Requiem (30 page)

Guarding us because of our part in their gospel.
It horrified her and it humbled her all at once. And the complexity of it baffled her, though she imagined that to an outsider, the ways of kin-clave and the order imposed by the Androfrancines might seem complex as well.

As well watched as they were, she wasn’t sure how they’d be reunited with Aedric, though just establishing a line of communication would be helpful. Eyes, ears, feet, and hands outside. She’d not yet seen her target, but she already knew that her own survival was unlikely.

But Jin was also even more convinced now of the sensibility behind her grandfather’s decision. The greatest weakness of this people was their faith. And the Crimson Empress was much more than an empress to this people. She was a god, promised by prophecy. Taking her out of the equation would strike a blow at the heart of that faith. She wasn’t sure if it would turn the tides of war—she suspected that rage and wrath were just as likely responses—but it would take a massive toll.

And end the madness my grandfather saw here.

She stretched, then left the balcony to return to bed. Jin pushed back the light blankets and stretched out, trying once again to sleep. She tossed and turned for an hour, replaying the parade and then the lunch with the regent and his staff. The day had been a blur as they were settled into their quarters. There had been measurements and then parcels of clothing arriving throughout the day, a whirlwind tour of their wing followed by another lavish meal—this time in formal dress. But beyond all of that, it had been a day of cataloging data. Where entrances and exits were. How many guards worked the wall and gates.

And now, when she should’ve slept, Jin Li Tam played it all back and could not stop. When the softest chimes rang in the halls beyond her room, she sat up.

Padding to the door, she opened it slowly. Outside, a guard stood in the corner with a clear view of the double doors leading into the wing and each room’s door along that short hallway. The double doors were open now, and beyond them, she saw first one and then another robed figure slip past.

Jin stepped into the hall, leaving the door cracked behind her. The guard inclined her head, and she returned the gesture with a smile. “I heard a bell,” she said, forming the words carefully in V’Ral.

“First prayer, Mother.” The woman’s voice was younger than her eyes.

“Ah,” Jin said. She looked beyond the double doors. “I think I’m going to walk a bit. Will you send someone for me if Jakob awakens?”

The guard nodded. “Yes, Mother.”

She glanced behind her to the partly open door. Lynnae also slept nearby, her own chambers separated from Jin and Jakob’s by way of a lavish bathing room. Still, she was hesitant to leave.

He is safer here than anywhere else in the world.

She looked to the guard once more, then slipped down the hallway. Her bare feet were silent in the thick carpet, though she made no effort to conceal her footfalls. She moved out from the wing, into the greater living quarters of the palace. Robed figures moved quickly and quietly down a central staircase, and she was so focused on them that she didn’t see the chief mother until the woman was in front of her.

“Lady Tam,” Elsbet said. “Are your quarters satisfactory?”

“Quite,” she said. “I just couldn’t sleep. I heard the chime and came out.”

The older woman nodded. “Of course. Strange surroundings and sleep don’t often go well together. I’m sure we can find you something in the apothecary’s pantry if you wish.”

Jin shook her head. “Thank you. No. I prefer to walk. But don’t let me keep you from your prayers.”

Elsbet smiled. “Nonsense. Prayer takes many forms; certainly walking with our Great Mother is one of them.” She paused and raised her eyebrows. “Unless, of course, you prefer to be alone?”

The lie was easy. “I’d be happy for the company.”

“Good,” the Chief Mother said.

As they walked, they chatted in quiet tones, and Jin Li Tam noted every guard, every door, every window, pausing to ask questions as they went. And when they slipped out into the warm night into gardens scented by lemons, limes, and oranges, she took note of each outbuilding and cobblestone path.

An hour later, Jin found herself once more by the entrance to her wing. “Thank you,” she said, inclining her head to the older woman.

“Thank
you,
Great Mother.”

Jin’s eyes strayed to a closed and ornate set of doors leading into the single wing she’d not yet seen. Two of the Blood Guard stood to either side of the entrance. “Is that where the Crimson Empress resides?”

Elsbet followed her eyes and nodded. “It is.”

