with their forward scouts as those southern forces approached the Marshlands, and yesterday, the rangers of Pylos had crossed into Marsher territory or the band of wilderness that commonly passed as the unmanned border, just ahead of their army.

  But who do they fight? The Marsh army patrolled the far north, looking for answers to the destruction of the Summer Papal Palace and the brutal murder of the Androfrancines hidden there.

  Before Philemus could release the bird, another, this one white, also dropped into the net. She knew that this one meant stop and the Second Captain read the knot codes even as she raised her hand to order a halt.

  “Someone approaches,” he said. “A lone Marsher on horse back. He wishes to parley with you.” The officer looked to her, his eyes worried. “Alone,” he added.

  She continued scanning the landscape around them. They’d forded the Second River two days behind them, far north of Windwir’s ruins. In another three or four days, if she pushed them, they would ford the Third River and be within reach of their objective. She’d hoped to plant herself and her army along that southern Marsher boundary. But she’d also hoped-irrationally to be sure-that she could prevent the fighting from breaking out. That somehow, she could appeal to reason if she and the Wandering Army blocked Pylos and Turam’s forces from moving further north.

  Still, when she thought of Meirov’s lost child and of Turam’s lost crown prince, she wasn’t certain there was any reason for her to appeal to. The rage brewed by those cowardly acts would surely be stronger than her ability to encourage higher thinking.

  The army slowed to a halt behind her and she waited, her horse prancing to and fro along the frozen ground. Finally, a form took place in the gathering fog ahead. She squinted at it until it became a man on horseback-an old man upon an old horse.

  “Set up a perimeter of scouts,” she said in a voice sharper than she meant to.

  “Shall I accompany you to-”

  “No,” she said as she spurred her horse forward.

  She trotted the horse forward until the old man came into focus before her. He wore tattered robes made of fur-wolf, she thought, from first glance. He had bits of bone and wood woven into his carefully braided beard and hair, and his face, though painted in the custom of a Marsher, held more intricate designs than what she’d seen of others. The earth tones were painted on in an interlocking pattern of black, gray, green and brown.

  He sat high in the saddle, his head moving to the left and right as if he listened and smelled for something. As she approached, he turned to face her and she saw that his eyes were the color of milk.

  A blind man sent to parley.

  He bent his head to the side. “Great Mother,” he said, “you should not be here.”

  She remembered the cryptic note that bore the same title. She’d pondered it for hours, even had it with her in her pouch. Was it possible that this man knew something about her father, somehow? Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you call me that? And who are you?”

  The old man smiled. “I am Ezra. I am herald to the soon-coming Macht Queen and prophet of the Crimson Empress.”

  More riddles. And she’d heard of the Crimson Empress before. But where? “Winters has not spoken to me of you.”

  He chuckled. “She did not know of me herself until recently.” He looked up, then cocked his head again. “You come with your army, but what do you hope to accomplish? You are ill from caring for your son. You are weakened still from his birth. You should be resting, not mounting a war against a foe you cannot see.” His face softened, and a smile broke out upon it. “Still,” he said, “I had not hoped to live long enough to see this day. I would ask a great favor of you, Lady.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She could not see them, but there were scouts surrounding them now. One whistle and a dozen arrows or two dozen blades would bring him down. “What favor do you ask, old man?”

  She saw tears coursing down his face from his milky eyes. “That I might hold the Child of Promise within my arms and speak my blessing over him.”

  Jin Li Tam’s response surprised her. She felt the hair rising on her arms and neck and felt something cold grip her stomach. “You are already privy to the matters of my household, it appears,” she said. “You know that my son is ill.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “the blessing would do him good.”

  Jin Li Tam shook her head slowly. “I do not know you, Ezra. You shall not go near my son.” She felt heat rising in her now-a righteous anger.

  He sighed. “I could whistle now and have him brought to me,” he said. “But I will instead hope for another time.”

  I could whistle now. She filed the veiled threat away for consideration later. “You are not alone then?”

  His laughter was sharp. “I am an old, blind man. It would be foolishness for me to ride alone.”

  She scrutinized the ground around his feet. He’d trampled the snow well enough that she could not see the footprints of whatever magicked escort accompanied him. But she did not need to see it to know these Marshers were blood-magicked. She thought of the scouts surrounding them, and the others that minded the carriage with Jakob and Lynnae inside somewhere closer to the middle of the army that stretched behind her. “Apart from my son and your concern for my physical health,” she said in a low, intentional voice, “what matter do you bring by way of parley?”

  “Only this,” he said. “We intend to honor our kin-clave with the Gypsy King. Our houses have much work to do, together, in shaping the Named Lands for the new Age that dawns upon us.”

