Antiphon (20 page)

“Still, he and his would cut our throats in our sleep. And if the rumors in Fargoer’s Station have any truth, he’d make a tasty stew of us and our horses.”

Petronus offered a grim smile. “You’ll not let it come to that, I’d wager.”

“Aye, Father,” Grymlis said. “I’ll not. My eye is on him.” The old soldier nodded toward the body. “What do you make of her?”

“She’s an Y’Zirite.” Petronus looked at her, her arms stretched out and her chest bared, the purple bruising of her neck offsetting the pale Whymer Maze of etchings in her flesh. That one mark, central and larger than the rest, still pulled at his eye, and he felt the burning in his own bosom from the scar Ria had cut into him when he lay dead upon the floor of that tent on Windwir’s desolate plain. “But not of a variety I’ve seen before.”

“And these are the runners this mysterious behaviorist was warning us about? The ones looking for the boy?”

Petronus nodded, remembering Hebda’s words. “And looking for the missing mechoservitors.”

Grymlis studied the body, and Petronus followed his eyes. “She was a tough one by the looks of her, but no match for whatever found her. And likely not much of a match for our men.”

Still, Petronus knew there must be more to this than what lay before their eyes. And as if in answer, a low whistle reached his ears from the other side of a low rise of bent and mounded glass.

They joined Edrys where he crouched with his scout. “It happened here,” the lieutenant said, pointing with his knife to the bare patch of ground. “She was carried to the place they buried her.”

Petronus stared at the ground, barely able to see the marks so obvious to the Gypsy’s trained eyes. “They?”

Edrys nodded. “There were three—maybe four of them—not counting the girl.” He pointed to another nearby outcropping, blue and yellow and green, with wind-sharpened ridges. “They waited here and took her quickly by ambush, I suspect, without much fight.” He stood and stepped carefully out of the clearing. “She ran from the east. Possibly in pursuit. Her stride indicates magicks of some kind were employed.”

Yes, Petronus thought, remembering that night so long ago in his shack, when the blood-magicked assassin had attacked him and sent him into Ria’s trap there on the Entrolusian Delta. The trap that had laid him out dead for his sins and brought him back in some twisted mercy he still could not comprehend, bending him into a miracle to prove their abominable gospel.

Grymlis must’ve been thinking in the same direction. “If she were under blood magicks, even a half-squad would be hard pressed to take her so easily—let alone four men.”

Edrys stood. “Not men,” he said as he looked to Petronus, and the realization dropped into his awareness like a rock in a well. He followed the scout’s knife tip and saw the clear outline of a footprint.

“The mechoservitors killed her,” he said, and his voice sounded flat in his ears. “The ones we saw moving west toward the Wall.”

Edrys nodded. “It appears that way.”

“Gods,” Grymlis muttered.

Petronus inwardly cursed the broken skies of this place that kept the birds from finding their way. Then, he cursed their already small numbers and gave his orders anyway. “This,” he said, “is something new that we cannot overlook. Magick a runner and send him for the Wall. And gather the party—we ride immediately.”

Then, as they moved off and away, Petronus turned back and made his way slowly back to the shallow grave and the girl who waited there in it. He was not sure if it was her nakedness or the starkness of the mark over her heart, but something compelled him, and he stooped to pull her shirt closed. With the scar covered, his eyes found the bruises at her neck and he imagined the quick, possibly even painless end she’d met in service to her faith in this desolate place.

Whatever the mechoservitors guarded, whatever they were about, they were willing to kill for it. And that was something utterly against
the gospels and precepts that fueled their scripting. It unsettled him deeply.

And at the same time, he found himself quietly rejoicing.

Because if these are the same that seek Neb,
he realized,
there’s now one less of them for us to deal with.

Grabbing up a stone in each hand, Petronus set about to bury his enemy. He worked quickly, feeling the sweat that trickled from his hairline and armpits tracing its way down his back and sides. When he reached that final stone, the white one that signified the light inherent in every human life, he hesitated.

In the end, the mechoservitors had more mercy than he himself could muster, despite the cold and calculated murder of their prey.

He remembered Ria’s knife, remembered her words, and felt the burning of the scars she’d left upon him. Felt the despair washing over him when he realized just what his death and resurrection had accomplished after a life of service to the light of reason, the light of human knowledge and experience. Then, he looked to the place near the corpse’s head, where the light-colored rock had lain before.

Hefting that stone, Petronus cursed and hurled it as far from the grave as his strength would allow.

Then he turned back to find his horse and press eastward with his men.

Cold rain pounded them from a bruise-colored sky, and Jin Li Tam’s hands kept moving beneath the rain cloak to where Jakob nestled close against her in his riding harness.

She was grateful that he rode so well, having heard stories from the house staff about the less amenable infants they’d encountered. And she’d been surprised—she’d been prepared for his ear to keep him screaming for the trip. But Lynnae’s powders, administered through Jin’s milk, seemed to cut the pain, and he’d ridden largely in silence.

Still, after so many days in the saddle she was ready for a real bed and a hot bath and a roof that wasn’t canvas. She imagined little Jakob felt the same way, though he seemed content enough to pass the time sleeping and nursing and looking about when the weather was less foul.

Aedric’s company of Gypsy Scouts were all around them, a platoon’s worth magicked and on the run, maintaining a perimeter that
moved around her entourage as they rode for the Machtvolk Territories. They’d sighted the first of Ria’s watchtowers the day before, tall and dominating the rugged terrain, and a kin-raven late in the evening informed them that they would be met today by an escort who would guide them into the territories.

