Canticle

Chapter 13

Winters

Winters winced as she lowered herself into the steaming water, feeling the bite of it in the deep cuts that lacerated her shoulders, sides and back. She’d been home now for four days, and though she’d healed considerably, the minerals in the water still stung. Clutching the cake of soap, she swam out farther into the pool and dove down, letting the heat of it soak into her. When she broke the surface, she shook the water from her hair and floated on her back. The lamplight danced over the cave’s high ceiling, and the bits of quartz and iron pyrite gave the illusion of domed starshine above her. She sighed and kicked her feet slightly, stretching her arms out cruciform and feeling the water lick the sides of her breasts and neck.

She’d awakened earlier than usual, disturbed by her dreams. The violent images, set to the music of Tertius’s mad harping, had become commonplace, and she could set aside that discomfort-but Neb’s absence was a different matter. She saw armies on the march beneath a moon the color of dirty ice. She saw a sky absent of birds, slate gray and ominous before a coming storm. These she could take into herself, working through the mystery of heaven’s message to her. But nowhere had she seen the snow-haired boy who kept her heart. It was as if he’d been swallowed by the Wastes, and she remembered the warnings about Renard with a shudder.

She rolled to her side and struck out for shallower waters on the far side of the cavern, finding a purchase for her feet on the slick rock floor. Standing in water now waist-deep, she took the soap to herself and continued to think about the boy as she moved her hand over her body, gently washing away yesterday’s mud and ash.

She wished it was Neb’s hand that touched here and then there, soft and warm and slippery with the soap. But these thoughts were foolishness, and in these dark times, so was love or anything like it. Sighing, she immersed herself fully again, and when she came up, she took the soap to her tangled hair, picking the bits of wood and bone from the long, wet strands.

She heard the clearing of a voice in the shadows and she spun, dropping the soap as her hands went reflexively to cover her breasts. “Who is there?”

“Forgive my intrusion, Winteria the Younger, daughter of Mardic,” a gravelly voice said. A figure moved-shambled, even-in the darkness at the farthest point of the cavern, beyond the lamp’s dim light.

Winteria the Younger? She’d not heard that before. “These are my private bathing waters,” Winters said, forcing some kind of authority into her voice. “Surely my guards did not allow you passage?”

The voice chuckled. “There are more passages than even you know in these mountain deeps.”

She felt fear in her stomach, and she lowered herself farther into the water, backing away with her eyes fixed in the direction of the unexpected voice. “Whoever you are, surely you see the inappropriateness of this interruption?”

Though the outside world believed the Marshers’ dirt and ash to be indicative of an insanity bred into them, the truth was far from that. At least weekly, they bathed away the layer of grime and reapplied fresh mud and ash, carefully weaving the bones and wood back into their hair, each slathered handful and twisted braid a prayer toward home. Apart from the sleep of death, when family and friends scrubbed clean the fallen before clothing the body in earth and ash one last time, it was unheard-of to see or be seen with the skin bare and unsheltered by the symbol of their sad sojourn.

“I cannot see you. I assure you of this. I cannot break form.” The figure drew closer and she backed up farther, crouching in the shallower water as her hands scrambled for a rock.

There were none to be found.

I could raise the guards, she thought. But she had not told them she would be bathing. They were posted at the entrance to her cave, and that was well over a league above and away, through winding corridors of stone. They would not hear her.

“Stop,” she said.

But the figure shambled closer until it revealed an old man with a wild beard and long hair. At first, the grime on him marked him as one of her own, but quickly, she saw that it was similar but different. The beard, once white, was streaked in alternating earth tones, braided in a fashion she had not seen before. And the markings on his face were more intentional, forming symbols of deep brown, charcoal and black that interlocked like a puzzle. His eyes were the color of milk, and when his sandaled feet reached the edge of the spring, he stopped. He looked toward her but not directly at her.

“A new age is in the birthing,” he told her, “and it is time for our people to reclaim their heritage.”

He’s blind, she realized. And yet he knows my home better than I do. “Who are you?” she asked again.

