Requiem (25 page)

Of course.
After nearly two years of war, the people of the Named Lands were weary and ready for peace even if it meant a change of flags and thrones. Most had no idea what dark and bloody beast lumbered in to settle among them, but even with that knowledge, Rudolfo caught himself wondering what this life could be. A life where his wife and child were revered in an elaborate blood cult and where he was established as the chancellor of a united Named Lands beneath the rule of the Crimson Empress. The life his father wanted for him.

But then, the wrongness of it all reasserted itself and he thought of everything that had been taken away, every drop of blood spilled from Windwir to House Li Tam to Pylos. Hundreds of thousands of lives.

And then, he thought of his own son and pondered how a father could want that for a child. No, he realized, not just any father.
My father.

He heard his name and forced his attention back to the conversation. “I’m sorry?”

One of Yazmeera’s captains—a young man resplendent in a dark silk uniform decorated with silver piping—smiled. “I was asking if you found the oysters satisfactory, Chancellor.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Quite. Thank you.” He raised his glass to the officer and sipped from it, letting the sweet wine cool the heat in his mouth. “Are you responsible for them?”

He smiled. “I am. Also, the pork and mushroom rice.”

“Also quite satisfactory.” He turned to Yazmeera. “Are all of your officers so skilled in the kitchen?”

She laughed, and he noted that her cheeks were flushed from the wine. “Most are. Others are quite adept at music.” She leaned forward. “I think a strong officer is a well-rounded officer. Tactics and poetry, strategy and steamed oysters go hand-in-hand in my mind. Men who love life fully will fight harder to keep that life.”

He inclined his head, hoping it hid his surprise at agreeing with her. “And it is clear that you have formidable officers, General.”

It was strange to dine so informally among uniformed men. He was the only one dressed in civilian clothing, though they’d laid a fresh uniform out for him in his dressing room. His head felt naked without his turban of office, and he’d dismissed their offered clothing without even giving it a thought. Instead, he’d gone through the clothing that still filled the villa’s closet, eventually settling on cotton trousers and a silk shirt that fit him near enough. He’d sent Ire out to find the walking slippers he now wore, and with his hair oiled and tied back behind, he looked more like the pirate this county was famous for than a Gypsy King or a chancellor.

A bell rang, and the music below stopped abruptly. “Ah,” she said, clapping her hands. “We will pause for vespers prayer.” She looked to Rudolfo. “Would you care to join us?”

The thought of it repulsed him, and he hoped his body’s sudden response to her invitation didn’t show on his face. “Thank you,” he said, “but I am still unfamiliar and unprepared in these matters.”

Yazmeera stood. “Yes. But I’m sure you’ll find your way. Meanwhile, if you will excuse us?”

He also stood. “Certainly.”

“Please be comfortable. If you need anything, just ring the bell.”

“I think,” Rudolfo said, “I will take this opportunity to meditate and reflect.”

She smiled; then, with a glance to her men, they filed off to the stairs. When they’d gone, he went to the edge of the roof and looked out over the city.

The sky moved from lavender to a deep purple, darkened here and there by clouds on the horizon. And the flat lands of the Divided Isle stretched out in all directions, gray now in twilight, though occasional lights speckled the landscape where houses stood. The city itself was quiet, and most of the buildings were darkened. Patrols of scouts and infantry moved about, but a curfew kept the few citizens who remained indoors. He felt a hand upon his shoulder and understood the words pressed into him.

Are you well, Lord?

He turned. Ire Li Tam stood before him. He saw his wife in her face more and more as he grew accustomed to her unmagicked presence and even saw aspects of his own son Jakob and her father, Vlad Li Tam. It startled him. His own hands moved quickly.
I am as well as I can be.

She fell in beside him. “They will return in thirty minutes.”

“You don’t pray with them?”

She shook her head. “I am assigned to you, Chancellor, and may not leave your side. The hours of prayer are not compulsory, and my work with you is considered a satisfactory act of worship according to the Daughters of Ahm Y’Zir.”

Her hands moved now, too.
And I do not share their faith.

