Antiphon (15 page)

More importantly, they’d seen him. And if this girl spoke the truth, they wanted him to help them find the metal dreamers.

He put the wrapped image away and thought for a moment about pulling out the plain box and the silver crescent that lay within it. The moon was up, and the canticle would be clear. He could taste the code buried in that song, could feel the equations and formulas within the numbers it hid. He knew it lay there, ancient and beguiling, and that somehow the mechoservitors had found a dream within it.

The metal dreamers.

The idea of the metal men dreaming intrigued him. He’d spent a good deal of time with Isaak during their early days at the Seventh Forest Manor. He’d found him different from the others, somehow set apart after his experience with the blood magicks at Windwir. Of all his kind, Isaak seemed the most advanced, and Neb had watched fascinated as the metal man became more and more human each day.

He had passed Isaak the scroll from Sanctorum Lux, and he believed that it was a copy of the metal dream. He wondered if the metal man had run the script. If he had, what had he seen?

And what about it brings these strangely carved women, hunting us in the Wastes?

His eyes went back to the box, and he glanced to the sleeping girl. He craved the song in its fullness, but knew if he used the crescent, the woman might hear it as well. And he could not trust her. Not yet. Certainly she’d seemed sincere in her effort to convince him to flee. And he believed her—believed his own ears, having heard them say so—that her sisters hunted him. Some small voice in the back of his head assured him that he did not want to be found by them.

Still, how could he leave?

It was a question for another time because there
was
time. Tomorrow, he would check her wounds and reassess.

He closed his eyes and called up a map of the Wastes by memory and recalled what geography he’d seen when he saw and heard the Blood Scouts. The closest had been the one at the well—at least a week by the root. But he could not be certain that the blood magicks didn’t cut that time drastically. Regardless, there was time. He could not afford to panic.

“Panic,” Renard had told him again and again, “is the Waste’s swiftest killer.”

They do because of what you are.

Her words were cryptic. How or why anyone could see him as an abomination eluded him, but nothing he’d experienced these past two years had made any kind of sense. Rationally or not, it was happening.
Even his very father—dead now these two years—had cast his own warning.

Neb shook his head and moved his focus to the song. He could hear the crescent in its lockbox, and again he resisted the urge to open it and cradle it against his ear.

Outside, the kin-wolves broke their silence and bayed as the swollen stars guttered overhead. The canticle was indeed loud tonight.

Settling into his dark corner, thorn rifle laid carefully across his knees, Neb watched the night and listened for the dream beneath each note.

They burned bonfires in the courtyard to illuminate the rubble, and Rudolfo paced and cursed as the rescuers dug the last survivors and bodies from the wreckage.

He stung from a dozen cuts and burns; he ached from the same number of bruises. His right arm hung broken in a sling, and his stomach clenched and unclenched as rage and anguish washed through him.

Be alive.

Twice, he’d tried to move past the Gypsy Scouts set to keep him from the wreckage. Both times, their hands upon his chest had been enough to subdue him, though the first time he’d raised fist to them before he caught himself.

Be alive,
he willed again.

Once more his mind veered into that place he could not bear it to go. His first thought was of them when he first stirred to wakefulness in the medico tent, and he’d felt the world shift and slide when Aedric, battered, burned and bleeding himself, told him that they still hadn’t found his wife and child. Or Isaak.

How long ago had that been?

Hours.

A white bird flitted back from the blast zone and was caught in the catch net. He’d seen it happen three times now this night and had watched the medicos race out. He heard shouting, and a team set out even now at a sprint, carrying a stretcher between them.

He saw Lysias barking orders to teams of refugees as they moved books by wheelbarrow around to the entrances of the subbasements.
He’d been told that the general’s men had extinguished the flames quickly, forming a bucket brigade within moments of the blast, even as the Gypsy Scouts took up a perimeter and rescuers began pulling out survivors. Of course, he’d been unaware of this, and he still felt the knot on the back of his head. As close as he was to the explosion, he had no idea how he had survived.

He also had no idea how it could have happened. After Ria’s infiltration, he’d doubled the watch. And still, somehow, someone had done this terrible deed. There were over thirty dead now and three times that number of wounded.

And still they dug. The entire roof and front portion of the wing had collapsed in the blast.

I did not listen to her.
Ria had warned him, and he’d not listened. Certainly, some part of him wondered if she herself hadn’t instigated this attack. And yet even as he thought it, he knew it couldn’t be. She would not put him at such risk. Despite everything, she had still spent tremendous resources to concoct Jakob’s cure—and he’d heard the reverence in her tone when she spoke of the Child of Promise, the Great Mother in their gospel. The very book itself lay open upon his desk, and already he’d marked passages that seemed to speak prophetically about his wife and son.

He looked to the pile of rubble, the devastated front third of the wing, and wondered again what kind of device could do this and how it could come to be here, in his forest.

A scout approached at top speed, his rainbow-colored uniform torn and smeared with ash. He inclined his head to Rudolfo and to Aedric, his face lined with worry. “We’ve found the mechoservitor.”

Rudolfo felt his heart race. “Isaak?”

The scout nodded. “He’s . . . nonfunctional.”

Rudolfo’s stomach fell away, and his head suddenly ached. “Nonfunctional?” He glanced to his left, where Charles labored under a makeshift tent, moving between two of the most damaged mechoservitors. Over half had been damaged in the blast, though most superficially. “Take the arch-engineer. Tell him it’s Isaak.”

The scout nodded and took off at a run.

Rudolfo sighed. “Gods,” he muttered.

“Or devils,” Aedric answered. “I have magicked the scouts, and they are scouring both town and forest, General. I’ll wager that Machtvolk bitch has something to do with it.”

Rudolfo shook his head. “I don’t think so, Aedric.”

