Antiphon (12 page)

She was there in the room with Rudolfo for hours biding her time.
How long had she hidden there? How much had she heard? And had she hidden in other rooms, too? Was she here now, watching? She felt another stab of anger.

Jin Li Tam took another breath. Then, she looked to the house. The windows were lit now, beckoning, and she found the one she knew belonged to Rudolfo. No doubt, he sat in his study and took dinner in the midst of reports and messages to digest and respond to.

She set out for the manor and paused near the edge of the Whymer Maze. Faint footfalls reached her ears, and she saw a young woman emerge from it. Winters, she realized, no doubt returning from Hanric’s Rest at the center of the maze, near the Whymer meditation bench.

There is much to meditate upon.

Jin whistled the low, soft note of a Gypsy Scout on alert.

Winters looked up, startled. “Lady Tam,” she said.

Jin stopped. The look upon the girl’s face was consternation and fear. To a degree, it made sense—Ria claimed to be her older sister, thought dead in infancy, and certainly by now Rudolfo had told her about their magicked guest. Still, she had to ask. “Are you okay, Winters?”

The girl shook her head, and for a moment, Jin thought she might burst into tears. “I don’t think I am. I failed my people. And I think I saw Neb.”

Neb?
Jin Li Tam looked around. “You think Neb is home?”

Winters took a deep breath. “No, not like that.” She swallowed. “More like a dream. He was in a cave made of glass. There was a woman with him. Only, he didn’t look like himself. His hair’s too long, and he’s too gaunt. He looked at me and said my name, and then he was gone.”

Jin knew the two of them had somehow shared dreams together before he’d entered the Churning Wastes. Until recently, Jin hadn’t put
much thought into Marsher mysticism with its glossolalia, prophecies and Homeseeking. But she’d also not believed there was a magick strong enough to bring back the dead or heal the mortally ill. She felt her eyebrows furrow. “It’s been a long time since you’ve shared dreams with him, hasn’t it?”

“Seven or eight months,” Winters agreed. “But this was not a shared dream. It was like a dream, but I was awake.” She looked away and Jin read the discomfort. “A . . . vision, I think.”

She knew the girl was no stranger to such things and wanted to ask more to get to what part of this made her uncomfortable, but then it struck her.
There was a woman with him.

She thought about telling her that she should not concern herself with it or leap to any specific assumption about the woman, but instead, she changed the subject. “And you feel you gave up on your people?”

She watched the discomfort melt into sadness. “I did. I did not have to give up on them. But I did. I came here and hid myself underneath a mountain of books.”

Jin Li Tam chuckled, and it was sardonic. “You’ve not failed them yet, and I don’t think it’s fair to say you’ve given up on them, either.” She watched the girl’s eyebrows knit together. “Maybe you don’t remember, but you had few choices left on that day, and you needed time to absorb that great loss and craft an appropriate response to it. You came to your only kin-clave in the Named Lands and took asylum. This is not failure or abandonment.”

She saw a bit of hope spark there, but it went out too soon. “I can’t even fathom an appropriate response to this.”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “For now. But you will.” She locked eyes with the girl, willing courage and hope into her that she did not herself have to give. “Give it time. Meanwhile”—here she hefted her knife belt, dangling the sheathed blades—“it’s time for you to get back to your knife lessons.”

They’d started practicing together in those early days after Winters had first settled into the Forest life, but they’d stopped for the wedding and the royal family’s tour of the Ninefold Forest. Getting back to the knives—and out of that basement—would be good for the girl.

And, Jin realized, it was good for her to have someone to teach. “So tomorrow morning, then?”

Winters offered a weak smile. “Tomorrow morning.”

Jin Li Tam inclined her head. “Good. And don’t fret about the boy.”

Inclining her own head, Winters turned and moved in the direction of Library Hill. Jin Li Tam watched her go. Then, she set out for the manor.

She had told Winters that in time, the young, deposed Queen would find an appropriate response to what had happened to her last winter. On that day that Winters lost everything, Jin Li Tam had bargained with a devil and saved what mattered most to her.

Like Winters, she could not fathom what her response might be, and now, with the anger burned away, her fear moved toward sadness she could not afford to feel, and she tried to keep it at bay.
Focus on what you have gained
, she told herself.
Life for your son.

She paused at the hidden entrance and the series of narrow passageways that would take her to Jakob’s room and then to her own bathing chambers, and turned again to take in the nightfall.

She tried not to think of her father and the scars that covered him, or of the mass graves she’d never seen upon that distant island, or of the orphaned children now nearby who bore the scar of Y’Zir over their hearts. She tried not to think of them and failed.

For all that I gained, I’ve lost as well.
And for that, a response was certainly called for. But what response?

Wiping a stray tear from her cheek, Jin Li Tam begged an answer from the first star that poked its light through the dusky canopy of sky.

Then, she slipped into her home and pushed her fear once more aside.

Winters undressed by moonlight, her bare skin noticing the slight chill of her basement bedroom. She hurried into her sleep shift and then scuttled into bed, pulling the covers up quickly and gasping at the cool of the sheets.

Lady Tam had surprised her; she’d thought she was alone in the gardens but for the scouts who patrolled it. But she was glad to have seen Lady Tam and spoken with her, however briefly. She’d missed her and Jakob especially while they were off touring the Ninefold Forest. Rudolfo had offered to bring Winters along, but she had preferred the library.

Hiding underneath your mountain of books.
Perhaps, she thought, but no more. Now, she knew that something had to be done. The light of blind, loyal faith in those evangelists’ eyes. And the self-assured tone that masqueraded as love, dripping from their voices. Her people were beset by wolves, and it seemed Rudolfo’s were now, as well.