Jin chose her next words with care, keeping her tone curious and light. “I was surprised that she did not participate in today’s celebrations.”

Elsbet smiled. “She’s been ill. But regardless, she rarely appears in public.” She looked at Jin, her eyes softening. “I’m sure formal introductions will be arranged soon. But … would you like to see her?”

“I…” Jin’s voice faltered. “Certainly. But only if it’s … appropriate.”

“You’ve travelled a long way. I think it’s very appropriate.”

Elsbet turned to the guards, and Jin watched as her hands moved in some coded sign language she did not comprehend. One of the women unlocked and opened the door.

On the other side, at the end of a hall lined with doors, a servant in red robes sat in a single chair with a leather-bound book open in her lap. When she saw Elsbet and Jin approach she blushed and started to rise. “Chief Mother, I—”

“Please stay seated,” Elsbet said with a gentle smile. “How is she tonight?”

“Her cough persists, but she sleeps.”

Elsbet nodded. “We’ll just look in on her.”

Elsbet opened the door a crack just as a fit of coughing started up behind it. The sound of it froze Jin’s blood before she even comprehended it, and as the door swung open, a shaft of light spilled into the darkened room.

Jin felt a hand at her elbow, guiding her through the door, but it was a distant touch she barely felt. Instead, her focus was centered on the large, round bed that dominated the room.

Lying in the middle of that bed, sleeping sprawled on her stomach, was a little girl of roughly Jakob’s age. Her dark curly hair spilled out on the sheet like ink on clean paper, and she clutched a cloth-made dromedary in one of her hands.

“Behold,” Chief Mother Elsbet whispered, “the Crimson Empress … Amara Y’Zir … the hope of our world.”

And in that moment, Jin Li Tam knew that she could never do what her grandfather had sent her here to do, and she felt the hope leaking out from her like so much held breath.

Vlad Li Tam

Awaken, my love.

Vlad Li Tam heard the voice—the slightest whisper—and his eyes flew open. The staff trembled in his hand, and he untangled himself from the woman whose limbs entwined him. He stood and stepped out of the shed and into the warm night.

They’d walked for a day, he and Chandra, and he’d tried to use the staff less and less.

The tools of the parents,
he thought. After the interrogation on the boat, his weariness had moved from a dull and pervasive ache to a sharper, clearer pain. His bones hurt now, and he had moments of vertigo that made the ground rush at him like a magicked scout. When he
could
urinate, he pissed red, and he was always thirsty. The staff, he knew, was taking from him for everything that it seemed to give.

And now it whispers to me in the night.
No, he realized.
She
whispers.

Vlad stepped out of their latest shelter—an abandoned lean-to on the edge of an orchard that overlooked the river canyon—and stretched. The water below moved slowly, shimmering back the starlight. To the southwest, at the river’s end, the lights of Ahm’s Glory washed the sky a lighter shade of gray. They would reach that vast city tomorrow if they kept their pace.

And then what?

He wasn’t sure, but Vlad had something—faith, he thought—that assured him the right path would be clear just as it always had been before.

He heard the faintest rustle to his right, and he turned quickly, raising the staff. The kin-raven hopped back, its beak open.

“Knives,” the kin-raven said.

Vlad blinked. “Knives?”

It chortled and lifted itself into the air, wings stirring up wind. Vlad took a step toward the bird. “Knives?”

“Yes, Uncle,” a voice said behind him. “Knives.” Vlad turned, feeling the staff vibrate to life in his hands. The man was slight of build, dressed in loose-fitting desert robes that concealed all but the hilts of his scout knives.

It was instinctive now, and he held the man in place with the staff, commanded truth with the staff. “Who are you?”

“We are the Knives of Tam,” the man said. “Hidden away for time of need. Our kin-raven brought us to you.”

No resistance.
But Vlad didn’t need the staff to see that the man was being truthful. And neither the dimness of the starlight nor the scars upon his face could conceal the features of a Tam—not from another Tam.

Now he saw there were others with him—two young men and a girl of maybe twelve. They wore simple garb—shades of brown to match the desert—and they carried scout knives. The girl had a blowgun tucked into her belt. He looked back to the man in robes. “Which nephew are you?”