“I am called Ezra,” he said. “I was the Keeper of the Book in your father’s time, and in his father’s time before him. Before my eyes failed and my new sight found me.”

Winters squinted at him but knew she couldn’t possibly recognize him. In her lifetime, Tertius had played that role, and when he’d died, she’d chosen not to select a new Keeper. The Home dreams had started up with a new intensity, and the imminence of it had convinced her that there would be no need. The council of elders had agreed. She felt the firmness setting in her jaw. She swallowed against it. “Why are you here?”

The old man smiled. “I’ve come bearing a message of comfort and assurance. These seemingly dark times that wound you now are but the pains of labor. When it has passed, you will find your proper place. A New Age is upon us.”

Winters felt a sudden wave of anger. “I don’t need your comfort and assurance. I need you to stop talking in Whymer circles and be plain.”

The old man smiled. “You have your father in you,” he said. He chuckled. “Very well. I’ll be plain. P’Andro Whym’s children now pay for their father’s sins. Their city is no more, and the Desolation of Windwir changes everything.”

She felt her eyes narrowing. “Explain.” She felt a sudden chill and squatted farther into the water, glancing toward the tunnel that led to her sleeping quarters and the throne room above them.

“You have read-and even dreamed-of the Homefinding,” he said, his voice lowering. “But the Book was born in a time of sojourn. Before that, we were gifted these lands-all of them-to share with the Gypsies. You know this is true. They were taken from us. And ever since, the gray robes and their watch-wolves have kept us tamed and toothless while carrying out their so-called Gospels of Whym, that Great Deicide.” She heard the bitterness in his voice when he spat the word “deicide” and it made her cold again, despite the hot water that held her. “Now is the time for a new gospel to emerge. Now is time for the truth: There is no Home to find, but there is one here for the taking.”

No Home to find? The wrongness of those words flooded her. “You speak falsehood,” she said. “I’ve seen our Home. And the advent of the Homeseeker is already upon us. I’ve met him.” I’ve tasted his mouth, she thought. I’ve seen the wounds behind his eyes and felt his heartbeat against my skin.

Ezra shook his head. “No. Perhaps that was our hope once, but another has risen. I speak the truth. You know it yourself. The dreams have changed, and these dreams change the course of the Book of Dreaming Kings. Did you not see the light-feel its heat-as it was consumed?”

She had, and the memory of it still haunted her. But she said nothing.

Ezra continued. “There is no Home to find,” he said again, “but there is one that we may take.”

Take? Winters felt her stomach lurch. He’d said it before, but it hadn’t registered. She suddenly saw Hanric’s cold, dead body naked and scrubbed clean, stretched out upon the snowy ground of the Gypsy King’s Maze. She saw the Marsh Scouts frozen in death, slain by their blood magicks, the mark of House Y’Zir pink upon their skin. She felt truth dawning, and it tasted like cold iron in her mouth. When she spoke, her voice sounded more frightened, more timid, than she wished it. “What do you speak of, old man? If ever you loved my father, tell me plainly.”

When Ezra smiled it was filled with hope. “The Age of the Crimson Empress is at hand,” he said. “It is time for us to receive the mantle of our great heritage and prepare for her coming. You believe that we are called the Marshfolk because we live in these northern, barren wetlands. But I say to you now that it is not so. Once, long ago, before we touched this land in the Firstfall, we were the Machtvolk. The Making People, in service to the Moon Wizard Who Fell.”

“We were slaves,” she said, “to men who shattered the world beneath their boots and spells and blades.”

“No,” he said. “We were the joyful servants not to men but to gods.” He took a step forward. “And we shall be again.”

When he opened the upper portion of his robe, dim light played over the white scars upon his heart, and Winters trembled at the ecstasy upon his face. She dug for words, and the ones she found were familiar but she did not know why. She thought perhaps she’d dreamed them. “Begone, kin-raven,” she said in a voice that rang out strong and clear. “Your message is unwelcome in this House.”

