by Ken Scholes
“It’s because we love each other,” she finally said.
He looked down at her. “It is.” Now he crouched so that he was suddenly eye level with her. “And I am not going to prevent you from coming with me. But I am going to ask you, because we love each other, to please stay with Ire Li Tam. When I am finished with Lord Tam I will return, and we will rendezvous with Nebios Whym.”
Marta blinked at the tears. The morning her mother left for Windwir suddenly ambushed her. “But what if you don’t come back?”
“If I don’t come back, then you certainly would not have survived coming with me,” Isaak said. “And I will have ceased to function knowing that I kept you safe.”
She met his eyes and then looked out into the gloom. In the distance she saw the lights of what she assumed was the city of Ahm’s Glory. Then she looked down. “Okay,” she said.
Isaak’s metal hands settled onto her shoulders. “Thank you,” he said.
She looked up and wiped her nose. “But you better come back.”
Isaak nodded. “I will.” Then he rose to full height and turned for the edge of the mouth and the wooden dock just beyond it.
The weight of the conversation struck Marta, and her fear was different now—grounded in something she could count on now as true. Because we love each other. And so she could honor his first gift with her second, and he could do the same.
She watched him climb up onto the dock and set out for the city. He was lost in the darkness when she turned to the hatch. Ire stood in its red light, two packs in her hands. “Is he gone?”
She nodded. “But I thought we—”
“He asked you to stay with me. Correct?”
“Yes, but—”
Ire splashed into the water and crossed to the teeth. “So then stay with me.” Then she hopped lightly out and onto the dock. “Quickly.”
Marta let Ire help her over the teeth and onto the abandoned dock. Then she strapped on the pack that the Blood Scout handed her. When she finished, she made sure her knife and sling were both within easy reach.
Ire pulled out a small pouch and a steel phial from her pack. “Look at these. Do you know what they are?”
Marta shook her head.
She held up the phial. “These are blood magicks. They will kill you. You would have needed to start building a tolerance to them years ago to use these magicks now.” Then she held up the pouch. “These are scout powders. Too many of them will kill you, too, but with small doses now you can begin to build tolerance and practice using them.” Then she drew a silk thread with a loop from beneath the sleeve of her shirt. “This is a running line.” She slipped it over the girl’s hand and pulled it tight. “Do you understand?”
Marta nodded.
Ire Li Tam shook a tiny amount of the powder into the palm of her hand. “Open your mouth and put out your tongue.”
She did as she was told, wincing at the bitterness of the powder as Ire placed a pinch of it onto her tongue.
“Swallow that.” As Marta did, Ire wet her thumb and used it to dab the powder onto the girl’s forehead.
Marta felt her stomach twist as vertigo made her light-headed. She felt a sudden strength surge through her as her nostrils and ears flooded with distant smells and sounds. The darkness brightened a bit, and she realized that she was panting.
“It’s okay,” Ire said. “Breathe.” The Blood Guard took in a deep breath and then released it. “Like this. Breathe.”
Marta breathed. Finally she held up her hands. She could not see them. “I’m … magicked.”
“Just like a Gypsy Scout,” Ire said.
“How long will it last?”
Ire was fading now, too, as the powders from her hand did their work. She licked the remainder and was gone. “About an hour. So let’s make the most of it.” Then she tugged at the lead-line. “Are you ready to run?”
“Aye,” Marta said.
She could smell smoke from the city that burned ahead of them, and in that smoke, she smelled death. But Marta was not afraid. Fueled by love and magicks, she stretched out her legs and ran faster than she had ever run before.
Neb
The moon rose slowly over the Desolation of Windwir, and Neb sat on the overlook and watched it. This was the place he’d stood and felt the racking pain of a city’s death. It had turned his hair white and tangled his tongue up in the random words of P’Andro Whym for a time. It had brought him to Winters and to the dreaming.
And everyone else.