  She tried to sort and categorize the data she pulled from his words, but it became lost in a sea of questions she knew she did not have the time to ask. “Our kin-clave,” she said slowly, “is with Queen Winteria. not with you.”

  “Kin-clave,” he said, “runs deeper and wider than you can know from this place, Great Mother.”

  “And because of it, you wish me to turn my army back homeward?”

  He nodded. “I do; though I doubt you shall.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You are correct. I intend to honor my kin-clave with your queen and with her neighbors to the south. I go to bid peace among them.”

  Ezra smiled. “And you may at
tain something akin to it,” he said, “but it cannot last. These are the pains of childbirth, the pains of something made.” He paused to regard her, and in that moment she could have sworn he could see her. His stare penetrated. “You are a part of this great making. As is your husband. And Jakob-he is most highly favored among men.”

  She scowled at his words. There was a rhythm to his language that struck a familiar chord deep within, and she suddenly realized what it was.

  The dreams. The voice was different, but the cadence remained the same, and she looked up and around her quickly to confirm her sudden suspicion.

  Perched high in an evergreen, an enormous black bird-a kin-raven, she suddenly knew-watched them with a solitary black eye.

  “Go cautiously, Great Mother,” Ezra was now saying as he turned his horse around. “The kin-clave of House Y’Zir and his servants is no small thing to trifle with.” Here his eyes narrowed, and blind or no, she was convinced he saw her. “Neither is that blessing a thing to spurn so recklessly, for someday it will save your son, and he will, in turn, save us all.”

  She sat stunned and blinking. She’d certainly had her suspicions. She’d seen the intelligence reports on the dead scouts; she’d read her history and knew well that the resurgences stubbornly resurrected themselves, particularly during times of great distress and trauma in the Named Lands. Certainly, now was one of those times.

  But to hear the words and to know that her family was so centrally woven into whatever belief this old man carried mixed a different kind of fear into the brew that bubbled deep in her stomach. She wanted to shout after him, to demand answers and if need be, to whistle down the Gypsy Scouts upon him and take him back to the interrogator’s wagon and the single Physician of Penitent Torture she’d brought out of forced retirement to assist them if needed.

  And at the same time, she wanted to turn her horse, gallop for her son, and hide him within her embrace. Somehow keep him from the madness that seemed to unravel the world he would inherit.

  But Jin Li Tam did neither. Instead, she sat upon her horse and watched Ezra the Marsh Prophet disappear into the gathering mist.

  When she looked back to the kin-raven, she saw now that it had vanished, too.

  If, she realized, it had ever been there at all.

  Summoning up courage for her voice, Jin Li Tam called for the Wandering Army to resume its march. And for the rest of that day, she rode in silence and wondered what she would find awaiting her in the Marshlands.

  Chapter 18

  Rae Li Tam

  Rae Li Tam stood at the bow and watched the sun rise ahead, casting red and tenuous light over the eastern horizon. Somewhere to the north-her port side-the Divided Isle marked the southernmost territories of the Named Lands. Behind them and farther south lay the island chains they’d so recently fled once she’d received that fateful bird indicating disaster for half their fleet.

  She was no closer now, weeks later, to sorting it out. But there had been no further word sent after them, and she had no reason to believe there ever would be.

  At this point, how would they find us? At sea, even six iron ships were moths in a forest. The only way to have found them before would’ve been to follow their trail from island to island, and even that would have required a great deal of guesswork. Back then they’d been careful.

  But now a different layer of caution applied. They’d made no stops where watching eyes might find them. They’d stopped to replenish the water tanks the one time they’d gotten dangerously low. It had been a remote and midnight isle, with the steampumps pulling the water in through a series of leaking hoses they had no time to repair. They’d dropped nets and pulled fish to supplement their diets and fell back to rationing to see them through to their new destination.

  Even so, fever had taken one ship. Quarantined, it limped behind them as the sickness burned its way through its families and crew. Another had dropped to one-third its speed, and the engineers were uncertain why.

  Still, considering how much could go wrong, Rae Li Tam was pleased.

  Now, a new day dawned and she gave herself to it, closing her eyes and letting the cold wind pull at her robes and her hair, feeling it move over her face.

  She felt Baryk’s hands slide around her, and she leaned back into him, sighing. “We’ve made good time,” he said. “Have you thought more about what we’ll do when we get there?”

  She leaned her head back into his chest and turned her head slightly so she could see his face. “I don’t know what we’ll do. I’m sure Father knew what he was about, but he didn’t share that strategy with me.” She looked back out over the water and the bloodred sun that rose over it. “I’m disinclined to keep the family at sea at this point until we understand better what is happening.”

