Canticle poi-2

by Ken Scholes

  Beyond that, this message today clearly supported her belief that her father had been lured out of the Named Lands, he and his spider’s web of children and children’s children, for some dark purpose. They’d been out of touch with the Named Lands for months now, and in this moment, she found herself wondering if that wasn’t part of some larger strategy as well. Perhaps separating House Li Tam from the Named Lands served more than one purpose. It culled them out from potential allies, leaving them alone and far from home; it left the Named Lands without her father’s eyes and ears, and worse, without his strategic influence.

  In the absence of light, P’Andro Whym had asserted in his twelfth gospel, walk slow and with measured step into that waiting darkness.

  Yes, she thought. She would walk slow into this with her eyes and ears open.

  Scowling once more at the flagship where it waited, Rae Li Tam handed the spyglass to her husband. She turned and looked north toward the Named Lands. “We’ve been silent for too long,” she said beneath her breath. Then, louder: “Have the birder meet me in my cabin.”

  He nodded, and she left the pilot house. She had much to do. First, a note to her sister and her betrothed in the Ninefold Forest. Second, a coded message to whomever now captained her father’s flagship.

  After which, she would have to make a decision.

  She glanced once more to the vessel where it lay at anchor and wondered again where it had come from after so long away.

  Rudolfo

  The taste of the powders were still bitter in his mouth when Rudolfo joined Rafe Merrique at the helm of the Kinshark. Most of his life, he’d used the magicks to hide his men but not himself. It was unseemly for a noble to do otherwise. Yet in the last year he’d used the magicks more and more, though each time it went against the grain of his heritage. Worse, it went against his father’s teaching. Still, it had to be done. Two hours ago, birds had been sighted from the south, moving northeast beneath the new-risen sun-a larger, darker bird in fast pursuit.

  And now, all hands had been called, and an out-of-breath sailor had fetched him topside at the captain’s order.

  He’d hoped, at least, that the headaches and nausea, the uneasy twitch of over-ready muscles, would subside with more exposure to the white dust. So far, that was not the case.

  He moved slowly, not as surefooted as Merrique and his men, and the rocking of the ship and the movement of the waves all around him wreaked its disaster on his stomach. The magicked ship was a wonder to be certain, but one that cost him every time he left the relative normalcy below the deck.

  He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth and heard the answering clicks of the crew around him as he made his way to the bridge. Steady hands aided him as his feet found the narrow stairs. He felt something cold and metal pushed into his hands.

  “It’s a telescope,” Rafe Merrique said. He felt the captain’s hands on his shoulder, turning him in a direction. “Look dead ahead.”

  Rudolfo raised the glass to his eye and watched the ocean surge at him. He raised it higher, caught the horizon, and scanned it. The iron ships were not easy to miss.

  Rudolfo sucked in his breath at the sight of them. He’d tossed and turned through four sleepless nights after his decision to pursue Sanctorum Lux. He’d known it was the best path left to him, but it haunted him. He prided himself on the inner compass his father had gifted him with-confidence in the right direction to take at any point in time. But how to choose the best of two courses of action where neither offered any reasonable assurance of success? And now, having placed his hope in Charles’s knowledge of another unlikely path, he found himself confronting Vlad Li Tam’s iron armada.

  He counted the ships-a slow moving circle of six with one anchored in the center.

  Rudolfo realized he was holding his breath and released it. “It’s Tam’s fleet.” But just more than half of it, he realized.

  “Aye,” Rafe Merrique answered. “One flies a flag of quarantine. And the one in the center flies colors of distress.”

  The anchored ship was sleeker and slightly smaller than the others, suggesting that it might be the flagship. Rudolfo couldn’t be certain, but it was as good a place as any to start. “I need to speak with them.”

  He heard wariness in Rafe’s voice. “The six are at Third Alarm,” he said. “They’ve manned their guns-better than the one the Androfrancines granted me, I’ll wager-and they’ve longboats in the water under colors of parley. I’ll not put the Kinshark in cannon range. We wait and watch.”

