Antiphon

Chapter 10

Petronus

Geoffrus’s men found the shallow grave just west of D’Anjite’s Bridge, and only Petronus’s insistence kept them from skinning the corpse they found there.

The sun was low and heavy with morning when he saw their quiet commotion in the camp, and he’d known instantly that something was afoot. Whistling for Grymlis and the first lieutenant of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts, Petronus had fetched his horse and followed the ragged band of Waste runners to their newest find.

They’d already exhumed the body.

Now, they stood at a distance, muttering and whispering, while Petronus and his men studied it.

It was a woman, her hair shorn and her yellow-gray skin scarred in a way that dropped ice into Petronus’s stomach. He knew those markings, had seen them all too recently upon the skin of his childhood friend, Vlad Li Tam. She lay stretched out, her hands folded upon her chest and her eyes closed, dressed in a loose-fitting tunic and trousers of unfamiliar cut, wearing well-worn low boots made for running. Around her lay the scattered rocks that had covered her shallow grave. And though she’d been dead for some time, her body looked more asleep than not.

Grymlis bent over her while Petronus hung back. “There’s no decomposition,” he said. His large hands moved her head, revealing the deep bruising around her throat. “And her neck has been broken.” He scowled. “It’s a clean break. Something strong and fast.”

Petronus glanced back to Geoffrus and his men. “Did you find anything else?”

Geoffrus shook his head. “Nothing, Luxpadre. But my men wish to assert to you the contractual clause regarding the fair division of found objects among our party as-”

Petronus cut him off with a stare to match the hardness of his words. “This is a woman, Geoffrus. Not a found object. You’ll not desecrate her corpse.”

For the briefest instant, Petronus saw rage on the man’s face, and he noted the line of the man’s jaw. He could do me harm, he realized. And then, the rage was gone, replaced by calm acceptance. “As you direct, Luxpadre, so I serve.”

He looked back to the woman. She was young-perhaps the tail end of her twenties. And even before he ordered it, he knew what he would find. The cuttings on her face and arms, the symbols etched into her, told him exactly what he needed to know. “Open her shirt,” he said.

Grymlis looked up, surprised, and Petronus watched the light spark in his eyes. He nodded, swallowed, then forced her arms from her chest. Then, he used his scout knife to cut the fabric open.

Petronus’s hand moved to his own chest, fingers tracing the skin of his own raised scar through the fabric of his robe. There, just to the left of center, cut into her skin between her breasts, was the mark of Y’Zir. And surrounding it, swirling in line upon line of symbols, was a lattice of scars he could not read, though he caught their meaning well enough.

Grymlis slowly rose and stepped back. “What next, Father?”

Petronus looked to the sun. The day was young, and though they’d slowed their reckless pace somewhat, they had much ground to cover.

Runners in the waste, the man Hebda had said. This, he knew, must be one of them. But something had intercepted her, snapped her neck like dry wood and buried her here in the Wastes, even placing a white stone at her head in the custom of the Androfrancine funeral rites. The lack of decomposition made it impossible to know how long ago, but he suspected it had not been more than days.

He turned to Edrys, the first lieutenant of the scouts that rode with them. “Have the scouts walk the surrounding half league for anything they can find.” He gave Geoffrus another firm stare. “You pull back your men, Geoffrus.”

The Waste runner did not look at Petronus; his eyes never left the naked chest of the girl, and it was not the scar that caught his eye, not by the way he licked his lips. Disgusted, Petronus raised his voice. “Geoffrus,” he said. “Pull back your men. We ride in two hours.”

Startled, the Waste runner looked away from the girl and with a word to his ragged band, slunk away with them.

When only Grymlis remained, Petronus sighed.

“That one will be trouble before we’re done,” the Gray Guard captain said in a low voice.

He nodded. “He will; but for now, we need him.”

“Still, he and his would cut our throats in our sleep. And if the rumors in Fargoer’s Station have any truth, he’d make a tasty stew of us and our horses.”

Petronus offered a grim smile. “You’ll not let it come to that, I’d wager.”

“Aye, Father,” Grymlis said. “I’ll not. My eye is on him.” The old soldier nodded toward the body. “What do you make of her?”

