Antiphon (24 page)

The classroom sat thirty children easily, lined up on plank tables and benches facing a teacher who sat at a small table at the head of the room. When they saw their queen, they stood.

“Good afternoon, children,” Ria said. “I’ve brought you a most important guest.”

Ria motioned for Jin Li Tam to enter, and she hesitated. Checking Jakob again, she stepped into the classroom.

As one, the teacher and the students bowed deeply. The teacher blushed. “Great Mother, I am honored to meet you. When I heard that you were bringing the Child of Promise to our school, I wept for joy.”

Now Jin Li Tam found herself blushing. She couldn’t find any words, and she was unable to meet the open adoration in the woman’s eyes. She looked instead to Winters, who’d stepped into the room to stand beside her. The anger she’d seen was now tucked away, and Jin Li Tam noted the skill with which Winters concealed it.

Ria went to an empty section of table with three small chairs, motioning for them to sit. Once they had, the children sat, too. “I thought,” the Machtvolk queen said to the children, “that we might sit with you and hear what you are learning.”

The teacher beamed. “I was teaching them about the Great Promise.”

Ria inclined her head. “Please continue.”

The teacher returned the slight bow and walked to her table. Sitting down, she picked up the newly bound book. “Join me, children,
in the fourth verse of the sixth chapter of the Last Gospel of Ahm Y’Zir.”

Jin Li Tam remembered that title and glanced to Winters for confirmation.
Yes. She knows it, too.
It was the book Winters had brought to Rudolfo, the one that convinced him that they would be safe here. He’d translated passages for her, as had Winters, but she wondered how much it had lost through that process.

Now, she listened as the teacher selected a child to read the verse they were to discuss. The little girl stood, looked to Jin Li Tam, her face red, and then she recited from the book. “And at the end of days, a Crimson Empress shall rise from the south and a Child of Promise from the north to reunite a kinship long severed. And their reign shall heal this broken earth and restore the Machtvolk to their rightful home.”

Jin Li Tam watched the room as the child read and saw that both the teacher and Ria closed their eyes for the recitation. When she finished, they opened them. “Excellent, Nandi,” the teacher said. “So who can tell me what is the rightful home of the Machtvolk?”

A boy raised his hand. Jin Li Tam thought he couldn’t be older than eight. When the teacher called upon him, he answered in a loud, clear voice. “Our rightful home is in service to House Y’Zir as hand servants to the Crimson Empress and her betrothed.”

“Yes,” she said. “Very good.”

For the next thirty minutes, the teacher asked questions and various students raised their hands. As they asked and answered questions, she found herself caught up in the elaborate story of their gospel, and it disturbed her. On the one hand, she could see the comfort it would bring to know their station, to hope for a better, healed world and to be connected in some way to that healing through their service. But on the other hand, she saw that they were teaching these things to children. Certainly, adults would also believe it—surely the evangelists she and Rudolfo had spoken with believed with their whole hearts. But those adults would turn quicker to doubt than a child would. What they taught these children, now at such a young age, would stick to their hearts like the snow falling outside. Wizard Kings worthy of worship, kin-healing and magick by the shedding of blood—it would follow them throughout their lives.

Your grandfather created this and fed it,
she tried to tell herself. But the more she heard, the less she believed that possible. He’d not created it. He’d
believed
it. And he would not have without good reason.

This also disturbed her, and she found herself pulled into the Whymer Maze yet again.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher invited Jin Li Tam and Jakob to the front of the class. She presented them with a copy of the gospel they’d read from—bound in cured leather and translated into Landlish from the ancient language of House Y’Zir.

After they bundled into their robes, they trudged back through the snow to Ria’s lodge, where they were met by a warm foyer and yet more servants to help with robes and boots. While the others moved off to the dining room, Jin Li Tam excused herself to feed Jakob. At home, she would have thought nothing of feeding him anywhere she happened to be. But here, with the way these people looked at her and her son, she craved privacy.

She slipped down the hall and opened her door, turning to close it and suddenly stopping when she was caught off guard by the slight breeze that followed her in. “I’ll trust you to turn your back, scout,” she said as she went to the bed and pulled Jakob from his harness.

“Apologies, Lady Tam,” the Gypsy Scout said in a voice muffled with magick. “First Captain Aedric bid me bring word directly to you.”

Jin Li Tam laid her son on the bed and shrugged out of the harness, setting it aside. Then, she checked his diaper and unbuttoned her shirt before raising him to her bared breast. She winced as he took the nipple, feeling the beginnings of his teeth. “What have you learned?”

“We spent today scouting unusual bird migration to the northwest and found something of note. A series of caves outfitted as a messaging station.”

She heard hesitation in his voice, despite the magicks. “What else?”

“There is evidence of messages being intercepted and altered,” the scout said. “And birds are being diverted here somehow.”

She’d known that the birds had become unreliable. She remembered well the forged note she’d received in her sister’s hand just before Jakob’s healing, telling her there was no cure. Setting her up to turn to Ria’s blood magick as her last and best hope.

She closed her eyes against the pull of Jakob’s mouth. “Is there more?”

“More evidence of compulsory worship for those who are not quick to convert. Forced cuttings. We think there may be a fledgling resistance movement at work, as well.”

She nodded. “Very well. Tell Aedric to keep the scouts out and
gathering intelligence where they can. I will figure out how to get word to Rudolfo.”

“Aye, Lady.”

She looked over her shoulder in the direction of his voice. “Now, stay put until I’ve finished and I’ll let you out on my way to lunch.”

