Requiem (19 page)

Vlad made sure the girl was safely tucked behind him. “I have no intention of doing otherwise,” he said. Then, he offered a smile that was not returned.

Sister Agnes and Sister-Mother Drusilla stepped aside, their voices low and their hands moving in some kind of code he could not read as they conferred quickly. When they finished, Drusilla turned to the captain. “This man is in the custody of the Daughters,” she said, “for violation of holy writ and interfering with the redemptive work of House Y’Zir.”

Vlad’s smile widened. “I am my own custodian,” he said. Then, he nodded to the girl behind him. “And I am her custodian as well.”

Now it was the woman’s turn to smile; it started as a chuckle. “She was spoken for millennia before her birth, stranger. Who are you to steal from Y’Zir’s sheepfold?”

“I am the one who made her whole.”

The woman shook her head. “You may think you have, but it is not true.” There were more words exchanged between her and Sister Agnes; then she glanced at the staff before meeting his eyes. “You bear a curious artifact,” she said. “How did you come by it? And how do you come to be here?”

“Love led me to the staff, and murder placed it in my hands,” he said, unsure of where these words suddenly came from as they rang out from him. “And within the belly of a beast, I came to your shores in search of the Barrens of Espira.”

“You are a long way past the Barrens now, stranger.” Her brow furrowed, and it made the scars upon her forehead all the more menacing. “And why exactly have you interfered in the redemption of this woman and our world?”

Vlad stared at her. “Because she suffered and I could.” Even he did not understand the why of it. It was as if some deeper instinct moved in him now, uncoiling a part of his own heart that until now he’d not comprehended.

“Not all suffering should be healed,” the woman said. “I bid you return her to us now that she might complete her work.”

Vlad shook his head. “I’ll not return her,” he said. “But perhaps I can offer you something better.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “And what could you offer us?”

The staff came up within his hand as if it had a will of its own. Three times, he stuck it upon the ground, and on the third time, there was a collective gasp as Drusilla, Agnes and the others that surrounded him fell to the ground. Vlad reached behind him and took the girl’s hand. “Look away,” he whispered.

Now they writhed in the dust as sores broke out upon those bits of skin that were exposed. Clawing hands tore out loose fistfuls of hair as their tongues swelled up from dehydration, choking off their cries of agony. Vlad watched them and felt the tension in the girl’s hand as she squeezed his.

Others, hearing the commotion, raced into the courtyard and fell, themselves, to writhe and scream.

Vlad counted slowly, intending to go for a full five minutes. But a quiet voice behind him interrupted.

“Please, Lord,” the Vessel of Grace said. “No more.”

He released held breath and raised his own voice. “You now suffer the afflictions she once bore. Tell me about its saving work in you. Tell me that you wish it to continue, that somehow it benefits you or this world.”

The cries were whimpers now.

“What I give you,” he said in a quieter voice, “is understanding.”

Then Vlad Li Tam tapped the staff thrice more and waited for his new hosts and hostesses to rise from the dust of their past suffering and arrange the next leg of a journey he still could not fully comprehend.

Chapter

10

Charles

Hunched over his saddle, Charles blessed the cold winter wind and begged it to keep him awake.

They’d ridden west for days and had started running into Machtvolk patrols soon after. They’d even seen at least a battalion’s-worth of cavalry riding south toward a horizon smudged with a hazy wall of distant smoke. Twice, the patrols had stopped them, demanding their names, where they were from, where they were going. But they seemed to be intent about other business, and Charles’s story about a grandfather escorting his displaced granddaughter home wasn’t questioned. Charles suspected it was actually a fairly common occurrence with recent events and the massive influx of refugees he’d seen during his stay in the Ninefold Forest.

And so they’d continued on.

The rocking of the horse soothed him, and he nodded again. Even in that split second, he found himself spinning away.

He moved through an evergreen forest now, the girl walking beside him, her shorter legs pumping furiously to keep up his long metal stride. “Where are we going?”

Charles didn’t answer. He was scanning the forest, and he’d felt the tickle of something in his skull. “I am uncertain of
my
destination, little human. Your destination is not my concern. You should return home to your family. I do not need—” He stopped, saw the movement ahead and knew in an instant it was three Machtvolk on horseback—half of a squad.

