by Ken Scholes
Where can we go? She called up her memory of the maps she’d studied under Tertius’s tutelage. An idea struck her and she locked eyes with Hebda. “How far and how fast will this weapon travel?”
“Fast,” he said. “Under a week. And from the mountains to the sea.”
From the mountains to the sea. She looked again to the metal men, then back to the arch-behaviorist. “Then the Churning Wastes are safe.”
His eyes widened. “Safe from this but certainly not safe otherwise.” He thought about it a moment. “But they could reach the Keeper’s Gate ahead of the pathogen.”
“Enoch, how long would it take you to reach the Ninefold Forest?”
“We can make the run in two days’ time at top speed.”
She closed her eyes, calculating the distance. “And you could have them past the gate and into the Wastes within ten days of that?”
The metal man inclined its head. “Yes. If we send word ahead and they are ready to leave when we arrive.”
“We will still need ships,” she said, “and a place for them to rendezvous. But that is secondary to getting them out of the Named Lands.” She pulled herself up to her full height and felt the weight of command in her voice. “Very well, Enoch. Send word ahead to Seamus to have them ready. And entreat Rudolfo’s new steward to outfit them as necessary. See my people through the gate and to the nearest suitable landing; I will meet you there once I’ve gathered the others and secured vessels.”
The eyes flashed amber, dull then bright, and the other eyes flashed as well. “Yes, Lady.” The metal man drew a black stone from the pocket of its robe and held it in metal fingers. She recognized it, and it brought back the memory of her stretched out upon a much larger but similar stone, lying next to Isaak as they dreamed the Final Dream. “We will access the aether and inform our cousins once we are away.”
She nodded. The Blood Guard and Daughters of Ahm also had access to the aether, but she trusted the metal man to take whatever precautions necessary. “Thank you, Enoch. Shepherd well and tell my people that home draws nigh. Bid them wash away the mud and markings of their sorrow.”
The metal men said nothing. As one, they turned toward the door. Then the mechoservitors stepped out into the gray winter day, and were gone.
After they’d left, she gave a hard look at Hebda and then at Tertius but said nothing, waiting for them to speak.
Finally, it was the old man—the one who’d taught her much of what she knew of the world—who spoke while Hebda looked away.
“Nebios Whym,” the old man began in a slow, measured voice, “is not the first of his kind that the Order has encountered.”
Winteria bat Mardic sat and closed her eyes, letting the words wash over her like cold rain. “Explain,” she said, with as much bravery as she could muster.
And then her world changed again as he did just that.
Petronus
Petronus paced the halls of the Firsthome Temple and marveled at what the Younger Gods had commanded.
No, he reminded himself again. Not the Younger Gods. The People. The ones who had fashioned this moon and the world it orbited, building into them everything they would need as a species.
He ran his hand along a pale wall, startled again by the fleshlike warmth of it. In the days since Petronus had unsealed the temple, it had sprung to life in unexpected ways. Water flowed throughout the structure through vines along the walls, hot and cold both, in addition to rooms where it bubbled up in bathing pools. And scattered throughout the varying levels of the tower were rooms given completely over to fruit orchards. He and the others had sampled them. He could’ve sworn that one of them had a taste and texture akin to rare beef beneath a skin much like a tomato’s.
He spent his time wandering the temple and running the jungles around it while the last of their mechoservitors made maps and notes and Rafe fished the canal. There was little else to do while he waited for Neb to finish his work and return.
It wasn’t a bad way to spend his last days.
Petronus had no idea how long he had left, but he knew from the spider, Aver-Tal-Ka, that his transformation would ultimately cost him his life. Weeks or months, the spider told him, and his new, younger body would fail. Still, it had taken forty years off his life and turned back time in even deeper places, restoring Petronus to a heritage that had been lost.
Because I am also of the People. They all were.
His breath caught again at the wonder of it all. He’d spent his life in service to the light, serving the Order in its role of digging the lost and fractured past from the ruins of the Churning Wastes. He could still remember the first time he’d seen the Great Library as a young acolyte, astonished at the vast sea of books. As he’d climbed the ranks within the Order, he’d seen even more—artifacts, leftover bits of magick, mechanical oddities like Isaak and the others. And now, he saw that all of that had merely been the leftovers of a people who had already forgotten themselves.
The light, he thought, is far brighter and vaster than I ever imagined. The temple evidenced a light that stretched back across the void to … He reached for the word. Firsthome, they called it. The place they’d sprung from as a species.
And these are the Last Days of Lasthome. Petronus couldn’t remember where he’d heard the words. Perhaps it had been the spider or something he’d read during those days in the aether waiting for Aver-Tal-Ka’s gift to finish its work in his body. He wasn’t sure how many days he’d spent there, but that part of the aether looked and felt much like one of the quieter wings of the Great Library, though full of titles no Androfrancine had ever heard of. Between that and the library here, Petronus saw more and more a vast bridge of light that spanned more years than he could imagine.
Back to where we came from. He suspected that the place he now wandered, a named testament to that first home, was designed to invoke the kind of holy awe he felt.
