Antiphon

Chapter 14

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam knocked lightly on the boiler room door and slipped inside, pulling it closed behind him as he did. The heat of the room washed over him, and he felt the sweat rising. He licked the salt from his lips and glanced around the room.

Baryk stood nearby, and beside him, Vlad’s forty-eighth son, Ren, covered in grease and wet from sweat. On the far end of the room stood the sunstone vault-a massive steel compartment with Rufello locks to keep the ancient power source secure. Though he wasn’t supposed to have them, Vlad had long ago paid very well to acquire the ciphers for the locks, but he’d yet to need them. The boiler stood in the center, a series of pipes leading to and from it carrying steam aft to power the engines. Stretched out on a rack, almost as if hung to dry, the metal man stood, chest plate open, wires spilling out. Ren held one end of a braid of wires that led deep into the chest cavity.

He looked to him. “Are you ready, Father?

Vlad nodded. “Do you think it will work?”

“I think so,” the young man said. “Yes.”

They’d spent the better part of a day looking over the metal man before Ren Li Tam had been brought over from one of the other ships. He’d studied the mechanicals during a dispensational apprenticeship to the library in his youth and had continued to dabble here and there with what little he could find.

It took him no time at all to see that the mechoservitor’s power supply had somehow burned out.

Now, most of a week later, they were ready to reactivate the mechanical using the sunstone that powered the flagship of the iron fleet. Ren had gone over his plan with them quite carefully, and Vlad didn’t see a better way to discover how a mechanical could be adrift in the deepest south of the Ghosting Crests in one of Rafe Merrique’s lifeboats.

“I’m going to power us down,” Ren said, throwing a large switch. “Then I will wire the mechoservitor directly to the sunstone.”

The vibration of the ship that he’d grown so used to was suddenly gone, and Vlad looked up. He could hear everyone breathing in the quiet.

He watched as Ren threaded his end of the wire braid through what looked like the eye of a gigantic needle set into the side of the vault. He knotted the braids and then pushed the needle into a slot in the side of the vault, slowly. When he was finished, he wiped the sweat from his hands and threw the switch.

The mechoservitor danced upon the rack for a moment, then settled as its boiler started ticking. After a few minutes, the amber eyes fluttered open as the shutters blinked.

“Are you functional?” Ren asked it.

“I am functional,” it answered.

“What is your designation?”

“I am Mechoservitor Number Seven, First Generation, attached to the Office for the Preservation of the Light by Holy Unction of Pope Introspect.” The metal man shook violently as he spoke, his bellows pumping wildly as his eye shutters opened and closed fast as hummingbird wings. Then, the shaking stopped and the eyes grew bright and then dim. “My name is Obadiah.”

Vlad blinked. “You have a name?” He was familiar with Isaak-though the last time he’d seen that metal man had been at Sethbert’s arranged execution well over a year before. Still, Isaak was the only mechoservitor he knew of to take a name.

“I do,” the mechoservitor said. “Where am I?”

“You are aboard The Serendipitous Wind, flagship of House Li Tam,” Vlad said. “What are you doing so far to sea? And how do you come to be in one of the Kinshark’s lifeboats?”

The metal man pulled at the chains that bound him to the rack. “Why am I restrained?” He stretched his legs.

Vlad smiled. “I ordered it. To be certain of you. When I am, I will order it otherwise.”

The mechoservitor blinked. “You are the captain of this vessel?”

“I am Vlad Li Tam.”

The mechoservitor clicked and clacked, its eyes flashing again. “Do you serve the light, Lord Tam?”

An odd question. And one he’d not thought about for a good while. Not so long ago, he might have lied in his answer. But now, he opted for the truth. “I do not serve anything,” Vlad Li Tam said.

“The light requires service of you.”

How many times had he heard these words? To be fair, at least half the times that he had acquiesced when they called, it had been because of some secondary outcome he could achieve beneath their very cowl-shadowed noses. His eyes narrowed. “What service does the light require, Obadiah?”

“A replacement power source. The twelve vessels provided you by the Androfrancine Order are powered by sunstones and-”

“Six vessels now,” Vlad said. “Perhaps we can barter a satisfactory arrangement.” He glanced around the room, saw the stool someone had placed for him, and sat in it. “But first, a conversation.”

“Time is of the essence, Lord Tam. I do not-”

He raised his hand. “First,” he said again, “a conversation.” He leaned forward. “Where is the Kinshark?”

