by Ken Scholes
And yet the words he’d needed found him. He glanced to Petronus, then back to Commander Eltara and Sister Agnes. “I am asking you once more to reconsider,” he said. “Lay down your arms and show us that you’ve come in peace. Or return to Y’Zir and come back with others more capable of seeing a better path than needless bloodshed.”
The two of them said nothing. With a glance to their men, they turned to the longboat and walked back to it. Neb watched them row away and felt the knot in his stomach growing.
They will not leave. He wasn’t certain that they would engage the two of them either, and when he saw the deckhands scrambling to raise sails and anchors, he knew their intentions. “They’re going to sail on as if we aren’t even here,” he said.
Petronus nodded. “Yes.”
Neb sighed. When he’d sunk the earlier ships there had been no conversation and very little else to make it personal. He’d even closed his eyes at the time, dropping the massive weight of his kin-dragon through the wooden ships like a boulder from the sky, never seeing the cost in human life. “I wish there was another way,” he said.
He saw compassion on Petronus’s face. “I wish it, too.”
The ships were slowly moving now, Sister Agnes and Commander Eltara watching smugly from the bow of the last vessel.
“You should return to the temple,” he told Petronus. “Have Rafe ready the ship.” At the man’s nod, Neb filled his lungs and summoned the kin-dragon.
It called to him from a distance as it burst up from the eastern jungle, red in the light of the rising sun. The kin-dragon’s wings beat the sky as it rose and then dropped onto Neb, enfolding him and pulling him into the belly of the beast.
He felt his body become one with the dragon, felt his wings take hold as he hovered, felt his lungs filling with air that stank of salt and the myriad odors of the Y’Zirite vessels and their crew.
Neb roared and watched wide eyes go wider still at the sound of it. It was clear that the Y’Zirites had not expected this development, and he took advantage of it to launch himself upward even as their archers sent a volley of arrows toward him. They clattered off his metal skin as he climbed out of range and hovered. He positioned himself above the last vessel—the one that held the senior leaders—and then dove for it, building speed as he bent his wings and straightened his neck.
He tucked his wings in and curled himself into as tight a ball as he could just before impacting and felt the deck splinter as he broke through it with ease. Once he felt the inside of the hull, he tore into it with his claws, opening the ship up to a flood of warm salt water. Then, he pushed himself up from the wreckage to launch himself back into the air.
Neb built altitude and held, studying his handiwork. The ship sank, though it would be a shallow grave in the canal. There were bodies scattered amid the debris, more of them swimming and flailing about than not, which pleased him.
He’d not tried to speak from the kin-dragon, but now he felt compelled and cleared his voice. It was a deep bass that rumbled like thunder over the jungle.
“I do not wish to harm you further,” Neb said. “The moon is closed to the Empire of Y’Zir until peace is treated for. Take your people aboard and return to the Seaway.”
Neb waited and watched as the ships slowed and boats were lowered. He saw the commander pulled from the water but no sign of Sister Agnes. Already he felt remorse and hoped they were savvy enough not to press him. Surely they saw their wooden ships and wooden arrows were not going to win them any ground.
He felt the heat of the sun on his silver skin, and a shudder washed over him. Petronus had told him the story of the People, reading it to him as they walked around the temple. That he was one of them, descended from a species that had bent the universe to its whims, still astonished him. As did the magick—or what seemed it—that they took for granted. Below him, his enemies felt an astonishment of their own.
Once the two remaining ships were loaded with survivors and under way, Neb kept pace with them as they retreated. After staying with them for an hour, he swung out over the jungle and built speed for the coastline as he climbed higher into the sky. From this altitude, he could see the pillars of the Seaway in the distance and the three small specks upon the water. He’d flown over them at night, so he was confident that he’d not yet been noticed, though he’d picked them out well enough with the sharp eyes the kin-dragon afforded him. But now, Neb thought, it was time to be seen.
He approached slowly, giving the ships a wide berth as he swung around them, gliding on his wings. At night, the decks of these three had been crowded with sleeping forms, indicating that they were carrying far more people than the vessels he’d just turned away. But now in the daylight, the forms moved about, pointing and shouting to him as he passed by. And these were not predominantly military, though he saw a few uniforms scattered throughout. Of course the most distinguishing difference was the absence of the Y’Zirite flag and the presence instead of a hand-painted flag—a white tree against a dark field. Neb had not shared the dream with the others—as far as he knew, he and Amylé D’Anjite were the only two not to have experienced the dream. But he’d seen this tree on banners in Caldus Bay among those gathered to hear Winters speak.
A thought occurred to him, and he thought it again. These are People of the Dream. They were Winters’s people and—despite not having the dream in common with them—they were his people as well.
But unlike those he’d spoken to in Caldus Bay, these had come in Y’Zirite ships. The same dream calls them home.
Neb matched his speed to that of the ships, flying with them as he gradually descended. Once the wind of his wings whipped at their flags and sails, he backed off to hover. The ships were overloaded and tipping as they crowded the rail to see this latest lunar wonder. All in all, Neb saw a few pikes but no bows, and none of the weapons were at the ready.
