Canticle poi-2

by Ken Scholes

  Winters watched Jin Li Tam’s face. At Esarov’s initial words, she’d blinked but maintained her composure. Now, her face turned red with anger. “My father,” she said with a low voice, “is culpable in many matters. What exactly is your point in these observations, Esarov?”

  Esarov opened his hands and held them out. “Only this, Lady: The Desolation of Windwir is the greatest tragedy in Named Lands history. Nothing like it has been seen since the days of Xhum Y’Zir and his Age of Laughing Madness. And as the Francis have taught us, these wounds go deeper than our awareness can know.” He turned now, and began pacing the room, making eye contact with the leaders gathered there. He stopped at Meirov, and Winters saw the cold wrath upon her face. “The Fivefold Path of Grief can take us down a winding road, lead us into decisions and actions that in hindsight may be excessive but at the time, feel necessary.” He continued pacing. “Already, they ask one another in the taverns: ‘Where were you when Windwir fell?’ We are not gods-most of us do not even believe in gods-and there is no powder or magick to clear the head in the midst of such trauma and violence.” He stopped, back at his table now, looking down at Petronus. “We all acted as we were compelled when Windwir fell. Right or wrong. But to single out one man when so many others could join him here seems premature and unjust to me.”

  Winters looked out over the room. The faces were a blur of grief remembered and anger refueled. Jin Li Tam leaned onto her podium. “What are you proposing, Esarov?”

  Esarov smiled. “I am proposing a full investigation, authorized by kin-clave and with the full cooperation of all nations, into the destruction of Windwir, any and all acts leading up to and following that event, including oath-testimony by your father, Lord Vlad Li Tam, and all others relevant to the subject at hand. We try everyone-not just one man. Or”-here he paused and Winters heard the whispered voices sweeping the room-“we mourn our dead, move forward and rebuild our nations, restore balance to the Named Lands, heal the broken kin-claves and work together to assist Queen Winteria with the resurgence that has grown up in her territories. Either course is proper, but do not think for a moment that what we do today even scratches the surface of truth and justice.”

  Winters shifted in her chair, and as she did, the Firstfall axe shifted in her lap. For the briefest moment, she thought she saw movement reflected in the polished surface of its blade.

  Then, suddenly, they were at Third Alarm as a mighty wind shook the tent, and a young woman entered as Gypsy Scouts fell back from her magicked escort.

  “I bring you tidings of peace and grace,” she said as she raised her hands. She wore gold-scaled armor, and her brown hair was braided with bone and shell and stick. Her face bore similar markings to Ezra’s-the painting was more careful, using dark earth tones that accentuated her large brown eyes. She was unarmed. “Forgive my tardiness,” she said. “I’ve been tending to matters of salvation. I had hoped to join you at the very beginning.” The girl looked first to Winters, and when their eyes met, she smiled with warmth and affection. “Winteria,” she said, inclining her head. “A strong and prophetic name.”

  She knows me. Winters studied the woman and quickly returned the nod, hoping her eyes would leave hers if she did. There was something in them that frightened her. Something masquerading as love.

  The others were standing now, and Winters watched as scouts from the Delta and Turam applied their powders and vanished while drawing their blades. Gypsy Scouts, unmagicked for now, moved in closer to Jin Li Tam and Petronus, their hands upon the handles of their knives.

  “I petition the council for audience,” the woman said.

  She saw Jin Li Tam wince. “Silence the alarm,” she said, turning to the girl. “You have come into our kin-clave of peace, uninvited, with magicked escort that I can only assume stands ready to commit violence. Who are you and what is your business among us?” The Gypsy Queen’s level of calm amazed Winters.

  “I am about the business of our redemption and atonement, Great Mother,” the woman said. “I am Winteria bat Mardic, first and true heir of the Wicker Throne and Queen of the Machtvolk.”

  Winters heard a stifled gasp and realized it was her that gave it.

  Petronus

  Petronus looked to the newcomer and then to the Marsh girl Winters. The resemblance was uncanny, though the woman who announced herself was easily five years older. She carried herself with a confidence and abandon that he could read easily in her posture and stride.

  “My escort is indeed magicked-you would have not admitted me otherwise-but if we intended violence,” she said, “we’d have made those intentions clear without introduction and without losing the advantage of surprise.” Around them, he felt the tension crackling like electricity in a storm. The woman smiled. “May I have audience?” she asked again.

  Jin Li Tam frowned. “You already have it.”

  The woman who shared the young queen’s name bowed. “Thank you, Great Mother.” She looked to the others and her voice rose. “The salvation of a people is difficult and painful work. Kinship must be healed. Blood must be let. Sacrifice must be made.” As she spoke, Petronus watched her eyes travel the room, settling last upon Meirov of Pylos. The rage upon Meirov’s face gave him pause, and for a moment he thought she might lunge forward to attack the woman with bare hands. Of course, it would be her death sentence if she did. He remembered the strength and ferocity of just one blood skirmisher and knew this so-called queen must have dozens of them with her and perhaps a hundred more nearby. She would not have walked into a kin-clave otherwise.