The old man chuckled. “My message is more welcome than you know.”

But Winters persisted, her voice rising in volume until it filled the cavern and echoed over stone and water. “Begone, kin-raven,” she commanded, pulling herself up from the water and facing the old man squarely. “Your message is unwelcome in this House.”

The chuckle became a laugh even as the old man stepped back and back again until shadow took him. The laughter faded, and when it had all vanished, she felt the rage and terror drain out of her as her shoulders slumped.

His words stayed with her as she returned to her pile of clothing and took up the rough cotton towel to dry herself. We were the joyful servants not to men but to gods.

By habit, she slathered on the mud and ash, rubbing it into her skin and hair. When her hands reached her breastbone, she stopped, remembering the old man’s scrawny chest and the bare patch of skin over his heart. The stark white of that scar shone bright as snow in her memory. Not the pink of a fresh cutting but something old and deeply cut.

And shall be again.

She shuddered despite the warmth of the cavern and wished suddenly that she had not teased Neb when he’d asked her to come with him to the Ninefold Forest. Would you take me as your bride, Nebios ben Hebda, she’d asked him, and grant me a Gypsy wedding filled with dancing and music?

I should have said yes, she realized. But even as she thought it, she knew it was not her path to follow.

“We dance to the music that is played us,” Hanric had once told her not so long after her father had died. “And regardless the step or the tune, if we are true we will find joy at the end of it.”

Now the only music she heard was the harp that haunted her dreams, mad Tertius with his fingers flying over the strings as the light consumed two thousand years of dreaming. And the only dance she saw ahead was cold, spinning iron in a hurricane of blood.

Winters did not believe in gods. Tertius had taught her better than that. But in this moment, she wished she did.

She reached for something higher than herself to invoke and found only a campsite beneath the moon and the warm, strong arms of a boy in her dreams.

“Help me be true,” she whispered to that dream.

And still the canticle played on.

Rudolfo

It had been a long while, Rudolfo realized, since he’d mucked a bird coop. Despite the stench, he felt a smile pulling at his face as he imagined what he must look like now, his hands and arms gray with bird droppings.

He’d removed his turban and rolled up his sleeves for the work just an hour earlier, and now he stepped back from it, clucking at the birds in their freshly cleaned cages. Behind him, one of his Gypsy Scouts snored in a makeshift bed while the other kept watch outside.

The others had ridden out for Kendrick Town nearly a week earlier, leaving Rudolfo and two scouts to man the bird station and await word from Petronus-or whoever sat at the end of the line.

A reply had come, certainly, but Rudolfo had not been pleased by it.

I will send for you, the brief note said, but the handwriting was unfamiliar and there were no codes ciphered into it that Rudolfo could read. For all he knew, anyone could’ve sent it, and at this moment, the same anyone could be en route to intercept them.

Had Gregoric been alive, Rudolfo knew what that First Captain would think of this development. Still, he’d followed his instincts and forced himself to patiently wait. Forced himself to trust that whatever Petronus had built here could be trusted with his own life and ultimately, the life of his son.

For the first few days, he’d paced and plotted strategies when he wasn’t tending to the birds that came and went. But after that, he’d grown restless and set himself to whatever work he could find in Petronus’s boat house.

Now, he grinned at the clean cages and the filth that covered him and wondered at how something so foul could bring such delight.

Perhaps, he thought as he scrubbed his hands and forearms in a waiting bucket, it delighted him because the clean cages were a bit of chaos made right.

A low, short whistle reached his ears from outside, and everything fell away with that sound. Rudolfo’s right hand went instinctively to the satchel of powders around his neck as his left hand reached for his scout knife.

The other Gypsy Scout was already on his feet, slapping fistfuls of the white powder at his shoulders and his feet, then raising the palm of his hand to his mouth. As the magicks worked their way into his skin, he faded to shadow and eased open the door.

Rudolfo crouched and waited. His men knew their work better than any, and he knew that letting them do that work was the highest honor he could pay them. Still, he inched the knife out into his hand.

