Antiphon (32 page)

He blinked, forgetting to sign. “You know him?”

Renard nodded. “I do.” The hands moved again.
He assigned me to the boy’s training.

He forced his own age-gnarled fingers into an uncomfortable alphabet.
Training for what?

But Renard ignored him. “I can get him out,” he said. “I will need a dozen of yon Gypsy Scouts and magicks for myself and the boy.” He looked to the lieutenant, his face sober. “You will lose men,” he said, “but to take any more would leave you precariously shorthanded for your return to the Wall.” The officer nodded, and Renard glanced at Petronus. “As it is, if they bring reinforcements to bear, they will likely run you down before you make D’Anjite’s Bridge.” The line of his jaw was tight. “You will not be able to hold your own against them.”

Petronus swallowed. The bridge lay just four days behind them. That was not far at all. “We’ll have to hold them,” he said.

When he said it, he felt the full conviction of his words, and it gave him pause. He could remember meeting the boy, Neb, his hair freshly whitened by the Desolation of Windwir, his tongue commandeered by the madness of Xhum Y’Zir’s spell. He remembered watching him move through that tragedy, watching it temper the boy’s strength of character. Certainly he’d known the boy was odd. He still remembered the dream Neb had of the Marsh King riding south—a dream that came true, much like his dream of proclaiming Petronus’s renewed papacy there in the ruins of Windwir. And he remembered with a stab of shame the day he excommunicated Neb from the Order so that Neb would not interfere with Petronus’s plans to shut down their backward dreaming once and for all. He’d spent enough time with the boy to love him as if he were a son, but now something larger than those paternal feelings pulled at him like gravity.

We have to hold our own against them.
Because saving Neb meant something far more vast than Petronus had realized, though he did not comprehend why it was so or how he had come to believe it so strongly.

The survival of the light depended upon it.

Confident that she wasn’t followed, Jin Li Tam slowed in her run. The magicks bent her stomach—it had been some time since she’d used them. And the heightened senses overpowered her. She could hear her heart pounding and could smell the frozen earth beneath the snow.

She’d found Aedric’s note on her pillow—a message tied into a long strand of hair from her brush. Excusing herself from lunch under the
pretense of a headache, she’d magicked herself and slipped out her window, careful to keep her feet within the footprints of others as she sped into the forest.

When she reached the designated place, she clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth and heard Aedric’s reply.

She felt his hand upon her shoulder.
Lady Tam.

She took his hand and pressed words into it.
What have you found?

I will show you. But go safely and silently with me.

Before she could reply, he’d looped a running line around her wrist and pulled it tight. She started to struggle but then thought better of it, seeing that it was a savvy decision on his part. He had no way of knowing her level of scouting experience. And after a year away from the powders, she might welcome the aid.

They ran the forest, zigzagging their way north and east, their feet whispering over the snow, here and there kicking up the faintest bit of powder. At key points, Aedric clicked his tongue and she heard the distant reply as posted guards acknowledged their first captain and queen’s passing.

They ran for an hour before finding another path—this one bearing them eastward. As she stretched her legs, she felt Aedric picking up his own pace. When she found herself overtaking him, she fell back and matched his pace.

But not without first being certain he knew she could more than keep up.

They approached an open swath of land and Aedric slowed. They stopped at the edge of the forest, and she looked out on a clearing. On the far side, she saw the mouth of a cave.

She felt Aedric’s hand on her shoulder again.
This is the bird station. We pulled back and waited. We didn’t have to wait long. Watch.

She crouched and watched. From deep in the cave, she heard a humming and hissing. It whispered like a beehive until finally, a clacking form stepped out of the cave, light hitting those parts of its dark metal surface not covered by its plain black robe.

The metal man raised a silver flute to its lips and blew, watching the skies with emerald-glowing eyes. The notes tickled her eardrums, but she felt them more than heard them. She was unable to take her eyes off the mechoservitor. It stood tall and thin, made of a dark ironlike metal pitted with time, and when it walked, it moved with a liquid grace that flowed across the snow.

She’d spent a great deal of time with Isaak and his generation of
metal men. She’d also seen the previous generation—the one Sethbert had made sing while she and Rudolfo danced that first day they met. She saw similarity in all three, but this one—so much older than Charles’s reproductions—was clearly superior in its design. It moved slowly, though she did not doubt for a minute that it could move faster than any magicked scout.

For a moment, she crouched and blinked, her mind spinning with this new data. She’d seen a few mechanicals left over from the Age of the Wizard Kings and from the shadowy times of Rufello during the age previous to their reign. But this even surpassed those imitations of the Younger Gods’ handiwork.

The metal man tucked its flute into a pocket on the robe and turned back to the cave. Jin felt Aedric’s hand upon her again.
It uses the whistle to divert birds. We’re not sure how.

She placed her hand upon his.
This explains how our codes continue to be broken.
Even now, Isaak’s mechoservitors were creating new codes that were being deciphered just as quickly as they were issued.

The metal man paused at the cave entrance, then looked over its shoulder. When it spoke, its voice was melodic and low, though it carried easily across the distance. “Great Mother,” it said, “you do not need to hide with the others. I have tea inside and would be honored if you would join me.”

Jin Li Tam held her breath, unsure for a moment if the metal man had truly spoken to her or if it was some unexpected side effect of the magicks she used. The voice was so matter-of-fact, so casual.

An invitation for tea.

The metal man turned now, fully facing the line of trees where they hid. “Queen Winteria’s vow certainly holds true here, Great Mother. Your safety is assured, and I’m certain you have questions about all you’ve read and seen of late.” The metal man paused, as if in thought, then continued. “Your first captain and his men are not assured the same safety, I’m afraid, as they have no doubt already surmised.”