“She’s an Y’Zirite.” Petronus looked at her, her arms stretched out and her chest bared, the purple bruising of her neck offsetting the pale Whymer Maze of etchings in her flesh. That one mark, central and larger than the rest, still pulled at his eye, and he felt the burning in his own bosom from the scar Ria had cut into him when he lay dead upon the floor of that tent on Windwir’s desolate plain. “But not of a variety I’ve seen before.”

“And these are the runners this mysterious behaviorist was warning us about? The ones looking for the boy?”

Petronus nodded, remembering Hebda’s words. “And looking for the missing mechoservitors.”

Grymlis studied the body, and Petronus followed his eyes. “She was a tough one by the looks of her, but no match for whatever found her. And likely not much of a match for our men.”

Still, Petronus knew there must be more to this than what lay before their eyes. And as if in answer, a low whistle reached his ears from the other side of a low rise of bent and mounded glass.

They joined Edrys where he crouched with his scout. “It happened here,” the lieutenant said, pointing with his knife to the bare patch of ground. “She was carried to the place they buried her.”

Petronus stared at the ground, barely able to see the marks so obvious to the Gypsy’s trained eyes. “They?”

Edrys nodded. “There were three-maybe four of them-not counting the girl.” He pointed to another nearby outcropping, blue and yellow and green, with wind-sharpened ridges. “They waited here and took her quickly by ambush, I suspect, without much fight.” He stood and stepped carefully out of the clearing. “She ran from the east. Possibly in pursuit. Her stride indicates magicks of some kind were employed.”

Yes, Petronus thought, remembering that night so long ago in his shack, when the blood-magicked assassin had attacked him and sent him into Ria’s trap there on the Entrolusian Delta. The trap that had laid him out dead for his sins and brought him back in some twisted mercy he still could not comprehend, bending him into a miracle to prove their abominable gospel.

Grymlis must’ve been thinking in the same direction. “If she were under blood magicks, even a half-squad would be hard pressed to take her so easily-let alone four men.”

Edrys stood. “Not men,” he said as he looked to Petronus, and the realization dropped into his awareness like a rock in a well. He followed the scout’s knife tip and saw the clear outline of a footprint.

“The mechoservitors killed her,” he said, and his voice sounded flat in his ears. “The ones we saw moving west toward the Wall.”

Edrys nodded. “It appears that way.”

“Gods,” Grymlis muttered.

Petronus inwardly cursed the broken skies of this place that kept the birds from finding their way. Then, he cursed their already small numbers and gave his orders anyway. “This,” he said, “is something new that we cannot overlook. Magick a runner and send him for the Wall. And gather the party-we ride immediately.”

Then, as they moved off and away, Petronus turned back and made his way slowly back to the shallow grave and the girl who waited there in it. He was not sure if it was her nakedness or the starkness of the mark over her heart, but something compelled him, and he stooped to pull her shirt closed. With the scar covered, his eyes found the bruises at her neck and he imagined the quick, possibly even painless end she’d met in service to her faith in this desolate place.

Whatever the mechoservitors guarded, whatever they were about, they were willing to kill for it. And that was something utterly against the gospels and precepts that fueled their scripting. It unsettled him deeply.

And at the same time, he found himself quietly rejoicing.

Because if these are the same that seek Neb, he realized, there’s now one less of them for us to deal with.

Grabbing up a stone in each hand, Petronus set about to bury his enemy. He worked quickly, feeling the sweat that trickled from his hairline and armpits tracing its way down his back and sides. When he reached that final stone, the white one that signified the light inherent in every human life, he hesitated.

In the end, the mechoservitors had more mercy than he himself could muster, despite the cold and calculated murder of their prey.

He remembered Ria’s knife, remembered her words, and felt the burning of the scars she’d left upon him. Felt the despair washing over him when he realized just what his death and resurrection had accomplished after a life of service to the light of reason, the light of human knowledge and experience. Then, he looked to the place near the corpse’s head, where the light-colored rock had lain before.

Hefting that stone, Petronus cursed and hurled it as far from the grave as his strength would allow.