And he did not know why, but the first thing Charles did was grab up the girl into his strong metal arms before sprinting north and away.

Light swallowed him, and on the heels of that light he felt the pain of his back hitting the ground. Charles lay still in the muddy snow and blinked.

Winters turned her horse and started to dismount.

“Don’t,” Charles said, holding up a hand. Then, he forced himself onto his hands and knees and climbed slowly to his feet.

The girl paused, worry clouding her face. “It’s happening a lot,” she said.

He grabbed the bridle of his mare and huffed one foot into a stirrup. Pulling himself up, he melted into the saddle. “Every time I fall asleep. I’m either with it or with its dreams. Only…”

Only the Watcher was a ruthless, brutal machine.
And this one—despite its similarities—was different. It seemed burdened, even sad, as it fled east. And it protected the girl as it did. When it waited for the girl to sleep, its dreams were riddled with violence and haunted by a melody that Charles recognized.

These seemed nothing like the Watcher. He’d only known one other mechoservitor anything like the one he experienced in his dreams, and Charles dared not let himself hope for a moment that it was him.

Those we lose are lost.

But his heart pulled toward it like a wagon wheel to a rut.

Winters watched him, her brow furrowed. “And you’re certain you don’t want the kallacaine?”

He shook his head. “No. It muddles me.”

They nudged their horses forward, and Charles realized that he was taking the lead, adjusting their course instinctively.
It is as if I’m being led.

They rode on in silence, the landscape becoming more and more wooded as they did. Windwir was near now—but Charles intended to skirt it. The Machtvolk—possibly the Y’Zirites, too—were excavating it. He’d seen items from his own workshop in the Watcher’s cave and suspected that the plague spiders that had destroyed Pylos had somehow been resurrected from ancient eggs he’d stored in a Rufello vault with other dangerous leftovers of the Old World and the Wizard Kings who ruled it.

Something silver flashed by, low and near the ground. Turning in the saddle, Charles tried to follow it, but it was already twisting, turning and changing course. Still, he knew what it was and what to do.

Reining his horse in, he lifted his right hand and extended a finger. Winters pulled alongside of him, watching.

The moon sparrow landed easily, its gears whirring as its tiny metal feet clutched at his finger. It chirped twice, and then its mouth opened. Charles expected a metallic voice to whisper out and was surprised when it wasn’t. “Arch-engineer Charles,” the voice said, “the light requires your service. I am Arch-behaviorist Hebda of the Office for the Preservation of the Light. I must meet with you. I bear urgent information regarding the mechoservitors of Sanctorum Lux and the Y’Zirite mechoservitor designated Watcher. I require your assistance.” Then, the man’s voice was gone and the metal voice Charles had expected now spoke, whispering a string of numbers. When it finished, the bird ruffled its tiny silver feathers, closed its beak, then cocked its head and opened its beak again, waiting for Charles to speak.

“Message acknowledged,” he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, visualizing a map of the region and placing the coordinates he’d been given. “I will be there tomorrow morning.”

Closing its beak, the small bird leaped from his finger and sped away, low to the ground. He watched it until he could see it no longer, then became aware of Winters staring at him. He turned to her. “Moon sparrow,” he said. “They are an ancient mechanical. The Order kept a small flock on hand—they are the only birds we know of that are effective in the Churning Wastes.”

She nodded. “And the man who spoke to you … He said his name was Hebda. I know that name.”

Charles didn’t. He’d known there were secret offices and suspected that much of his work had been in service to them without his knowledge. He’d accepted it as part of his calling to serve the light, and even now, he did not question for a moment the present call. He would certainly go. “I am not familiar with an Arch-behaviorist Hebda,” he said.

“Neb’s Marshfolk name is Nebios ben Hebda,” she said. “His father was Hebda, and I cannot imagine it is a common name.”

“No,” Charles agreed, “it is not.”

Now her face darkened. “But Neb’s father was killed at Windwir. He left Neb to tend their wagon so he could fetch letters that had been left behind. He was in the city when it fell.”