He flew ahead and rose above the bow of the first ship, feeling a kinship with them that swelled up within him. He was a child of the dreams, those he shared with Winters and those he shared with the mechoservitors. Both had carried him here, just as a new dream had carried those below him.
“The People of the Dream are welcome here,” Neb cried out, his voice the roaring of many waters. “The time of Homecoming is upon us all.”
There was a moment of silence, and when their cheer rose up, it deafened the cheers he’d heard in Caldus Bay and in the Ninefold Forest. These were the heartfelt cries of people beneath the knives too long, tears streaking over the scars of the gospel carved into their flesh.
Neb saw joy upon those faces, heard it within their shouts. And relief. And hope. Unsure of what else to say, he repeated himself. “The People of the Dream are welcome here.”
Then Nebios Whym turned his nose toward the Firsthome Temple and beat his wings against the morning sky.
Chapter
13
Jin Li Tam
The Barrens of the Old World were eerily silent as Jin Li Tam matched her step to the line of survivors ahead and behind her. Overhead, the sun was relentless in its heat, her skin red from burns that stung by day and ached through the cool nights.
She moved slowly, head down, eyes darting left and right as she monitored a landscape that stretched flat and dark as far as she could see.
These are the ashes of the Wizard Wars.
She’d learned the stories as a child, taught of course that they were largely apocryphal. The ruins of the Old World after Raj Y’Zir’s silver army laid waste to Frederico’s empire. Then, according to myth, the Moon Wizard had gathered what survivors remained and led them to a new world and a new start beneath his reign and the reign of his descendants. Of course that new world had long been razed, reduced to a wasteland more habitable than this but not by much.
The person ahead of her—a woman in a torn uniform and short blond hair—stopped, and Jin Li Tam did the same at an order barked somewhere up the line in a language she did not understand.
Jin sat where she wa
s and waited for her ration of water, trying not to lick her chapped and blistered lips.
They’d buried their dead and what of the wreckage they could. Then they had stretched out sheets of what looked and felt like metallic cloth, covering what was too large to bury. She’d watched them run wires to something akin to a sunstone buried nearby, and when those wires were attached to the cloth, it shimmered and vanished, leaving only the appearance of flat, dark ground beneath it. It was a type of scout magick, she knew, but nothing like the ones she was familiar with.
That had been four days ago, and now they moved toward an uncertain rendezvous. During that time, she’d learned what she could about the New Espirans, but that hadn’t been much. The survivors, haggard from grief and fear, had been largely tight-lipped, though it was obvious that some of them understood Landlish. She knew that they were very concerned about being seen, doing their utmost to hide any evidence of the crash site while the woman who’d inherited command stood to the side, a dark stone in her fist. Jin had attempted to engage the officer repeatedly then and over the days they’d slowly traversed the wasted landscape. But the woman had offered her nothing in the way of information other than promises that her questions would be answered in due time.
Still, Pardeau’s whispered words haunted her with each step and chewed at her each time they stopped. Could Jakob somehow be alive?
She’d resisted the notion for the first day, her memory flooded with that horrible night. She could still smell the smoke, could still see her father there on the rooftop as he hurled the children away and downward into the raging fire.
But by the second day beneath that blistering sun, Jin realized that the commander’s last words had taken root. She had seen what her father had wanted her to see. He’d seeded her fears and told her exactly what he intended to do in his earlier encounter with her in the aether.
Of course it wasn’t the first time House Li Tam had used misdirection and fear to bend perceptions in favor of their work. And of all the children of House Li Tam, Vlad was the master of such manipulations.
He’d tried to tell her so just before she fell upon him with her knives.
Things are not as they seem.
By the third day, Jin Li Tam was convinced of the ruse. It had all the sensibilities of a Tam strategy. The only way to eradicate the Y’Zirite threat was to undermine the one thing it needed to maintain its power over people and motivate blind obedience.
Their faith.
Her father had done great damage prior to his attack on the palace. He’d incited terror with his plagues and fires, reducing the population and destabilizing the government. But to destroy a faith, Jin realized, you had to destroy the objects of that faith. Take away that which was believed upon and hoped in and the rest would fall into chaos, anarchy and despair.
Even me.
And it appeared to have worked. But it brought forward another question to perplex her here on the fourth day.
Vlad’s plan was dependent upon everyone’s belief—including and especially hers—that the Child of Promise and the Crimson Empress were dead. And the easiest way to assure that belief was to actually go through with their murder. Anything else was to risk discovery and unravel whatever other plans Vlad Li Tam had for the Empire of Y’Zir.
And yet he concocted a clever bit of misdirection instead. Why?
Vlad Li Tam had used his children, his nephews and his nieces, his entire family as weapons and tools in whatever work he deemed necessary in the Named Lands. The lives of two small children were nothing to him in the greater scheme of his perceived higher good.
Why had he spared them?
Perhaps, she thought, he was changing. Certainly the events of the last few years had changed the course of her own river. The desolation of Windwir and everything that followed were as transformative as they were traumatic.
She looked up and down the line and drank the last of her water ration, then stood when the others stood behind and before her. Jin felt the ache of too many leagues in her feet and knees, and felt the blistering sun upon her face and neck.