But who?
Whoever it was, he would find them and—

Another scout approached at full sprint. “We have them, Lord Rudolfo! They’re alive!”

Rudolfo felt the wind go out of him. The world slid away, and his legs went to water. Gravity pulled him down and he went to his knees.
They’re alive.
The building rage slipped from his clenched fist for just a moment, and he felt his face flush as tears threatened. He blinked them away and realized Aedric’s hand was upon his shoulder, firm and much like Gregoric’s had been so many times before.

He heard himself breathing, and each gasp seemed a sob. He swallowed against it and forced himself to his feet. “Take me to them.” He stared at his first captain, his grief suddenly frozen into resolve and anger.

Aedric opened his mouth and closed it. “Yes, General.”

They made their way around the edges and then down a makeshift path through the debris. As they walked, Rudolfo fixed his eyes ahead.

I did not listen. I did not protect them.
It was sharper than any scout knife, and it twisted in him. She’d proven to him how vulnerable he was when she snuck into his forest, into his home, into the very room where he met with her evangelists. Before that, she had sent her kin-raven, beseeching her sister to bear warning to him.

Another path that eluded him.

He found his footing and increased his pace as Aedric guided him by his good arm. Ahead, he saw the men and women gathered around Isaak. The metal man’s head was twisted at an impossible angle, his chest cavity crushed and his left jeweled eye dangling free on gold wire. He felt another sob shake him. Then, he saw them lifting his wailing boy from the ruins, and Rudolfo faltered in his run.

The cry was wrong; it was agonizing pain. And the blood on Jakob’s blankets wrenched Rudolfo at some deep place in himself that he did not know existed until now. He pulled away from Aedric and then sprinted ahead.

Now hands were lifting Jin Li Tam from the rubble, and when she looked to Rudolfo, he saw wild panic and grief upon her face. Two medicos intercepted Rudolfo. “No further, Lord.”

“My son,” he shouted, pushing against them.

“A ruptured eardrum, I’ll wager,” the River Woman told him, placing a hand on his chest. “Lord Rudolfo.”

“I need to see them,” he said.

“They will be fine. They need to be cared for, and you have work to
do.” Her voice was firm and it surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. She’d pulled him from his mother and into the world when she was a younger lass.

Rudolfo looked past her and the medicos. Jin was being forced into a stretcher, her hands stretched out for Jakob. The River Woman followed his eye. “Give the child to his mother—she’ll better soothe him until we can get the powders on him.” She gave the Gypsy King another stern look and went back to her waiting work.

Rudolfo looked to Isaak. Charles had arrived and was running his hands over the metal man’s chassis and head, checking the limbs. He saw the matter-of-fact manner with which he did his work and marveled at it.
If I were to look at it as such,
Rudolfo thought,
how would I behave now?

He pondered for a moment and looked up to Aedric. “Bring Lysias over,” he said.

Aedric gave him a puzzled look but heeded. He whistled to a scout and sent him careening through the rubble. Rudolfo knew the younger man wanted to ask—his father, Gregoric, most likely
would
have asked. And would’ve privately let Rudolfo know in clear words his opinions on the matter.

I miss you, Gregoric.
Still, he saw his fallen friend in the face of Gregoric’s son, and he knew that the father’s strength was in Aedric.

Rudolfo looked to Aedric now. “How long to muster the West Brigade of the Wandering Army?”

Aedric’s eyebrows furrowed. “A day, maybe two.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Good. You’ll call them up tonight after I speak with the two of you.”

Even as he said it, Lysias approached. The general’s eyes were filled with worry and red from smoke. “Lord Rudolfo? Are they safe, then?”

Rudolfo shook his head. “None of us is safe, Lysias.” He paused. “
General
Lysias.”

He saw the look of surprise in the old soldier’s eyes. “Lord?”

“Swear fealty to me and mine, General, and serve my family and my people well.” Something caught in Rudolfo’s voice, and the words sounded foreign to him as he said them. “Build me an army to keep my borders,” he said.

“You have my oath, Lord,” Lysias said.

Rudolfo looked to Aedric. “Lysias will raise them up; the Gypsy Scouts will train them. Bear witness, First Captain.”

“Aye, General Rudolfo.”

“Until they are ready, the Wandering Army will watch out for us. I want the Western Brigade on the line in three days’ time.” Rudolfo wanted to close his eyes for these next words, but he knew he could not. It went against everything his people had believed these two thousand years in the forest, and he had to look them each in the eye as he said it.

“The borders of the Ninefold Forest,” Rudolfo said, “are now closed to passage. Send birds at dawn to all, kin-clave and foe.”

Aedric and Lysias exchanged glances. Aedric spoke first. “Are you certain, Lord Rudolfo?”

Am I certain?
He heard the wailing of his son and the cries of the frightened and wounded around him. He heard Charles cursing and grunting as he manhandled Isaak onto the stretcher with the help of two scouts.

He remembered the anguish in Jin Li Tam’s eyes.

“Yes,” Rudolfo said, letting the wrath show in his voice. “I
am
certain.

The sun rose behind him as Vlad Li Tam rowed the skiff into the harbor. Already, the scant remains of his iron armada built steam as they prepared to leave. Even in the dusky rose of morning, he could see the remnant of his family as they scurried along the upper and lower docks, moving the last of their lives back onto the ships.

Six months and so little to show for it.
Yet, even as he said it, his heart felt full. These last nights, rowing out to where the ghost awaited, had added something indefinable to him—something he’d lived without for too long. The compulsion of it was frightening, especially given that this love he felt was for a twisting, writhing mass of tentacled light. Not for the first time, he wondered if perhaps something had happened to him those moments when he first encountered the d’jin, so fresh from his time beneath Ria’s knife, with his hands upon the throat of his first grandson.