How long had that vessel been missing now? Two months? Four? He made a mental note to ask Baryk.

“I do not know,” the mechoservitor said.

“Were you aboard her?”

The eye shutters flashed again.

Vlad smiled. “We found you in her lifeboat.”

“I was aboard. I do not know her current location.”

He nodded slowly. “What were you doing aboard the Kinshark?”

Nothing.

Vlad changed his tack. “Did you hire Rafe Merrique to transport you?”

The mechoservitor’s bellows pumped, and a gout of steam released from the exhaust grate in its back. “The light required service of his vessel. Captain Merrique and his crew were provided for.” When it met Vlad’s gaze he felt suddenly unsettled by the intense light in those amber eyes. “May we now barter?”

Vlad shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Not until my curiosity is satisfied. What is your purpose in the Ghosting Crests?”

“You are not authorized to-”

Vlad sighed. “Power him off.”

The eyes flashed again, and the metal man began to shake. Ren reached for the switch, and the metal man’s mouth worked its way open and then closed three times before it spoke in a quiet voice. “The antiphon will fail if you do not aid me, Lord Tam. My task cannot be accomplished without your assistance.”

“Then trust me. There is no Order to support you. There is no Pope to offer Holy Unction. You are aware of this?”

“Yes.”

“And you are self-aware. You have a name. Obadiah, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You are capable of making choices outside of your scripting, Obadiah?”

The mechoservitor was silent for a moment. Finally, it spoke. “I am.”

“Then choose to trust me.”

It hung its head, and when it looked up, there were tears welling in its eyes. “But the dream is clear on this matter: You are not to be trusted.”

Vlad sat back and blinked. “Me?”

“Your kind.”

He glanced around the room and made a quick decision. “Everyone out,” he said. “I want to be alone with it.”

He watched the surprise register on the faces. As they slowly shuffled toward the door, he caught the sleeve of Ren’s shirt. “Stay nearby. I’ll summon you.”

He waited in silence for a minute after they left. Then, he edged his stool closer to the mechoservitor. “Trust is an earned commodity not easily accrued in these times,” he said. “So I am going to trust you, Obadiah, and hope that you, in turn, will trust me.” He waited until the mechanical stopped clacking, processing his words, and then continued. “The only reason I found you was because the d’jin we follow took us to you. If she hadn’t, you would be lost at sea, nonfunctional, and whatever this antiphon is that you speak of would surely have failed. Do you concur?”

“I concur.”

“You are adept at mathematics and probabilities. What are the chances of another sunstone-powered vessel finding you in the Ghosting Crests?” When the mechanical started clicking and clacking to work the equation, Vlad raised a hand. “I do not need the exact number. Would you concur that it is highly improbable?”

“Yes,” Obadiah said. “I concur.”

Even as he painted the image for the metal man, Vlad began to see it for himself. She had known. She had brought him to the metal man’s rescue, but it did not appear to be her only destination. Each night, even since they’d brought the metal man aboard, she’d appeared to guide them farther southeast. Something still waited for them out in the waters where none dared sail.

“I do not know why she brought me to you,” Vlad said, “but I believe she intended us to find you. Even still, she leads us southeast and-”

The mechoservitor looked up. “You sail for the Moon Wizard’s Ladder.” He started to tremble again. “The light-bearer is calling you into the dream.”

Light-bearer? Vlad had never heard the term before. But he’d heard of the Moon Wizard’s Ladder from the mythology of the Old World. He’d certainly heard stories as a boy about the Year of the Falling Moon and the ladder that the first Wizard King had used to return and avenge the kidnap of his daughters, establishing the firm but just reign by blood magick in the now desolate lands north of them. He thought of the ghost in the water, and his heart swelled for her, aching in its intensity, in his need to follow her.

Vlad forced his attention back to the mechoservitor. “Calling me into what dream?”

“The dream we serve to save the light,” Obadiah said, his voice reedy and low. He clicked and whirred for a minute, as if calculating how much trust to extend. “The dream compels us. It requires a response.”

Yes. Like the ghost in the water. Compulsion to follow, expressed by an intense love. “The antiphon,” Vlad said.

Slowly, the mechoservitor nodded.

Then it opened its mouth and sang. The metal voice rose in the metal room, and Vlad Li Tam felt the hair on his arms and neck lift. In that moment, he felt a connection to something he had never felt before. The song was all around him, wrapping him like the warm sea, his scars burning from the salt. Light pulsed and undulated, tendrils waving to him.