Then he turned back to find his horse and press eastward with his men.

Jin Li Tam

Cold rain pounded them from a bruise-colored sky, and Jin Li Tam’s hands kept moving beneath the rain cloak to where Jakob nestled close against her in his riding harness.

She was grateful that he rode so well, having heard stories from the house staff about the less amenable infants they’d encountered. And she’d been surprised-she’d been prepared for his ear to keep him screaming for the trip. But Lynnae’s powders, administered through Jin’s milk, seemed to cut the pain, and he’d ridden largely in silence.

Still, after so many days in the saddle she was ready for a real bed and a hot bath and a roof that wasn’t canvas. She imagined little Jakob felt the same way, though he seemed content enough to pass the time sleeping and nursing and looking about when the weather was less foul.

Aedric’s company of Gypsy Scouts were all around them, a platoon’s worth magicked and on the run, maintaining a perimeter that moved around her entourage as they rode for the Machtvolk Territories. They’d sighted the first of Ria’s watchtowers the day before, tall and dominating the rugged terrain, and a kin-raven late in the evening informed them that they would be met today by an escort who would guide them into the territories.

It was hard to believe that she’d been here not so very long ago, deep in the winter, riding at the head of Rudolfo’s Wandering Army. It had been much colder, but the rain seemed more miserable to her than the snow. Of course, growing up on the Emerald Coasts, where winter was a warmish rain, had made settling into her new northern home a bit of an adjustment.

She shifted in the saddle, sore from the ride and aching still from the blast. Isaak had shielded them from the worst, saving their lives, but she still bore the bruises and cuts. She expected a scar now on her thigh where a long sliver of pine had laid open the flesh.

Memory of that day brought a shiver to her deeper than the wet and cold.

A flash of brown to her left brought her head around, and she saw Aedric fishing a bird from his catch net. He whistled and raised his hand for them to stop.

She reined in, a hand once more creeping to Jakob’s stomach to feel the warmth of him.

Just beyond Aedric, she saw Winters sitting tall in the saddle, though the girl’s eyes were downcast. She’d been quiet of late, and her work with the knives had taken on a determined edge that felt something like banked anger to Jin’s practiced eye.

When Aedric spoke, she met his eyes and returned the anger she saw there with cool aloofness. “The Marsher escort approaches ahead,” he said, then corrected himself. “Machtvolk. Their queen rides with them.”

She inclined her head, keeping her face masked. “Good.”

She glanced to her right, where Lynnae rode. The girl had insisted that she accompany them. It had been months since she’d served as Jakob’s nursemaid, but the bond between her and Jin and the child was palpable, and the River Woman had sent her with a full field kit of powders and scripts. Now, the woman rode swaddled in a rain cloak twice her size, her face buried in the cowl and her long curly hair spilling out from under it.

Behind them, the rest of the company stopped. Aedric would not move them forward, Jin knew. Instead, he would make their hosts come to them-a subtle message.

They did not wait long.

The procession was larger than Jin had imagined it would be-a long train of horses and footmen-and she blinked in surprise.

The Marshers had never been a uniform tribe. They’d ever been a mysterious, mad and mismatched people, known for their rotting fur clothing and their salvaged or stolen weapons, tools and accessories. They employed no industry and lived lives of subsistence in their hovels, shoved far north against the Dragon’s Spine Mountains apart from the nations of the Named Lands. They were known for brutal tribalism, and feared widely through the border towns of the northern forests, where skirmishing had bolstered a reputation they no doubt deserved. But there was more to them, she’d learned through her friendship with Winters. The young queen, now deposed and scrubbed clean of her people’s mysticism, had shown her a quieter side to this people with their Book of Dreaming Kings and their longing for a new home to rise through the agency of the Homeseeker they believed would bring them there.

The procession that now approached bore no resemblance to the army she’d seen two years ago upon the plains of Windwir. Crimson banners caught the wind, and the riders and footmen alike wore dark uniforms, accented also in crimson and stark against the careful grays and browns and blacks of their face paint.

