Canticle

Chapter 11

Rae Li Tam

Rae Li Tam paced the beach, shouting orders that were in turn shouted out to what remained of her father’s iron armada. Her family scrambled and scurried about her, helped by natives obligated now by kin-clave and by reciprocity for the fine tools and trinkets they now possessed.

Her family had to leave.

Now.

Before the bird had arrived this morning, they were down three vessels plus the flagship. Those Vlad Li Tam had steamed forth to rendezvous with and his own vessel. She’d followed protocol and sent out two more when the distress bird reached them, informing her that a vessel was reefed and in need of repair. She’d also sent two additional engineers and a sizable portion of their repair parts. Now she knew both vessels and crew would not be coming back.

She added the numbers silently. Over two thousand souls lost or gods knew where.

She smelled treachery but could not discern whose. Someone within the House, perhaps the First Son, though the notion was unheard-of. In all of these generations, never had there been division within House Li Tam. Still, the note seemed real enough, and she could not discount it. She still held it in her hand and periodically, stopped pacing long enough to read it again.

Windwir a ruse, the coded message said. We are betrayed by our own. Save what can be saved. There was no mistaking the seal and signature. It was her father, Vlad Li Tam. But the message bird had been from one of the ships they’d most recently dispatched. Its feathers were singed.

Her brow furrowed and she bit her lip. A ruse. Betrayed by our own. She lowered her hand and looked again at the flurry of activity around her as the longboats were loaded and rowed out to tall iron ships that belched steam into a cloudless sky. The engines were up, and they neared their last load.

When Baryk approached, her feet were back to moving across the water-packed sand. “We’re nearly finished. Two more trips and we’ll have everything.” His voice lowered. “Are we leaving the trade goods?”

Rae Li Tam pondered this. “Yes,” she said. “We will leave them. But spread word that we go south. And leave birds for that direction with feed for six months.”

Baryk nodded, then his face softened. “How are you?”

She forced a smile at his concern. He was a strong partner, and she was grateful that her father had approved the match. There was logic and purpose behind the pairing. “I’m fine,” she said. “Focused on what must be done.” But underneath the words, she was afraid.

“Where are we going, then?”

She shook her head and moved her hands low and to her side. Not here. Not until we are at sea.

He read the movements, then nodded. “I understand.” He looked out to the ships, cupping a hand over his eyes against the sun. “I’m going out with this lot,” he said. “I’ll check the armaments and the watch rotations.” He looked back to her, his mouth suddenly grim. “You think the others are lost, then.”

She swallowed against the fear she felt. “I do. I think we’ve been brought to this place and Father just figured that out. I think he was lured out to sea.”

Removed from the Named Lands. Set apart from them. Far apart and by his own kin-the only predators who could match Lord Vlad Li Tam of House Li Tam. She thought of wolves hunting in the northern timberlands and shivered despite the tropical heat that baked her skin, hanging heavy and hot in her lungs.

Save what can be saved. She realized Baryk was speaking, though his words were lost to her. “I’m sorry?”

“I said he’s a crafty old hawk. Perhaps the note means he’s safe.”

But something within her told Rae Li Tam that was not to be hoped for. Something whispered that her father may indeed still be alive but could not possibly be safe. “We can’t afford to think that he is. Which means everything changes. No birds without my consent-I want the coops locked and under guard.”

“I’ll pass the word,” he said. Then, Baryk leaned in close and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “I’ll see you aboard.”

He moved off quickly, shouting for two young men to wait for him as they prepared to cast off their boat. Rae Li Tam watched him climb over the bow and settle onto one of the benches. When he inclined his head toward her, she returned his gesture of respect.

Then she was back to pacing and barking orders, pointing and calling out to this one or that one while her mind continued spinning.

Half of the fleet was gone now, though the vessels had not carried full complements. It would mean cramped quarters on the remaining ships.

And slower speeds.

But if there was a threat to the House-from within the House-it would not be speed that saved them. It would be strategy and misdirection, craft and deception-all skills she’d learned at her father’s feet during the forty years she’d served him before settling into her married retirement with Baryk in their villa on the Outer Emerald Coast outside the city-state P’Shaal Tov. Certainly, she’d still served her father during those quieter years, often putting her skills as an apothecary to work. Three years of pretending to be a boy acolyte with the Androfrancines now made her the New World’s leading authority on all things chemical with the Order fallen. From time to time, her father required those services of her. And she’d agreed to provide them when he’d approved her request to take Baryk as husband and live with the warpriest near the city-state he’d served most his life.