“I know this song. She sings it to me.”

The mechoservitor stopped singing abruptly and fixed his eyes on him. “Lord Tam, you have heard the dream. You are my brother. The light-bearer chose you. The antiphon is nearly complete. We must clear the Moon Wizard’s Ladder or the antiphon will fail and the light will be lost.”

Vlad Li Tam stood slowly.

Yes my love, he told his ghost.

“Yes,” Vlad Li Tam said to his metal brother, his cheeks wet from tears he did not know he cried.

He could still hear the song beneath his skin.

Winters

Winters moved through the new-fallen snow, her feet carrying her once more along a familiar pathway. Behind her, her two constant companions followed at an appropriate distance.

She’d dreamed for three nights straight now, and it startled her how much the dream had changed. Now, metal men and numbers and white towers overlooking placid oceans filled her. And those skies, that world that hung above them, were the ones she’d seen in the Homeseeker’s dream. She knew they were connected just as she knew the song was what made it different now.

And then there was Neb.

She blinked, her eyes suddenly full of water. She could not see him, but she could hear him screaming somewhere far away. Or at least she thought it was him. Still, she’d written those parts down, too, even the words he cried out with such agony, though they were in a language she did not know.

From those nights, she’d amassed quite a stack of parchments. She carried them now in her copy of the Y’Zirite gospel, carefully folded in between the pages.

She climbed the slight incline and paused at the top, looking across to the closed entrance to her throne room. Garyt stood by it. When she was certain it was him, she continued walking.

Her hands moved quickly even as she hoped the fading sunlight was enough for him to see it. I am dreaming again, she signed. I must add the new pages to the Book.

He inclined his head slightly. I will find a way to add them for you, my queen.

She returned his nod and followed the trail down to the river clearing. When she reached it, she saw Jin Li Tam waiting. She stood straight, staring out over the river, hands on the handles of her knives. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a leather cord, and for a moment, Winters thought she was looking at a girl, not the ruthless, formidable forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam.

Winters approached. “I’m here,” she said.

Jin Li Tam looked at her. She nodded to her hands. “Why did you bring that?”

She looked down, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks and ears. She still held the Gospel of Ahm Y’Zir. I need to say something, she thought. She looked around, then leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I am dreaming again.”

Twice now she’d said it, and it frightened her both times. After so long without the dreams, she’d finally accepted that it must be some strange anomaly. They’d been her constant companion for as long as she could remember, and then the dreams were gone. As if a door had been slammed shut.

And now, suddenly it was flung open.

Jin’s eyebrows arched. “The ones you dreamed with Neb?”

She nodded and shivered. He’d screamed so loudly. “Yes, but different now. There are mechoservitors in my dream now.” She paused, feeling that sudden rush of water again to her eyes. “And I think someone is hurting Neb, but I can’t be sure.” She continued at Jin’s concerned look. “I think I hear him screaming.”

Jin looked over her shoulder, keeping her voice low. “We should dance now. We’re being watched.”

Winters started to turn, realized she was doing it, and stopped. She looked around the clearing, found a stump and brushed the snow from it. Then, she put down the book and shrugged out of her fur coat.

Jin’s knives were already out when Winters turned to face her. Drawing her own, she moved into the first overture. They moved slowly at first, their knives finding the others and clinking in the quiet afternoon. Their feet moved across the snow, breaking it up, as Winters matched her rhythm to Jin’s. Gradually, the seasoned knife fighter raised the tempo until it was at a point where Winters had to work. At its crescendo, their knives sparked and rasped as they danced across the clearing.

After forty minutes, they stopped and Winters bent at the knees to suck in great lungfuls of the cold air. She looked up as she did it and saw that this time, even Jin Li Tam had broken a sweat. The redheaded queen smiled at her.

“You’re getting better, girl.”

She slowed her breathing. “Really?”

Jin nodded. “I’d pit you against any of Rudolfo’s scouts. And your reach is exceptional. Better than most men. Once you’ve hit your full height, you’ll be unstoppable.”

Winters felt herself blushing. “Thank you.” She managed an awkward curtsy. “I have an excellent teacher.”

Jin Li Tam inclined her head, lifting her coat from the rock where she’d put it. “Tomorrow, then?”

Winters nodded.

