Antiphon (43 page)

Ria interrupted, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Father Ezra is required elsewhere.”

Even as she spoke, more Machtvolk guards materialized out of the gray, leading horses with magick-muffled hooves. Ezra mounted and whistled. A dark shadow separated itself from the shrouded forest, and a kin-raven settled upon his shoulder. “I will inform you of her answer by the bird, my queen,” he said.

Ria inclined her head. “Travel safely, Father, and preach well.”

Whose answer?
Winters wondered.
And where did the old man go a-preaching?
As they turned their horses south and picked up speed, she glanced at Ria. The troubled look on her sister’s face told her it was a serious affair. Winters opened her mouth to ask about it, but Ria spoke first.

“She’ll not bend her knee,” Ria said. There was sadness in her voice. “Neither will she repent. She’s already killed the bird I sent.” She looked at Winters. “It will cost her far more than the sacrifice that drove her to such violence.” Ria shuddered at her own words. Then, the woman tossed her braided hair over her shoulder and turned toward the path. “Let’s walk,” she said, “and talk of more hopeful things. Are you excited about the mass tomorrow?”

Winters fell in step beside Ria and tried to force enthusiasm into her voice and hoped her older sister could not hear her deception. “I am curious to see it.”

Her battered gospel had very little to say about the Year of the Falling Moon, but over the course of their conversations she’d grown to understand it better. When humanity had twice stolen daughters from the Moon Wizard, in his grace he had descended to establish his just throne. He’d brought Shadrus and the rest of the Machtvolk with him, and they had served their Lord Y’Zir and the Wizard Kings that followed after.

Of course, P’Andro Whym had ended that rule on his so-called Night of Purging, and Xhum Y’Zir, according to the gospel Winters read, had ended the world because it was better to wipe clean the slate and start anew than for men—and women—to live without the oversight of gods.

It was a backward twisting of history through belief that frightened her. And how quickly her people had been seduced by it grieved her, though she could not blame them. They’d already had the metaphysical underpinnings of the Homeward dreams and largely lacked any exposure to the teachings of their Androfrancine neighbors. Winters had been fortunate that her father had seen the value of Tertius’s lessons alongside the mysticism of her people’s beliefs.

As they walked, she realized they were on the path behind the lodge now, climbing the hill. Their escort had fallen out of earshot, behind them, and Ria was speaking. Winters forced her attention back to her sister.

“It’s been my favorite holy day since I was a young girl,” Ria said. “The celebration of the mass followed by three days of feasting and
gift-giving.” She smiled. “Where I grew up, it was always celebrated openly.”

This is new.
Winters blinked. Until now, her sister had said very little about where she came from, and for the moment, she laid aside her questions about the missing pages. “Where did you grow up?”

Ria smiled. “Someplace far from here, little sister. Soon, I promise you, all will be known. But it is not yet time. We stand at the center of a web woven by many hands through years of quiet labor. And as desperately as I wish to bring you into my confidence, it is not for me to decide.”

Winters tried to conceal the impatience in her voice. “I have so many questions, sister.” The word tasted bitter in her mouth, but she saw Ria’s eyes light up when she used it. For weeks, she’d avoided asking directly, but now saw a window she could crawl through. “Seamus told me that you died in infancy; yet you’ve come back from the dead. You speak of a place where the Y’Zirite gospel is commonplace and celebrated openly. I want to understand.”

Ria placed a hand on Winters’s shoulder. “And you will. But for now, I will tell you this much: You’ve seen the dead raised; my rebirth was not so spectacular as that. And it is a big world, after all, little sister, despite its many wounds and scars.”

Yes.
She remembered watching Petronus as he gasped and bled out on the floor of the pavilion on the day of Jakob’s healing and Ria’s declaration of herself. And though the world’s barrenness was well documented it stood to reason that there would be other pockets of survivors from that Age of Laughing Madness.

They paused now at the door of the blood shrine, and a cloud passed over Ria’s face. “I know we were to walk and talk,” she said, “but it just isn’t in me. Would you . . .” Her words trailed off as her brow furrowed. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Dark days come. Sometimes even the purest love must lay axe to a dangerous root. Would you pray with me, Winters?”

She called me Winters.
She couldn’t remember Ria calling her that before, and some part of her noted it, cataloging it in her inner library.
She grows to trust me.

And because she needed that trust for what was coming tomorrow, Winters nodded. “Surely I will, sister, though I do not know how.”

“None of us,” Ria said, “truly do.”

They entered the anteroom of the circular building, and Ria closed the door behind them, leaving them alone in that warm and iron-scented
space. She went to a small dark wooden box, ornately carved and attached to the wall. Opening it, she withdrew a silver knife. Then, the woman held open the inner door and nodded to Winters.

When she entered, she saw the altar at the center with its straps and buckles and catch-gutters. Wooden benches surrounded it in a rough circle, illuminated by guttering lamps.

Ria left the double doors open behind them and slipped past Winters to approach the altar. She knelt there, resting her knees upon purple cushions and her elbows upon the dark stone. Winters followed her and did the same.

“It is simple,” Ria said, taking the tip of the knife and running it briefly across the palm of her hand. The blood welled up, and she squeezed it over the catch-gutter. Winters watched a few drops splatter, and when she saw that Ria waited, she bit her lip.

Trust.
Summoning up every bit of strength she could muster, she extended her own hand and winced as her sister cut it open.

Then, she wrung her own blood onto the altar. “Like this?” she asked.

Ria nodded. “Yes. Now we beseech our empress to grant us grace for what is coming.” There was darkness in her words now, and Winters nearly flinched from it.

“What is coming?” she asked in a small voice.

“Consequences,” Ria answered. “Pray with me.”