“I am Al Shadryk of Terick’s Fall now,” he said. “But I was Som Li Tam before my grandfather sent me here.”

Som Li Tam.
He struggled to make the connection. His brother Tarn’s boy? Killed at sea … or was it moonpox? There was a time when he would have remembered. It was two decades ago or longer. “My father sent you?”

Som Li Tam nodded, and the others did, too. “We are your knives, set aside and hidden should you need them.”

Vlad opened his mouth to speak and closed it as Chandra emerged from the shelter. He could see the fear on her face. “We have guests,” he told her.

His nephew inclined his head to her. “You are the Vessel of Grace,” he said. It was more a statement than a question.

“Yes,” she answered. “I was … am.”

The man nodded and returned his attention to Vlad. “I bear word to you from Grandfather,” he said. He dug into his robes and drew out a folded, sealed envelope.

Vlad felt the age of it as he took it, and he resisted the urge to open it. He tucked it into his own pocket. “And what is your assignment?”

“I serve House Li Tam however you direct me, Uncle. I am your knife.”

They all are.
He saw their faces, bathed in the light of the city behind him and the stars above. There was determination on them.

And my father hid them here for me.
The idea of it staggered him—and though the boy was telling the truth and the note was sure to explain why, Vlad could not fathom his father doing such a thing. Ben Li Tam had been at the heart of the conspiracy that destroyed Windwir and its Androfrancines. And ultimately, his actions had put most of House Li Tam onto the Y’Zirites’ cutting tables in a temple he himself had designed.

But Som Li Tam is telling the truth.
And that told Vlad he could trust him. “For now, I will need quiet access to Ahm’s Glory and lodging for myself and the woman.”

The man nodded. “It will be arranged. I’ll send the bird with details.” He turned and flashed hand-signs to the others that Vlad didn’t recognize. A pack and two canteens materialized, and Som placed them on the ground near the lean-to. “Food and water,” he said.

Vlad inclined his head. “Thank you.”

His nephew returned the gesture. Then he turned and ran into the night, the others falling in around him. The sound of their retreat was a whisper that slowly faded.

When they were gone, he looked to Chandra. “We should sleep. We’ll have more walking tomorrow.”

They crawled back into their makeshift bed, and Vlad stroked her hair until she fell asleep, her arms and legs once more wrapped around him. As she slept, he lay awake and thought.

I could be wrong to trust him.
He didn’t think he was, but Vlad had to allow for it. And if he was wrong, he could call upon the staff to help him. But that slightest use earlier left his stomach cramping now as he came down from the euphoria of using it.

Vlad touched the scrap of paper in his pocket. He’d found notes from his father before over the years—it was a custom in the House. And some had been found long after his death, hidden for just the right time. But this was the first since Vlad had learned—and experienced—his father’s plans for House Li Tam as an intricate part of this Y’Zirite cult.

It surprised him how badly he wanted the note to explain his father’s choices and actions. But Vlad had learned it well and from the very man himself: Tams do not explain their choices and always have a reason for them.

He waited until first light and slipped out beneath a quiet sky to sit on the cliff over the river. Vlad carefully opened the envelope with fingers that betrayed him by shaking, and he pulled out the single sheet of parchment to unfold it.

He held it open before him until the gray of morning was such that he could make out the letters. He read it once, and then he read it again.

There were no coded messages, and the handwriting was his father’s—from his later years, after the first stroke.

I was wrong,
the note read.

And after those words, a poem in a style familiar to him. About a father who longed for his son’s forgiveness but knew he could never attain it.

Vlad tried to feel something for the man who had made him, shaped him, but couldn’t. In the end, he tucked the paper away, stood up on aching legs, and went to awaken Chandra for the road ahead.

Chapter

16

Neb

Neb moved up and forward in darkness, his feet careful to find their footing and his hands outstretched before him as he went. He was forced to move slowly, unsure of his step and of what obstacles might block his path, and as he climbed the endlessly spiraling staircase he lost all sense of time. It felt like he’d climbed for days in pursuit of the girl.