A distant hum tickled his ears, and Petronus turned in the direction it came from. It wasn’t something he could’ve heard before: the slight creak of metal joints and whisper of metal feet upon the mossy floor. But now he could even hear the water bubbling through its steam pipes as the mechoservitor climbed the stairs at top speed.
“Father Petronus?”
He moved in the direction of the reedy voice. “I am here.”
“The camp is at third alarm. Master Merrique requests your immediate presence at the portico.”
Third alarm? He was on the stairs now and could see the metal man standing below. “What’s happened?”
Petronus didn’t wait for an answer. He moved past the mechoservitor, taking the stairs three and four at a time as he built speed. He’d run the tower with Neb several times, racing him to the top and managing to even win once; it gave his feet a sureness now made more confident because the moss beneath his feet seemed to sing as he ran over it.
He reached the bottom and moved across the wide open room toward a portico that opened upon the canals and jungles beyond. Rafe and the others stood waiting with the other mechoservitor, their faces turned toward the southern sky.
Petronus squinted out into the afternoon. “What in the hells is going on?”
Rafe glanced to him and then nodded southward. “We appear to have company.”
Petronus stepped forward and shielded his eyes from the light. Something large and silver moved quietly toward them, cruising slowly just above the jungle’s green canopy. “What is it?”
But he already knew it was a vessel of some kind. And as it drew closer, he realized it was larger than the golden ship the mechoservitors had built to bring them here. But this craft moved slowly through the air, a bright blue flag hanging from a large metal cabin fixed to its underside.
Even as he watched, another flag ran out to join the blue. This was green, and Petronus raised his eyebrows. “Blue for inquiry,” he said.
Rafe finished the thought. “Green for peace.”
The vessel slowed further, and its shadow
swept around as it banked and circled the tower once. As it passed, Petronus could pick out faces pressed to portholes, and despite his better judgment, he raised a hand in greeting.
When the ship came around the other side, it stopped and descended until ropes snaked out and uniformed figures swarmed down them to pull the vessel farther down.
Rafe glanced at Petronus, then back to the vessel. “What now?”
Petronus shrugged. “They know the colors of kin-clave.” He looked around at the ragged group left from their initial landing here. One sailor, two scouts and the old pirate captain were all that remained besides he and Neb. “And we’d be no match for them if they didn’t come under a flag of peace.” Still, he doubted whoever came could stand up to what Neb was now capable of, and the boy was just a shout away. He felt for the silver crescent in his robe, reassured by its cool metal surface. “I think,” Petronus finally said, “we go and meet them.”
A gangplank lowered as Petronus and the others left the shaded portico. He saw a small group of men and women gathered in what he assumed was the cargo bay of the ship. They wore blue uniforms and stood around a woman who wore a plain blue dress decorated with a long silver scarf. Her ginger hair was tied back, and at first glance Petronus thought she must be a Tam. She held a slender book in her hand and talked in low tones with an older man with silver piping on his uniform that spoke of rank.
Her eyes met Petronus’s, and he saw a smile work at her mouth even as she blushed. He left the others and approached the foot of the gangplank even as she did the same.
Petronus saw the others shifting as she walked toward him but saw no evidence of weapons or malice.
“I am Ambassador Nadja Thrall of New Espira. Are you the Homeseeker, Nebios Whym?”
The words washed over him, and Petronus blinked. Ambassador. Espira. “Nebios? No, I’m not Neb. He is … unavailable.” He extended a hand to grasp hers. “I am Petronus.”
Her blush deepened. “The Pope?” There was the slightest stammer in her voice, and it raised his eyebrows further. “I didn’t realize you were here. It is a great honor to meet you.”
He squeezed her hand and noticed that she hesitated before releasing it. “You know of me?”
The ambassador nodded. “I’ve studied your speeches. Imagine my surprise when I learned you weren’t dead after all.” She smiled, and her teeth were even and white. “And now I’m actually meeting you,” she said, glancing up at the planet that hung above them. “On the moon.”
A hundred questions begged asking, and Petronus found himself holding his breath as he sorted through them. Finally, he released it. “And you are from New Espira?”
“Yes,” she said. “We came through the Seaway.” She thought for a moment. “The Moon Wizard’s Ladder, you call it.”
“I’ve not heard of New Espira.” Of course, until recently he’d never heard of the Empire of Y’zir. He looked up at the ship that hung silently above them. “And I’ve not seen a vessel like this.”
“It’s an airship. This one is called Frederico’s Hope.” She took a breath and continued. “We typically take great care for them not to be seen.”
He squinted up into the open cargo bay, taking in the uniformed men and women that held back, watching their young ambassador. “And you’re looking for Nebios Whym.”
She nodded. “But I’m very glad to meet you.” She glanced away, her cheeks again red. “I’ve modeled my own career with the council on many of the principles that guided you into your papacy. Your last recorded speech—the one about the backward dream—was the subject of my philosophy dissertation.”
Petronus felt heat rising to his own face. “I’m afraid you know much more about me than I do about you, Ambassador Thrall.”