Who is supplying them? Certainly not the Delta city-states or their neighbors, Pylos and Turam. As they drew closer, she noted that while the uniforms were alike, they were ill fitting and the men who wore them did not appear entirely at ease.

The woman who led them pulled Jin’s attention away.

“Hail, Great Mother,” Ria said from the back of her stallion. She wore a long black rain cloak, and it hung open to reveal a silver breastplate. In her left hand, she raised the Firstfall axe. “Hail, Jakob, Child of Promise.” Then she smiled and turned to Winters. “Hail, little sister.”

The words were bitter in Jin Li Tam’s mouth, but she said them anyway. “Hail, Winteria the Elder, queen of the Machtvolk Territories. On behalf of Rudolfo, lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses and general of the Wandering Army, I bear you grace and greetings in gratitude for your hospitality.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Winters flinch at the words, and it pained her to see it. In that same glance, she also saw Aedric’s tightly drawn mouth and the white knuckles of his hands upon his reins.

“Dark times bring you to us,” Ria said in a quiet voice as she walked forward. “But you will be pleased to know that our investigation is bearing fruit. I know it is a tremendous act of trust that you would even consider my invitation, and I assure you that every care has been taken for your comfort and protection during your visit among my people.”

Jin Li Tam whistled her own horse forward, and she leaned close to Ria. “Swear it to me,” she said, her eyes meeting the deep brown eyes of the Machtvolk queen. She saw Winters in the woman’s face-there was no denying their kinship. Jin’s eyes narrowed. “Swear to me on your gospel and on the mark upon your heart that we will be safe and that we will be free to leave your domain at the time of our choosing.”

Ria smiled, and it was wide, inviting even. She reached beneath her robe and withdrew a slender volume, raising it into the air even as her hand went to her breast. “I swear it, Great Mother. I know circumstance indicates enmity between us. I know the wounds we’ve inflicted upon your family and upon your world are deep, but know this: They were the breaking of bones not properly set in an earlier wounding that now may be undone by the grace of the Crimson Empress.” Her eyes moved to Winters and she repeated herself. “I swear it.”

Jin Li Tam watched the girl’s face redden under her older sister’s gaze. Then, once more she looked to Aedric. The first captain looked resolved but angry. “Very well,” she said. “I am satisfied.”

And yet, I truly won’t be until my son and I leave this dark, mad land you are making.

Ria nodded. “We will feast tonight in my new home.” She looked again to Winters. “I think you will be impressed with our progress, little sister.”

Winters said nothing as Ria turned her horse. Aedric whistled them forward, and they found themselves suddenly at the head of the procession, with the Machtvolk queen riding now between Jin and Winters as Lynnae and Aedric dropped back. The Machtvolk riders and footmen formed a wall to either side of the Gypsy Scouts, and together they moved at a moderate speed.

They rode in silence now, cutting north and passing between two watchtowers that loomed over a newly cut dirt road now mostly gone to mud. Ahead, Jin Li Tam saw low hills shrouded in mist that brushed the tops of the pine trees, and she thought she heard something from the forest there.

As they drew nearer, she became more sure of it and glanced to the woman beside her.

Ria’s face bore quiet delight.

It was the sound of singing on the wind.

The song grew as they approached, and suddenly, the rain let up. Scattered rays of sunlight perforated the cloud cover, though the air was still cold enough for Jin to see her breath.

She heard Jakob’s muffled laughter and adjusted her cloak so that his tiny face could peer out. They’d learned early that he loved music, and one of her favorite new pastimes as a mother was pretending to sleep while Rudolfo sang quietly to their son.

Now, all around her, voices sang, and she felt the hairs rising on her skin as the lyrics became clear. And as they entered the forest and climbed into the low hills, she saw the people crowding the sides of the road, their evergreen branches raised high in trembling hands as they sang of a healed home through their Child of Promise, a Great Mother of daunting beauty and a Crimson Empress of infinite mercy who prepared even now for her bridegroom.

The song rose high into the winter sky, and Jin Li Tam realized suddenly that other voices joined in around them as the Machtvolk escort and even their queen lifted up their own voices.