Four times in fifteen years had her father required anything of her. Most recently, it had been a recipe for her sister’s procreative work with the Gypsy King-a simple enough task. Each assignment had come with little information and she’d given herself to the work gladly. And though she’d have paid every last coin she owned to please her father, he had arranged generous compensation for each assignment.

But then the triple-coded note had come last year, and she’d known for the first time that her father had encountered something that had changed him, some kind of respect-based fear that drove him to retreat. Within weeks of that fateful bird, and after a short but impassioned conversation culminating in their first raised voices as a couple, she and Baryk had packed what they could not live without, sold off what they could, and had arrived at the Tam Estates to see the iron ships laying in their cargo at anchor in the bay. They joined in the work of loading while her father, Vlad Li Tam, burned the books of his family’s work and prepared to flee the Named Lands.

Or did he go a-hunting? she wondered.

Perhaps, she thought, it was both.

Regardless, after seven months at sea, moving at a leisurely, methodical pace, something had happened. The armada was halved, and though some part of her felt the compulsion to know, she knew there was little chance of discovering what might have happened to her father and to the rest of her family.

Save what can be saved. There was finality in those words, and despite her best hope, she sensed that some night soon, once they were safely to sea and steaming toward points unknown to all but her, she would sit at her writing table in her cramped captain’s quarters aboard the new Tam family flagship. She would give herself, for a moment, to grief and compose a poem to honor her father’s passing.

Even as her mind laid out these nets, her feet moved across the sand and her voice rang out with command. Years away, and yet the mantle fell easily to her as the oldest of Vlad Li Tam’s surviving children in the absence of his First Son or his First Grandson.

When the beach was cleared, and when she walked the village paths to be sure none were left behind, she went to the last boat where it waited in the surf.

Confusion colored the faces of the Dayfather and his people. Sadness and surprise rode his young niece’s eyes. They’d expected a longer visit-more attempts to make permanent those bonds of kin-clave Vlad Li Tam had negotiated with the young girl-and despite Rae’s best diplomacy, they’d not understood and she’d refused to alarm them.

If there is danger to them, she thought, my warning will offer no aid. Best to leave with as little said as possible.

She stood in the surf now and felt the warm water licking at her feet and ankles. She raised her hand in farewell and watched as the Dayfather and his kin did the same.

Then, she let the young men in the longboat lift her aboard and she fixed her eyes to the northeast.

In the end, it was the sand that told her where they would flee. The one place that none traveled these days.

Home to the Named Lands, she thought, and then around the horn.

Above her, a dark shape circled in the sky. Larger and blacker than a seagull, it flew ever-widening circles.

A raven of some kind. Out of place this far at sea, but not impossibly so.

“You are a long way from home,” she said to the bird.

As if hearing her, the bird stopped its circling and shot south as straight and fast as an arrow.

What prey do you seek? And when she asked it, she knew she meant the question both for the bird and for her father, also fled south.

Sighing, she shifted on the uncomfortable wooden bench and gave her mind to the web of strategy and misdirection she must now lay down for her family on her father’s behalf.

Winters

The Chambers of the Book were stifling hot, and Winters found herself opening the front of her shirt, using the loose fabric to fan cooler air onto her breasts and into her armpits.

Outside, she knew there was fresh snow and a coming blizzard. How had it become so unseasonably warm here?

She walked quickly, following the cavern’s spiraling descent. She’d reached the Last Chapter of the book now, watching the dated spines of each volume. She stretched out a hand and let her dirty fingers trail over them.

She could not remember how many volumes there were now. But the Book of Dreaming Kings was a paper serpent over half a league long, shelves carved into the stone walls containing each volume.

As Winters walked, the cavern grew hotter, and an intense light built below. Music drifted up to her, and she recognized it as a solitary harp. A stinging breeze watered her eyes.

Her voice was muffled by a distant roaring but rang out above the flowing melody. “Hello?”

She heard a low whistle and looked to her left, where the cave spilled open into a midnight desert. Neb stood there beneath a blue-green moon, talking with a man she did not know but suddenly feared. He was slender as a willow and dressed in tattered robes. He carried a thorn rifle, though she did not know why it was called that or what it did. And he meant to take Neb from her to a place where her dreams could not find him.

As if he knew this, he raised a hand and pointed to the moon and it became a cold, dead thing-and etched into the white of the lunar corpse, a sign she’d so recently seen carved into the skin of Hanric’s killers.