She laughed. “Yes,” she said. “Also something we’ve taken great care about.” She took a tentative step forward. “But the time of Sowing is at hand, and the time for secrets is past.”
Yes. He wasn’t certain why he trusted this woman with her gentle smile and her easy blush, but he knew that he did. And just as he had been for much of the last two years, Petronus found himself surprised at how very small he was and how very little he knew. The light, indeed, was vaster in its scope than he’d realized, and the world he and his Androfrancine Order had thought they understood so well was much larger than he’d ever imagined.
“I will let Neb know that you are here,” he said, his hand brushing against the crescent in his robe’s pocket. “I’m sure he will want to meet you at his earliest convenience.”
“Good,” Nadja said as she stepped off the gangplank and onto the surface of the moon. “We have a treaty to negotiate and saplings for the library.”
The hundred questions had bred into a thousand, but this time Petronus asked none of them. Instead, he stood back and watched as the ambassador and her crewmates disembarked. And he realized as he did that if he’d needed to find any common ground with this woman and her people, it was the look of rapt wonder upon their faces as they took in the majesty of the Firsthome Temple and the brown, scarred planet that hung above it.
Chapter
3
Lysias
Eyes still running and stinging from smoke, Lysias gulped air and listened to the moans of the wounded around him.
He tried to slow his breathing, to slow his heartbeat, wondering how it was that after so many years of soldiering, he suddenly found himself shaking and afraid.
It’s because you’ve never fought underground like a sewer rat. He’d trained as a young officer at the Delta’s famed Academy and had been tested against minor Y’Zirite resurgences, Marshfolk incursions and the occasional trouble with neighboring Pylos back in his days in the Entrolusian military. It had all culminated in the War for Windwir, where he’d learned to respect the Gypsy King and his Wandering Army. He’d never imagined at that time that one day he would not only serve General Rudolfo, but also build him a standing army to protect his assets in the Ninefold Forest.
And certainly, he’d never imagined fighting underground. In the dark.
They’d moved largely undetected through the Beneath Places, escorting two of Orius’s officers northward to an access point for the Named Lands’ water tables deep beneath the ruins of the Papal summer palace. Along the way, they’d established a series of camps and couriers to keep lines of communication open with the Androfrancine Army.
It was quiet until the dream.
The memory of it still raised the hair on his arms. He’d experienced nothing like it before, finding himself and his men suddenly in a great field, surrounded by thousands and thousands of others, watching a massive tree gone white with seed. He’d been close enough to see the mechoservitor and the Marsh Queen, Winters, clearly, and thought he’d seen someone that looked like Pope Petronus, only the younger man Lysias had first met some forty years earlier, not the old man the Pope had grown into. He saw all of this and felt connected to everything and everyone in a way that he’d never experienced before. He had shared something with the people there that defied his capacity to articulate, and it dogged him like a hunting hound even now.
But in the midst of the dream, he’d also seen the others and knew them by their uniforms: Y’Zirites moving among them, and not caught off guard by the suddenness of the dream. They were counting men and measuring distances with shifting eyes.
Not long after, they’d lost contact with a courier. And then after, the ambush.
Lysias pressed himself against the wall of the cave. He felt hands pressing a canteen into his, recognizing the voice that whispered in his ear. It was Tybard. “Wash your eyes out, General. There’s some kind of irritant in the smoke.”
The Y’Zirites had struck hard and fast, carving through them with a squad of blood-magicked honor guard, then retreated as the caves filled with an acrid, burning smoke.
Lysias held back his head and forced his eyes open as he poured the canteen over them. He blinked in the dark. “We need to keep moving. Where’s
Royce?”
“We lost Royce.”
“Lost or dead?”
“Dead, sir.”
Lysias felt a stab of sorrow that quickly became the anger at having lost a good officer at the worst possible time. “And Blakely and Symeon? Are they safe? And their package?”
“We’re here, General,” Symeon whispered. “And the package is safe.”
Good. Their enemy couldn’t possibly know what they were up to, but now that they knew there was an army moving below them, just north of Windwir, they would have to wonder why.
And I can’t afford for them to wonder. Or to wait around for the Y’Zirites to figure it out. Lysias turned in the direction of Tybard’s voice. “How many have we lost?”
“Thirty, maybe forty. With twice that injured.”
It was a significant loss, especially with Royce. All from what he estimated to be five or six blood-magicked Y’Zirites that had scouted them out. Lysias suspected they’d used the dream somehow to work out their general location, but at least three of the scouts had fled, laying the smoke beyond them. They would report back, and that would bring others down upon them.
Lysias had not been so naïve to think they might get to their destination unnoticed, but he’d hoped they’d get farther. Still, they’d considered the potential of being discovered and had worked out the best contingency they could. “It’s time to split the army,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll harry us down to nothing now that they know we’re here.”
“Aye.”
“I want the walking wounded to make their way east and up. Give them to Lieutenant Drake. They’re to retreat to the forest and once they’re fit for duty, take up positions on the border.” Lysias paused, closing his eyes and pulling up the maps from memory. “I want you to take the remaining half and head west. Meddle with the Y’Zirites and keep them busy while we run north.”