by Ken Scholes
Now she reached under her robes and pulled out a gem like the others Neb had seen them whispering into around the Temple. “This will let you reach us if we become separated.”
He took it and felt the dry warmth of her hands as she pressed his own fingers closed around it. “You can use it audibly,” she said. Then she blinked. And with practice you can use it by direct cortical transmission. Her face was sober as her voice lowered. “Giving you this will likely cost me my commission with the council,” she said. “And your physiology will give this much greater range than ours, so use it carefully and understand that though the Y’Zirites and mechoservitors won’t hear you in the subaether, my people—both the ones in favor of this intervention and those who are not—will hear.” She winked at it. “So whisper, Nebios Whym.”
He nodded and tucked the gem into his satchel. Captain Vanya moved closer to the lamp and held up her head for the two men who waited there. “How do I look?”
The one who had spoken pulled a small canister and brush from his pouch and opened it. Then he dabbed at her face. “You’ll pass.”
Their scars are painted on. Neb watched as they checked each other’s clothing and paint. It still baffled him that this group, hidden from them all, had watched them quietly from the shadows, bidden to do so by the Last Weeping Czar and his companion, Amal Y’Zir, once they knew that the Wizard Wars were lost to Raj Y’Zir and his silver army. That bargain wrought by Frederico somehow included Neb and the line of Whym along with both the metal dream and the dream that Winters’s people followed—the Dream That Shadrus Drank.
They’d hidden the staff and ring for him to find. And Amal Y’Zir had sealed the temple upon her last visit when she’d set the mechoservitor to its harp and poisoned the bargaining pool behind her. All building to today.
Neb felt the weight of millennia in his stomach and swallowed. And he felt the weight of the hand cannon in the satchel at his side—the very weapon that had taken Pope Resolute’s life in a faked suicide that, ironically, Vlad Li Tam himself had arranged.
And now, if I need to, I kill him with it. But Neb had no doubt he would need to. He did not think the old man would surrender the staff.
A light tap at the door made Neb start as Vanya and her men drew knives. He rubbed the fabric of his sleeve and drew the silver garment up tight, feeling his body flood with strength as the blood of the earth empowered him.
The door opened slowly. “Lord Nebios Whym,” a metallic voice whispered into the room. “Do not be alarmed.”
A tall robed figure ducked into the room and swept off its hood, revealing a silver face set with red jeweled eyes that burned like the Watcher’s. At first sight, Neb thought it was the Watcher—only newer. But as it limped across the room, he knew just who approached him with inclined head. “Isaak,” he said. Before he realized what he was doing, Neb had crossed the room to embrace the metal man. He looked nothing like the mechoservitor he’d seen in the aether. Or the one he’d seen give his last to save him from the Watcher and send him to the moon. But he was here, and between the two of them, Neb thought they might have a chance against Tam.
“I’m glad you’re well, Isaak,” Neb said, stepping back.
Then Captain Vanya stepped forward, eyes narrow. “And how exactly did you find us?”
Isaak’s eyes flickered bright and then dim. “I am able to monitor both the aether and the subaether in my current configuration.”
Neb saw the frustration on her face and heard it in her voice. “And were you followed?”
“I do not believe so, Captain Vanya.”
The use of her name transformed her anger into a moment of bewilderment. She opened her mouth to speak, but Isaak continued before she could.
“I assure you, I am here to help Lord Whym acquire what is necessary for his work. Your operations in Ahm’s Glory are not compromised in any way.” He looked at the older man. “And I concur with your theory regarding the kin-dragons. My cousins’ experience upon the moon corroborate it.”
The man inclined his head, staring at Isaak as he did. “You were in the dream,” he said. “You stood with Winteria bat Mardic.”
Now Isaak inclined his head. “I was the conduit for the Final Dream.”
The man’s voice was matter-of-fact, devoid of any judgment. “And the conduit for the Fall of Windwir.”
Isaak looked away. “Yes.”
There was silence until Neb cleared his voice. “I think it’s time to go,” he said.
They left one at a time, pausing in the shadows of the doorway to space themselves out along the street. Vanya led, and Neb and Isaak walked side by side beside her. The others followed.
They went quietly, taking streets and alleys largely abandoned, and those few they encountered averted their eyes as if they did not want to see. Neb counted the minutes, and after nine of them had passed, Vanya whistled low at the entrance of a dark alley. Neb heard a crackle and the slightest pop, and a man in plain black clothing appeared. Vanya drew close to him and Neb joined her. “What do we know?”
“Tam is there with the Lunarists,” the man said. “They’ve been gathering supplies. I think they’re preparing for a move.” He passed her a gem and she held it, closing her eyes.
Vanya opened her eyes and gave the gem back to him. “Looks like they’re leaving the city. How many times has the kin-dragon been out?”
“Three times. It’s out now, Captain.”
Neb felt his eyebrows furrow. What is she up to? “How long have its trips taken?”
“A few hours.”
Neb calculated. She could go nearly anywhere in that amount of time. Even to the moon with the Seaway open. “I think it’s to our advantage that she’s gone.” He frowned. “But it would be better to lure him out and spare as many of the Lunarists as we can.”