She opened her mouth to speak, but then saw Isaak. He lay broken open, and the man she feared was crouched over him, hands up to his forearms, deep and working within the mechoservitor’s chest cavity.

His name is Renard, a voice called to her from below. She turned her eyes away from Neb’s dreams and saw her own unfolding.

The stairs spilled out into a reading chamber, continuing their downward spiral across an open space littered with cushions and chairs. In the corner, seated upon a three-legged stool, a robed man played his harp.

“Who is he?”

“One who will make you weep before all is done,” Tertius said. “But you will laugh again after.”

Winters moved cautiously into the room, her hand no longer tracing the spines of the Book. “You are dead, Tertius.”

“They say so,” he said. “Yes.”

“What is happening to the Book of Dreaming Kings?”

Tertius smiled. “ ‘The light devours and burns brighter for it,’ ” he said, and she knew the words. They were from one of the Errant Gospels, possibly from T’Erys Whym himself.

Even as he spoke, flames belched up the stairs and the room began to burn. As if compelled, the scholar Tertius gave himself over to the harp, his fingers flying across the strings.

And in the moment that her dream shifted again, Winters knew also the song he played, though like the thorn rifle, she did not know how or why she knew it.

It was “A Canticle for the Fallen Moon,” composed by the last of the Weeping Czars, Frederico. It was a song about love and loss, about being separated by vast distance and finding one another at last.

And suddenly, the song was gone; she was alone and struggling in her bedroll near a guttering fire.

A wolf howled in the hills below, and Winters shivered.

“You are far from home,” a voice said from someplace below her on the slope. She felt cold fingers move lightly on the skin of her neck and arms. By instinct, she reached for her knife, then relaxed as Neb materialized at the edge of the fire’s glow. He wore his dusty uniform, and his long white hair had fallen over one eye in a way that made her want to touch him.

“So are you,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder at the blasted lands that stretched behind him. “Yes.” He stepped closer, and the fire whispered out as he did. “The dreams have gotten stranger,” he said.

“This one is nice,” she answered. Neither needed to mention how rare the nice dreams were. They were scarce in the first place and had become more so since Hanric’s death. She patted the bedroll beside her. Neb pulled off his boots and crawled beneath the covers.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll reach the summit and announce myself.” She could not see it in her dream, but the Wicker Throne and its leather harness lay somewhere within reach. She was sure of it. She felt the bite of the straps in her shoulders and back from the long days of carrying it north to the spire.

Neb wriggled near her. “I’m in Fargoer’s Town. I’m on watch soon,” he said.

Then, without further words, they intertwined themselves and she felt the warmth from him spread out to contain her. They did not kiss, though they had in times past. And they did not move their hands over one another, though that also had happened before.

Now, they simply held one another and took comfort from that holding.

And then she was alone again, stiff and cold, the clouds covering the starshine overhead as the sky grew mottled gray with morning. She smiled at the memory of her last dream and forced herself out of the bedroll and onto her feet, but the smile faded quickly.

I will not see him for a season, she thought. She did not know how she knew it, but it was a truth. Different worlds called to them now, but someday, they would be re united as Home rose and called them forth.

She packed quickly and then kicked over the lean-to and pushed dirt into the fire. There were puddles now where the snow had melted, leaving potholes edged in the red clay dust of the Dragon Spine Mountains.

Groaning, she pushed blistered feet into tattered boots and shrugged herself into the harness. Leaning forward, she tipped the Wicker Throne onto her back and started her climb. She felt the leather straps cutting into her skin and felt fire in the soles of her feet and in her knees as she forced herself forward.

Three days she’d borne this load, and today she would enthrone herself in the thin air above the world and announce the beginning of her reign.

As her shadow, Hanric had done this once on her behalf-a labor of love that only now could she fully comprehend. She blessed him for it in that moment, and wept as she moved her feet. She did not sorrow for his loss. Her tears were for the work ahead of her. There was something about carrying the throne upon her back, feeling it bite into her flesh, that spoke to the weight of her role. I am the Marsh Queen.

“I am Winteria bat Mardic,” she said beneath her breath. “I am True Heir to the Wicker Throne and the Dreaming Queen of my People.” She’d practiced the words until they came easily to her tongue.

For as long as she’d remembered, she’d fantasized about this day. She’d always known it would be a bloody day, but she’d imagined a slower climb, perhaps in the spring just after her birthday. And in those girlish daydreams, Hanric walked with her. He kept pace just behind, offering a kind word here or an encouraging word there. And her people lined the path with flowers even though she blushed at the open way they adored her.

