Antiphon (39 page)

In the dark, beyond the reach of Garyt’s lantern, amber eyes flitted open and gears hummed. The first of the mechoservitors stepped into the light. “Greetings, Winteria bat Mardic, Dreaming Queen of the Machtvolk,” the metal man said. Behind him, three other sets of eyes opened as those mechoservitors also left the shadows to join him.

Winters looked around the room. The book still ran along its wall—volume after volume—and it looked the same as it always had. The latest volume lay on its side, and she saw familiar pages poking out. Garyt—or someone—had been putting them in for her each day.

“You are dreaming again,” the metal man said.

She nodded. “I am.”

There was a hiss as the mechanical released steam from its exhaust grate. “The Homeseeker has broken the tamps; the time for containment has passed.”

She felt her brow furrowing.
Containment? Tamps?
“I do not understand.”

“We are required to leave. The antiphon must be protected. But we will leave our brother here to receive your last dream.” Here, one of the metal men inclined his head. “He will bear it to us across the aether, and we will share it with the Homeseeker.”

Neb?
She tried to force the panic from her voice. “Is he alive? Have you seen him?”

“We leave to seek him.” The mechoservitor paused, its scrolls clicking. “We must show you something first.”

Clanking, it turned and descended the gentle slope a few paces, reaching for the section of the book her father had added to. “Throughout each of these volumes, a page has been carefully removed from each king’s dreams.” He drew down a volume and handed it to her, a slender metal finger opening the book to a page.

Winters walked to him and leaned in to see more clearly. Barely discernible, she saw where an extremely sharp knife had left the faintest mark. “I see it.”

The metal man continued. “These pages come from each king since the first dream. The Homeward Dream is in the blood of your line. The missing pages are the scripting of your final dream—the last lock of the tower. Do you understand?”

The tower.
She saw it clearly, white and tall, overlooking jungle and
sea. Her mind spun and she shook her head. “I do not understand. Who would remove the pages? What is this tower?”

The mechoservitor blinked, its eye shutters clicking open and closed. “Surely in thousands of years of dreaming you comprehend the tower?”

She shook her head again. “I’ve only recently started dreaming it. And I rarely comprehend the dreams—I simply record them, reflect upon them.”

“The tower,” the mechoservitor said, “is the hope of the light, and the Homeseeker’s path is to restore it to your people. Without the final dream, the Homeseeker will fail. The tower will not be opened to him.” She heard deep grinding in the mechoservitor’s chest cavity and saw water leaking from the corner of its jeweled eyes. “If the tower remains closed, the light shall be lost. You must find the missing pages. You must dream the final dream.”

I do not know how
. She heard earnestness in the mechoservitor’s voice, and her vision focused on one solitary, rusty tear that slid down the metal man’s brass-colored face.

“We will show you,” he said.

The metal man stepped forward, his hand out, and then paused. Cupped in the metal palm, Winters saw something small and dark—a stone, she thought, only carved. Garyt shifted uncomfortably and she looked to him. “I want to see,” she said.

The metal man pressed the dark object against her forehead.

Four pairs of amber eyes opened and closed in unison, and she shuddered as a wave of nausea passed over her.

She opened her mouth to speak and suddenly felt the room slipping from her. Her knees went weak and she staggered.

Garyt reached out a hand to steady her, but already she felt her eyes rolling back in her head and heard the glossolalia, melodic and terrifying, as it poured from her open mouth. Her body fell back limp, and she became aware of other voices joining her.

Reedy and metallic voices rose in ecstatic utterance that blended harmonically with her own. The sound formed the notes of a song and she saw them again, encircled upon the tower with upraised arms. She and Neb stood weeping within the metal circle they made. Below them, the illuminated sea bubbled with each note. Above them, a brown and dying world filled the sky, hanging like a shameful scar against a tapestry of endless night.

This dream is of our home.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the vision ended and she opened her eyes.

“It is the Moon Wizard’s Tower,” Winters said in a quiet voice. She knew it, just as surely as she now knew that her sister would know exactly what had become of the missing pages.

And as one, the metal men nodded.

Jin Li Tam drew in a cold lungful of air and rubbed the cut upon her arm.

She’s getting quite good.
This time, Winters had even managed to draw a bit of blood.

Now, the girl stood sheepishly by, her eyes worried. “I am so sorry, Lady Tam,” she said again.

Jin chuckled. “You shouldn’t be. You earned that blood.” Even as she said it, she knew there was more to it.

I am distracted.
And, she realized, something had changed in the girl. She had a ferocity about her suddenly that scared Jin a little. The girl’s eyes, when she struck, had borne a striking similarity to her older namesake. She knew it had something to do with the events in the cave. Aedric’s man had briefed her personally, though he’d not been close enough to hear everything that was said between Winters and the metal man. Something about a tower.

Between that and the message from home, she hadn’t been fully focused. Though if she was truly honest, she’d not felt focused since she’d met the Watcher.

And the note from Rudolfo chewed at her. He’d not seemed himself. Gone now were the coded messages of inquiry after her well-being and Jakob’s. The handwriting was sloppier, and he said very little but what needed saying and he offered no real news of events in the Ninefold Forest. She knew he was away from the Seventh Forest Manor but was not sure where.

It had dulled her wits, and now she had a healthy cut from it.
And she feels guilty for beating me.
Jin shot a glance at Winters and smiled. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “And I’d match you against
any
of Rudolfo’s scouts.”

She watched the worry melt from everywhere but the girl’s eyes as she inclined her head. “Thank you, Jin.”

She returned the nod. “You earned it,” she said again. “Don’t mistake
my validation as a gift. It is a wage due you.” One that stung, she realized as she stooped to scoop more snow onto the cut. She glanced up at the girl, then out to the Gypsy Scouts and Machtvolk guard who stood at the edges of the clearing. She lowered her voice. “I know about the cavern,” she said in a low voice.