She turned her attention back to her boy and found herself wondering how it was that he had become so important in this story that she was only now just beginning to grasp. It was an ancient story that stretched back beyond the Age of the Wizard Kings, if today’s lesson was to be believed. And it was a story that her father’s father had embraced to such a degree that he had arranged to sacrifice his first son and most of his family in order to heal kinship with House Y’Zir. He’d engineered within the Named Lands the beginnings of the fall of the Androfrancines and, through her father, both Rudolfo’s reign and her own betrothal to him. He’d arranged for her, through her father, to bear Rudolfo an heir. And had also arranged the transfer of the library, the Order’s holdings, and their own family’s vast wealth into the Forester’s hands.

She wondered if her grandfather bore the coming sacrifice of his family like a great mountain upon his back. Or did he find joy in it? Or both?

She wondered what it meant to believe in something so completely as to make such choices, to love something so wholly as to give everything for it.

Then Jin Li Tam looked to the face of her suckling son and understood what could bring her to that place.

Still, it did not comfort her to know it.

Outside, wind rattled the shutters and Winters felt sleep pulling at her even as she turned another page in the gospel she read.

She’d read the book innumerable times now, gleaning what she could from the cryptic passages and prophetic promises. She wasn’t sure why she poured herself into it; it seemed the only thing she could do. Somehow, she thought, if she could just understand these new beliefs among her people, she might know how to free them from its hold.

No, she told herself, not new, but old. Some aspects older even than their sojourn in this land.

Still, how long had this resurgence lain in secret, gorging itself on her tribe beneath her and Hanric’s oblivious eyes? At least back to the time of her father, she knew. And had he been aware of it? Had he, like Jin Li Tam’s grandfather, been an active participant in this faith? She could not believe that, but neither could she believe how wrong his dreams had been, how wrong her own dreams had been, in light of what now happened in their world. Some part of her still wept for the home she was so certain would rise, and for the boy now lost to her whom she’d so completely believed would take them there.

She stretched up a hand to check the knife hilts that peeked out from beneath her pillow. They seemed much more likely than dreams or boys when it came to taking back her land. She’d even found herself considering whether or not she could slip one of those blades between the ribs of her older sister and take back by force what she had lost by apathy. But the moment that violent thought intruded, her stomach clenched and recoiled at the thought of it.

What would Jin Li Tam think of that? she wondered. She knew the woman was capable of killing. They’d danced with the knives each morning, and surely the movements of body and blades could be taught. Already, she felt competent. But could that redheaded courtesan spy turned Gypsy Queen and mother teach Winters how to kill?

It is not who I am. But maybe,
she thought,
it is who I need to be.

She forced her mind back into the gospel.

And in those days the birds of the sky shall betray and the darkness that masquerades as light shall be fully illuminated by the grace of House Y’Zir. The Usurper’s city will become a pyre and the Machtvolk will rise from their ashes and mud to make straight a path for the Crimson Empress’s advent.
She thumbed the pages forward now, finding a less familiar passage.
And behold, I saw those dwelling in the Beneath Places and heard these making their bargain with devils. Weeping, I watched them summon forth their abomination to damn and desolate the children of men by a song. And I wept not because of the sorrow of this, but because of the grace of the Crimson Empress, for even in this, she would prevail in joy, and heal our broken home.

She read it again, drawn in by the power of the words. She’d read as many books as she could get her hands on—Tertius had been particularly good at smuggling them in. She’d read most of P’Andro Whym’s
gospels, but his were not so dressed in imagery, parable and prophecy. They were mostly admonitions and stories around the preservation of human knowledge and learning from the mistakes of the past.

But these writings, unlike the reason-based words of the Androfrancines, were not so very different from her own Book of Dreaming Kings, and she knew that this similarity was at least a part of its appeal among those of her people who now believed it. It was specific enough to give something of substance to cling to, yet vague enough to allow for varied interpretations.

And unlike the Book of Dreaming Kings, this gospel was something every family could sit with near the fire, read on a winter’s night and feel a part of.

Closing the book, she climbed out of her bed and put it on the shelf as far from her as the room allowed. She couldn’t bear to keep it any closer. Then, she settled back into the bed, savoring its warmth in the cool room. She dimmed the lantern and gave herself to rehearsing the steps of tomorrow’s knife dance. She’d moved through the dervish twice and started on a third, mentally noting each place she’d put her feet in the muddy snow, trying to block out the book.

When the dream fell upon her after so long away, it jarred her and she blinked at the suddenness of it. Sitting up in her Wicker Throne, she savored the sunlight that somehow found her and bathed her here in her subterranean throne room.

She felt a presence and spoke to it. “Neb?”

The only answer was the faint sound of clicking and clacking that drifted up to her from the tunnels behind her. Rising, she gripped the Firstfall axe tightly in her fists, wishing instead for scout knives, and made her way toward that sound.

Winters descended into the caves, passing her sleeping and bathing areas as she wound her way to the leagues-long cavern where she’d spent most of her life before leaving for the war two years earlier. As she drew closer, she heard the sound of a harp and for a moment recalled another dream from months before. She looked in the sitting area and was not surprised to see Tertius sitting there, his fingers moving over the strings and filling the room with music. The last time she’d seen him in this place, the Book of Dreaming Kings was burning as it was consumed by the light. This time, the dream was different.

Four robed figures stood facing the shelves of volumes that lined the walls, and she watched as metal hands moved quickly over the volumes, pulling down one here and one there. The clacking and clicking
was louder, now, and punctuated by massive gouts of steam that burst from vents in their metal backs. And whatever books they pulled down did not get replaced, leaving gaps on the shelves, sockets empty of their teeth. She stepped toward them.

“Careful,” Tertius warned her, picking up the tempo of his song upon the harp. “They will consume you, too, my queen.”