She watched as Jin Li Tam and her escorts left. Her own guards still stood out of view in the woods, but she had no doubt they’d seen every step she’d taken in the dance, every thrust and slice of the blades. She went to the stump to get her coat and book.

She pulled the heavy furs over her and lifted the gospel. Something seemed different, and she glanced down at it. Opening it, she thumbed through the pages and heard her breath catch.

The dreams, folded so carefully into the pages, were gone.

She kept her back to her watchers, looking quickly around the clearing to see if somehow the pages had defied all logic and loosed themselves. Then, she looked to the snow around the stump. Only her footprints back and forth to it, though that meant little. A well-trained scout could run at top speed in the footprints of another, leaving little to no trace of their passing.

They’re gone. But another page had been left-a note scribbled with a birder’s needle on a bit of rough parchment. She read it without removing it from its place in the book:

Hail Winteria bat Mardic, queen of the Marshfolk, and hail the Homeseeker’s Dream. Someone will come to you each day in this manner. Your dreams will be added to the Book.

She closed the gospel and made her way back up the trail. As the forest swallowed her, she found herself pondering the dreams. Isaak had been there, and she thought that maybe he had even quoted the Book to her, though she didn’t know how that could be possible. None but the Marsh King had ever read the Book. And Tertius, of course. It had been the price he’d extracted to abandon the Great Library at Windwir and risk a hangman’s noose to educate the Marsh King’s daughter.

She thought of the Book and the years spent in the smell of paper, in the guttering light of candles. Mornings spent writing and afternoons spent reading, connecting the various bits that connected. Nights spent seeing the shape of things to come; a home rising for her people.

I am dreaming again.

When she passed Garyt ben Urlin at his post, she watched him stand a bit straighter and she carefully inclined her head to him, mindful of the men who followed her.

Thank you, her hands said upon the side of her coat.

He said nothing, his own hands still upon his spear. But the look in his eye was enough for her. It was something she did not see in the eyes of those around her, something she herself had not felt often in the last year or so.

Still, Garyt had it in his eyes and in the line of his jaw, the way that he stood at the door he guarded.

Hope, Winters thought, is a contagious thing.

And in that moment, she knew what she must do.

Jin Li Tam

Late-morning sun slanted into the windows lining the hall, and Jin Li Tam embraced the warmth and light upon her face. It had already been a full morning.

She’d breakfasted with Winters, practicing the Gypsy subverbal language and discussing the girl’s latest dream in quiet voices. After, she’d met with Aedric briefly while walking Jakob in Ria’s meditation grove. He’d lost two scouts in the caves where the birds were being diverted and had pulled his men back. But still, the bird station had been disrupted. They’d launched a handful of short-distance birds to bear word of that back to the edge of the Prairie Sea. Still, unless Aedric committed resources to actually eliminate the bird station, it would be up and running again. And though Jin Li Tam was certain Ria knew Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts were running these operations and tolerated them in an effort to prove her trustworthiness, she was equally certain that she would not tolerate an act of open aggression, Great Mother or not.

Thinking of Ria refocused her. The Machtvolk queen’s note had been brief and direct, and Jin Li Tam wondered what was planned for her this afternoon. Another school? Not likely-she’d been asked to come alone. And the children at the school were far more interested in Jakob, their Child of Promise. She was merely the means to that end.

An odd place to be.

The doors to Ria’s study were unguarded, and when she knocked, she found the door was ajar. “Come in, Great Mother,” Ria said, rising from behind her desk. Her face was grim, and there were circles under her eyes.

Jin Li Tam forced concern into her voice. “Are you well, Queen Winteria?”

Ria offered a brief smile. “I am very well and very tired,” she said. “And I’ve someone to introduce you to.”

They found their boots and coats waiting for them at the door, and Jin Li Tam followed Ria as they climbed the low hill behind her lodge. They walked without talking and Jin Li Tam savored it, enjoying the sound of the snow and ice crunching beneath their feet, the whisper of the wind through the trees. The air hung heavy with scents of pine and wood smoke and snow, and for a moment she was able to forget about everything but now.

At the top of the hill, a round stone building awaited. She recognized it as a blood shrine, but the guards at the door told her it wasn’t the same as the others she’d seen springing up in the Marshlands.

When they approached, the guards quickly opened the door, and an old man in the long black robes of a priest met them. His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and his hands and forearms were covered in blood. He grinned behind a pair of thick spectacles. “My Lady,” he said, “our penitent has taken the mark.”