Isaak’s eyes flickered beneath his hood. “I concur, Lord Whym. I do not believe Lord Tam is going to freely relinquish the staff and ring.” The metal man sighed, and Neb heard the weariness in it alongside the resolution. “Statistical analysis favors a ninety-four percent likelihood that he will resort to violence.”
Yes. Neb was certain of it, and he swallowed against the fear that stirred beneath the surface of his own resolve. He offered a sigh of his own. “Yes,” Neb said. “I am prepared to kill him for it.” The satchel grew heavier as he said the words, and Nebios Whym took a deep breath. Then he nodded to Captain Vanya. “We’re ready,” he said.
And Neb hoped as he said it that they truly were.
Winters
Wind rattled the windows of the borrowed room where Winters tossed in yet another borrowed bed. She’d found it harder and harder to sleep, and she suspected it was more than just the voice magicks she used.
It is the work I’m doing. The sermon was increasingly the easier part. But afterward, the hours of talking—of answering questions there really were no answers for yet—mixed in with the feasting and dancing late into the night and left her mind running through it all again and again hours after she’d crawled into bed.
Winters couldn’t blame them for being curious. She was, herself, and she’d had no opportunity to really think much about the questions they now asked her.
How will we govern? Will I be their queen? What of the Homefinder? What is his role, and where is he now? She’d spent her lifetime dreaming of a home, and now that it was found, she was uncertain what to do with it. The questions daunted her, and before the unintended sharing of the Final Dream, she’d just assumed she and her people would continue as they always had—a council of twelve elders that shared the burden of government with her so that she was free to …
To do what? The council had given her the freedom to dream and explore those dreams. And when he’d lived, Hanric had also helped keep her focus there. But those dreams had fulfilled their purpose. And now a new dream—an accidental dream—had her gathering people she’d never imagined calling her own to a home she never imagined sharing in this way. And from that
dream, others took root that seemed less intentional. The dreams of Grandmother and of the angry old woman.
Though they do not feel like dreams.
Still, sleep meant they likely waited for her, and that was less appealing now than the racing thoughts of what her purpose would be beyond this role of dream catcher once she settled into her new home.
Winters sighed and sat up, looking around the room. It was in a larger house, its family already en route to Caldus Bay and the waiting ships. The Y’Zirites had been pleased to accept it when the mayor offered it up, and now they occupied the larger of the bedrooms while Tertius and Hebda made use of the smallest. They’d given her this one because of its proximity to a bathing room, though she’d not taken advantage of it. It was not a night to be nostalgic for her caves and the hot springs she’d bathed in when her life was simpler.
Winters dressed quickly in the dark, knowing what she did would likely make her guards unhappy—her friends as well—if they found out. But she suspected it would be simple enough to keep them from finding out. She strapped on her knives and slipped into her rain cloak, gripping her boots in her hands and letting herself into the hallway silently. She padded to the back door in her socks, then slipped her boots on and cracked the door quietly open into the windy night.
She stepped onto the stone porch and pushed the door carefully closed behind her, scanning the open yard before her. The house was southwest of town in a less densely wooded region near a creek that branched off of the Second River. Of course, she’d had no real plan other than getting out of that room. And now that she stood in the cold, the wind tugging at her cloak, Winters realized she had no idea what to do now.
Still, waiting on the porch to decide wasn’t prudent. So she set out at a slow walk toward the tree line, drawn by the sound of water over rocks. The wind was cold upon her until she left the clearing and entered the wood. The creek was larger than she remembered it earlier, or maybe it just seemed louder in the dead of night. The snow here was melting, and the ground beneath was spongy and soft beneath her boots.
“Hail, Lady Winteria,” a quiet voice whispered to her left. She jumped, her knives out and ready before she had time to think.
A tall form stood two spans away from her, hands upraised. The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “I mean no harm,” the man said.
Captain Endrys Thrall. Winters released her held breath and sheathed her knives. “Captain Thrall,” she said. “You have a way of turning up near bodies of water when young women are walking alone.”
He smiled and lowered his hands. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to reach you. Our fleet was grounded and it’s made transportation … challenging.”
Winters felt her eyes narrowing. “Why are you following me?”
“The council has assigned my crew and me to monitor your mission and offer what limited support we can. The ambassador awaits you on the moon to negotiate the full terms and conditions of the treaty between the House of Shadrus and the New Espiran Council.”
“So you’re keeping watch over me?”
He nodded. “Until you’re safely to the moon, Lady Winteria. I will bear you there myself once my ship is cleared to launch.”
She’d really given no thought to how she might get to the moon. No, she realized, that wasn’t true. And she blushed, remembering the one time she’d allowed herself to think about arriving on the moon with Neb, carried to her new home by kin-dragon. She felt the heat in her cheeks and ears and was grateful for the darkness. “I assume,” she said, “that you are not just monitoring me but the greater situation here in the Named Lands?”
“Primarily you,” he said. “But I also have observers keeping an eye on nearby military movements.”
She’d heard little. Everyone had been so focused on the dream and the moon. “How near?”
He looked away. “I was coming for you when you stepped outside the house.”
