Antiphon (57 page)

Isaak’s other hand was up now, both of them settling over Charles’s shoulders as he gathered the old man into his arms. The old man was reminded of the embrace he’d seen Rudolfo give the metal man before they’d entered the Beneath Places. He let Isaak pull him in and finally raised his own arms to return the embrace briefly.

“Come back to me when you are finished,” he whispered.

“I will do my utmost, Father.”

Charles nodded and sniffed, suddenly embarrassed at the emotion he knew must paint his face. He looked to Garyt and saw the young Machtvolk look away, also uncomfortable.

Then the door was open and the two mechoservitors were speeding across the snow, sure-footed, as they raced to join their Homeseeker.

Charles watched them go, feeling both powerlessness and pride as
they followed their faith in the moon’s whispered song. They did not need his blessing, not any more than Isaak had needed Charles to install the dream scroll in him. But regardless, just as he’d needed to give his metal son that dream, he also needed to relinquish him to serve it.

Because love offered asks its blessings and love returned offers those blessings freely.

“Bless you,” he said quietly. Then Charles turned away and buried his face in his hands so that Garyt would not have to see him weep.

Winters packed quickly, her mind still foggy from the kallacaine she no longer needed. Her encounter with Neb had left her shaken.

No, she realized.
Terrified.
The first time she’d seen him, when she was tied to the table and beneath Xhum’s knife, he’d seemed more himself, though he was taller, more hollow-eyed than she’d remembered. And she’d not yet gotten used to the length of his hair. But at least she’d recognized him.

What she’d seen when he burst into her room was not the boy she once kissed in Rudolfo’s Whymer Maze. She’d not recognized him at all but for the voice. He had been something terrifying and ancient—a man wrapped in light and power with rage in his eyes. She had no doubt he would have killed the regent if she and Jin hadn’t interceded.

Maybe I should have let him.

She shook away the thought and tried to focus on the packing. She’d already dressed for rugged weather. They would go due southeast as quickly as they could. She’d pondered taking her people through the Beneath Places, but she still held out hope that the system of underground passages was unknown to the Y’Zirites and the Machtvolk. Better to keep it secret for as long as possible.

And the rest of my people need to see our exodus.
She had purchased that with her blood, along with those people who joined her. Those who chose the convenient lie would die in the land of their sorrow. She and those who followed her would follow the Homeseeker and return to the birthright of Shadrus.

Neb.
The boy she’d led into her camp two years ago, the young man who’d stood with her at Hanric’s Rest, had been gentle though old for his years. But the man she’d seen today had no gentleness in him.
When he’d laid his hands upon her and healed her wounds, even that act had a fierceness about it. And even now, she heard the thunderous crashing of him as he fought the Watcher in the forests. At first, she’d tried to pursue him, to persuade him to flee. But Jin had caught her arm, and the look in her eye had been enough to stop Winters.

It hadn’t taken much.
And she understood why now: Neb—the Homeseeker her people had longed for these two millennia—frightened her. He had become something unexpected. So in the end, she let him go and trusted that he would find his way to the new home they were promised, that he would make a path that she and her people could follow. And whatever magicks fueled him now, she hoped they would somehow help him wrest from the Watcher that which had been cut from her people’s book so that the tower could be opened.

But her hopes felt flat now.

No, she realized, it was not hope that had become flat. She knew he would do what must be done.

It was the love.
He’d burst into her room, with his wild eyes and unruly hair, and she’d seen nothing in him familiar or beloved remaining from the time before he left for the Churning Wastes.

She sighed.

When the regent had requested audience with Jin shortly after Neb raced bellowing from the lodge, Winters had returned to her own room to pack. People were already gathering, she’d been told, at the door that had once led to her throne room and living quarters. She would join them and lead them.

She took another look around the room. She’d packed everything that might be useful, fitting it into a scout pack that one of Aedric’s men had provided. She had socks and spare clothes, paper and pencil, and last, she strapped on her knife belt and took comfort in the blades upon her hips. She’d learned the dance with Jin thinking that she might take back her people by the blade, but in the end, it was someone else’s knife that gave her those people who were truly hers.

There was a knock at the door, and before she could speak, it opened. Jin stood framed in lamplight, and Winters forced a smile.

“May I come in?”

Winters nodded, and the tall woman slipped into the room. She held Jakob in one arm, nestled to her shoulder, as she pushed the door closed behind her. Jin nodded to the pack that sat on the bed. “You’re ready, then?”

“I am.” Winters frowned. “They’re still fighting.”

“They are. They’re moving northeast, though. You’ll want to steer clear of them.”

She’s not coming with me.
Winters wasn’t sure why she’d assumed that the woman would, but she had. “You’re staying, then?”

Trouble passed through Jin’s eyes, lingering only for a moment. She shook her head. “I’m not staying either. Can we sit?”

Winters went to the bed and moved the pack, sitting where it had been. Jin took the desk chair, turning it with her free hand so that it faced Winters. Then, she sat slowly, careful not to wake Jakob.

After they were both sitting, Jin met Winters’s eyes. “We’ve had our secrets, you and I,” she said, “and I think it’s time for us to trust.” Winters opened her mouth to answer, but Jin continued. “The regent has asked me to bring Jakob back with him to Y’Zir. He is citing tonight’s event as one of several indicating that it is not safe in the Named Lands for his Great Mother and Child of Promise.”

Winters felt her eyes widening. “You’re going with him?”

Jin nodded slowly. “Three nights ago, a woman claiming to be my sister appeared in my room and told me that Eliz Xhum would bid me come with him and that I should go. She told me that my grandfather’s golden bird would find me and tell me why.”

