Requiem (43 page)

Nearly losing them at the library had taken him into terror unimagined, and losing them to Y’Zir had done the same. But a greater fear now grew within his heart, breeding with his anger. It grew and twisted itself with every new turn in the Whymer Maze. Until now, he’d thought his son relatively safe in Y’Zir, but that was not the case. Certainly, his body was safe. But his mind was at risk.

If we do not find some way to end this, my son will grow up believing this is true.

And so Rudolfo sat down again to his desk and started through his notes about the mark. He would internalize as much as he could, and over dinner, he would ask questions of Yazmeera and her men about the day they took their own marks. He would fuel the conversation with comments and comparisons wherever he could in order to keep them talking about themselves and their beliefs.

He would note their words and frame questions for the dinners to follow. And somewhere, Rudolfo knew, in the midst of it he would find the path and somehow undo his father’s handiwork and spare his son a future he could not abide.

Chapter

22

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam paced while Jakob fussed his way to sleep in the other room. She was vaguely aware of the lullaby Lynnae hummed in the same way she was aware of the scent of lemon blossoms and smoke on the warm night wind.

Portions of the city still burned beyond her balcony. Fires set, the regent assured her, to coincide with the distraction and destruction of her father’s challenge and the toppled statue.

“They found tracts,” he told her through a clenched jaw. “Burning in a warehouse by the docks. Not many. But enough. Supposedly we are victims of the Younger Gods’ wrath.” She remembered the hollowness in his eyes and remembered hoping that he could not see her pleasure at his words.

Father, I see your hand in this.
Vlad Li Tam was speaking to the Y’Zirites in a language and context they understood, and it was working. People were fleeing the city as the plague ravaged them. Hundreds had been killed when the statue fell, dozens more in the fires. There was a calculated brutality to it that she respected, given what her father had endured, though she did not fathom how he’d come into the power to impose his vengeance so completely.

She saw his agenda clearly, and it tasked her to reach deeper for her own. She was a Tam, and the moment she saw her father’s work, she saw in it her own opportunity to make use of the distraction he provided.

But to use it for what?

Security had increased, with more and more of the elite Blood Guard brought in from beyond the city to guard the palace. More and more of the black-robed magisters prowled the halls now, too, as they responded to the growing threat outside. She’d heard very little, but she knew that the plague had spread beyond the city, carried by caravan. And she knew that they were burning bodies on the outskirts of town.

Jin Li Tam stopped pacing and faced the city. The statue lay where it had fallen, cracked and broken across the courtyard. Beneath and around it, the rubble of the walls and buildings it had broken in its fall lay scattered about. They’d tended to the casualties, but beyond that, the army did not have the resources to remove the wreckage. Already thinned significantly by the plague, the army was now overtasked just supplementing security and fighting fires that threatened the docks and the magisters’ compound.

She closed her eyes and felt the tired beneath her skin. She’d spent the last two days learning more of the nooks and crannies of the palace, including its armory and the low, squat laundry facility tucked into the back of the massive building. She found herself rehearsing the various routes she’d taken, noting how and where each room and hallway connected, what types of doors and locks she would encounter along the way.

“It is good that you are preparing.” The voice made her jump, and she spun, suddenly disoriented and uncertain on her feet. The room was gone now, and instead, she stood in her father’s open-air office at the top of his tower overlooking the sea.

Vlad Li Tam sat in the center of the room upon a simple pillow, his low work table empty but for the long silver staff that lay upon it. The old man inclined his head. “Hello, Daughter.”

Jin felt her mouth go dry and she licked her lips, habit bringing her chin down in his direction. “Father.”

“They are watching for me here,” he said. “I will be brief. They will come asking what I’ve told you.” She tried to read the emotion in his eyes and found nothing. “Tell them,” he said.

She blinked. “Tell them what?”