But when Winters prayed, it was not to an empress nor to any faith that required blood to be heard. It was to a white tower rimmed with singing mechoservitors and the song they danced to. To a boy with silver hair who had fallen into her dreams like winter snow, only to melt suddenly away.

It was a prayer to a pregnant moon now hidden by the gray of dawn, that it might rise soon to be her people’s home.

And last, a prayer to the strength within her, that it would be sufficient for her to lead them there.

As the sun crested the eastern horizon, it threw shafts of red light over the Churning Wastes. In the north, beneath the shadow of the Dragon’s Spine, it was a cooler light, and Petronus’s eyes had yet to adjust.

He lay stretched out on a ridge overlooking the valley below, with Grymlis and Rafe Merrique to either side of him. The massive dark metal doors set into the side of the gray cliff face told him all he needed to know.

If the visions are true, the hollow mountain lies somewhere behind that door.
It stood tall as an Entrolusian bank, a half-dozen massive dials standing out from it, older even than Rufello’s locks.

They’d made the best time they could, but the sudden addition of men on foot had slowed them down. And despite patrols, they’d been perpetually under attack from the south, losing nearly a third of their ragged company to the blood-magicked aggressors. And then, suddenly, the attacks had let up, though the kin-raven still kept pace with them as they rode and ran.

Rafe Merrique tapped his shoulder with the spyglass, and Petronus looked over at him, taking the glass in his hand. “How do we get inside?” the pirate asked.

Petronus put his eye to the lens and blinked as the terrain at the base of the door leaped into close focus. He steadied his hand and moved the glass up, taking in the metal and its massive locks. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we knock,” Grymlis said with a chuckle.

We need Isaak or one of his kind,
Petronus realized. “You say four took your
Kinshark
,” he said, looking to Rafe. “We saw four others running west. Maybe there are others about.” He thought about it for a moment. “But I don’t think we have the luxury of time to wait for them.”

Something was afoot. He knew it had to be, with the attacks letting up. And certainly, by now, their enemy knew their destination. The current of one strong river pulled them all to this place, and he knew the outcome would be conflict, even though he did not know exactly when that battle might arrive.

“But we should be ready,” he whispered, and then started when he realized he said it aloud. The two men with him said nothing. He passed the glass to Grymlis. “Send in the scouts,” he said. “We need to know every inch of that landscape.”

Grymlis paused before raising the glass to his own eye. “Father, may I be candid?”

Petronus snorted. “When haven’t you been?”

“Why are we here?” There was frustration in the Gray Guard’s voice. “That door looks near impregnable. If your metal men and their antiphon lay beyond that door, an army could not dislodge them. What good is our ratty band?”

Petronus looked away from his friend and took in the scene below yet again. “I was called here,” he said in a quiet voice. “Gods know why, but I was.” He tapped the sack he kept near him now at all times, the roar of the song it held always at the edge of his mind. “Their response to this dream is the salvation of the light.” Even as he said the words, he felt the power of them raising the hair on his arms. “They must not fail at this, Grymlis. I don’t understand it, but I
believe
it.”

The old man regarded him for a moment, then put his eye to the lens. “Then we do what we can,” he said. “But,” he added, “we’ll do better from behind the door than before it, I’ll wager.” Then, he collapsed the telescope and passed it back. “I’ll send the scouts in shifts.”

They crept back from the ridgeline on their hands and knees by habit and made their way back to the makeshift camp at a quick walk. As a fresh batch of scouts applied their powders and vanished at a run, Petronus looked over what was left of their band.

They’d lost nearly half of the Gypsy Scouts and a third of the Gray Guard. Rafe’s crew had fared best, but even they had sustained casualties. But they’d also managed to capture two of the strangely scarred women who hunted the Wastes for Neb and the mechoservitors.

He scanned the camp and saw them, bound to stakes in the shade of an outcropping of jagged stone. They showed no fear, looking bored as they sat silently in their tattered silk uniforms. Rafe had tried his hand at questioning them early after their capture but had gotten nowhere. And Grymlis’s efforts during the short breaks in their forced march had yielded nothing, though the old captain assured Petronus that there were more
persuasive
techniques that could be employed with his leave.

He’d not granted it, of course.

One of the women saw that he was watching, and when her eyes met his, he saw disdain in them. It sparked an anger in him and he banked it, forcing the emotion out of his level stare. He walked to her slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.

“You are not afraid,” he said, “because you know your people are near and you think they will save you.”

“I am not afraid,” she answered, “because I am already saved, Last Son.”

Last Son.
He’d heard this title before, though he did not comprehend it. Petronus crouched beside her, glancing to her companion where she sat testing the knots Rafe’s men had employed. “Your notion of salvation leaves much to be desired.”

She smiled, and when she did, the symbols carved into her face bent
into a surreal mask. She lowered her voice. “I will offer you this once, Last Son. My sisters are coming, and when they do, you will watch them kill every person in this camp, dismantle each of the Abomination’s metal hand servants before you are again set to your exile . . . alone.” She looked away, across the camp, and he followed her gaze until it settled on Grymlis, where he stood conferring with the captain of the scouts. “You care for that one,” she said. “You are friends. I’ve seen you talking to him.” Her eyes returned to his, and he saw hard steel in the deep gray of them. “Bring me my dreamstone and I will see that he is spared the death that approaches.”

Dreamstone.
His mind flashed to the packs in his tent. He’d been through them a dozen times, setting out each of the items he found there and studying them carefully. Copies of battered, well-read gospels in an ancient script he could not read, spare clothing, mess kits and canteens, scout knives and ornate ceremonial cutting blades. And the carved totems—tiny kin-ravens made from a black stone that seemed familiar to him, though he could not connect to the hazy memory they referenced.

He stood slowly from where he crouched. “That,” he said in a calm, measured voice, “is not going to happen.”