He’d told her of Ria’s visit, and she’d felt her own mouth drop open in surprise. Then, he’d shared her message of the impending threat. Now she understood something that had perplexed her.

Ria had been in the Ninefold Forest when she sent the kin-raven.
The violation of Rudolfo’s borders and home were handled with discreet precision. She’d even kept it from Winters, having her dismissed from the
room with the others. If it had not been for Rudolfo’s trust in her, Winters might never have learned of her sister’s visit. Something about that bothered her.

Because of the message. Come home to me and joy. If she felt so, why not ask herself?

She felt the slightest breeze and started. The hand fell over her mouth quickly before she could cry out, and a calm voice whispered at her ear. “Be still, little sister.”

Winters struggled against the hand, then stopped.

“Much better,” Ria said, lifting her hand.

Winters waited, surprised at how unafraid she suddenly felt. She simply breathed, in and out.

“I wanted to see you before I left,” the woman said. Winters lay still, unable to find words.
I must say something.

Winteria the Elder continued. “You would not recognize the Marshlands. Towns and schools are being built—each with its own Council of Twelve. Children are being taught the oldest ways and taking the mark. Settlers are moving into the river valleys around Windwir, and shrines are being built in the villages that were already there.”

She thought of the Tam children and their scars and imagined the same upon the mud-and-ash-rubbed skin of her people. Finally, she found her words. “You savage my people with heresy.”

“I restore
our
people to their prideful place as servants of the most high. And I meant it, Little Winteria: Come home to me and share this joy. Home is for the taking, and the advent of the Crimson Empress is at hand.”

Winters wanted to rage. She wanted to scream at this woman, lash out at her with fists and feet, but once more calm asserted itself in her and she poured herself into each breath she drew in, each she pushed out.

Winters said nothing.

After a minute, she felt the breeze again and saw the window open. Ria’s voice drifted across the room to her. “I’ve brought you a present. It’s beneath your pillow. Perhaps it will change your mind.”

Winters resisted the urge to reach beneath her pillow. Instead, she waited a full three minutes. Then, she crawled from the bed and closed the window, locking it. After, she lit her lamp and carried it to the table beside the bed. Reaching out a tentative hand, she lifted her pillow.

A small book lay beneath it, bound in leather. The cover bore no
title, but it did look old. She put her pillow down and took up the volume.

Opening the book, she saw the title and remembered it instantly from the audience earlier.
The Gospel of Ahm Y’Zir, Last Son of the Wizard King Xhum Y’Zir.

She read the first paragraph. The print was too consistent for a scribe and the pages too small for a printing press. Still, it was a familiar style to her, though the age of the paper made it seem highly unlikely.

This gospel, she strongly suspected, had been scripted by a mechoservitor.

Intrigued, she went back to the place her thumb marked and continued reading. Hours later, when she finished it just as her lamp guttered, Winters understood why her people had been so easily swayed. There was a beauty and a power to the story, made even more compelling by the miracles clearly predicted that she herself had borne witness to.

This gospel, she realized, was carefully crafted. A snare carefully set for her people. She had talked with Rudolfo enough to know about House Li Tam’s involvement in this, the secret network Vlad’s father had put into place, operated by his grandson.

Not just my people.
The realization struck her hard, though she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t realized this all along. This snare caught them all. It took down the Androfrancines. It shattered the trust between the nations of the Named Lands. It created a strong, unbeatable army on the flanks of the New World and set Rudolfo and his family apart.

The age of the Crimson Empress was indeed at hand, and it was not a gospel that required faith. It was a message of something dark and terrible coming regardless of whether or not she believed it.

Tomorrow, she would take this book to Rudolfo. He would understand the rune marks of House Y’Zir, she suspected. And he would want to know what was coming. He would want to do what he could to prepare for it.

When Winters did finally slip into light slumber, she found her dreams were full of Neb, though he would not look at her or acknowledge her when she called out to him.

“He is in grave danger,” she thought she heard a voice whisper into her dream.

Alone in the Churning Wastes, her white-haired boy fled just ahead of those ravening kin-wolves that hunted him.

Powerless to help, Winters watched.

Petronus paced his study and tried to shake the sense that something terrible was coming on the wind. Each time he looked out the window at the spires and towers of the Great Library and the massive city that spread out from there, he saw brief flashes of a plain littered with skeletons and felt the bite of blisters in his hands. He heard the distant sound of pickaxes and shovels working frozen ground and vaguely remembered a boy beside him, one with hair shocked white at the desolation he’d witnessed. But what desolation? Where?

Why can’t I remember?

There was a knock at his door and he looked up. The gaunt Androfrancine stood in the doorway. “The time for subtleties has passed,” he said. “The boy is in grave danger.”

“Which boy?” But Petronus already reached into his memory, and a name drifted into reach on the tide of that vast ocean of things he could not remember. “Neb?”

The man nodded. “Aye, Father.” He walked farther into the room, and Petronus noted that he carried a rolled-up chart beneath his arm. “There was an incident earlier. He broke through the mechoservitors’ dream tamp—something he should not be able to do without a conduit. Still, he’s done it and he’s announced himself loudly. He’s also revealed the canticle.” The man did not wait for Petronus’s invitation. He went to the sitting area, spread his chart upon the table there and took a seat near the wide fireplace. “Sit with me, Father.”

Petronus walked to the empty chair facing the man and sat. “Do we have any expeditions nearby? Do we have time to get a contingent of the Gray Guard to him?”

The man sighed. “You are disoriented still. The stone has that impact. We’re still new to it and haven’t learned the more subtle nuances of using it.”