Antiphon (38 page)

The nights were a warm wind and a hard ride upon the bony shoulders of the tenacious man who bore him. The days were a tossing and sweating in the grips of a fever that would not break. Underlying all of it, Neb heard the song fading and spun through dreams he could not comprehend beyond whispered noise and shifting light.

An ocean of moonlight and a white tower stretching far into the night. Metal men at sea and beneath the ground. All of these images danced together with scattered memories that intruded, unbidden. A pillar of fire in the sky as the pain of a city’s death racked his body. Ships casting off the piers of Windwir only to burn as they sank. The weight of his father’s arm around his shoulders in the park.

The images chased him into intermittent sleep, and only the briefest moments of clarity—moments he clawed at for purchase—visited him. Those were the times that he croaked out words too difficult to form in a mouth too dry to hold them.

Still, Renard ran and the smell of the root was strong on him.

He is overusing it,
some vague inner voice told Neb. But his fevered brain would not unlock enough for him to remember what that meant.

“We’re nearly there, lad,” the wiry Waste runner told him between ragged gasps as they took water someplace west of D’Anjite’s Bridge.

His mouth wet, Neb struggled for a word—a name—and found it. “Petronus?”

Renard shook his head. “Those plans changed some days ago.” There was concern in the man’s voice and upon his face, and Neb suddenly wondered how long exactly they’d been running without scout magicks. “You need more aid than he can offer, and his help is needed elsewhere.”

Then, they ran again until the sun rose, red and angry, behind them to cast bloody light upon the shattered lands. This time, they
ran into the day, and somehow Renard drew even more strength and stamina and speed from the root he chewed, pressing on through the shimmering heat.

They ran until a flash of silver brought the Waste guide to a sudden stop. Neb blinked and wondered if this was part of the dreaming, the small sparrow made of a silver so polished that it reflected its surroundings, nearly indistinguishable from the outcropping of rock it perched on.

“Brother Renard,” the silver bird said, “our eyes are upon you now. North forty leagues and west one hundred. You will be met.” It was a familiar voice he could not place, and it sounded far away.

“Reply function,” Renard said, catching his breath, and Neb thought the bird cocked its head as if listening. “Message acknowledged. The boy is not well.” He hesitated. “I suspect I’m not well, either.”

And then they ran again.

The time passed and Neb lost all sense of it. As day became night, he saw faint splashes of silver moving quickly across the sky, and it seemed as if those fluttering wings moved between the throbbing stars scattered across the moonless canopy that covered them.

When the sun rose again, they stood in the center of a ruined city with the Keeper’s Wall dominating their western horizon. Renard stretched Neb out upon the fused glass floor, and Neb groaned at the pain of it. The cuts that covered him had been a dull ache, but as the kallacaine wore off they became a blazing fire. And the pain-killing powders could not touch the fever or the deep ache in his bones. He shuddered.

He forced his eyes open and toward the man who’d carried him. Renard was bent over, his hands on his knees, gasping and choking for wind. A spasm took the man and he coughed, and Neb saw blood on his lips before he wiped it away with a shaking hand.

There was the faintest whisper of a breeze and a muffled voice materialized nearby. “You made it.”

Renard continued coughing while he nodded.

Neb felt cool hands sliding beneath him—at least four of them—and he felt himself gently lifted and moved into a cloth hammock. “We’ll carry him from here, Brother.”

A finger moved along his lips, and when he opened his mouth, he tasted the bitterness of scout magicks. “Not long now, boy. But we need to hide you a bit longer.”

It was the slightest dose—closer to the amount the Gypsy Scouts
used on their new recruits to gradually introduce them to the powerful magicks. Still, Neb felt it take hold first in his stomach and then as a tingling upon his skin.

Once more they ran, and this time Neb fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Or at least it was dreamless for what seemed the longest of spans.

But somewhere in the midst of it, he dreamed their running had finally stopped and that he was borne through winding tunnels of rainbow-colored glass into a small cavern. There in the center of the cavern lay a hatch much like the one where he’d found the silver crescent and the dream it sang. And gathered around that hatch was a huddled squad of Androfrancine Gray Guard who looked up when he was carried into their midst.

And in his dream, that squad of soldiers parted to reveal a gaunt man with a worried face who leaped to embrace Renard and kiss him hard upon the mouth, then moved quickly to crouch at Neb’s side.

“Oh my son,” Brother Hebda said, tears coursing his cheeks. “What have I done to you?”

It was a good dream, Neb thought, though he did not understand it. Still, he smiled as sleep once more carried him into a dark and empty space.

Winters put down her pencil and started the work of collating last night’s dreams into the pages of her leather-bound gospel. Outside, a steady snow fell and she could hear the wind as it moved over the eaves of Ria’s large house.

There had been a message even this morning, shoved hastily beneath the door.
I’m sorry, little sister; I am required elsewhere.
Winters hadn’t minded having her morning walk with Ria canceled again. The conversations were less and less helpful, and as much as she wanted to pay attention to Ria’s words, to grab what insight she could from her sister’s beliefs and somehow use it to aid her own work, she found that her mind wandered into the images that filled her inner eye each night.

She yawned, feeling the exhaustion that soaked her through and through.

The dreams were stronger now. Much stronger. Though Neb was no longer in them. She’d lost him days and days ago. Still, the metal men continued to share those dreams now in his place. They fed upon the Book, hidden deep in dark caves beneath her feet. They watched an ocean swell with moonlight and song beneath white pillars and a silver moon. They scampered across scaffolds draped in fishing nets and evergreen boughs.

They danced to the ocean’s song in a circle at the top of the white tower.

And Isaak danced with them.

