Antiphon (5 page)

Her first inclination was the bell. Her eye darted to it and she raised her hand. Swallowing, she tasted the copper of fear in a mouth gone suddenly dry.

I should call for the guards.
But something else asserted itself within her, and instead she stood slowly. “What business have you here?” she asked the kin-raven in a quiet voice.

As if hearing her, it hopped forward and pecked again at the glass. Then, it waited and watched.

Approaching slowly, she stretched up on tiptoes to reach for the window’s latch. Then, she paused as her fingers found it.
What am I doing?
she asked herself.

But a certainty grew within her that this bird at her window was there with intent, that it had come for her and bore some note that she must read, though she saw no colored thread tied to its foot.

Holding her breath, she worked the latch and pushed the window
up. A cool morning wind wafted scents of wood smoke and evergreen into the room, but under the surface of those smells was a darker, older smell of carrion and dank earth.

For a moment, the kin-raven regarded her and then tipped its head to one side. Its beak opened, and a familiar voice whispered out from it.

“Winteria bat Mardic, my younger namesake, I send you greetings,” her sister’s voice said. “It grieves me that our meeting was not better orchestrated and that you are not now by my side working with me to establish our new home by the grace of the Crimson Empress.” Winters watched as the beak remained open and the kin-raven pulled in a deep breath. “But it is fortunate that you have remained with the Great Mother and the Child of Promise. Even now, my ambassadors approach to seek audience with Lord Rudolfo, but I fear he will not hear the dark tidings I bear. The Child of Promise is in grave danger. I have sent my kin-raven to you that you might bear word to your hosts and entreat them to take heed and accept my offer of aid in this matter.”

The bird paused again, and Winters felt the words taking root within her. Certainly, she knew she could not trust this woman who claimed kinship with her. If Lord Tam and Rudolfo were correct, her entire faith was a fabric of lies created by Jin Li Tam’s grandfather to bring down Windwir for reasons they were only just beginning to understand. She’d heard their speculation, late at night, of a foe beyond the borders of their New World.

The bird continued. “We are kin, you and I, and despite our differences I bear you nothing but deepest love. Bear this word to Rudolfo. Bear this word to the Great Mother: The Child of Promise was not saved to die at the hands of wicked men.”

The bird’s beak closed and it hopped back, away from her. For a moment, she thought she might leap up, reach out, grab it, hold it and cry out for the guards to assist. But even as the thoughts formed, the bird leaped up and unfurled its wings, pounding at the quiet morning air.

She watched it as it sped west, and then she went looking for her boots so she could climb down from Library Hill to seek out Aedric and Rudolfo.

Winters had no reason to trust this message or messenger, but the dark, cold pit of fear in her stomach was a feeling she’d learned to trust over these last years.

As she let herself out into the morning, Jakob’s tiny face and hands flashed across her memory; Ria’s words followed:
The Child of Promise was not saved to die at the hands of wicked men.

Winters hurried her pace and wondered what new darkness awaited them now. As she walked quickly down the cobblestone road that led into town, the morning sun kissed the back of her neck and the top of her head with a warmth she could not feel.

The setting sun washed the clear water in a purple so deep that it was nearly black. Overhead, the first of the stars struggled against a sky that was still too bright for them to shine in, and Vlad Li Tam sighed.

Of late, he’d taken to fishing again, though he knew that it would be more effective if he went out in the boats with those sons and daughters of his working that particular shift. Rod and tackle from the high dock was not nearly as efficient as their casting nets. Still, Petronus had taught him as a boy that the art of it was to love the act of fishing more than the act of catching. And moreover, it gave him time alone to think.

Don’t fool yourself. It also gives you time to watch the water.
Yes, he thought.

Behind him, the dinner bell sounded out from the halls of the Y’Zirite Blood Temple he and his family now called home. Rudolfo had rescued what few remained of House Li Tam from this place in a chaotic night some six months past. Vlad Li Tam had returned weeks later to take revenge on the Resurgence that operated the island temple, but they had found it abandoned.

Still, they spent months scouring the building for any clue they could possibly find. They’d dived into the wreckage of the ships Rafe Merrique and his men had scuttled in the harbor. They’d dug through the mass graves and refuse pits. They’d wandered every last span of the island to gather what little they could about the people who’d occupied this place. They’d even established regular scouting expeditions deeper into the Ghosting Crests in search of vessels he knew must be out there—vessels that did not match the line and trim of the New World.

And while they searched, Vlad Li Tam allowed each stained stone in the temple to remind him of the last words of the children and grandchildren he’d lost beneath the cutters’ knives while Ria whispered love into his ear and left her own scars upon his flesh and soul. He remembered each cry, each stanza of every poem they screamed to him while the Machtvolk queen extracted agony from him along with his blood
and the blood of his family. Blood used for magick-making, to resurrect Petronus and heal Vlad’s forty-second daughter’s son. All to establish a gospel and a strategy that his own father had helped design in a grand betrayal that left Vlad filled with rage and despair at once.

He shifted on the dock and looked to his rod and line. He’d taken no fish this evening, but it was fine. There would be plenty of food. Some of his children harvested the plentiful island while others hunted or fished, and supply ships from the Delta, financed by the Ninefold Forest, kept them well stocked with other provisions.

No, he did not care so much about the catching. Or the fishing for that matter, if he were honest. His eyes went again to the water.

You want to see it again.

He closed his eyes and tried to conjure it up. It had happened in the midst of pandemonium and madness. Rudolfo, magicked, had freed Vlad’s children from the holding cells in the tower’s basement and had taken the woman Ria hostage. He’d loosed Vlad, and they’d fought their way down the hill to the docks.

