Antiphon (55 page)

Ahead of them, a dim light grew, and when they spilled out into the open, Petronus saw that it was the moon, high and full above the mountain. It washed the valley with blue-green light, reflecting off a large metal mass he saw there.

He’d seen it hidden with evergreen branches upon a massive series of scaffolds those times he’d seen this space in his dreams, but now he saw it standing free of the scaffolds and open to the night.

No, he realized, not standing.
Floating.
Easily the size of one of Tam’s vessels, made of a burnished gold, the ship hung tethered to the rocky ground. A large door in it stood open, and metal men hauled sacks and crates of supplies along a gangway.

Petronus blinked, taking in the image and recognizing it.

“Gods,” he whispered. “Do you see it?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Grymlis nod. “Aye, Father.”

He’d seen the drawings—those fragments they’d been able to find in Rufello’s
Book of Specifications.
It was that old Czarist engineer’s greatest accomplishment, blending ancient sciences and magicks with those considered modern when he served the czars. As a boy,
Felip Carnelyin’s One Hundredth Tale
had been one of his favorites, though much of the story had been lost over the millennia that had passed. Still, Petronus had no doubt what he saw. It clicked into place the last of this lock’s cipher, and he understood.

It is the ship that sailed the moon.

Somehow, the metal men of Sanctorum Lux had reconstructed it here, in secret, and even now Petronus saw they prepared it for flight.

He forced his feet to their work again and moved out of the cave and into the open air, allowing the men behind him to fan out. He wondered how many of them would recognize what hung suspended in the air before them, chained to the ground as it hummed and sputtered.

He felt a metal hand upon his shoulder, and he tore his eyes away from the ship to take in the metal man before him.

“Father Petronus,” the mechoservitor said, “you should not have come.”

His eyes slid past the amber eyes to the vessel beyond.
It is larger than I imagined.
Swallowing, he forced his eyes back to the metal man. “Hebda told me I was needed here.”

“He and his kind have been interfering a great deal of late.”

His kind.
“Still,” Petronus said, “we are here. We will see your antiphon safely into the air.” He could not take his eyes off of it, and quick glances to his left and right told him that it was the same for his men as more and more of them filed into the open space. “When do you launch?”

The mechoservitor’s eye shutters flashed open and closed as steam released from the steam vent. “When the Homeseeker instructs us to.”

Neb had told him earlier that he would come soon, though Petronus was not sure how that could be possible, nor how the boy would wade through the small army that even now was gathering at the gate. Another voice spoke up to his right as Rafe Merrique stepped forward. “I don’t suppose,” the pirate asked, “this Homeseeker will instruct you regarding the return of my vessel?”

The metal man regarded him, and when it spoke, the tone was measured and matter-of-fact. “I regret the loss of your vessel in its service to the light, Captain Merrique, but I would be unkind if I failed to point out that it is unlikely you or your men will have use of it given your choice to come here.”

The pirate’s chuckle was pained, and Petronus winced at it. They’d talked enough in the quiet hours before dawn to know that none of their group expected to survive their latest venture, but he couldn’t blame the man for hoping. Now, Rafe Merrique spoke with a flourish. “Then I shall hope that she served you and the light well.”

Again, the mechanical was blunt. “The vessel was functional. But a misinterpretation of our role in that aspect of the dream has cost us your vessel along with two of our brethren and a combined fourteen percent of the holdings of Sanctorum Lux.”

Merrique opened his mouth to speak, but the mechanical was already moving away, back to the line of mechanicals as they loaded the ship. His jaw went firm for a moment, and that was the only outward sign of the man’s anger.

Petronus turned and took in the last of their company as it emerged from the cave. The men that staggered out into the moonlight were a brooding, weary bunch, carrying only their packs and weapons. They’d sent their extra gear, and that of the horses that had survived, away
in the care of Geoffrus and his men, knowing even as they did it that the horses were as likely to be eaten as cared for . . . if the Waste mongrel and his band weren’t taken by the Y’Zirite forces first.

Grymlis took a step closer and lowered his voice. “What are your orders, Father?”

“We hold the gate until the ship is up.” Certainly, they couldn’t hold it forever. At some point, their enemy had to find a way around the Rufello locks. But if Neb came soon and the locks held long enough, they could hold the cave. In the end it would be only a matter of time before the Y’Zirites reached them, and Petronus was under no illusion over how it would go for them. Certainly, he himself was set apart from the promised violence—his role as the Last Son of P’Andro Whym assured his survival, according to the Blood Guard Rafe had captured, now buried in shallow graves just beyond the gate. But he also knew that he would take his own life, no matter how abhorrent that was to him, before he went into their custody.

“Establish a line in the caves and work it in shifts,” he said. “Mandatory rest for the others; I want them hydrated and steady. Neb said he would be here soon.”

When Grymlis spoke next, Petronus heard the awe in his voice and noted that it was barely a whisper. “And where do you imagine Neb will be going?”

Petronus met his eyes and then looked up to where the moon hung in the sky above them. He did not say it; he did not want to. Many Androfrancine scholars disputed the accuracy of
The Hundredth Tale
, claiming it to be a story twisted by mythology and mysticism. But the vessel was here—or one much like it—and there were just as many scholars who believed Rufello’s science had once guided a Czarist Lunar Expedition so many millennia before and that it was possible, just possible, that the disaster of that expedition had eventually brought about the Year of the Falling Moon and the wizard who fell.

Grymlis followed his eyes, saw the moon, and then nodded. “We hold the cave until the ship is up.”

Grymlis moved off barking his orders while men scrambled and Petronus pulled aside to think. He had a list of questions longer than his leg but knew this was not the time to ask them. Still, his mind required that he order them, and he was setting himself to that work when the ground shook and a distant rumble tickled his eardrums.