  “And you still believe your father was lured off to a trap?”

  She nodded. “How could I not? Six ships lost in less than a week. And the note. If it was a forgery, it was better than anything I could’ve done.” And at one time, she’d been her father’s best forger.

  There was a whistle from the pilot house and she looked up. She saw the pilot pointing south and followed his finger until her eyes settled on a speck just barely visible in the sun’s rising light.

  She turned and Baryk turned with her, releasing her as he did. She went to the rail and leaned on it, squinting out into morning.

  “It’s a ship,” Baryk said.

  She could see it more clearly now. It rode high in the water, boxlike in its shape. She saw the gout of steam from its stack and felt her stomach tighten. “It’s one of ours,” she said, her brow furrowing. “How is that possible?”

  Baryk straightened. “I’ll bring us to Third Alarm,” he said. “And I’ll get birds to the other vessels.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be in the pilot house.”

  She crossed the deck at a brisk walk and climbed the narrow steps into the cabin. The officer of the deck, a young redheaded woman, passed her the telescope before she asked for it, and she sighted in on the ship.

  Not just a ship, she realized, but the flagship.

  It flew distress flags in eight colors and moved on a course that would intercept them within the hour. And though she saw movement on the deck, it was impossible to pick out any of the individuals from this distance.

  They knew where we would be. But how? The bird coops were locked, and she trusted those who guarded them. Yet somehow, they’d been found.

  Light flashed from its bow and for a moment, blinded her. She looked away, then shifted the telescope so that it was slightly to the left of center. The flashes formed words.

  Father has been taken by deceit and we have wounded aboard, the flashing mirror told her. We need immediate assistance.

  She held her breath for a moment, then swept the ship again with the telescope. She glanced to the officer beside her. “Fetch the mirror,” she said. “Send this: Shut down your engines and drop anchor.”

  She waited while the girl sent the message. But the light did not answer. Instead, the ship began to slow. Meanwhile, the bell for Third Alarm jangled in the quiet morning as men and women swept the deck and took up stations. She heard Baryk shouting over the noise as he and the master-at-arms distributed bows among them. A lone cannoneer loaded the ship’s single gun and spun it toward the slowing vessel. The Androfrancines had been stingy in their mechanical knowledge when it came to weaponry, carefully keeping back what they could and tightly controlling what they couldn’t. The flagship had three of the small weapons, but the others were limited to just one apiece. It had been enough, in those gray-robed minds, to give House Li Tam far more of an edge when combined with the iron hulls and steam engines.

  “Decrease speed to half,” she said. “Birds to the fleet: Maintain Third Alarm.” She felt the scowl on her face as something hard settled in her stomach. She swept the deck of the flagship again, noting the saffron robes of her father’s House among its crew, and knew that soon she would have to make a de
cision; and though the numbers were on her side, she hesitated.

  It was a trap, she realized. It simply had to be.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  She whistled for Baryk and he joined her. She passed the telescope to him. “I’ve ordered them to shut down their engines. They’ve complied. They’re claiming Father was taken by deceit, that they’ve wounded aboard.”

  Her husband looked them over, then handed the spyglass back to her. “I don’t trust it,” he said.

  She nodded slowly. “I concur. Strategy?”

  She knew his greater strength as a warpriest lay with tactics and strategy by land, but Baryk was also a capable sailor and had had seven months to become familiar with exactly what her father’s ships could do. “Bring the Wind of Dawn and the Spirit of Amal in closer. Keep the rest of us around those two slower vessels, fore and aft, port and starboard.” He looked at her, his eyes showing concern. “Maintain half speed in a wide circle for now; we can send a longboat to investigate their claims.”

  She nodded. It was sound thinking. She gave the orders and then lifted the spyglass again. The flagship had stopped and its anchor lines were out, but a sense of foreboding fluttered in her stomach. The ship, supposedly lost, now sat at anchor, and she found herself wondering about their message.

  Father has been taken by deceit. Of all men, Vlad Li Tam was the least likely to be deceived in any way. The notion that he’d been caught in someone’s net normally would not cipher for her.

  Except.

  She swallowed the fear that suddenly tasted like iron in her mouth. They had left the Named Lands quickly. He’d pulled down his network, bundled all but his forty-second daughter into the iron ships, and fled in search of someone. They’d not spoken frankly of it, but she’d suspected for a time that somehow, their family had been compromised in their work to bring about intentional, carefully crafted change in the New World. Otherwise, why flee with the entire family? Certainly, her father could have sent his ships out in search of this invisible foe he suspected without bringing the entire House.