He nodded. “The truth,” he said. “What your grandfather knew. There is only one way to end this madness. I am coming for the children.” He reached out and touched the staff. When he did, it twisted into a snake of silver light, shifting and coiling upon his table with a hiss that chilled her blood. Her father lowered his voice to almost a whisper, and Jin heard sorrow and finality in his voice. “Tell them I am coming for the children, and there is nothing they can do to stop me.”

“What do you mean?” Her stomach had turned to ice with his words.

“You know what I mean, Daughter. And you will not be able to stop me any more than they will.” He looked up, and beyond her, his eyes fixing upon something she could not see and narrowed slightly as they did. “I must go now.”

She opened her mouth to reply and realized she no longer stood. Instead, she lay stretched out upon the floor. Lynnae crouched over her, her hands upon Jin’s shoulders as she shook her. “Lady Tam?”

“Call the guards in,” she said as she sat up. Vertigo took her as she climbed to her feet. She staggered toward the sudden quiet of Jakob’s attached room, feeling the panic rise within her as she moved forward on wobbly legs.

She felt a sob tear from her as she approached his bed, then paused. He slept, his chest moving with each deep breath. Jin Li Tam steadied herself against the doorframe and slowed her own breathing. His words—and the tone of them—rolled over and around her, washing her in certainty.
I am coming for the children, and there is nothing they can do to stop me.

The guards were in the room now, and Lynnae guided Jin to sit at the edge of the bed, pushing a glass of water into her hand. There was concern in the young woman’s voice. “What happened?”

Jin sipped the water and breathed, feeling her heart rate slow with each lungful of air she pulled into herself and pushed out. “A nightmare,” she said.

But I was awake when it happened.
She’d experienced waking dreams since the last days of her pregnancy with Jakob. Only they had been rare and much less vivid.

“It was my father,” she said. And she knew it was the truth, regardless of how she wished it were a nightmare. She took another drink of the water and turned at the commotion behind her.

Sister Elsbet moved quickly into the room, a full squad of Blood Guard moving about her to take up positions near the door and in the hallway around it. Her face was calm, but Jin saw alarm in the woman’s eyes as she came to the bed and crouched by her. “We sensed him in the aether, Great Mother.”

She nodded. “He told me you would.”

A Blood Scout moved a chair for Sister Elsbet, and the woman smoothed her robes as she sat. “What did he want?”

Jin’s eyes moved to Jakob, then took in the gathering crowd in the room. Elsbet noticed and snapped her fingers. “Leave us.”

Lynnae squeezed Jin’s shoulder and moved away, filing through the door with the others. She waited until the door was closed, then took another drink. “He wants the children.”

Jin watched the woman grow pale, her lips pursed together and graying from the pressure. Finally, Elsbet released her breath. “Tell me,” she said.

She recounted the conversation word for word, leaving nothing out, and when she finished the woman nodded. “And now tell me the rest.” Their eyes met. “What your grandfather knew?”

Jin swallowed. “My grandfather knew your faith was madness and that the only way to end it was to kill the Crimson Empress and crush your beliefs in that cradle.”

Elsbet nodded slowly. “And he sent you,” she added, “to do this dark deed.”

Jin stared at the woman.
Tell them the truth.
“Yes,” she said.

Elsbet smiled. “Yes.”

“How long have you known?”

She shrugged. “We suspected all along. You came easily with us at the regent’s request. And we know your family all too well.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I suppose I knew it when I finally introduced you to Empress Amara.”

Jin let the surprise pass over her face. “Yet you did nothing?”

“There was nothing to do,” she said. “I knew you could not harm the girl.”

Could not.
She swallowed. “How could you know that?”

Now Elsbet laughed, her eyes losing their fear for just a moment. “Because despite whatever else you may be, you are the Great Mother first and foremost, Lady Tam.” Then, the fear returned, and she placed a hand upon Jin’s shoulder. “The question is whether or not your father could harm the children.”

And when Jin answered, she knew she answered not just for the Crimson Empress she’d been sent to assassinate but also for her own son. Her breath caught in her throat as she answered.