A minute passed.

Wind moved into the room.

Rudolfo felt the lightest of taps upon his arm. Something approaches on the water.

Rudolfo furrowed his brow, found the man’s shoulder and pressed his fingers into it. Something?

There was hesitation in the scout’s fingers. Moves like a boat. But magicked.

Magicked? Rudolfo imagined it might be possible to magick a ship-they rubbed oils into their knives to keep them sharp and hidden, so why couldn’t it be done for a ship? He pushed the speculation aside and forced his attention back to the Gypsy Scout. Take up positions outside, he tapped.

Then, he magicked himself, drew his knives and followed.

In the morning drizzle, Rudolfo picked his way across muddy snow, careful to step into the prints already there. He moved to the shelter of a pine tree and squinted out at the bay.

He could see it there-the shape of something on the water that wasn’t there. A shadow smudged into the rain, tall as a ship and moving along the choppy water. Rudolfo could hear the water rushing against it.

Rudolfo waited, listening, as a longboat-also magicked-was lowered. He heard its oars sliding across the water and slipped away from the tree to pick his way onto the dock.

There was no way to know how many men might be in the longboat, nor any way to know what their intent was. Though it seemed to Rudolfo that no friend would arrive magicked.

He tensed his muscles as he heard the sound of wood on wood.

When the first magicked sailor stepped onto the dock, Rudolfo kicked him into the bay and then danced back. “Stay put,” he said, “unless you’d like to swim in the winter bay with your friend.”

He heard movement in the boat.

The water thrashed and sputtered. The sputtering became a voice. “Wait,” it said. “Damn you, wait.”

Rudolfo knew that voice but couldn’t place it immediately.

Meanwhile, the thrashing became a more practiced swim. “I’m going to climb out,” the voice said. “Don’t kick me again, you ridiculous fop.”

Ridiculous fop. Rudolfo smiled and remembered those words. How many years had it been since he’d heard them? At least twenty, he thought. “Rafe Merrique,” he said. “I thought you’d drowned by now.”

“No thanks to you,” Rafe said, grunting with effort. “Gods, it’s cold.” Rudolfo watched as wet handprints appeared on the dock and a dripping, man-shaped shadow pulled itself up out of the water. “And what in all hells is that terrible smell?”

“Me,” Rudolfo said. “I’ve been at the cages.” He sheathed his knives and whistled for his scouts to do the same. He whistled again, and moments later, a thick woolen blanket drifted out of the boat house and into his waiting hands. He extended it to the magicked pirate. “Petronus has sent you for me?”

He’d known that the Order had used Merrique’s services over the years, but he also knew that those services could not come cheap. When he and Gregoric had sailed with him in his youth, even then it had cost a goodly sum.

Rafe took it and wrapped himself in it. “Not quite Petronus,” he said. “But his host has arranged this. quietly, of course.”

His host. Quietly. Rudolfo frowned. It explained the magicked ship, though the last time he’d seen Rafe Merrique, when he and Gregoric had been young men bound for the Wastes, the pirate had nothing so elaborate under his command. “And where is Petronus, exactly?”

“It would be better,” Rafe said, “to talk aboard the Kinshark. Suffice it to say that he is safe. for the moment.”

“I need to speak with him.” But already, Rudolfo wondered if that were true. It was possible that all he needed stood, magicked and dripping, before him on the narrow dock.

Rafe’s voice lowered. “Then time is of the essence, Gypsy King. I’ve been instructed to free the birds, close this station and invite you to accompany me.”

Rudolfo looked from the sopping blanket to the shimmering ship half a league out. The drizzle moved gradually toward downfall, and he felt the temperature dropping. He whistled his men in and pressed his fingers into their shoulders, passing instructions to them silently. They retreated and ten minutes later, the birds lifted out of the boathouse and scattered. Rudolfo used that time to scrawl a hasty note homeward and sent it with his own bird as the scouts handed their packs down into waiting hands.

Then, he and his men climbed into the longboat and took their place in the bow.