He’d suspected as much, and he wondered at what kind of fierce, formidable nature it would take to go beneath the knife of a faith he did not believe in order to accomplish a higher good. Because if her story was true, she’d left House Li Tam when she was but a young girl, placed carefully within the Daughters to work her way to one of their highest honors—service in the Blood Guard, Y’Zir’s elite, all-woman scout brigade. All for the purpose of one day bearing word to her sister at the appointed time.

The manipulations and machinations bewildered him, but more than that, her resolve did the same.

They stood quietly and waited until a bell chimed and the others returned. Then, she slipped back to her corner of the roof with the other scouts, and he returned to the table.

General Yazmeera sat first, and the others followed. “Before I left,” she said, “I think we were discussing the benefits of a well-rounded officer. I think you used the word ‘formidable,’ Rudolfo.”

Their eyes met. Hers were gray but somewhat glassy from the kallaberries, and they were softer in repose than when she’d met him earlier in the day. “Yes,” he said. “I did. The success of your invasion certainly proves that out.”

Her eyebrows raised. “Invasion?”

Rudolfo heard the discomfort of bodies shifting upon cushions and held breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your …
occupation
of the Named Lands.”

She smiled. “No apology required. You are not of the faith; you couldn’t possibly see it from our perspective.”

He leaned forward, returning the smile. “Enlighten me.”

She looked to one of her officers—this captain a woman with dark, close-cropped hair. “Captain Mera,” she said, “why are we here?”

“By the grace of Y’Zir and the Crimson Empress,” she answered. “To heal kinship and earth by blood and by faith.”

She looked to another—this one an older man, at least ten years Rudolfo’s senior. “And what is the true spirit of the knives we carry, Captain Niva?”

“That some cuts heal and some cuts harm, some cuts save and some cuts slay. It is the hand that guides the blade and the intent that guides the hand.”

Yazmeera looked back to Rudolfo. “The only life you have ever known has been changed irrevocably in violence and fear. It stands to reason that you would see our work as an invasion force set to occupy. But we are family, bound by blood, and we have come to liberate you and yours that you might join us in the healing of the world.”

He felt his eyes narrow but tried to keep his tone lighter. “And from whom do you liberate us?”

She snorted. “From that Deicide, P’Andro Whym, and his flock of sheep for one. How long have they ruled you, controlled you, cowed you with their magicks and machines, hidden away in their safe city doling out scraps to hungry dogs at the gate?”

He could hear the hate in her voice, though he suspected she thought of it as love. He opened his mouth to say something, but she continued. “And don’t for a moment believe that the kin-clave you all lived under somehow put you on equal footing with your former masters. It, like everything else they did, served their purposes. They kept the ruins of the Homelands apart for themselves. The wastes are scattered with the shallow graves of any who ventured there without their sanction. And have you not wondered how it is that in two millennia, your population continues to fit nicely within the careful borders of your Named Lands?”

Rudolfo sat back. “It was a product of the Age of Laughing Madness—leftovers of your Wizard King’s devastation. Surely you don’t suggest that the Androfrancines somehow regulated our population?”

“No, I suggest that they had the power
not
to and chose otherwise.”

Rudolfo scowled. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Can you explain how it is that my people outnumber yours six to one?” She leaned forward as he shook his head. “I can. And I will show you myself once we find it. There is a world beneath us, Rudolfo, and it is filled with many wonders. Our excavation at Windwir has proven that your gray-robed diggers knew it well enough, and I’m willing to bet my knife that they knew the truth about this place.”

He took a moment to lift his wineglass to his lips, his eyes moving to the other faces around the table. The others watched, some with amusement and others with discomfort. “And what truth would that be?” He said it with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“That these places—these Keeper’s Crèches—were made to keep us alive. Lifeboats, if you will, for the sinking ship.”