Of course, Orius and his Gray Guard were supposedly in Windwir as well, but Charles and Isaak had stumbled upon a scouting party of Androfrancine Gray Guard in the Beneath Places. A remnant remained, though he had no way of knowing just how strong their numbers were or how exactly they’d managed to escape Windwir’s desolation.

I will know soon enough,
he suspected. He nudged the horse forward. “Well, it seems this Hebda’s somehow cheated death.”

Winters said nothing, but her eyes danced with the same hope that Charles struggled to crush in the cradle of his heart. Still, with each league that they rode, he found that struggle more and more a losing battle, and when the sun finally set at the end of another day in the saddle, he found himself longing for sleep and the dreams it would bring.

Because in those dreams, somehow Isaak lived and searched for his father even as Charles searched for his lost metal son.

Neb

The sound of his breathing and pulse slowed around the steady slap of water against the hull, and Neb savored the landscape of his opening mind as he settled deeper and deeper into himself.

He could taste the salt of the warm breeze on his lips and could smell the spider’s musky scent where it knelt nearby, but he could also smell the others—the sweat of the sailors and the grease and metal of the mechoservitors mingled with the odor of Petronus’s fish.

“Good,” Aver-Tal-Ka said. “You are achieving calm faster. What do you feel?”

Neb kept his eyes closed. “I feel my breath and pulse slowing. As they slow, I’m sensing more. Mostly smells.” He cocked his head and listened. He heard the whisper of turning gears and spinning scrolls. And the spider’s heart, also beating slowly. “I can hear, too.”

Yes. You are finding your way toward who you are.

They’d spent much of their time aboard the ship together, and Neb’s head hurt from much of it. Still, the Builder Warrior had held back, doling out information with the care of an Androfrancine. “In time,” he told the boy, “you’ll know everything.”

He’d pushed at first, but the spider was an unmovable wall. Still, he’d learned a great deal, and it boggled him. Everything, Aver-Tal-Ka said, had indeed been made to serve Neb and the People he belonged to, those Neb had grown up regarding as gods. The Younger Gods, they called them—an entire people and their civilization now lost to mythology. But at one time, the spider told him, they’d made their home both here upon the moon and on the world that it orbited. Their cities and gardens and forests and farms had covered both. This much Neb had already known based on the scraps of writings left over from the Oldest World, stories that were legends in the Age of the Weeping Czars, several millennia before the Age of the Wizard Kings.

But the Downunder War—this was new. There had been conflict between the Younger Gods and their children, and the parents were eventually forced to retreat to the moon or hide themselves in the Beneath Places where they slept—much as his father Whym and Amylé’s father, D’Anjite, had done. And they would’ve stayed hidden upon the moon but for that first Y’Zir, the Downunder thief who’d tricked them out of their Firsthome Temple and made their extinction his life’s ambition.

You are losing focus.
The spider’s voice startled him.

“There’s … so much to understand.”

“Yes. And so much more than you realize.” The spider chuckled, and it was a chilling sound. “Once you’ve unsealed the temple, you’ll also have the Library of Elder Days to incorporate into your learning.”

An image came with the words—a vast white cavern scattered with trees bearing gems that hung like fruit, shining out a rainbow of colors that stung Neb’s eye.

Millions of years of knowledge.
It staggered him, dwarfing what until now had been the largest repository of knowledge he could conceive of—the Great Library that had fallen with Windwir. He wondered what Petronus would think of it, and the moment the old man’s face crossed his mind, he sensed the spider’s hesitation.

What is your …
Neb stretched for the word but couldn’t find it.

I am concerned only for your well-being, Lord Whym.

Neb scowled, mindful of the old man who worked his fishing net aft of them.
Why does Petronus concern you?

Aver-Tal-Ka paused, its mandibles chittering.
Perhaps “concern” is too strong a word. But these things I share with you—and those things that will come later—they are for you. They are for the People and none other. The children of the People have cast aside their birthright. They chased their parents to the moon and chose the Downunder for themselves. They cheered when Y’Zir made himself strong on the blood of their parents and took the temple for himself.