He wasn’t sure why he’d come here. There was so much to do, so many things to check on. Petronus was preparing for the arrival of pilgrims and already busy assigning housing in the vastly spacious Firsthome Temple. The New Espirans, to Neb’s knowledge, remained aloof and simply observed. And here, on Lasthome, Winters had been clear about where she felt his focus should be.
Getting the staff from Tam. Agreement or no, he needed it and she was right. It was time to stop the bloodshed both here and in Y’Zir.
And keep an eye on the pilgrims bound for their new home. He’d come in over the horn to check progress and was pleased to see vessels sailing for the rendezvous. Farther north, he flew over the campfires of the Marshers and Tam survivors who moved south through the Churning Wastes, shepherded by mechoservitors, carrying what they owned upon their backs as they set out for their long-promised home.
And as he saw from the abandoned Y’Zirite camp below, there was also a war to finish and a home to rebuild.
Neb sighed and shifted his position against the tree.
He was quiet for a time, listening to the silence and watching his breath upon the air.
He must have slept, because when he opened his eyes, the world had changed. It was a bright second summer day, and the city on the plains below thrived with life. He could hear the buzz of it from here. On the Third River, ships bobbed at the docks. The colors of kin-clave flew over the city, and Neb’s breath caught at the sight of it.
“I come here to remember how it was,” a reedy voice said behind him.
He turned and looked. It was Isaak, but not the newer version Winters had told him about. It was the Isaak he remembered first meeting, with his damaged leg and his Androfrancine robes. A gout of steam hissed from the mechoservitor’s exhaust grate. Neb looked back to the city. “How is it…?” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We are in the aether. My use of the dreamstone seems to have connected me to it, and I am able to project much farther in the aether than anticipated.” The mechoservitor paused, its eye-shutters flashing open and closed. “But we cannot stay long. The aether is monitored.”
Neb’s eyes narrowed. “Where are you, Isaak?”
Isaak stretched out a hand and put it on Neb’s shoulder. “It is not necessary for you to know where I am,” he said. But his metal fingers, pressed lightly into his skin, said otherwise. I intend to recover the staff from Lord Tam. Your assistance may be required.
He had reached Ahm’s Glory, then. The sigh Neb released was louder than he expected. “I will reach you by dawn,” he said.
Neb sat up, shivering in the dark, and climbed to his feet. The city was gone now, and its snow-covered grave stretched out below, interrupted only by the Y’Zirite camp and the scaffolding and dirt piles of their excavation. He turned his back and slipped under the cover of the evergreens.
The kin-dragon was waiting for him in the clearing where he’d left it, and Neb clucked his tongue at it. He’d spent nearly all of his time in the beast these days, and he wondered if he shouldn’t name it. He shrugged the sentimentality aside as it reared up on its hind legs and exposed its stomach to Neb. He let the creature encircle him with its forelegs and draw Neb into itself. He felt the heat and closed his eyes against the flash of light, opening them slowly as he adjusted to the sudden change in his body. He flexed the wings and then flapped them against the night air.
It was time to return to Y’Zir and join Isaak. Together, they should be able to get the staff
away from Tam. But first Neb needed to even up his chances. When he launched himself skyward, it was not to the southeast in the direction of Y’Zir but to the northeast in the direction of Rudolfo’s Seventh Forest Manor and the library he built there.
Neb stayed low and built speed quickly, not caring if he was seen as he sped across the forested hills and then the open snow-sweep of the Prairie Sea. He found the manor quickly and had the kin-dragon drop him in the forest to the west of it. Then he found the trail he’d walked back in the days before Sethbert’s trial.
Have this destroyed, Petronus had told him, handing over the cloth-wrapped item. But Neb hadn’t. Instead, he’d buried it. And now he looked for the rock he’d used to mark its resting place two springs behind him.
It wasn’t as easy in the dark and snow, but he found the tree he’d placed it near and from there, heated the silver suit he wore until the ground around him grew spongy and snow began to melt.