They shuffled off northward, and once again she fell into the rhythm of one foot before the other, her mind once more working the Whymer Maze of her circumstances.
They’d marched two hours when movement on the horizon ahead brought them to a halt. She shielded her eyes from the setting sun and watched a single figure moving toward them at impossible speed.
“Lady Tam.” She took her eyes off the movement and met those of the woman who’d taken over command. It was the first time the woman had addressed her in four days.
Her eyes went back to the approaching runner. “Yes?”
“You will be going on ahead of us,” she said. “And I am now authorized to tell you that your son—as well as several members of your family and First Captain Aedric—await you beyond Endicott Station.”
Even though she’d spent days pondering the possibility, the sudden assurance from this woman that Jakob lived rocked her back on her heels and brought about a sob she could not contain.
The woman placed a hand upon her shoulder. “I’m sorry I could not answer your questions earlier. I was under orders until your safety could be assured.”
Jin looked to the single figure rapidly closing the distance between them. “You’re sending me ahead with one man, and that assures my safety?”
The commander shook her head. “Not a man.”
She squinted at it and now saw the fine dark cloud of dust that rose behind it as it moved. She’d seen a similar loping run before, and when the last of the setting sun reflected off a metal surface, she understood. “A mechoservitor.”
“Yes. An automaton. You will be safe in its care.”
Jin nodded. As it drew closer, she saw that it was a twin to the Watcher, though it was a dull silver and showed less age and wear than its dark, time-pitted cousin.
The metal man stopped, looming above them, and the commander whispered something into the black stone she held.
“Lady Tam,” the mechoservitor said in a low voice as it inclined its head. “I am to bear you to Endicott Station.”
She was so used to interacting with Isaak that she instinctively inclined her own head. “Thank you.” She looked to the woman now. “What about the rest of you?”
“The rescue party is two days out. The council wants you out of harm’s way as soon as possible.”
Jin nodded. The mechoservitor turned and stooped, exposing its back to her. She climbed on and felt its hands slip back to grip her legs as she clutched to the cold metal neck. “Be safe,” she said over her shoulder.
But any reply was lost as the metal man lurched into an awkward run that steadied as it built speed. Soon, they moved at top speed across the wasteland as the sky went dark periwinkle and the first of the moon spilled its eerie light upon the ashes of the world.
My son is still alive, Jin Li Tam thought.
And that thought banished the aching from her bones, transformed the desolation that surrounded her, weighed upon her, into an unexpected oasis of grace and peace.
Rudolfo
Wet ferns slapped at Rudolfo’s buckskinned legs as he ran the forest. To his left and right, the soft clicks of the Delta scouts marked their formation. He ran unmagicked for a change, enjoying a break from the nausea and vertigo that the scout powders still gave him.
As he ran, he thought about Sister Tamray and her screams.
It had taken a few days for Physician Benoit to break the woman, but he had. And Rudolfo, of course, had been there for it. They’d kept her hidden away, stockpiling enough untainted water to keep her alive indefinitely. And though Benoit and the Gypsy King had both questioned her, they’d expected little intelligence. The salted knives would cut nothing useful from her already scarred flesh.
But when Benoit had begun peeling away the words of her gospel, something had snapped within her.
Before Windwir, Rudolfo had—like his father before him—frequen
tly sat in to observe the Physicians of Penitent Torture at their work. After Windwir and after what the Y’Zirite knives had already cut from the world, he’d dismantled Tormentor’s Row, using its stones as part of the new library.
But this time, there was nothing redemptive, nothing penitent, about the act. For her, at least. He sat and watched, merely waiting for her to feel the blade the way he had felt every blade since the days of his earliest memory. And for Rudolfo, it had become an act of almost worship.
Finally, she had screamed, and the sound of it was like a hymn in the basement corner where they’d put the Physician’s table and knives. Rudolfo smiled at the memory of it.
Ahead, he heard a low whistle and slowed as the magicked escort around him matched his stride. A group of figures separated from the deeper shadows of the forest.
“Hail, Rudolfo,” a gruff voice called.
“Hail, Orius,” he answered.
The general had aged in the years since Rudolfo had seen him, but he felt the strength in the man’s grip as they clasped hands. “It is good to see you, General.”
The old Gray Guard inclined his head and winked with his single eye. “And you as well, General.”
Rudolfo smiled at the use of his military title. “I take it your venture was successful?”
Orius nodded. “Aye. I’ll show you.” He turned, and Rudolfo followed him as the Gray Guard fell in around them. He heard the clicking as his scouts took up positions farther out and was surprised when he had to work to keep up with the Androfrancine. “It was simple to take the estate with the leadership neutralized.”
They broke into the clearing, and Rudolfo saw the outbuildings and main house of another Entrolusian estate—this one commandeered by the military to billet officers fresh to the front from Y’Zir.
The bodies of fallen Y’Zirites scattered the grounds, and soldiers of the Gray Guard moved among them. Orius and his entourage moved past them and climbed the wide steps to the main doors. They toured the building quickly, and Rudolfo felt astonishment and delight warring for dominance over his mood as he tallied the bodies.