Ria smiled, and Jin saw genuine joy in it. “Good,” she said. “Brother Aric, this is the Great Mother, Lady Jin Li Tam.”

The priest bent from the waist. “Great Mother,” he said, “I am honored to live so long as to see your coming.”

Something in his voice chilled her. Or was it the way he looked at her? She inclined her head to show respect. “Thank you,” she said.

He straightened himself. “I will hope to meet the Child of Promise before you return to the Ninefold Forest,” he said. “Though I hope this will not be your last visit to our lands.”

She smiled. “I’m sure it won’t be.”

The priest led them through another door, and Jin found herself wanting to retch from the smell of excrement, urine and blood that ambushed her. “I apologize for the smell,” he said. “We had hoped to clean up before you arrived, but we only just now finished.”

Jin Li Tam looked into the dim-lit room, suppressing the strong impulse to gasp at what she saw. She’d certainly seen violence-she’d given as much as she’d received. It had never felt right, but she’d learned from her father that feelings were simply the body’s way of assuring its survival and should be subject to the rule of the higher mind. She’d assumed all violence should feel wrong. But there was a wrongness to what she saw now that turned her stomach over and broke her heart.

He’d been a man once, she knew, strapped to an altar designed to serve also as a cutting table. Now, he was a red mass of twitching, raw meat. His skin, freshly cut in the symbols of House Y’Zir, had been peeled away bit by bit. Sluggish streams of blood crept toward the catchers. The man wept quietly.

Ria approached, leaned in and whispered to him. “I am back, Jarvis.”

A red mouth opened, flashing bloody teeth. “Oh my queen,” the man said.

“I’ve brought Lady Jin Li Tam, the woman you tried to murder.” She looked to Jin. “We took Jarvis off the Delta. One of our priests in Turam hosted him for a few weeks and prepared him for us. He arrived yesterday and has been most forthcoming.”

The man rolled his eyes, blinking more tears and sniffling. “I am mortified by my sin, Lady Tam,” he said.

Ria continued. “Jarvis is a former Androfrancine engineer and was one of Esarov’s lieutenants in the civil war. He was hired to create an explosive that could be magicked, and to train a team of former Delta Scouts to detonate it.”

Jin Li Tam looked at him and tried find rage for him. She could not, and it bothered her. Instead, she felt curiosity and the question slipped out. “Why?”

“Yes,” Ria said. “Tell her why.”

He sobbed. “I was paid to do it. I did not realize who you were, Great Mother.”

Jin Li Tam forced herself to meet his eyes. “Who paid you?”

“I did not meet him. It was arranged through Governor Rothmir’s offices.”

Rothmir. She recognized the name and suspected it was someone she’d met during her years as Sethbert’s consort, doing her father’s work. She looked at Ria. “Was Erlund involved in this?”

She shook her head. “We do not think so. A landed nobleman on the Emerald Coast.” She smiled. “He’s been sent for.”

“I am mortified by my sin,” the man said again.

She looked at him and tried again to find anger but could not. How is it that I pity this man? He had tried to kill Jakob.

Ria examined the knives that were laid out upon a black velvet cloth. She lifted one and held it up to the light. “We’ve learned all we can learn from Jarvis, and he’s ready to pay for his sin.” She extended the knife to Jin. “I wanted you to have this opportunity,” she said.

Jin Li Tam blinked. “You want me to kill him?”

Ria nodded. “Of course. He participated in a plot to murder your family.” She bent over him, stroking his bloody cheek. “You’re ready, yes, Jarvis?”

“I am ready, my queen.”

Again, Ria extended the blade, and Jin Li Tam understood the intersection she now faced. The choice she made here had significance beyond her feelings, and she willed herself to be, just for this moment, her father’s daughter. This was a test, an opportunity to build trust.

Do not think. Do what must be done. Jin hesitated, then took the knife. She turned and bent over him. “You should not have tried to harm my family,” she said in a low voice.

Then she did what needed doing.

When she was finished, she washed his blood from her hands in a silver basin they brought to her. She did so with her back turned and swallowed at the tears that threatened her.

Putting her coat back on, she followed Ria back to the lodge in silence, and when she took Jakob from Lynnae’s arms, she crushed him to herself and stifled her sob in his blankets.

We are all mortified by our sins from time to time, she thought.