He found the stone and dug up the hand cannon that was wrapped in oilcloth and buried beneath it.
Then Neb called down his dragon and had it take him the short hop to Library Hill, aware of third alarm being whistled beneath him as he flashed past the lights of Rudolfo’s manor.
He landed in the library’s courtyard and exited the kin-dragon before the dumbstruck guards could magick themselves. Neb raised his hands. “Stand down,” he said. “It’s Nebios ben Hebda.” He gave his former name by instinct and then corrected himself. “Nebios Whym.” He paused. The guards were already slowing. “The Homeseeker.”
“Homefinder,” a metallic voice said from the library’s porch.
Neb looked up. The forest guards, knives drawn, looked as well. “Brother Hezekiah?”
The mechoservitor clanked forward. “No. My designation is Malachi, formerly Mechoservitor Four. I have stayed behind with two of my brothers to oversee the library in Hezekiah’s absence.”
Neb walked toward the stairs. “I need your help. Is Brother Charles’s workshop still functional?”
The metal man nodded. An officer of the Gypsy Scouts approached, and Neb turned to him. “Good evening, Captain. I apologize for my sudden appearance.”
The man’s eyes were wide at the massive beast that crouched behind Neb. Neb was certain that they’d seen nothing like it. “Lieutenant Nebios? Ornys told me you’d paid us a visit a few nights back. The Marshers were singing about it all the way out of town.”
Neb offered him a weak smile. “I resigned my commission to pursue the dream,” he said. “I’m here on urgent business.” He added the next words because there was no reason not to. “From the moon.”
The officer looked up, then back to the dragon. “We’ll surely not keep you.”
The guards fell back, and Neb approached the mechoservitor. He carefully unwrapped the package. “Do you know what this is?”
The mechoservitor lifted the weapon up and turned it over in its metal hands. “I do.”
“Can you make it operational and instruct me in its use and loading?”
Malachi clicked something on the weapon, and it came apart in two pieces. “Yes,” the metal man said. “I suspect I can. Let’s go to Father’s workshop and see if everything I need is there.” The mechoservitor glanced at the kin-dragon. “I may require blast powder.”
“I can get you whatever you need,” Neb said. “But I need this by morning.”
The mechoservitor inclined its head. “Yes, Lord Whym.”
Then it turned and reentered the library, waiting for Neb to follow just inside the open door.
When Neb entered, he felt the soft carpet upon his feet and a warm blast of air that smelled like paper. He closed his eyes against it and gulped it in as the door closed behind him. He opened them and took in the foyer. There were portraits here of Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam, along with glass cases containing artifacts from the age of the Androfrancine Order. He wanted to linger here, because the last time he’d visited, they were just finishing the basements and still hauling in the timber and stones for the main buildings. It had been a muddy hill.
Still, Malachi’s long legs moved quickly, and Neb left the foyer behind for the first massive room. It was lined with shelves, each crammed full of books that were still so new they’d barely been opened.
Again the desire to stay was strong, but he forced himself to keep up with Malachi. When the metal man stopped suddenly, Neb stumbled into his back. He felt the sudden heat of steam as it released from the exhaust grate.
“It occurs to me, Lord Whym, that this is the first time you have seen our work here in the Ninefold Forest.”
“It is,” Neb said.
“Perhaps you would like to look around while I inventory supplies and determine what is required to restore the hand cannon? I can find you when I know exactly what I need and when it can be ready.”
Neb looked at the hand cannon and then to the books. He would be useless in the workshop, and the smell of paper was overpowering. Intoxicating in its sudden comfort.
It reminds me of home. He’d grown up in the Great Library. And nights after a day full of fear and panic, he dreamed of those days. Of the feel of a book in his hands and the smell of its pages in his nose.
He stretched out a finger to touch a spine. It was Arch-Behaviorist Lemuire’s On Y’Zirite Resurgence, a classic he’d read in school. Neb turned to the mechoservitor and inclined his head. “Thank you, Malachi. I would like that very much.”