“You’re surely a long way from home during interesting times,” Rafe said as they pulled away from the dock.

I am indeed, Rudolfo thought. “Our world is changing.”

He could hear Rafe’s smile around his reply. “It is,” he said. “But as our gray-robed friends used to say, ‘Change is the path life takes.’ ”

Rudolfo grinned. “You’ve not changed so very much, it appears.”

Rafe chuckled. “Ten years ago and I’d have dropped you into the bay with me. I’m getting older. Slower.”

Rudolfo nodded. Rafe Merrique had been middle-aged the last time he’d seen him, just coming into the pinnacle of his success at sea.

They were quiet now as the oars whispered into the water, moving the boat forward. The rainfall increased and Rudolfo watched the drops splash into the whitecapped bay, watched the splashes leap half-heartedly back toward the sky before surrendering to gravity. When they came alongside, he felt the hull with his hands and let Rafe guide them toward the waiting rope ladder.

Rudolfo scrambled up and let the hands there at the rail steer him toward the hatch.

Belowdecks, he sat with his men near a small furnace in a long, paneled galley while dusky women served them steaming hot firespice and fresh black bread with sweet butter. The same women had shown them their cabins and offered them baths. Rudolfo declined, choosing instead to wait for Merrique.

When the door opened and a shadow slipped through, he put down his mug. “So exactly where are we going, Merrique?”

Rafe chuckled. “Still impatient, aren’t you? So impatient that you still reek of those damnable birds.” A chair moved across the floor and creaked as Rafe sat. “We sail for the Delta. Esarov himself has sent for you. He has something he’d like you to keep an eye on.” The pirate paused. “I’m not privy to more detail than that, but I do think your friend Petronus is climbing onto a narrow limb in a very high tree. And a storm brews for him there.”

Esarov. That name had come up more and more since the end of the war. His little revolution had sprung to life in the chaos around Windwir’s fall and had gained momentum once Sethbert was removed from the equation. Erlund hadn’t the stomach or resolve to treat ruthlessly with the root of that insurrection when it had first taken hold, and now open warfare was his only option. Esarov, a master statesman and strategist among other things, had bent his pen and his words in the direction of change, and slowly, the Delta followed.

And now, somehow, that Democrat was in league with Petronus. “What does Esarov play at with our former Pope?” Rudolfo finally asked.

“Something with high stakes,” Rafe answered. “I know that much. And I know Esarov was pleased to no end that you were already nearby. He offered me twice my normal fee to fetch you.”

“I wanted to speak with you about that,” Rudolfo said, resisting the urge to stroke his beard. “I will soon have need of a fast ship and a fierce crew, and I’m prepared to sign letters of credit for whatever price you require.”

Rafe Merrique chuckled. “Whatever price I require? What will my ship and crew be doing for you, exactly?”

Rudolfo thought for a moment that he saw the briefest glimmer of the pirate leaning forward intently. “I need to find Vlad Li Tam and his iron armada. Petronus may know where he’s sailed. Once I know, I will need someone to take me to him.”

The pirate snorted. “He could be anywhere by now, regardless of where he sailed for.” He waited, and when Rudolfo said nothing, he continued. “Still,” he said, “I’m certain we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

Rudolfo nodded, though he knew Rafe Merrique couldn’t see. “It will be good to sail with you again, Captain.”

The chair grated back. Already, parts of Rafe flickered back into focus as the magicks burned themselves out. Rudolfo thought he saw him incline his head, and he returned the gesture.

“I’m at your service, Lord Rudolfo,” the pirate said.

Rudolfo remembered the first time he’d heard those words. It was in a Delta tavern over two decades behind him. It was one of his first assignments for the Order; he’d been sent to meet his transport with Gregoric and a half-squad of scouts.

Rafe Merrique paused at the door. “By the way,” he said, “congratulations are in order. I’m sure he will grow into a fine, strong boy.”

In that moment, Rudolfo was glad for the magicks. They masked the shadow that crossed his face as fear and sadness washed him. He wasn’t sure how to answer.