Once she’d met Neb, a new note had been added to her daydreams. He walked with her and she was the Homeseeker’s Bride, there taking her place upon the throne and declaring herself queen of her people.

But the reality of it was an achingly cold climb, completely alone. She climbed because she had to, and when she reached the top, she unbuckled her harness and turned the Wicker Throne into the wind. She unstopped the flask and tipped the rancid blood magicks into her mouth. They were sour and briny on her tongue, and she had to choke the vile fluid down her throat.

She waited, counting silently.

When she opened her mouth, it was the voice of many waters that rumbled across the sky, spilling out upon her people. The voice over-flowed her lands, her words reaching distant towns and farms as a whisper after marching strong and clear so many hundreds of leagues.

“I am Winteria bat Mardic,” she cried out. “I am True Heir to the Wicker Throne and the Dreaming Queen of my People.”

She said it twice more and then sat down upon her throne.

She sat there, looking out upon her lands with a quiet heart, until the sun began to drop low and far to the west.

And as the sun dropped, she looked away to the east instead and watched until the light was gone.

Then, she stood and strapped on her harness.

With a sigh, Winters lifted her burden once more and descended into the beginnings of another cold night.

Neb

Neb started when firm hands shook him awake, and suddenly the cold mountain air and the warmth of the woman from his dreams vanished. Aedric stared down at him, his face lined hard in the low lamplight that played over the walls of the barn they slept in.

Nodding to show he was awake, Neb crawled from his blankets and pulled on his soft leather boots, wondering if their guide had returned yet.

True to his word, Renard had brought them into Fargoer’s Town just as the last of the sun blinked out and swollen stars swept up into the night. He’d helped them barter for lodging in a barn that stank of pigs and goats just outside the walls of the town proper and then had left them there to gather what news might be helpful to them.

The small settlement was farther into the Wastes than Neb had believed, farther even than his eye from the heights of the Keeper’s Wall could have discerned. He’d heard stories of Fargoer’s Town, but the details had always been scant. He’d filled those gaps with such items and characters that lent themselves to the romance of archaeology. The reality of it was disappointing. He dimmed the lamp behind him as he let himself out into the starlit landscape, closing the barn door as he went. Aedric waited for him in the deeper shadows near the corner of the barn. Near him, Isaak stood. The metal man’s eyes were closed, but behind the shutters, light flashed and popped even as gears whistled and steam whispered deep within his metal surface.

“He’s ciphering,” Aedric said in a quiet voice. “Renard showed him a map before he left. He’s projecting possible routes our other friend may have taken.”

Neb watched the metal man for a moment, then said what he knew Aedric must already be thinking. “I don’t see how we can find him.”

Aedric nodded. “I don’t either. And to be frank, I’m not certain we should try at this point.” He paused, and Neb waited for him to continue. When the young First Captain did, his voice bore a strange tone, one that Neb had not heard from any of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts-a note of doubt that bordered on fear. “I’ve sent three birds, whispering them to the Wall,” Aedric said. “All have returned with messages untouched. Two were wounded. Our last word from the Forest was that Rudolfo rides out quietly to find Vlad Li Tam and armies now rally in Pylos and Turam with an eye to the north. This is the wrong time for us to be away on an improbable errand with no way to bear word home.”

Neb thought about this. “Do you think Renard can help us?”

Aedric shrugged. “I’m not sure what he offers is help.” He nodded to Isaak. “These metal men are a wonder of the world, to be sure, but there was something deadly in that one. something unlike Isaak. It had blood on its hands-I’m sure of that-and no qualms about spilling more.”

Neb did not doubt it. He’d seen the metal beast roar through them in the guard house, seen it leap the stairs three at a time to crest the wall. Certainly, Isaak also had blood upon his hands, yet the regret and remorse of it was obvious in the metal man with his every limping step. He did not feel dangerous, but the one who named him cousin there on the Keeper’s Wall reeked of it. But despite the danger, something more powerful-a curiosity that bordered on need-fueled Neb. He gave name to it. “What about Sanctorum Lux?”

Aedric nodded, slowly. “Aye,” he finally said. “There is that curiosity.” He sighed, looking west toward the Keeper’s Wall, then east where jagged lines of mountains serrated the horizon. Last, he looked back to Isaak and to Neb. “We need to know of it. But I think General Rudolfo would not risk so much treasure to chase down an answer to that question. The venture is ill timed, and we are ill suited for it.”