She did not doubt the mechoservitor’s words. Several times over the course of the past two years, she’d seen clearly that somehow she and Rudolfo and their child were excluded from the brutal violence that surrounded them. At least until the explosion—which clearly had not been driven by the Y’Zirites.

And the metal man spoke correctly: She was made of questions, and if he offered answers, it behooved her to seek them. Even if she suspected those answers, ultimately.

She started to stand, slipping the running line from her wrist, and felt Aedric’s firm grip upon her shoulder.

She could feel the tension in the firmness of his fingers as they pressed words into her skin.
You can’t possibly—

She shrugged off his hand, her voice low and thick from the magicks. “I can,” she said. “Wait here with your men.”

She stood to her full height and strode into the clearing. Despite her magicks, the mechoservitor’s head followed her as she went.

He sees past the powders.
And as if to confirm it, the metal man spoke. “Great Mother, it gladdens me to see you after so many years of longing for your day.”

She walked to him, no longer guarding her steps. “I am Jin Li Tam of House Li Tam, queen of the Ninefold Forest. Who are you?”

As she drew closer, she saw now even more clearly the effect of time on the dark metal surface, patches of spiderwebbed fungus, pockmarks and pits and faint scratches on the unfamiliar steel. The joints were less pronounced, and its form was more slender than the others. Its age was obvious, and she suspected strongly that she was witnessing a marvel from the oldest times—a leftover from the age of the Younger Gods.

“I am called the Watcher,” the metal man said.

Jin Li Tam stopped before it. “What do you watch, Watcher?”

And at that, the metal man smiled, and it chilled her blood to see such raw emotion on a face that should not be capable of expression. “I watch all of you,” it said. “But I have especially watched for
your
coming, Great Mother, and the coming of your son, Jakob.” The Watcher turned and walked into the cave, the hum and buzz of his movement somehow soothing to her. “And in this particular moment,” the metal man added, “I’ve a teakettle to watch. I put it on once I knew you were coming.”

I was expected.
Jin Li Tam looked over her shoulder. She could not see the Gypsy Scouts where they hid there in the shadow of the tree line, but she knew they watched her. And she knew that Aedric no doubt fumed at her decision.

He wasn’t wrong to do so. Certainly her experience so far lent her confidence of safety in this place. Still, even now, she felt a kind of fear—one she’d not been familiar with previously.

A fear of the unknown.

With the sound of the Watcher already fading ahead of her in the narrow cave, Jin Li Tam brushed aside her momentary doubt and followed quickly after.

Outside the cave, a low wind moaned through the canyon. Rudolfo sipped his firespice, feeling the warmth it made as it moved from his mouth to his stomach.

He’d taken to spending his days here near the ladder when he could, occupying a table in the corner of the cave. He found the low buzz of conversation and the steady whisper of the mechoservitors’ pens strangely comforting as he read over reports that were days old before they reached him in the far north of his Ninefold Forest.

His own intelligence officers had been busy in the southern nations, but at each step, they were outcrafted by what he assumed must be the Y’Zirite resurgence’s quiet operatives. They’d arrived at Lord Cervael’s estate on the Emerald Coasts, tracing Jarvis through Rothmir to that place, only to find the minor noble missing. Rudolfo wondered if his wife would be called upon to execute this man as well, and found himself wondering if she would again do what needed to be done.

It alarmed him to discover that he was divided in his opinions on the matter. One part celebrated the swift and ruthless judgment; another knew that they could do this for decades and still be no safer for it.

Because the knives would simply beget more knives.
It was a simple equation.

And yet,
he thought as he took another drink,
I wish my hand were upon that blade.

He heard a distant bell ringing from far below and pushed himself back from the table. One of the mechoservitors stood and went to the pulley crank, turning it with ease as it lifted a cage of tools and equipment for cleaning and inspection. After unloading it quickly, the mechoservitor lowered it and brought it up again, this time full of dirt-smeared packs.

Soon after, the first of Rudolfo’s scouts appeared, climbing wearily over the lip of the shaft to strip down from their wet, filthy uniforms and wrap themselves in thick wool blankets.

Tyrus, a middle-aged miner from Rudoheim, was the last of the group to climb up. After he’d passed his satchel of papers over to the waiting mechoservitor and wrapped himself in a blanket, he approached Rudolfo.

Rudolfo pointed to the bottle of firespice and at the man’s nod, filled a wooden cup with the thick liquor and pushed it to him. “How was this foray?”

Tyrus sipped the drink. “Good,” he said. But something on the man’s face and in the tone of his voice told Rudolfo that
good
was a relative statement in this matter. “We mapped another two hundred leagues farther south.”

Two hundred leagues.
That put them roughly halfway to the Seventh Manor—five days by caravan or two by horseback if the roads were reasonably clear. Rudolfo shook his head in wonder.

Tyrus nodded. “I’ve worked in the ground my whole life and never imagined there could be such a Whymer Maze beneath our forest.” He took another drink and looked around the room, then lowered his voice. “But I do not think we’re alone down there.”

There it is.
Rudolfo saw it in the man’s eyes now. Fear like a low-grade fever burning behind those bloodshot whites, weighing down the brows and crow’s feet around them. Rudolfo raised own glass to his lips. He felt the fire making its way into him. “The mechoservitors went west,” he said, “but I don’t think you are referring to them.”

Tyrus shook his head. “No, Lord. I don’t know what I’m referring to exactly. But we hear things. And we’ve seen boot prints that are not so very old.”

Rudolfo felt his eyebrows raising. “Boot prints?” He was forming the rest of his question when a distant whistling from outside interrupted.