“That is my hope,” he finally said.

After Rafe Merrique had gone, Rudolfo excused himself and returned to his cabin. He removed his boots and clothing and did the best he could with the waiting basin of warm water.

After toweling himself off, he crawled into the narrow bed and pulled the covers over himself. After a week on the ground, the bed was softer than a woman’s breast and smelled nearly as sweet. It gentled him into thoughts of Jin Li Tam. My wife now, he realized as he drifted into sleep.

But in Rudolfo’s dreams, his wife wept alone in a field of bones and he was powerless to help her.

Neb

Neb slowed his run as he crested the rise and sucked in his breath at the view ahead. Renard waited there, bent slightly with his hands on his knees, drinking air as he surveyed the landscape that stretched out beyond them.

Overhead, the sky washed itself in a blush of dusky rose as it emptied itself of birds.

Neb joined Renard, shielding his eyes from the reflection of the fading sun upon the jagged forest of rainbow-colored glass that stretched as far as he could see in all directions but the one they’d come from. Distant and moving across that treacherous ground, he could just make out Isaak’s metal form.

Renard followed his gaze, drawing his waterskin and passing it to Neb. “We don’t need to catch him,” Renard reminded him. “We only need to follow him, and he’s leaving us a good trail. He’s far better equipped to handle his so-called cousin than we are.”

For four days now, he’d wondered exactly what Renard had whispered to Isaak that sent him sprinting into the night. And he’d also wondered just how this Waster knew his father. Last, he’d wondered what had possessed him to abandon his squad and take off after their strange guide-and why it had seemed so easy, so natural to do so, despite the fact that his own men were in the midst of ambush. He’d chewed the root himself and followed after, the shouts of surprise fading behind him as he fled the battle.

As the bitter juice took hold, he’d felt a surge of strength and speed, easily catching up to Renard.

He told himself that his service to the light required it-that he had to stay near Isaak and that fleeing with Renard was the only way to do so. He told himself that Rudolfo and Petronus would both concur, even if Aedric did not. Still, it gnawed him. He’d thought all this as he stretched his legs into a full sprint and felt the breath of betrayal and desertion on the back of his neck like a wolf on his heels.

Of course, the ambush had been faked by Renard and his drunken friends, but he’d not learned that until yesterday, when Renard had told him with a casual chuckle in the face of Neb’s consternation.

They’d run that first night all the way through in silence, and then another day before they stopped to rest and to nurse water from the hidden places Renard showed him. But Isaak hadn’t stopped, and when Neb moved to go after him, Renard had stopped him.

“You’ll kill yourself in the dark or lose his trail,” Renard said. They were his first words since leaving Fargoer’s Town. “We sleep now until light. Then we track your metal friend easily. Eventually, he’ll lead us to the other.”

Two more days of racing full-sprint across the jagged, uneven ground, and each day they came within view of him just as the sun sank.

Neb took a pull from the tepid water and swished it around the inside of his mouth before handing the waterskin back to Renard. The water bore the burnt dust and salt flavor of the Wastes, but he swallowed it down anyway, grateful for it. “What was this place?” he asked.

Renard lifted the skin to his mouth, swallowed, and replaced the cap. “These are the outskirts of Ahm,” he said. “It was the capital of Aelys.”

Neb’s brow furrowed. He remembered this place from years before, when his father had brought him a square coin bearing the image of Vas Y’Zir, the Wizard King who oversaw Aelys for his father, Xhum Y’Zir, in the days of old, before P’Andro Whym and his scientists brought him and his six brothers down in a month of bloodshed. Brother Hebda had come by the coin during a dig and kept it back as a gift for the son he could not raise because of his Order’s vows. “My father came here,” he said.

Renard laughed. “Your father saw most of the Wastes, young Nebios. But aye, he was here.” He set out at an easy walk down toward the jagged jungle of glass. “And who do you think brought him?”