“Pull down anything you want,” Malachi said. “We have aides who will shelve them in the morning.”
Neb smiled, remembering that work himself. Then he wandered the rows and lost himself in all of the words. It was much smaller than the library it tried to live up to, but it was still easily the largest repository of knowledge in the Named Lands.
And elsewhere, Neb knew, there were other repositories. The New Espirans had spent millennia in hiding, gathering knowledge and prepping seedlings for a library he had yet to explore—the Library of Elder Days—in the Firsthome Temple.
It’s … the light. No, Neb thought. It really wasn’t. But it reflected the light like a mirror. And after so much dark, Neb was ready for this reminder of why they pressed forward.
Of why I am having a weapon repaired so that I can kill a man and take something away from him.
Neb shuddered and took down another book, much preferring its weight and balance in his palm to that of the Androfrancine hand cannon.
Then, for a time, he lost himself in words there in that place of light. But Nebios Whym knew all the while that darkness awaited him and that soon enough he must return to it.
Winters
It is hard to awaken after so long asleep.
The voice drifted to her in a dark, warm place, and Winters thought at first that the voice referred to her. And she suspected that indeed she was sleeping, though when she opened her eyes against the dark there was only more darkness there. Darkness and the voice.
But they tell me that the way to the moon is open, and I can feel the Seaway’s engine pulsing in my veins.
Winters opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Furrowing her brow, she pushed the words out from her like a prayer. Who are you?
I am the Grandmother. Bring them to the dream, Child.
Winters closed her eyes. Where are we?
We are in the World-womb.
World-womb? Winters tried to move but found she couldn’t. Every muscle was suffused with a liquid warmth that pulsed through her. I do not understand.
Winters felt the Grandmother’s chuckle like a ripple in the warmth. No. And I’ve forgotten most of it. Imagine waking up and discovering you are older than anyone who ever went before you? Then the voice took on a note of sadness. And discovering that you can no longer remember those who came before. Or even those who came with.
Winters floated silently in that place and felt the questions growing even as sleep pulled at her. The voice was distant now, and she was suddenly aware of the cold.
/> Bring them to the dream, Child of Shadrus.
She opened her eyes with the words still echoing in her mind. Then she rubbed her face and blinked into the predawn gloom. “I’m trying to,” she said. The voice had become stronger, and now it was in her dreams more frequently.
Winters crawled out of her bedroll and dug her coat from the bottom of it. Then she pulled on her boots and climbed down from the covered wagon parked by the side of the road. She picked her way around the water-filled ruts, slipping in the mud as she made her way for the fire where the Y’Zirite soldiers gathered. Erys had sent her with some of her lowest-ranking infantry. The lieutenant claimed she needed her others elsewhere, but Winters was convinced it was another evidence of the woman’s unwillingness to hold her prisoner.
Hebda and Tertius waited there, too. Hebda was crouched over a kettle pouring chai. She’d thought about sending them around the horn with the ships but was still not confident of what to do with them. Hebda’s—and the Order’s—manipulation of Neb along with Tertius’s secret assignment for the Office for the Preservation of the Light while serving as her tutor represented a way of doing things that was untenable. They’d proven her concerns justifiable yet again when they’d protested her invitation to Erys.
Still, she’d pressed the woman, knowing the Androfrancine weapon would kill her as surely as it had killed her superiors at Rudolfo’s Markday Feast. “Bring down the Y’Zirite flag,” she’d told her. “Release your soldiers to make their own choices and meet me on the moon.”
The lieutenant had smiled. “You are persistent. And you know nothing about me.”
“I know enough,” Winters said. She wished she could grab her by the shoulders, shake her, and tell her that she would be dead in days if she did not listen. But Winters, as much as she hated the death that was coming, understood that it was necessary for those they left behind. Because only some will reach for this new dream. So instead, she met the woman’s eyes. “And I know a better life awaits you there than here,” she finally said.