Close against her breast, Jakob laughed in delight, and she realized suddenly that tears coursed her cheeks. But even as Jin Li Tam wept, she did not know if her tears were from the beauty or the terror of the overwhelming hymn that encompassed them.

Winters

Winters arose early and slipped out into cold northern air beneath a predawn sky flung wide with stars.

Of course, she’d not really slept. The events of yesterday had rushed at her all through the night. Even during dinner-a lavish feast of salmon, elk and wild mushrooms-the song echoed through her, punctuated by memories of Jakob’s delight by it all and Jin Li Tam’s unexpected tears.

She rarely sheds tears. Winters wished she were like that, too. But she wasn’t. And what she’d seen and heard since her return to these changing lands had added more sorrow, more remorse to her shoulders.

On the surface, all looked well, but beneath it lay something darker. The watchtowers were up, but they watched both outward and inward. And the children, enrolled now in schools, were volunteering to take the mark as they learned a more balanced history of their peoplethrough history, poetry, drama. and the gospels. They were also training the children now in the blood magicks and scouting.

She’d heard this over dinner when the song wasn’t pulling her back to their grand entrance into her former lands. And on that ride, she’d seen the evidence of other changes-there was more lumber being pulled from the forest; there were more houses and structures built and more uniformed men moving to and fro among her people.

Winters heard a sound behind her now and looked over her shoulder. She saw one of her sister’s guards following at a distance and behind him, a Gypsy Scout that kept to the darker patches of night.

She let her feet carry her, and somehow, despite the changed landscape, they found a familiar path and bore her to the caves she’d once called home, the caves that stored the Book of Dreaming Kings and held the Wicker Throne. The heavy oak doors were closed now, and when she saw the guard there, she paused. He stood in shadows cast by the watch lamp on its post and stepped forward when he saw her approaching.

She stopped, unsure of what to do or say. Suddenly apprehensive, she glanced over her shoulder again. The men that followed her had stopped as well.

“Is the way to the Book closed, then?” she finally asked.

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

She studied him, finding him suddenly familiar. He was perhaps ten years older than she was, and though the face paint bent his features, she was certain that she knew him. “You are one of Seamus’s grandchildren.”

The guard nodded but said nothing. He stepped farther into the light and waved to the guard that followed her. Positioning himself so that her body was between him and the others, his hands moved quickly and her eyes were drawn to them.

Hail Winteria bat Mardic, true queen of the Marsh, he signed to her. I am your servant, Garyt ben Urlin.

Winters blinked, his words overpowering her. She opened her mouth to speak, remembered herself, and willed her own hands to move into the house language of Y’Zir. Grace to you, Garyt.

“These caves are closed by order of Queen Winteria the Elder,” he said aloud. And his hands flashed again. We may bear the mark on our bodies, but we do not all bear it in our souls.

She felt the heat in her face before she felt the water in her eyes. She remembered these words-she’d said something similar to Seamus on the day of his sobbing confession. But these were not words of comfort spoken into shame. They were words of loyalty and commitment. She felt a tear break loose. “Thank you,” she said.

Turn now, she willed herself. And she did. She turned and took another path her feet remembered. The landmarks had changed, but she still found her way. At last, she stood in a wide, bare patch of ground near the river. It was a place she’d come to when she needed to meditate upon the dreams she’d had until just a few months ago.

She tried to remember those days spent in meditation but found the memory of them elusive. Instead, her mind was filled with the song and the children that took the mark and those doors now closed and guarded where her book of dreams lay hidden. She’d seen and heard so much the day before and had assumed it meant her people had wholeheartedly embraced this new way of life.

But Garyt hadn’t, despite the mark he’d taken and the uniform he wore. And now she was certain there were others like him.

Drawing her knives, Winters balanced them in her hands and shifted on her feet. Overhead, the stars wrapped themselves in rain clouds to leave her in darkness. The sound of the river’s slow current mingled with the soft and distant hoot of an owl.

Winters drew in her breath and held it.

All is not lost here, she realized.

She brought the knives up, held parallel to her forearms, the edges facing out. She moved her legs apart and slowly released her breath, remembering the form that Jin Li Tam had taught her.

Then, Winters began to dance and in that dancing, laid aside her tears.