  Rudolfo opened his mouth to protest, but a muffled boom-followed quickly by another-closed it. He saw smoke and panned the spyglass until he found the source of it-the pilot house of the quarantined vessel had collapsed in a ruin of bent metal, smoke and flames. It veered off course toward the open sea. And this time, Rudolfo saw a flash and gout of smoke from a seemingly empty patch of sea in a close-range broadside shot that opened a tear in the hull at the vessel’s waterline. “They’re under fire.”

  Rafe Merrique snatched the telescope from his hands. “Under fire?”

  Rudolfo had spent little time at sea, but he knew full well how jealously the Androfrancines guarded the ancient war-making knowledge. He’d seen firsthand what it could do-losing a Gypsy Scout to Resolute’s hand cannon in the last war. The very hand cannon that false Pope had used to end his life. These cannons were far larger, and Rudolfo had seen them only on Tam’s iron armada and Merrique’s Kinshark.

  But who else?

  More explosions drifted across the whitecapped morning sea. “It’s an ambush,” Rafe Merrique said incredulously.

  Rudolfo squinted ahead. He now could just make out the ships as the Kinshark made its careful approach. “How is an ambush possible on the open sea?” But even as he said it, he knew the answer. They weren’t the only magicked vessel in the water. At least two more attacked Vlad Li Tam’s iron armada-magicked and armed with bits of so-called Androfrancine light.

  He heard Rafe Merrique exhale suddenly. “They’re being boarded.” Then, his voice rose. “Take us in slow; keep us hidden and out of range.” He passed the glass to Rudolfo’s hands.

  Raising it to his eye, he watched as an invisible blade cut through a crowd of armed men in saffron robes. He watched as groups of three or four of Tam’s household tried to bring down even one of the boarders and suddenly, he was in his own banquet hall, his nose filled with blood and sweat and his ears full of shouting and screaming as the hurricane of assassins slashed through them to take Hanric and Ansylus.

  He watched the decks cleared and watched as children were herded onto the deck by invisible soldiers. It stirred something in him, and Jakob’s face flashed across his inner eye. He loathed Tam, and yet he remembered also the tear he’d seen on that day at the bonfire, when he’d confronted his father-in-law about the murder of his brother and his parents. He’d told him that day that if he ever had a child, he’d not use him as a game piece. And yet, he did not doubt that Tam loved his children in some way-even the ones he sacrificed so readily in service to his strategic cause.

  And now, Rudolfo watched as the youngest of those children-grandchildren or great-grandchildren more likely, he supposed-were rounded up upon the forecastle, on display for the others to see.

  A voice blasted out across the waters. “Surrender,” it said. It made no threat and did not utter another word. The force of the word, even at ten leagues, was enough to raise Rudolfo’s hair.

  He scanned quickly and saw two other vessels with children crowded in the upper decks, terror and blood upon their faces.

  “We have to do something,” he said.

  “We are,” Rafe Merrique said. “We’re watching and waiting. We’re one wooden vessel, Rudolfo, with no real sense of the odds.”

  Rudolfo handed the telescope over to Merrique. “I don’t think we’ll wait long,” he said in a quiet voice.

  And they didn’t. Two of the vessels tried to pull out of the circle but found themselves fired
upon. And now, in the flashes of light and gouts of smoke, they were close enough that Rudolfo could see the dim outline from one of the large, magicked vessels that surrounded the circling ships and the deep rent in the waters from the invisible craft’s displacement.

  They were too far away to be certain, but to Rudolfo’s eye, based on its size, the attacking ship could easily be another of Tam’s iron vessels.

  The realization struck him. “They’ve been divided,” he said.

  And even as he said it, he watched the colors lower on all but the flagship. Their engines slowed, and the remains of Vlad Li Tam’s iron armada scattered into a loose formation with the flagship at its head. When Rafe passed back the telescope, Rudolfo scanned the waters and saw that the longboats were gone now, brought in during the fighting. Men and women wearing loose silks lined the decks under invisible guard. On three of the ships, white-faced and wide-eyed young men and women heaved the bodies of their fallen parents over the railing and into the sea.