“Yes,” the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam said with complete certainty, feeling her own fear running cold beneath the skin. “He is
very
capable.”

And he is coming.

Neb

Neb measured time by the healing of his wounds with no sense of how accurate the measurement was. He walked until he was too tired to continue, then slept where he fell, aware now keenly of the food and water he needed. Sometimes, he heard the girl moving ahead of him in the distance. But most times, he heard nothing at all but the sound of his own footfalls as he slowly climbed the tower.

He kept the harp strings wrapped tightly around his hand, their biting presence a reminder of how dangerous the girl was. He did not grasp the nature of her illness, but he knew that at least some part of her wanted him dead.

And she has the means to do it,
he realized, thinking about the broken crystalline harp. There was no doubt in his mind that she would use the weapon she’d fashioned if he gave her the opportunity. The thought of it slowed his pace as he strained his ears for some sign of her ahead.

He overtook her while she was sleeping and nearly missed it. It was the faintest movement on the far side of the chamber he crept through that caught his attention. Neb paused, then moved slowly in her direction.

Amylé D’Anjite slept nestled into the corner, her sharpened length of crystal clenched tightly to her chest. He paused for a moment, stilled by the sight of her. He certainly felt the call upon him, but beneath it there was simply an extraordinary beauty to her sleeping form. He blinked and slowly unrolled a length of wire.

Neb launched himself at her, kicking the weapon away as he forced her onto her stomach. She fought, but not with the ferocity of their earlier encounter, and he quickly pinned her, bringing a cry of pain from her as he pushed his knee into her back. “Hold still,” he said.

She bucked and kicked at him, but he tied her hands. Once he was sure of the knots, he pushed away from her.

Her voice held as much fear as it did anger. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he climbed to his feet and wished the ache in his stomach would subside. He forced himself to look at her, letting the shame pass over him and through him. He studied her, not sure what to say. He stooped and picked up the shard of crystal. “You nearly killed me the last time I saw you,” he said. “I can’t let that happen.”

Her eyes went wide and her nostrils flared. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Neb snorted. “You don’t have to see it.”

She moved, testing the wire that held her wrists. “What will you do with me?”

Neb wasn’t sure how to answer. He couldn’t leave her, but he also wasn’t convinced that bringing her along was his best choice. Even tied, he suspected fierce resistance if and when the other part of her surged back to life. And he knew that when that darker side to her emerged it would do so with the utmost brutality and no warning whatsoever. He stood over her, finally stumbling into the first words he found. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

Now she snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Then you want to keep going?”

She said nothing, and he took her silence as consent, bending to catch her arm and help her up. He felt the warmth of her body brushing against him, accompanied by another stab of the shame. Once she was on her feet, he stood her to the side, and his eye caught what her sleeping form had been covering. He reached for the crescent and raised it to his ear.

“You found this in the room with the mechoservitor and the harp,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know where I found it; I woke up with it. But I’ve met Petronus. He told me to tell you that he is coming.”

Neb looked away from her for a moment to the crescent in his hands. Unlike the other, this was slightly larger and had different impressions worn into its surface. He felt the outline of continents and mountain ranges beneath his fingers and tilted an end of the crescent toward his mouth. “Petronus?”

“I’ve not heard him for a while,” the girl said. “They were being pursued.”

Neb brought the crescent down from his ear to stare at it. Then, he looked to the girl. “But he’s coming?”

She nodded, and he felt something like relief struggling to break loose in him. He’d lost track of the days, but even with the strength of his new body, he could not hold out forever. He woke up after each period of sleep still tired, still thirsty, still hungry. And he still had no sense of how to be free of the tower. He climbed because the girl climbed, and now that he’d found her, he wasn’t certain of what to do next. He found himself wishing he could ask Petronus what to do, or even consult with the mechoservitors, though he knew the old man—along with the others in his troop—were looking to
him
for that direction.