Winters put the final page into the book and then went to her wardrobe to pull out clean doeskin trousers and a thick woolen shirt. She stripped out of her shift and dressed quickly. The snow was too deep for knife dancing now in the clearing by the creek, and they’d taken to practicing indoors—though lately Jin Li Tam had been nearly as occupied as Ria. She’d gone off over a week ago with Aedric, and when she’d returned, her face was pale and her eyes were troubled. Still, the woman had said nothing of what she’d seen.

And Winters would not ask. After all, she herself had her own secrets. The voice magicks hidden in her room, the dreams she recorded and dropped daily for placement in the Book by those hidden loyalists within Ria’s army.

She pulled two pairs of socks onto her feet, followed by a pair of sturdy boots, and gathered up the heavy parka and gloves that hung near her bedroom door. Then, she slipped into the hallway and made her way toward the entrance.

The captain of the watch stood by the door with a handful of guards. A lone Gypsy Scout stood nearby. The officer was familiar to her, and she smiled. “I am going to walk and meditate,” she said.

The captain’s eyes went to the book beneath her arm, and he nodded. “As you wish, Lady. I will find you an escort.” He vanished down the hall, and Winters’s eyes went to the Gypsy Scout.

He stood quietly apart from the others, the rainbow colors of his well-worn winter woolen uniform starkly contrasting against the new and ill-fitting dark uniforms of the Machtvolk. The scout returned her stare quietly, his brown eyes hard and his mouth a grim line on his unreadable face. She looked away and he started pulling on his coat and boots.

When the captain returned, a young guard followed behind him. “See her safely on her walk,” the officer said. There was something in the way the officer looked at her that gave her pause, and she sensed unspoken words between the two of them.

She slipped into the cold predawn morning and noticed immediately the difference. This guard did not trail behind as the others had but stayed near her, just as Garyt had done. She set out for the trail, and when she staggered from the deepening snow, his hand shot out
to steady her. When he gripped her shoulder she felt the words he pressed there.

Garyt has need of you at the door.

She looked to him quickly, then glanced to the Gypsy Scout behind them, wondering if he’d seen. Winters said nothing; instead, she turned in the path and made her way up the hill to what had once been her home.

She climbed in silence and finally saw Garyt’s outline through the falling snow. The wind lessened its moaning, though she still felt the bite as it worked its way into the gaps in her clothing. Winters approached the soldier and immediately saw that something was wrong. Despite his best effort, Garyt’s face was dark. He swallowed when he saw the book beneath her arm, then looked to the Gypsy Scout. “Whistle him in closer,” he said. “Something has happened.”

Until now, Winters had not needed the whistle Aedric had taught her. Puckering her lips, she blew three bars quietly and saw the scout pick up his pace to slip in next to her, hands upon his knives. “My lady?” he inquired.

Winters nodded to Garyt, who spoke in a low voice. “Our queen is needed elsewhere. I need you to be scarce until she returns.”

The scout shook his head. “I am under strict orders. She doesn’t leave my sight.”

Garyt sighed and looked around again, his brow furrowed. Finally, he sighed. “Fine. But you observe only. You do not interfere or I will kill you myself.”

The scout chuckled. “You might try, Marsh pup.”

The guard’s jaw was firm when he nodded. He turned to Winters. “You are required in the Cavern of the Book, my queen.”

She started. “Required by whom?”

But Garyt said nothing. Instead, he turned and worked the locks in the door. Then, he cracked it open and gestured her inside. Passing his keys to the younger guard, he followed and motioned for the Gypsy Scout to do the same. Winters watched the Forester, looking for some sign of emotion upon his face other than grim resolution, but if he felt anything, he masked it well.

“We do not have much time,” Garyt said as he took down a lantern and lit it. When it cast its light and made its shadows, he set out at a brisk pace, and Winters stretched her legs to keep up with him.

The caves were cold now, and she could smell the dust that had
gathered in the months they’d lain unoccupied and under guard. They passed through the throne room with its wicker chair and its meditation bust of P’Andro Whym before slipping into one of the many narrow corridors that wound their way down into the deeper places.

Their footfalls echoed down the caves as they walked without talking. Certainly, the questions chewed at her as her mind spun the dials and worked the levers of this newest Rufello lock. But as they walked, a possibility began to dawn on her—one that she struggled to believe despite the truth her dreams so frequently carried.

What if they truly were here?
She thought of those metal teeth working the paper amid the clack and whir of gears and memory scrolls, and then she knew of a certainty that she was on her way now to meet them. She turned to Garyt. “There are four of them . . . right?”

His brow furrowed, and he slowed in his pace. “How do you know this?”

Winters swallowed. “I’ve seen them in the dreams. Surely you’ve read them?”

He blanched and picked up his pace. “I would never do that,” he said.

It made sense to her. Seamus, his grandfather, was of the older ways. A more brutal time, when any intruder caught in the Cavern, Marshfolk or not, would be hung. But she had granted Tertius, the scholar who’d tutored her, open access. And had even discussed the dreams openly with some of her Council of Twelve.

“I dreamed of them,” she said again. “They wore robes and were eating the Book of Dreaming Kings.”

Garyt did not answer.

They continued their descent in silence, the corridors twisting and turning as they went, the floors covered with thick rugs—plundered from border villages—now layered in dust. It evoked a homesickness in her that she had not expected, sharper because so far, nothing in her former homeland had been the same. The forests above them had filled with shrines and schools and uniformed soldiers. Her people followed a new faith. Everything else had changed, but her caves were largely the same as she’d left them. She suddenly missed a time she knew she’d never see again.

Winters sighed.

Finally, they approached the closed doors that marked the entrance to the Cavern of the Book. Garyt opened the door and motioned
Winters to follow him inside. She heard the Gypsy Scout step in behind them and close the door.