“And you believe her?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “But I’ve seen miracles I never imagined I would see, and for whatever reason, my family is swept up in this—both my family of birth and my family of choice. Some paths can’t be escaped from,” she said, “and some shouldn’t be.” She glanced at Jakob as she spoke. “I believe he will be safe there. And my eyes and ears could be useful to us.” She paused. “I think my father was more right than he knew: War
is
coming, and this unknown empire is a superior force.”

Especially with the discord and devastation sown here.
The southern nations were in disarray, recovering from assassinations, civil wars, the loss of their economic and moral center with the loss of the Androfrancines.

Jin continued. “I am sending Aedric and his men with you. I’ve not told him yet that I’m not coming. He will be angry. And Rudolfo will be even more angry, but I bid you tell him for me that I will see Jakob safely back to his care, and if I can, I will return to him as well.” Here, her words failed and her eyes fled from Winters. The woman’s mouth pursed for a moment, and then her eyes returned. “Tell him that I love
him and that he bears my grace above all others but the son we have made.”

Winters nodded, stunned at the finality she heard beneath the woman’s words.
She doesn’t think she’s coming back.
“I will tell him.”

Jin inclined her head. “Thank you.” She stood. “The scouts will go with you and keep you safe. The regent assures me that his promise will be honored, that you and those who wish to leave are free to do so.”

Winters stood, too, suddenly awkward in this moment, feeling the weight of a good-bye she did not want to give. Instead, she stepped toward the woman, stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. Then, she kissed the top of Jakob’s head. “You have been mother and sister to me, Lady Tam. And friend.”

Jin looked surprised at the affection, and Winters felt the heat of her blush as it moved out from her ears and face and down her neck. “Rudolfo would say you are a formidable woman, Winteria bat Mardic. I value the friendship dark circumstances granted us.” She smiled, reached out a hand and touched the girl’s cheek. “I hope your boy finds his way to the home you seek and that he takes you there soon.”

Winters wanted to open her mouth and protest, to say he was no longer her boy, to confess that he had changed, that she had changed and that because of those changes, love had fled. But she did not. The time for all secrets, it seemed, had not passed.

So she watched and said nothing as Jin Li Tam inclined her head one final time and left the room. After she’d gone, Winters wiped from her eyes the unwelcome tears that had sprung up there.

Then Winteria bat Mardic strapped on her pack and left to find her boots, her coat, her people and her path toward home.

Neb heard the sound of the tree cracking as he struck it, then held his breath as he fell with it. His skin prickled with heat as the silver fluid that somehow encased him absorbed the force of his impact.

Blood of the earth made to serve me.
And how was it that he knew? He shook away the thought and pulled himself up from the snow, turning as he did. The Watcher bore down on him and would have reached him again, but Isaak intersected with it, tumbling them both away from Neb. The other mechoservitor joined in, hands and feet flailing for purchase on the Watcher’s ancient, pitted metal surface.

They had joined the fight how long ago? He’d lost track of time, but it felt like hours ago. The two metal men, at first, had seemed to turn the tide, but the Watcher adapted quickly and now held his own against the three of them. Neb had managed to turn the battle north and east, away from the more populated area. It wasn’t until now that he realized he was also moving them toward the Watcher’s cave.

And toward the bargaining pool that lies beneath it.
He’d found the cave after climbing the ladder and opening the hatch. He’d seen the cutting room and the blood-still along with the bird station. It had been recently ransacked, and a pile of gospels still burned just outside the entrance beside two bloody but neatly folded kin-wolf skins.

I am slowing down.
He was winded, now, too. The silver sheath that
swam over his skin seemed sluggish, and his muscles were beginning to ache. Its brightness vacillated, moving between white and gray.

You are losing your strength,
his father whispered.
It will burn out soon.

Yes,
Neb realized. He’d first felt it when he’d healed Winters. And now, with each blow the Watcher landed—and each blow Neb returned—the blood of the earth burned hotter over his skin.

He forced his attention away from his father’s whispering and back to the Watcher. The metal man flowed in combat, moving with far more grace and precision than Rufello’s re-creations, brought back to life by the Androfrancines.

It was taking a toll.

Even now, Neb watched as the Watcher’s fist came down on Isaak’s companion, shattering a jeweled eye and denting the metal skull. As it reeled away, Isaak threw himself at it only to be tossed easily aside.

“Abomination,” the Watcher said, “do not make me dismantle your metal playthings. I hold the final dream.” He chuckled, and it was colder than the winter’s night they fought in. “Come take it from me.”

And Neb knew it then of a certainty:
I can’t.

The blood of the earth was failing. It would not sustain more than a few more impacts before it burned off utterly. Without it, he would be broken like kindling over a metal knee. And the mechoservitors were no match for their older cousin.

I cannot beat him.

No,
his father answered.
You cannot.

Neb dodged north just ahead of the Watcher’s charge.

What do I do?

The image of the bargaining pool flashed before his inner eye.
You are the Homeseeker, Nebios. Leave this to your hand servants and go to the antiphon. Time is of the essence.

He’d forgotten about the antiphon, and he cursed. He squeezed the kin-raven in his fist, feeling the bite of it in his palm. “Petronus,” he said.

The old man looked up from where he crouched in the cave. The song flooded the cave, drowning out the sounds of the fight that raged there. There were bodies piled, both magicked and not, as they fought in the dark. “Neb?”

“How do you fare?”

The old man didn’t answer the question, shouting one of his own instead. “Where in hells are you? We can’t hold out much longer.”