Of course. If Renard held the guide contracts with the Order it made sense that he would’ve escorted the very expeditions his father had worked on. He followed Renard, catching up easily. “Did you know him well?”

Renard found a clear patch of ground at the edge of the glass field and put down his pack. “Well enough,” he said. “He was a good man.”

Neb found a boulder and sat, watching Renard. The Waste guide drew a vial from one of his many pockets and shook out droplets at the four corners of the camp as he’d done each preceding night. In nights past, he’d not spoken about it, but now, his tongue loosening with each league they put between them and the Gypsy Scouts, he talked. “It’s kin-wolf urine,” he said.

Neb looked up. “Aren’t they extinct? Didn’t they die out with the Old World?”

Renard stopped the vial and tucked it away. “Nearly,” he said. “But there are a handful left, including an old white one that the Waste Witch keeps handy for those of us who run the Wastes.”

Neb had seen sketches in the Great Library, but until now, he’d assumed they were renderings based on skeletal evidence and whatever knowledge the Androfrancines had dug up. Kin-wolves were easily twice the size of a timber wolf-a fierce predator with an uncanny intelligence and predisposition for violence bred into them by the blood magicks of the wizards who made them long ago.

Renard continued. “They are few in number but still the second most dangerous predator here in the Deeper Wastes. They won’t encroach one another’s territory out of respect, and their prey know better.” Opening his pack, he tugged out a thin mat and stretched it over the flat ground, then pulled out two tightly rolled blankets, tossing one to Neb.

Something the man said suddenly registered with him. “If they’re the second most dangerous predator here, what’s the first?”

Renard looked up, his eyes hard as stone. “We are.” He spread his blanket out over his half of the mat and then straightened, spreading out his hands toward the fading landscape. “Certainly there are other threats-the ghosts and monsters from the basement of the world-and the land itself is hostile enough. But as predators go, man-or what he’s become here-still reigns.” He unslung the thorn rifle and squeezed the bulb at its base gently. Neb heard the slightest whisper and snap of a thorn snapping home. He’d not had a close look at this particular wonder of Renard’s but he hoped to, now that the man became more free with his tongue. “Meat for dinner tonight,” Renard said. “You gather wood; I’ll be back shortly with our supper.”

Neb watched as Renard slipped away, moving at a leisurely pace into the jagged line of glass not far from their camp. When he disappeared into it, Neb spread out his own blanket and then cast about to gather the bits of gray scrub he could find. Thirty minutes later, he had a decent pile.

When Renard returned, he carried a bloody carcass by its long, slender tail. The Waste rat-nearly the size of a dog-had been skinned and gutted away from camp. “There’s fresh water a league or so west,” he said as he laid the meat onto a flat stone and drew out his tinderbox. “You may want to bathe and scrub out your clothes in the morning.” Renard took in Neb’s torn and stained uniform and wrinkled his nose. “Or maybe you should bury that. I’ve got spare trousers and a shirt for you that should keep you for a few days.”

Overhead, the stars pulsed to life in a deep purple sky. A blue-green sliver on the horizon promised moonrise, and as Renard set the rat to cooking in the crackling fire, Neb pulled off his boots and stretched out on the hard ground. Propping himself up on his elbow, he watched Renard as he took careful inventory of their shared pack. The man noticed and grinned. “We’ll outfit you at Rufello’s Cave,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow-more likely, the morning after. The glass will slow us down a bit.”

Neb had certainly heard of Rufello, that ancient scientist who’d captured so many of the secrets of the Younger Gods in his Book of Specifications. It was Rufello’s schematics, pieced together from a thousand parchments, that had brought back the mechoservitors. “Rufello’s Cave?”

Renard looked up. “There’s an Androfrancine supply cache there. They were careful that way.”

That made sense to Neb. The Churning Wastes were brutal, and the vast distances that the Order’s expeditions covered, along with the amount of time it took for most digs, made supply chain a challenge. He imagined a network of hidden supplies, tucked away and sealed against the elements and inhabitants of this harsh land.