Keeper’s Crèche.
He’d not heard that term before. But that wasn’t the part that dropped his jaw. The Androfrancines had maintained vigorously that this small corner of the world and a scattering of islands were the only truly habitable places remaining. The Churning Waste to the east boasted a handful of people who preferred subsistence and Waste-illness to the confines of kin-clave and what until recently had been the Order’s strong influence in the Named Lands. But between the Ghosting Crests to the south and east and the Stormwaters to the west, they’d accepted long ago that even if their ships could weather those seas, there was nothing worth finding beyond their own continent. He blinked at her widening smile and could find no words.

“Yes, Rudolfo,” she said slowly. “The world is larger than you have been led to believe.”

Certainly he’d wondered. They had to come from someplace. His wife and child had to have gone somewhere. But until now, it had been guesswork he’d tucked away. Now, it was real. “How many crèches are there?”

“Five total, we believe. We know of three.” She raised her own glass and sipped. “And finding the last two are certainly important, but with the three we know of, we have enough of a start for our work to begin. And at some point—perhaps in another millennia or so—the crèches will become irrelevant.”

He ran his fingers along the side of his glass, feeling the beads of condensation. He’d heard enough, had even read their gospels, to know what that work was, but until now, he wasn’t sure he fully grasped it. He’d assumed it was more metaphorical. “The healing of the world,” he said.

If they could do that—if it were true—what would that mean? A wasteland restored to the garden it once was? A broken continent returned to life?

Her laughter brought his eyes back to hers. “Yes. The healing of the world. And your son—your little boy—and even you, Rudolfo, are an important part of that healing.”

When one of the captains proposed a toast to that work, Rudolfo raised his glass with the others, but his heart was not in it. Instead, it tangled in a Whymer Maze where the lines between good and evil blurred to near invisibility, and he realized with sinking heart that despite their madness and their brutal beliefs, these Y’Zirites might have underpinnings of truth guiding their hands.

And, Rudolfo realized, even if they did not have a scrap of truth it would not matter. The greatest, most useful gift victory brought any army was the power to record history in the way that it wished to.

He wondered how his role in that history would be written, though present circumstances definitely gave him some idea. And as he drank to the healing of the world, the sweetness of his wine became bitter and its chill was lost in the heat of anger that flushed his face.

Charles

They rode out into a gray morning and the cold chewed Charles all the more because of one warm night spent indoors. Of course, the night had been near sleepless, between everything he’d learned and the dreams that continued to haunt him.

Still, it was good to set out this morning with a belly full of spiced chai and peppered bacon. And it was good that they no longer rode alone. Renard joined them now, riding point, and though he couldn’t confirm it, Charles suspected a full squad of magicked Gray Guard ran silently, invisible around them.

They rode north into a light snowfall, circling west around the lower borders of the Desolation and the excavation of the city. Most items that had been hauled from the ruins during Petronus’s grave-digging had ended up on the Delta, and Charles had seen some of them during his captivity there. Some had even found their way back to the Forest’s new library once the treaty was negotiated. But every good Androfrancine knew—as the Y’Zirites did, too—that the best of Windwir’s secrets lay beneath her. And though the Seven Cacophonic Deaths would have destroyed much of it, certainly some of its hoard of magickal and mechanical wonder would survive. He’d seen the evidence in the Watcher’s cave. And he suspected the plague spiders that destroyed Pylos had been drawn from the petrified egg pouches he’d stored in his workshop’s lower vaults. It was one item on a list of many that he’d learned to keep in a different type of vault—one he kept for things he did not want to think about overly much. He’d been responsible for the spell’s security and for the mechoservitor that was ultimately rescripted to activate the spell. And based on everything he’d learned yesterday from Hebda, it was his very first generation of mechoservitors that had first brought down the dream, had awakened Whym in the Beneath Places and ultimately delivered Neb—the offspring of a Younger God—into the care of the Androfrancine Order and its secret Office for the Preservation of the Light. The office that had allowed Windwir to fall unevacuated because of some dark bargain made to assure Neb of his birthright. He did not fully understand it; but between Hebda and Micah, he’d learned much, and it staggered him.

And my fingerprints are everywhere on it.
Certainly, he had no idea at the time, but so much of his work had been co-opted by the schemes of others—the Office, the Y’Zirites, Whym—and it angered him.