When his first grandson, Mal Li Tam, had threatened the youngest children, he’d given himself over in exchange for their promised safety, and when he’d seen his opportunity, he’d taken it. Sometimes, at night, he still dreamed it.

The solid thud of Mal’s head striking the railing. The warm immersion chased quickly by the pain of salt water in his open wounds. His hands clutching at the throat of his first son’s first son as they went deeper and deeper.

And the light.
It was blue-green, and it filled the deeper waters with song. He’d named his forty-second daughter for the d’jin that swam the Ghosting Crests without having seen one. But to behold it—if that indeed was what he saw there—was stunning. Buried in the pain of loss, he’d felt love from it, and when strong hands pulled at him a part of him wanted to be released, allowed to drown in that love.

Footsteps sounded on the dock behind him, and he knew them instantly. “I heard the bell, Baryk,” he said. “I’ll be up soon.”

The large warpriest sat down beside him. “How’s the fishing?”

Vlad chuckled. “The fishing is fine. The catching, not so much.”

Baryk also laughed; then his voice turned serious. “It’s good that you’re here,” he said. “I’d hoped to talk with you alone.”

Vlad turned and regarded the man. Baryk had married into his family, and though he’d always relied on the older warpriest, in the months since his daughter—Baryk’s wife—had died, writhing in agony as the
blood magicks consumed her, he’d grown to see the man in a new light. He suspected that the ’Francis would say that the trauma of the loss they experienced together bonded them in a deeper way. With most of his oldest children now dead and buried here on the island, Vlad had learned to lean on Baryk for strategy and wisdom.

Now, the old warpriest looked worried and worn. “What’s on your mind, Baryk?”

He sighed. “I don’t think we’re going to learn any more from this place.”

Vlad nodded. They’d gone over every last bit of it. They’d found the bargaining pool and the blood-distillery within it, though the Y’Zirites who had fled Tam’s return had poisoned it somehow before leaving. “You think we should leave,” he said in a flat voice.

“We have four ships. We could hire more, step up our forays south and east.”

His eyes went once more to the water. “What about Merrique’s ship?”

Baryk shook his head. “Still no word.”

The old pirate had been out of touch a goodly while now, House Li Tam’s birds unanswered for nearly two months.

Vlad looked from the water to the island behind him. “This would be a logical point on the map to operate from,” he said. But before Baryk spoke, Vlad knew what he would say.

“It would,” the warpriest said, “but I think your family is restless. I think this constant reminder of loss is no longer sharpening your blade.” He paused. “It may even dull it.”

Vlad turned from the man and looked back to the water. “You may be right, Baryk. I’ll consider it.”

Baryk inclined his head slightly. “It’s all I ask, Father.”

He calls me father now.
It stirred something in him, and he savored the meaning in it. He remembered the first time it had happened, the day they’d buried Rae Li Tam in the frozen plain of Windwir. Baryk had not done it in front of the other children, though. No, he reserved the title for the times they were alone, and Vlad understood that very well. He looked to his daughter’s widower and forced a smile. “You are a good man, Baryk.”

Baryk stood and returned the smile. “Shall I tell them you’re coming soon?”

Vlad nodded. “Soon.”

As the warpriest’s footfalls faded across the wooden dock, Vlad
pulled in his line. The man was right, of course. They
had
learned everything they could from this place. And it was a reminder, a constant reminder.

One that I need,
he thought, though as he thought it he also knew that perhaps what little remained of his family did not need such reminding.

I will grow my pain into an army.
They were the words that had carried him through the worst of the cuttings, the worst of his children’s screams. And they were the words that his daughter had later given him with her final breath.

Perhaps it was time to leave after all.

He sat with the rod across his lap while the sky darkened and the harbor stilled. He sat until he lost track of time, and when a flicker of blue-green danced across the waters he felt his heart catch in his throat. He could hear the song, too, if he listened for it. If he could just
listen
for it. And somehow, that ghost could soothe him, could save him. But in the end, it was not the catch he longed for. No, it was simply the moon, rising up to lend its light to those quiet waters he contemplated daily.

Victorious, the stars at last poked through a dark velvet veil of sky, and Vlad Li Tam sighed at them. Perhaps tomorrow, he thought.

He rose, turned his back to the Ghosting Crests and made his way up the hill.

Charles spun the gears and listened to the low groan as the mirrors around his workroom moved on their tracks and bent more light onto the object upon his table.

The moon sparrow lay disassembled, its various pieces laid out for examination with the magnifying lens he held before his eye.

When Jin Li Tam and Isaak had awakened him just after sunrise, he’d thought perhaps one of the mechanicals had broken down during the night’s work. He’d pulled on his robes and met them at the locked door of his subbasement workroom.

He wondered now, hours later, if they had seen his face grow pale when he saw the little messenger. Or if they had noticed a catch in his voice. Or the trembling in his fingers as he sought the tiny reset switch beneath that one small feather that felt slightly rougher than its other silver companions.

Fortunately, their questions had been few and he’d managed to deflect them under the guise of getting to work to find answers for them.

Charles lifted the tiny firestone that powered the bird. It was the size of a grape, burning white but without heat that he could feel through the thumb and forefinger that gripped it and held it beneath his eye. With his thumbs, he carefully pressed it into the bird’s silver chassis and used tweezers to carefully hook the long golden wires that
led from it to the memory scroll casing. The casing had been punctured by what he assumed must be the kin-raven’s talon or beak. It was a small puncture—and precise.

Where have you been off to?
Biting his lower lip, he found the switch and moved the bird’s wings and feet farther from its torso and head, as if somehow it might reattach them itself when it saw that it could not flee. When his callous fingertips found it, the bird’s tiny red eyes flickered open and it started humming in the palm of his hand.