  “We’ve another choice to make now,” Rafe said. “We are less than four days from the horn. Nine from where your Charles tells us is the best landfall to reach his Sanctorum Lux.” Rudolfo heard the pirate’s words, but his eyes still swept the scene ahead. Two of the ships limped and smoked now. Two of the others were sinking slowly, their crews lined up upon the deck as their longboats were lowered. The captain continued. “We either press on for the Wastes or-”

  Rudolfo sighed. “We follow them.”

  His first instinct had been to find Tam. Jin Li Tam was a fierce, formidable woman, and she had believed her sister would know how to counter the powders she’d used to give Rudolfo’s soldiers back their swords. The near impossibility of the task had truly not entered into the matter.

  But the promise of this new library-the hope he held that it offered a cure for his son-had crept upon him unawares when serendipity had brought Charles across his path. And though now they appeared to have found Tam, they had done so under alarming circumstances. He’d not needed to decode Petronus’s notes to grasp that the old Pope-along with the Order he once served-believed some external force threatened them. Tam had believed it, it seemed, and fled the Named Lands to investigate. And now, House Li Tam had been divided or had somehow lost nearly half its fleet into unknown hands. Unknown hands with access to the same blood magicks that had torn through the Named Lands just weeks ago and the same stealth magicks that until now had made the Kinshark one of a kind.

  Yes, he thought, another choice.

  But was it really? The compass within him pointed squarely in one direction, and it frightened him how easily he read it, knowing full well the cost and risk. In the end it wasn’t really a choice at all, he realized.

  He felt his jawline tightening with resolve even as he spoke the words again.

  “We follow them,” Rudolfo said, and this time his voice was firm and commanding.

  Then he returned belowdecks to sharpen his knives and ponder what they might find at the heart of this newest Whymer Maze.

  Neb

  Days blurred past Neb, his waking hours filled with the smell of burnt earth and stone and the steady sound of his feet slapping ground in an endless race across the Wastes. The nights were shorter now as they tried to make up distance, sleeping for a handful of hours and running before the sun rose. The landscape and the full moon seemed to accommodate them, but Neb secretly wondered if he was simply getting good enough at running the uneven terrain that Renard’s concerns about the dark were lessening. He had no doubt that the lean Waster had run plenty of moonless nights in times past.

  Regardless, they ran more and his muscles no longer ached from it. The farther in they ran, the warmer the climate grew until he was peeling away layers of clothing and letting the sun bake his skin to a dirty bronze color.

  They’d turned south from Rufello’s Cave, running until they were within sight of the expansive salt dunes that marked the southernmost shore. Then, they cut east and continued on Isaak’s trail.

  During the days, they ran in silence unless Renard pointed out something of note along the way. At night, exhausted from the run, they ate whatever Renard found on the hunt, if there was wood for a fire. If not, they went without meat and relied upon their scout rations. Neb took advantage of the time to watch and study. He’d already learned where to find pockets of bitter water hidden beneath the veneer of desolation and had learned a half dozen ways to extract it and treat it to strip any madness or disease from it. He’d learned where to find bits of root and bramble that could sustain him and how to harvest the black root they chewed throughout the day should he find himself stranded and out of the powerful earth magick.

  And he realized he learned differently now. What had once been best passed to him through books, Neb now easily retained just from watching it done. He wasn’t sure why, but the Waste called strength out in him that he’d never experienced before. His mind was focused, clear and calm. His body felt like a lute coming into tune, and his sleep, dreamless and deep, was more restful than any he’d ever known.

  This place is changing me, and I like what I am becoming. He felt the truth of the thought. Yet, in the corner of his heart, he remembered Winters and it wrenched him.

  They ran and ran, and on the fourth night since they left Rufello’s Cave, they stopped at the edge of a chasm that, according to Renard, divided the continent. Nightfall had already swallowed the deep canyon, but looking south from the edge of it, Neb saw what he thought might be the wide and dangerous sea east of the horn-haunted waters the first settlers referred to as the Ghosting Crests. Neb had heard tell of secret Androfrancine-financed voyages around the horn, but these were largely apocryphal. Though reason dictated that such a crossing was possible, history was replete with tales of vessels lost in those waters to the ghosts that swam them.