It was hard to believe that she’d been here not so very long ago, deep in the winter, riding at the head of Rudolfo’s Wandering Army. It had been much colder, but the rain seemed more miserable to her than the snow. Of course, growing up on the Emerald Coasts, where winter was a warmish rain, had made settling into her new northern home a bit of an adjustment.

She shifted in the saddle, sore from the ride and aching still from the blast. Isaak had shielded them from the worst, saving their lives, but she still bore the bruises and cuts. She expected a scar now on her thigh where a long sliver of pine had laid open the flesh.

Memory of that day brought a shiver to her deeper than the wet and cold.

A flash of brown to her left brought her head around, and she saw Aedric fishing a bird from his catch net. He whistled and raised his hand for them to stop.

She reined in, a hand once more creeping to Jakob’s stomach to feel the warmth of him.

Just beyond Aedric, she saw Winters sitting tall in the saddle, though the girl’s eyes were downcast. She’d been quiet of late, and her work with the knives had taken on a determined edge that felt something like banked anger to Jin’s practiced eye.

When Aedric spoke, she met his eyes and returned the anger she saw there with cool aloofness. “The Marsher escort approaches ahead,” he said, then corrected himself. “
Machtvolk.
Their queen rides with them.”

She inclined her head, keeping her face masked. “Good.”

She glanced to her right, where Lynnae rode. The girl had insisted that she accompany them. It had been months since she’d served as Jakob’s nursemaid, but the bond between her and Jin and the child was palpable, and the River Woman had sent her with a full field kit of powders and scripts. Now, the woman rode swaddled in a rain cloak twice her size, her face buried in the cowl and her long curly hair spilling out from under it.

Behind them, the rest of the company stopped. Aedric would not
move them forward, Jin knew. Instead, he would make their hosts come to them—a subtle message.

They did not wait long.

The procession was larger than Jin had imagined it would be—a long train of horses and footmen—and she blinked in surprise.

The Marshers had never been a uniform tribe. They’d ever been a mysterious, mad and mismatched people, known for their rotting fur clothing and their salvaged or stolen weapons, tools and accessories. They employed no industry and lived lives of subsistence in their hovels, shoved far north against the Dragon’s Spine Mountains apart from the nations of the Named Lands. They were known for brutal tribalism, and feared widely through the border towns of the northern forests, where skirmishing had bolstered a reputation they no doubt deserved. But there was more to them, she’d learned through her friendship with Winters. The young queen, now deposed and scrubbed clean of her people’s mysticism, had shown her a quieter side to this people with their Book of Dreaming Kings and their longing for a new home to rise through the agency of the Homeseeker they believed would bring them there.

The procession that now approached bore no resemblance to the army she’d seen two years ago upon the plains of Windwir. Crimson banners caught the wind, and the riders and footmen alike wore dark uniforms, accented also in crimson and stark against the careful grays and browns and blacks of their face paint.

Who is supplying them?
Certainly not the Delta city-states or their neighbors, Pylos and Turam. As they drew closer, she noted that while the uniforms were alike, they were ill fitting and the men who wore them did not appear entirely at ease.

The woman who led them pulled Jin’s attention away.

“Hail, Great Mother,” Ria said from the back of her stallion. She wore a long black rain cloak, and it hung open to reveal a silver breastplate. In her left hand, she raised the Firstfall axe. “Hail, Jakob, Child of Promise.” Then she smiled and turned to Winters. “Hail, little sister.”

The words were bitter in Jin Li Tam’s mouth, but she said them anyway. “Hail, Winteria the Elder, queen of the Machtvolk Territories. On behalf of Rudolfo, lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses and general of the Wandering Army, I bear you grace and greetings in gratitude for your hospitality.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Winters flinch at the words, and it pained her to see it. In that same glance, she also saw Aedric’s tightly drawn mouth and the white knuckles of his hands upon his reins.

“Dark times bring you to us,” Ria said in a quiet voice as she walked forward. “But you will be pleased to know that our investigation is bearing fruit. I know it is a tremendous act of trust that you would even consider my invitation, and I assure you that every care has been taken for your comfort and protection during your visit among my people.”

Jin Li Tam whistled her own horse forward, and she leaned close to Ria. “Swear it to me,” she said, her eyes meeting the deep brown eyes of the Machtvolk queen. She saw Winters in the woman’s face—there was no denying their kinship. Jin’s eyes narrowed. “Swear to me on your gospel and on the mark upon your heart that we will be safe and that we will be free to leave your domain at the time of our choosing.”

Ria smiled, and it was wide, inviting even. She reached beneath her robe and withdrew a slender volume, raising it into the air even as her hand went to her breast. “I swear it, Great Mother. I know circumstance indicates enmity between us. I know the wounds we’ve inflicted upon your family and upon your world are deep, but know this: They were the breaking of bones not properly set in an earlier wounding that now may be undone by the grace of the Crimson Empress.” Her eyes moved to Winters and she repeated herself. “I swear it.”

Jin Li Tam watched the girl’s face redden under her older sister’s gaze. Then, once more she looked to Aedric. The first captain looked resolved but angry. “Very well,” she said. “I am satisfied.”

And yet, I truly won’t be until my son and I leave this dark, mad land you are making.

Ria nodded. “We will feast tonight in my new home.” She looked again to Winters. “I think you will be impressed with our progress, little sister.”