Now, Renard drew a patch of cotton from his pocket and soaked it in water from the waterskin. He wadded it up and shoved it into a small hole at the base of the bulb on his rifle. “I’ll need to lacquer it tomorrow,” he said.

The smell of cooking meat made Neb’s stomach growl. He’d had nothing but jerky, nuts, and sour dried apple slices over the last four days, and even that had been sparing. And until Renard’s tongue had finally loosened, Neb’s initial protests-and the questions that accompanied them-had fallen on seemingly deaf ears. Now, just as he’d settled into the taciturn silence, his companion had started offering up information quite freely.

Why? He looked to the man and his eyes narrowed. “You’re much more talkative now.”

Renard chuckled. “You’re right. I am.”

Neb rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand. “Why now?”

Renard considered him, and for a moment, Neb saw something in his eyes that chewed at him. “Because now,” he said slowly, “we’re too far out for your friends to find you. or for you to find them.” He paused, poking at the rat with his knife. “Now,” he said, “I’m the only reasonable path left to you, and our work can truly begin.”

The words fell into Neb like a stone in a pond, their meaning rippling out into the corners of his heart. His mouth went suddenly dry. “Our work?”

“Aye,” Renard said. “Work your father pressed upon me when you were born.” He looked up at Neb, and his blue eyes were piercing. “Work he and your mother knew you were set aside for years before you were even conceived.”

He and your mother. Brother Hebda had never mentioned Neb’s mother, and Neb had been too polite to ask. No, he realized, not polite but careful. He’d simply been too afraid that if he asked about her, his father would stop visiting him. It was a rare thing for one of the Order to acknowledge the children born outside their so-called vow of chastity. Rarer still that one of those men would take the time to visit his son in the Franci Orphanage. Neb swallowed at the dryness and cleared his voice. Two questions tugged at him for attention, and he gave way to the one that terrified him the least. “What work is that?” he asked.

“The work of Homeseeking,” he said.

How does he know this? Neb blinked. And how could my parents have known? His head suddenly swum, and the other question found its way to his tongue, though when it fell out his mouth it sounded more like a statement. “You know my mother.”

A cloud washed Renard’s face, and he closed his eyes a bit longer than he should have. When he opened them, his face was clear again. “Yes, lad. I knew her.”

More questions flooded Neb, but there were too many to ask and it left him in silence, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. Certainly, sharing dreams with Winters gave him a seat at the front of Marsher mysticism and prophecy. He knew she believed him to be the Homeseeker. But beyond his own dreams and the belief of the girl he loved, he’d not had any other evidence. Now, a man he barely knew and did not necessarily trust told him that this was a work both his father and his mother had known about before Neb was even born.

It staggered him.

After a while, Renard used his knife to move their dinner away from the fire so it could cool. He looked over at Neb. “She was beautiful and smart,” he finally said. His voice was heavy with memory.

“What happened to her?” Neb asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But then Renard fell silent. After the meat had cooled, he tore the Waste rat in half and they ate quickly and quietly.

The meat was greasy and carried a strong, sour flavor, but Neb tore into it as if it were a roasted Ninefold Forest hare. He couldn’t remember a better feast despite the silence.

When he finished, Neb crawled into his blanket and counted stars until thoughts of Winters kept stealing him away. He wondered what she was doing now and how she was. The deeper into the Wastes they ran, the less dreams he could remember. He willed himself to dream of her tonight, that he might find her somewhere in that middle place between their dreams-or even share a dream-and tell her how afraid he suddenly was. Until now, he’d believed that chance had brought him here in pursuit of the two metal men with this quandary of a man, Renard. But now, he sensed destiny in it beyond himself and his Marsh Queen.

And he knew my parents. He did not trust the Waste Guide Renard, but he did believe him.

Neb lay awake long after Renard’s breathing became slow and easy and long after the moon reached its zenith in the night sky. He thought about it all and wished for sleep and dreaming.

But when sleep finally took Neb, it gave him no dreams whatsoever, and he awoke again and again at the strangeness of it.