  Renard turned north, and Neb followed him. By the time the sun vanished entirely and the moon rose, they reached a high, arching bridge that spanned the gap. Blue and green light reflected from it.

  They slowed and stopped at the base of it.

  “It’s said that one of the Younger Gods was awakened by Y’Zir’s spell when it broke the world open again. They say he placed this bridge to aid those few survivors that they might find their way west.” His voice deepened to nearly a growl. “At least until the Androfrancines manned the Wall and stopped the gate shut but for their own interests.”

  It was the first time Neb had heard bitterness in the man’s voice. He noted it but said nothing. Instead, he nodded to the bridge ahead. “How long ago did they pass this way?”

  Renard smiled. “Hours. if that. We’re close again.”

  Neb nodded, and they set out at a run. They’d crested the apex of the bridge when they heard strange sounds from the east and below. They slowed, and Renard brought out his thorn rifle, walking a few paces ahead of Neb. As they drew closer to the noise, they saw the dim amber glow of glass eyes fluttering below them and heard the wheezing of bellows. Reedy, metallic voices met their ears.

  “You must listen to reason, Cousin, and turn back with your colleagues now,” the first voice said. “You are not authorized to travel beyond this geographical point. Message follows: Under holy unction I declare the lands beyond D’Anjite’s Bridge closed, under seal and signet, Introspect III, Holy See of the Androfrancine Order and Seated King of Windwir.” The voice was flat and matter-of-fact.

  Neb blinked into the darkness and saw their dim outlines at the far edge of the bridge. The moonlight wasn’t such that he could pick them out easily, but it was obvious that the fleeing metal man fled no more. Feet planted firmly on the far side of the chasm, it stood and faced Isaak where he stood upon the last of the bridge.

  Neb and Renard crouched on the bridge. He felt the night wind move over the back of his neck, raising gooseflesh.

  Isaak’s voice was calm and measured. “Pope Introspect is no longer in power. The Order returned to Pope Petronus’s care when Windwir fell-before its e
ventual dissolution seven months, two weeks and three days ago.”

  “That is not possible; Pope Petronus is dead. Without a counter-manding order from Introspect or his named successor, I may not let you pass.”

  Neb didn’t realize he was rising to his feet until he felt Renard’s hand clamp onto his arm. He shrugged it away, suddenly sure of himself. He raised his own voice. “Petronus is not dead; I declared him myself on the plains of Windwir. You yourself claimed to bear him a message. The holdings of the Order have been passed to the Ninefold Forest-all holdings-including the Order’s mechanicals.” He took another step forward, willing authority in his voice, reaching back to the brief months he’d commanded the gravediggers’ army. “I am an officer of the Ninefold Forest Houses and the Great Library reconstructed therein.” More steps now. “I order you to escort us to Sanctorum Lux immediately that the holdings may be cataloged for the new library.”

  He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t what happened next. The metal man’s eyes fluttered open and closed, its mouth flap working as steam whistled out suddenly from the exhaust grate in its back.

  And then, the metal man laughed.

  It was a loud, long, wheezing laugh that rolled up and down the canyon, haunting the night with its eerie, metallic sound. “Nebios ben Hebda,” it said, “you are early for your time here. Do not be so eager for the gift you cannot give back.”

  Gift you cannot give back. It was from the first Gospel of P’Andro Whym, and he conjured the words up from the bottom of his memory.

  And it came to pass on the night of the Purging that P’Andro Whym wept with his closest lieutenants for the work that they had done and turned his eyes upon them and said unto them “Behold our duty to the light is this night begun, and it shall be a gift that cannot be given back and the last path we shall follow in this land.

  Neb’s eyes narrowed. “You speak of duty to the light; we do not choose it. We are called to it.” He stepped farther forward. “Isaak, are you well?”