Coming for me? She glanced back in the direction of the house. She made the connection and turned on him. “What’s happening?”
“Gray Guard forces augmented with Delta Scouts,” he said. “Members of the resistance reported your escort. Orius knew you were being held captive—loosely—by the Y’Zirites. He’s been receiving intelligence on your movements since your first sermon at Caldus Bay.” The captain’s face was obscured by the night, but his chuckle said enough. “The general apparently has no love of you or your people.”
Winters smiled. “We took his eye before I was born.” Then her smile faded as she remembered her last encounter with the man. The hatred and rage she’d seen in him when he’d demanded the Seven Cacophonic Deaths from Isaak. “Orius is a dangerous man,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “And so I’m here.”
She looked back to the house again. “Do we have time to get Hebda and Tertius?”
Endrys Thrall shook his head. “No. But they’re Androfrancines. But once they captured your sister, I—”
Winters felt the wind go out of her. “They captured Ria?”
It made sense. They shared the same parents, so of course her older sister would survive the Androfrancine pathogen.
There was an awkward silence. “They have. I thought you knew.”
She shook her head. “No one is talking to me about anything but the dream.”
The captain nodded. “She was taken near Windwir. They’re planning to execute her there.”
Winters blinked into the darkness. “Who is?”
“General Orius. Rudolfo’s man, Lysias, captured her and handed her over to the Androfrancines.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is Rudolfo aware of this plan?”
But of course, she knew he was. She remembered him standing over the Y’Zirites they had rooted out of the Ninefold Forest, the coldness in his voice as he banished them—banished the very man that had raised him after his parents had been murdered. And Ria’s surgical work upon House Li Tam and its master had sent Vlad Li Tam to Y’Zir. Where he murdered Rudolfo’s son.
“I believe so. He is sending the Wandering Army ahead to Pylos under Philemus’s command.”
“What are they doing with the other prisoners?”
He glanced to the house again, and his tone was somber. “Lady Winteria, there are no other prisoners. Some have fled for your ships, but with their scars they’ll be easily culled from the others. Between the Entrolusian resistance and the Androfrancine forces, I doubt many Y’Zirites will leave the Named Lands unless Orius is dissuaded from this course of action.”
She felt the weight of it in her stomach. “We have to get to them first,” she said as she turned to the house. “I have no love of the Y’Zirites, but our escorts do not deserve to be slaughtered in their sleep like—”
His hand upon her shoulder, suddenly firm, interrupted her. “It’s too late,” he said in a low voice. “It is not our place typically to interfere, but they had orders to take you as well, and my sister and I concurred that minimal intervention was in the best interest of the Shared Dream. Your new home is on the moon.”
The way he said it made the words sound almost sacred, and in that moment, Winters knew something about Endrys Thrall that she hadn’t known before.
He is a follower of the dream. The Shared Dream. And his allegiance to it was already trumping his allegiance to the council and the uniform he wore on its behalf. She stared through the trees to the house and watched one by one as the few lights within went out. She heard the shrieks first and then the shouting.
Winters took another step forward, and Endrys kept pace with her, his hand again settling on her shoulder. “There is nothing you can do there,” he said. “I think it’s time to get you home, Lady Winteria.”
But my people are not gathered. The thought was a knife in her soul.
Now they will gather themselves. The words you’ve sown will spread. She recognized the ancient voice and shook it out of her head.
“I’m not ready to go home,” Winters said
.
“We should discuss it on the move,” Endrys said. “We have a safehouse in a neighboring village where some of my crew are waiting.” He set off at a brisk walk downriver, and Winters walked beside him.
She waited until they were half a league out before she spoke again. “How would you get me to the moon if your vessels are grounded?”
He glanced at her. “Getting you to the moon would likely be worth risking an airship. But I could also always escort you to the coast and hire a ship.”
Winters thought of the Y’Zirites and then of their lieutenant. And then, she thought about her sister. Ria had certainly earned an execution. But even Sethbert had a trial, sham though it was. And Ria herself had interrupted Petronus’s trial only to execute the old Pope herself. Killing Ria was a message—likely for those of the Marshers who’d survived the pathogen. And it was a vengeful, vicarious act for those who’d survived the Y’Zirite invasion overall. Certainly her own people had committed their share of symbolic violence. Blood was a powerful message.
The problem with blood was that it continued to call for more. Blood for blood, eye for eye, ear for ear.
And Winteria bat Mardic sighed, because she knew Orius’s message was meant for her as well. And because she knew that she must find some other refrain to answer with that would not be more of the same.
Marta
The alley stank of smoke and rotten fish, and Marta fought the urge to gag as she waited for Ire Li Tam. Her stomach still clenched and roiled from her brief time under the magicks, and her head still throbbed. The stench and the heat of this place didn’t help either.
She had better return for me. It had occurred to her that the Blood Guard might abandon her now that they were deeper into the city, but how was that safer than leaving her behind in the first place? No, Marta was confident that Ire would return.
She closed her eyes. When she did, she could feel the tug of the running line and the twist and turn as they ran from alley to alley. Ire had tucked her into this forgotten corner as her magicks sputtered out.