He looked up quickly and saw that Grymlis had stopped, midorder; then the orders came faster and the men who’d been pitching their
bedrolls abandoned them, took up their weapons and sped into the cave. The metal men stopped along the line, looking in unison toward the cave entrance before starting up again as one and moving their supplies aboard at increased speed.

Petronus made his way to a white-faced Grymlis, certain his own face was pale as well. “We’ve underestimated them.”

Grymlis nodded. “We have. They’ve brought blast powders to the door, I’ll wager.”

Rafe Merrique joined them, drawing his cutlass and testing its edge with his thumb. “Then let’s hope this so-called Homeseeker comes quickly.”

Petronus looked one last time to the ship and to the moon that hung above it. Then, without a word he entered the cave to join his men in their last work upon the earth.

They laid Winters out on a bed that had been stripped down to a simple cotton sheet, and as Lynnae set to tending the girl, Jin Li Tam pulled aside with Garyt.

There were white paths upon his painted cheeks from the tears he’d cried, and Winters’s blood dried upon his hands and uniform. Jin could read the despair upon him and understood it at once.

He loves her.
She doubted that he knew he did, but she could read it plainly upon him, and she remembered the ache of that kind of love, remembered its own genesis between her and Rudolfo in what seemed a lifetime ago. She put a hand on his arm. “She will be fine,” she said. “Scarred but fine.”

He nodded, and when their eyes met she saw more than his anguish; she also saw his rage. “Why did she choose this? Any of a hundred of us would have taken the knife in her place.”

Jin looked at the girl. She was moving in and out of awareness now that the kallacaine was taking hold, and her body flinched at Lynnae’s sponge as the woman cleaned her wounds and applied her ointments and powders. “I think she saw it was her place to do this for her people, to show both the faithful and the unfaithful among them.”

He nodded and looked to the door, then back to her. “There is
much work to do,” he said. “There will be people gathering at dawn to leave with her.”

Yes. But how many?
Jin was uncertain, but despite Winters’s choice she suspected the numbers who actually chose to leave their hearth and home to follow the girl would be low. But she also suspected, just as strongly, that it would only be a beginning. What they had witnessed this night would stay with her people, and over time, more would trickle out as the reality of what they saw settled into their hearts.

She looked to the young Machtvolk guard. “What will
you
do?”

His answer did not surprise her. “I will stay as long as I can,” he said. “I will be her eyes and ears here.”

She nodded. “I would have you bear word to Aedric if you see him.” Now she chose her words carefully. “Tell him that our stay here is finished and to prepare his men for travel.”

“Aye, Lady. I will tell him.”

She thought again for a moment. “Bid Charles and Isaak the same. They would be wise to leave by the way they came.”

He nodded again. “Aye.”

She studied the man. “And the Ninefold Forest is ever your friend, Garyt. You bear my grace and thus Rudolfo’s as well. If you have need, get word to him.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you, Lady. I fear that what we need may be out of his reach to give us.” He laid a hand upon the door latch and paused. “Bid my queen good health and safe journey,” he said.

Then, he slipped from the room.

He’d been gone less than five minutes before the sounds of third alarm grew beyond their window. It started in the distance and moved through the forest, a growing clamor that soon enveloped the lodge as she heard the running footfalls of soldier and servant alike. Jin went to the window and watched as squads formed up in the yard. She watched a handful of men drink down phials of blood magick and warble out of sight as they ran eastward.

There was a knock upon the door, and Jin turned from the window. “Come in,” she said.

The door opened, and Ria stepped into the room, her face washed in rage and worry. Behind her, still in his furs from the walk back, stood Regent Eliz Xhum. “How is she?”

The concern in the woman’s voice angered Jin, but she forced that anger from her voice, though her words were still frosted. “She will be fine.” She nodded toward the window. “What is happening?”

Ria scowled. “Our perimeters have been breached. And our—”

But she was cut off by a booming voice out of the east that shook the glass and raised the hair on Jin’s arms and neck.

“I come for Winteria bat Mardic, true Queen of the Marsh,” the voice cried out. “Where is she?”

She knew that voice, though she did not know the magicks that propelled it; there was a clarity and power in it beyond the blood-distilled voice magicks she was familiar with. She saw light moving toward them now and watched the Machtvolk scramble toward it. She heard the cries and grunts of those who found what they sought and then saw the light grow until it took the shape of a man.

His run slowed to a walk as he entered the clearing, and Jin blinked as she recognized the voice, though the man it belonged to looked nothing like the boy she’d last seen so many months before.

Neb?

But not the Neb she’d last seen the night of Jakob’s birth. He burned with a hot, white light now from his toes to the tips of his hair, and his eyes were the color of the moon as he strode roaring into the clearing. His silver robe caught the wind and flowed out behind him as he went; and as Ria’s men closed in, he swung his fists like clubs and scattered them like kindling. When the invisible wall of blood-magicked scouts pressed in, he tossed them into the trees, where they thrashed and fell.

By the time they were on their feet, he stood upon the porch. “I have come for Winteria bat Mardic,” he bellowed out again, and then he was in the lodge, roaring down the hallways.

Jin Li Tam looked to the girl. Her eyes were open now at a voice she also recognized, and she wrestled against Lynnae’s ministering hands in an effort to sit up. “Neb?”

Jin glanced at Ria and saw her face grow cold at the name. Her voice was low when she spoke. “Lord Xhum,” she said, “I think it would be best to remove you to a remote location.”

The regent smiled. “Nonsense. Let the Abomination come. The faithful have nothing to fear from him.”

The sound of fighting in the hallway intensified, and then suddenly, the regent and Ria were pushed aside as the room filled with light.