He means us, Neb realized, though he could not fathom why Rudolfo would place such stock in him. Isaak made complete sense-the metal man carried vast amounts of knowledge within him and was indispensable in their work restoring the library. His absence from the Ninefold Forest for even a month would be felt, but if anything were to happen that he not return, it could slowly bring that light-saving work to a halt. Among the mechoservitors, he was chief and was the only of their kind to understand the principles with which they operated in such a way as to keep them maintained and functioning. And he was. Neb reached the word and finally found it. Special. Different. Of his kind, he’d been the only one to take a name and to take up the Androfrancine robes. At least until this other had shown up, wearing robes and going by the name of Charles, the name of the mechoservitors’ supposed father.

And at one time, Isaak had uttered the words of Xhum Y’Zir, singing down death upon Windwir, transformed into a weapon that could weep for the genocide it was bent and twisted into committing.

It made sense that Rudolfo would not risk Isaak. But what of Neb? He was a boy, a young officer who’d seen too much for his years and yet had seen very little. Winters saw destiny within him-Nebios ben Hebda, the Homeseeker. The one who would eventually become the Marshfolk’s fabled Homefinder, spiriting them off to a promised land beyond their wildest imaginings. But even Neb struggled with the superstitious underpinnings of those beliefs, despite his trust in the Marsh Queen Winters.

Neb forced his mind back to their quiet conversation, licking his dry lips before he spoke. “Still,” he said, “if there is a sanctuary of light-if it is another library as Isaak suspects it may be-”

Aedric interrupted. “Then we will trust that those who hid it here in the Wastes did their work well and that it will await us when we can come to this place with more presence and certainty.” He offered a grim smile. “We have time, lad. And perhaps our guide will bear us happy tidings.”

With a hasty goodnight, Aedric slipped into the barn and pulled the door closed. Neb settled down on his haunches and watched the night move on toward morning.

There was an eerie silence punctuated by the occasional barking of dogs inside the walled town just north of them. Still, even the dogs sounded odd-as if noise here just didn’t behave properly.

He’d always loved last watch during his time in the gravediggers camp-it had proven to be a quiet watch most nights and one less popular with others. But the notion of being up before the morning really began, of seeing the day unfold in such a manner, felt hopeful. Fifteen minutes slipped past, and suddenly a figure emerged silent from the shadows. It was already upon him when he reached for his knives and puckered his lips to whistle Third Alarm.

“Hush now, young Nebios,” Renard whispered in a slurred voice. “You’ll wake your friends without cause.” The gangly scarecrow of a man slipped closer. The smell of alcohol was strong on him, and he staggered a bit while he walked. The man chuckled, then mumbled, “Sounds like your young captain doesn’t have the stomach for the Wastes.”

He’s drunk. But Neb noted the surety of his feet. The long stick was now slung over his shoulder, and he approached with open hands. Neb couldn’t resist the question. “Do you bear news?”

Renard looked up, smiling, and for a moment Neb was no longer certain of his inebriation. There was a cold light in those gray eyes. “I bear more than news,” he said. “I bear a choice.” He took a step closer, and the reek made Neb’s eyes sting. “Remember what your father told you about choices?”

And he did remember. Neb’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Hebda had told him on more than one occasion that a man’s success or failure in life came down simply to making the right choices. He started to say something, but before he could, Renard slipped past him and bent close to Isaak’s head. He whispered something Neb could not hear, and he wasn’t certain even Isaak heard it until he saw the eyes flash suddenly open, as wide as the shutters would let them. When Renard smiled at Neb, his teeth were black with the chewing root. He cast something to the ground near Neb’s foot, but everything happened too fast for him to look.

The Waster whistled Third Alarm and shouted, “Renard betrays us,” in a voice that sounded much like Neb’s own. Pandemonium erupted on the hillside as bright lights and loud booms filled the night air. In the shadows, a horde of figures swarmed. Neb heard scrambling in the barn but still had not drawn his blades. Renard set out south at a run that stretched and stretched until he was lost beyond the dim reach of Neb’s vision.

Isaak looked to Neb. “I’m sorry,” the mechoservitor said.

Then he, too, ran. His metal legs pumped into a run that lurched and wobbled from his limp, but he steadied as he built steam and loped off after Renard.

As Gypsy Scouts spilled from the barn, knives and pouches at hand, Neb looked down to the bit of black root between his feet and made his choice.