  The woman continued. “You believe that you gather here upon the plains of our handiwork to judge the Last Son of P’Andro Whym and to hear my sister’s plea for help. But this is not true. You are here-called and set apart-to bear witness to the grace and mercy of House Y’Zir and the Crimson Empress whose advent is nearly upon us.”

  Jin Li Tam’s eyes narrowed. “You speak in riddles.”

  “No,” the woman said firmly, “I speak of prophecy and destiny for those who have ears to hear. She raised her voice: “ ‘And it shall come to pass that the city of P’Andro Whym shall become a pyre and in the shadow of that pyre, a child of great promise shall be born to make ready all people for the advent of the Crimson Empress and the Homecoming of House Y’Zir.’ ”

  The words were unfamiliar to Petronus, but they had the ring of age about them. And they had a similar tone and cadence to other words he’d heard not so long ago. Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children.

  The woman continued, and her smile warmed when she fixed her eyes upon Petronus. “Last Son,” she said, “you know what I speak of. You chose this time and place for a reckoning you have felt calling you for some time now. Is this not true?”

  Yes. He found himself nodding. “I have felt it,” he said in a quiet voice that only he and Esarov could hear. Some Franci corner of him spun the Rufello ciphers on this lock, but a deeper voice pulled at his will like a tide. How can she know this?

  Petronus glanced around the tent to see what others were doing. Surprise and confusion still dominated most faces. Jin Li Tam watched carefully, her eyes moving from the woman who called herself Winteria, to the guards positioned at various points around the tent. He saw the briefest flash of fingers and hands moving to give orders. The Marsh girl Winters sat still, her eyes wide and her mouth open-it was obvious to Petronus that she was as surprised as anyone by this sudden turn of events, but the resemblance between them was unsettling. Last, he caught Ignatio’s eye and saw him lean forward to whisper something into Erlund’s ear. When the spymaster leaned back, his eyes locked with Petronus’s and he understood the smile some twenty days earlier in the council chambers on the Delta. He is a part of this.

  The Machtvolk Queen walked to Petronus’s table, trailing her fingers across the surface of it as she strolled past. He caught the heavy scent of blood and mud and ash from her and from her invisible escort. “The time for kin-clave is past
,” she said, “and the time of kin-healing is upon us all.”

  Even as she said it, there arose a clamor beyond the tent. It was as if a thousand voices gathered just outside, raising up in a shout all at once, and then a frightened-looking girl entered the tent, a baby clutched in her arms. Behind her, an old man followed with upraised hands, singing loudly in an ecstatic burst of glossolalia. Around them, snow flurried as magicked skirmishers swept into the tent around them, forming an unseen wall between the audience and the infant.

  Erlund’s general-Lysias, Petronus remembered-plunged forward and called out a name that was lost in the gasps and cries that filled the tent. Invisible hands pressed him back. And the loudest cry sounded from the front of the room, where Jin Li Tam clung to the podium with ice in her eyes and a snarl upon her lips. “Release my child,” she said, “and I will spare your life.”

  The Machtvolk Queen laughed, and Petronus felt the chill of it along his spine. “You are in no position to command me in this matter, Great Mother. Your boy’s life lies in the hands of the Last Son of P’Andro Whym.”

  Jin Li Tam cleared the platform in one leap, and Petronus watched as a wall of force caught her up and held her, invisible hands grasping at her arms and legs as she bucked and twisted. Petronus heard a disembodied voice. “Don’t struggle, Great Mother. We hold you for your own good.”

  The girl holding Jakob sobbed now and clutched at him as the old man stretched out his hands to take him from her. Jin Li Tam shrieked her rage then, and when soldiers suddenly surged forward, unseen wind knocked them back and down. Then, Jakob rose up in the prophet’s arms for all in the room to see. “Behold,” the old man said, “the Child of Promise.”

  It was Petronus’s first close look at the child. He was gray and smaller than he should be, his eyes squeezed shut against the light. He hung motionless in the old man’s hands, his head rolling to the side.

  The older Winteria looked to Petronus and drew a knife and a ring from a pocket beneath her armor. He looked at them and blinked. How did she come by those?

  He’d not seen either since that day he’d dropped them onto the floor of the tent and left to wash Sethbert’s blood from his hands.

  “You know these, then?”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  She placed the ring upon the table. “I’ve told you that the child’s life is in your hands. Do you believe me?”

  He studied the line of her jaw, measured the certainty in her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I believe you.”

  “Rise, then, Last Son, take up your ring and face your reckoning.”

  He stood, his eyes never leaving the infant, and took up the ring. It was still brown with dried blood that he felt peeling away as he shoved it onto his finger.

  He walked around the table to stand before her. She smiled at him. “You called this council of kin-clave for the matter of your guilt in the death of Sethbert as King of Windwir and Holy See of the Androfrancine Order. I charge you with more than this, Petronus, Last Son of P’Andro Whym. I charge you with two thousand years of blasphemy and bullying. I charge you with regicide and deicide.” She paused and looked out over the others in the room. “I charge you with home-stealing and light-hoarding.”