The girl’s eyes moved away, and a blush rose to her cheeks. “I assumed Aedric’s scout would tell you.”

Jin wiped the snow from the cut and examined it again. The bleeding had stopped. “Do you know what they are doing here?”

The girl nodded. “I do,” she said. There was hesitation in her voice. She looked around, and Jin could see that she was measuring the distance of the guards. “They are studying the Book of Dreaming Kings.” The girl’s eyes settled on the stump where their things lay.

Jin blinked. “What would they hope to find there?”

Winters met her eyes. “Our way home,” she said.

There were other questions to ask, but this wasn’t the time or place. And Winters’s eyes told her that further answers might not be forthcoming. She also noticed the guards, now, and saw that they were edging their way closer. “Perhaps we will discuss this in more detail at a later time?”

Winters nodded, but Jin saw even in the nod that the girl intended to keep her secrets for now.

This is no time for secrets.
She wanted to say so, but then thought of the Watcher in his cave—a mechoservitor like none she’d seen before, hiding here in the north. She’d not sought Winters out to share this knowledge with her. Neither had she told the girl about the metal men this Watcher and his regent wished to bring under their care to keep them from being exposed to the very mechanicals Winters had seen deep in the caves of the Dragon’s Spine.

No, Jin had her secrets and must offer the same grace to her young friend. She forced a smile to her face. “I think we’ve practiced enough for today,” she said.

Winters inclined her head yet again and then moved quietly off to the stump. Jin followed her, and they put their coats on in silence.

Quiet wrapped them as they trudged wordlessly up the trail that led eventually past the heavy doors set in the side of the hill. A light snow fell, adding a soft layer to the frozen drifts to either side of the trail. They were nearly back to the house when one of Ria’s officers approached.

“Lady Tam?”

He looked weary, as if he’d been up all night, but he smiled. “The queen begs pardon and requests a word if the morning is not too cold for you.”

“Certainly, Captain.” She looked to Winters. “We’ll talk later,” she said. “Would you look in on Jakob?”

At the girl’s nod, she turned to follow the captain. They climbed the trail behind the house, and she found herself hoping they weren’t going to the shrine. Somehow, in her memory, the shrine had become tangled up in her recollection of the Watcher’s cave. The smell of blood and decay choked her, and unbidden, the memory of the knife within her hand and its blade upon Jarvis’s throat flooded her.

I did what needed doing.
And yet. She was certain P’Andro Whym had something to say about that somewhere in his gospels. She’d killed before and it had not given her pause. Still, she’d never executed a man . . . and certainly never killed one who wanted to be killed.

And yet.

As they climbed, she became aware of noise on the hill. First, the sound of a pickaxe. Then, the ring of a shovel on hard earth.

When they crested the hill and moved behind the shrine, she saw Ria in dirty woolen trousers and shirt, her face red and sweaty from exertion as she leaned upon the shovel. Beside her, wrapped in a blanket, lay a body. Before her, a grave took shape in the frozen ground.

“Good morning, Great Mother,” she said, smiling.

“Good morning,” Jin answered. She looked from the body to the grave again. “You are burying Cervael?” She’d not known the minor Emerald Coast lord other than by reputation, but her father had. And when she’d learned of his role in the attempt on her life and the life of her son, she wondered if he’d have been so bold if House Li Tam had not been dismantled.

“I am. I had intended to offer you his life, but I’m afraid I became too engrossed in my work.” She inclined her head. “My apologies.”

She returned the nod, forcing calm to her face. “Accepted,” she replied.

“But you will be pleased to know that our work with this lord has taken us to the root of the attack upon you and your family.” The woman’s smile widened, and above it, in those piercing brown eyes, she saw the same ferocity she’d just seen in Ria’s little sister. “We are unraveling a network now that reaches even into Rudolfo’s forest . . . and we know who has funded and fed it.”

Jin Li Tam felt her eyebrows rising. “And you are confident that
your”—here, she paused, looking for the right word and tone—“
means
of gathering this information is reliable?”

“Oh yes. Quite.” She sighed, and for the first time, Jin realized the woman had been crying. She could see the white streaks upon her cheeks. “We were quite close in the end; he would not have lied to me.” Their eyes met. “There’s a bond that forms when we participate in another’s redemption. The size of the bond is in direct proportion to the size of sin being atoned for.” She moved the shovel. “I could have any of my men dig this grave and satisfy our people’s custom. It is my right as queen. But I will bury him myself. Just as I cleaned him myself. I would have done the same for your father, had Rudolfo not interrupted my work there.” She paused. “Because in the end, I loved him very much.”

Jin hoped her revulsion did not show. She worked hard to keep her face an emotionless mask and reached for the first question that came to mind. “Who is responsible, then?”

“The order—and means—came ultimately from Queen Meirov of Pylos.”

The words struck her like an open-handed slap. “Pylos?” That small nation to the south, nestled between the Entrolusian Delta and Turam, had suffered a good deal of late. Refugees had glutted her during the civil war to the east, and the collapsing Entrolusian economy had its impacts as well. But worse—far worse—Meirov’s young son had been killed on the night that Hanric, Ansylus, and the others had been butchered by Ria’s Blood Scouts. All part of an elaborate sacrifice that, combined with the torture and murder of most of House Li Tam, somehow created the blood magick that healed her son.

Not even a year ago, she’d seen the unhidden hatred upon that queen’s face. But this response was unexpected. Jin closed her eyes, suddenly caught up in the sounds of screaming and panic in the library courtyard and the sight of bodies lined up beneath blankets just beyond the rubble.

“What will you do?” she finally asked.