  He looked to the baby and then back to the woman. “Who are you to make these charges?”

  “I am the Bond-Servant of House Y’Zir, sent to prepare for the advent of the Crimson Empress. I am the Machtvolk Queen Winteria bat Mardic, the Home-Taker.”

  “I do not recognize your authority in this matter,” he said, nodding toward Winters. “Winteria bat Mardic is the ascended queen of the Marshfolk.”

  “You do not have to. My authority is in this moment and this knife.” She smiled. “And things are not as they seem. My little sister and I may share a name, but make no mistake that our father’s throne is mine by right of birth.”

  He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Jin Li Tam’s hands were moving. Do not play into her hand, she said in the Whymer subverbal. There must be another way.

  He nodded so that she would know he understood her message, but he had no intention of changing course now. She held the knife in the same way he had, hidden beneath his robes, while he waited for the right moment. This is my reckoning, he thought.

  “What do you require of me?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I require a plea of you, Last Son.”

  Petronus looked at the infant. “And if I give you what you require the child will be unharmed?”

  She laughed. “What you give, you give for Jakob and for us all.” If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought love shone out from her eyes. “What you give, you give even for yourself.”

  His eyes narrowed. Some part of him wanted to flee now, and his bladder suddenly demanded release. He remembered the place where he had stood when it was Sethbert, remembered the look in the dethroned Overseer’s eyes when he realized the knife had cut his throat, and he felt remorse again for the price he’d exacted-the price he had paid-in order to euthanize the Order and its backward dreaming.

  It had been the right thing to do, he realized, even as now he knew this was the right thing.

  “Then I offer my plea,” Petronus said. “I am guilty.”

  The woman smiled.

  He did not think he would feel the knife, but he did. It was a dull ripping with sudden cold against his open throat. He felt his knees buckle and saw his own blood.

  Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children.

  He saw Esarov moving around the table, his face twisted in rage. He saw Erlund’s stunned look and the ecstasy upon his spymaster’s face. And he saw the baby, held high like a standard, so that his shadow passed over Petronus.

  A wind of blood to cleanse; a blade of cold iron to prune.

  He heard the cries of those who bore witness, he heard air bubbling through his wound, and above it all Petronus heard the Child of Promise raise up his voice and wail as if with great sorrow.

  Then, the Last Son of P’Andro Whym smiled at his reckoning and embraced the light that reached for him.

  Jin Li Tam

  Jin Li Tam tore her eyes away from Petronus’s twitching form at the sound of her child’s cry. Her body and mind flooded with emotion as the weight of the day’s events finally broke her.

  It had begun with the bird. Weeks late, a reply from Rae Li Tam had arrived before dawn, pushed into her fumbling hands by the captain of the watch. She’d read it by firelight and wept.

  The note was brief, but she recognized the handwriting as her sister’s, and the triple-coded response was in the standard script of House Li Tam. There is no cure. I grieve with you, Sister.

  Beyond those terse words, there’d been no further information and no word from Rudolfo, either, in weeks now. She’d kept the messages going out to him in the hopes that one would find him. None had-or if they had, he’d not responded.

  She’d carried the note with her in her pocket and had spent the day crying in her tent when she wasn’t presiding over the kin-clave.

  Still, she’d steeled herself for her duties, though the weight of that knowledge crushed her. Rae Li Tam was perhaps the best apothecary in the New World, and if she said there was no cure, Jin Li Tam believed her. Not even the promise of Sanctorum Lux could hold her despair at bay.

  So she had hidden her sorrow and faced her day.

  And now, the tent stank of blood and mud and ash as Petronus kicked his last on the canvas floor. Her son wailed-great sobs that made his tiny body convulse in the gnarled and filthy hands of Ezra the Marsh Prophet. In his short time with her, Jin Li Tam had never heard him cry so forlornly, and it went deeper than any scout knife.

  The so-called Machtvolk Queen glanced at her and then knelt over Petronus, flipping him over. “Do not despair, Great Mother. Salvation is upon us all.”

  Then, she opened the old man’s blood-soaked robe, baring his pale chest.

  Jin Li Tam willed herself to struggle, but somewher
e between her brain and her body, the message fell flat and she hung limply in the arms that held her.

  The woman’s hand moved with confidence and precision, running the knife over Petronus’s chest. His glassy eyes stared upward, his arms spread cruciform.

  When the mark of Y’Zir was complete, the woman looked up to Jakob. “Bring the child of promise to me,” she said. Then, from beneath her armor, she drew out an iron needle and a small glass phial on a silver chain.

  Dipping the needle into Petronus’s blood, the woman unstopped the phial and slid the needle into it, depositing a single drop. She stopped it up and stood, approaching Jin Li Tam. Behind her, Ezra cradled her crying son.

  “Your child is going to die,” she said, leaning close enough that Jin could smell the honey of her breath. “Ask me to save him and I will.” She replaced the needle and shook the phial in her fist.

  Jin Li Tam swallowed. This was a darker mysticism than the Marshfolk had shown before, and some part of her mind reeled away from it. “You cannot save him. He is sick.” She felt panic growing within her.