Antiphon

Chapter 15

Rudolfo

Rudolfo paced the command tent and tried to force his anger into something he could manage. Outside, a break in the snow gave shivering recruits time to establish their somewhat more permanent quarters with timber felled by a group of loggers arrived out of Paramo, seat of the Third Forest Manor. It wasn’t optimal work for the front end of winter, but Lysias had maintained that war did not wait for weather and neither should an army in training. So now, the sounds of saws and hammers filled the morning air.

And now, the last major wagonload of supplies from the Seventh Forest Manor was arriving. Future supplies would trickle in much more slowly now, though already crews of recruits were dispatched to drag heavy plows over the wagon trails to try to keep them clear.

Rudolfo stopped his pacing and forced himself to breathe.

It had been bad enough sending his wife and child into Ria’s lands. Now he had word from Charles that he and Isaak made their way north with that last wagon train to follow the mechoservitors into the ground, and the thought that the most lethal weapon in the known world might stroll casually into Ria’s hands raised a panic in him that his mind could only translate into rage.

I cannot let him leave. Isaak carried Y’Zir’s Seven Cacophonic Deaths in his memory scrolls-a weapon that could leave the Named Lands desolate if the wrong hands were to lay hold of that spell. For Isaak to so suddenly and without a word make this decision and abandon his work in the library was an ambush Rudolfo had not expected, and everything within him whistled third alarm to this new development. And yet, how could Rudolfo stop his friend?

By forbidding it, he thought.

He heard footsteps approaching and listened for the low whistle at his tent flap. When it came, he returned it and a breathless lieutenant entered. “The caravan is here, General.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Very well. Send Charles in first once they’ve been assigned quarters.”

He forced himself to sit at his cluttered table, forced himself to sip at the lukewarm firespice that he’d barely touched, feeling the heat of it as it traced its way down his throat and into his stomach. He’d found himself spending more time with the stronger liquor of late, less interested in the fruit wines that had been his preference for so long before. He told himself it was the cold, but he knew it wasn’t. It was the dulling of an edge that had become too sharp for him, and an easy way to find sleep at the end of a long day spent worrying.

He reread Jin’s coded message about the bird station and what they had gathered so far about the conspiracy on the Delta. He’d conferred with Lysias about the man Jarvis, and saw with little surprise that there was no love lost between them.

“He was ever of questionable character,” Lysias had told him. “Choosing his loyalties based on the size of one’s letter of credit.”

It was a solid lead in the investigation, but he found himself wondering how deep and wide the conspiracy went and whether or not that weed could be dug out. Of course, his own garden was choked as well. They’d not found more shrines, and though his scouts carefully watched the one nearby, there had been no further activity there since his visit. His borders were breached to the west by evangelists, to the east by magicked runners he still couldn’t find and to the south by this latest development.

He moved papers about for the better part of an hour, his eyes burning from lack of sleep and the words all blurring together into one that he finally spoke aloud. “Why?”

Just as he asked it, the lieutenant was back with Charles. Rudolfo looked at the man and saw his own weariness reflected back in the arch-engineer’s face and eyes. He gestured to a chair. “Please sit,” he said.

“Thank you, Lord Rudolfo.” Charles sat, and the officer who escorted him slipped back out of the tent.

Even his voice sounds tired. Rudolfo pointed to the bottle of firespice. “It’s been a cold ride north, I’m sure,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”

Charles surprised him by accepting, and Rudolfo poured a small metal cup half full of the thick, spice-scented liquor. The old man raised his and Rudolfo followed.

“To brighter times,” the old man offered.

“To brighter times,” Rudolfo repeated.

They sipped, and the Gypsy King forced himself to wait quietly. Finally, he could wait no longer. “What in the Hidden Hells is happening, Charles?”

Charles blinked, and Rudolfo registered the surprise on his face at the sudden and uncharacteristic outburst. “You mean with Isaak?”

“Yes,” Rudolfo said. “With Isaak.”

Charles sighed. “I am not certain.”

Rudolfo leaned forward, feeling the small table bend beneath his weight. “You made him. Surely you have some speculation? He’s left the library in the care of the others and intends what exactly? And why?”

Charles paled, and Rudolfo was pleased that his tone induced such a response. “He intends to follow the other mechoservitors into the Machtvolk Territories. He is deciphering their dream along with notes hidden in Tertius’s volume on the Marshfolk prophecies.”

The dream. He’d heard reference to it that night in the forest when the four mechoservitors had approached seeking safe passage. He’d heard other references as well. That it was coded into a song-one he actually sang to his infant son, one his own mother had sung to him and his brother when they were very young. “How did he come by this dream?”

He knew the answer already but wanted to hear it from Charles directly. The man made no excuse and no attempt to cover the truth. “I installed it in him after the explosion at the library.”

Rudolfo’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do this without discussion with me?”

Charles raised his eyebrows. “I was not aware that discussion was required, Lord.”

“He is the most dangerous weapon in the world,” Rudolfo said in a low voice that betrayed his anger. And he is my friend, he didn’t say. “I have strong interest in his safety.”

“As do I,” Charles answered.

Rudolfo continued, feeling the interruption in the tingling of his scalp. “Anything that might alter his normal functions is of concern to me. I should have been consulted on this decision. Ultimately, I am responsible for him as the inheritor of the Order’s holdings and the Guardian of Windwir.”

Charles inclined his head. “I would argue that ultimately I am responsible for him as the one who made him. But arguing this point would be fruitless. I failed to consult you; I intended no disrespect by this.”

Rudolfo did not expect his fist to come up and then down upon the table. When it did, they were both surprised at the resounding noise of it. “Damnation,” he shouted. “This is not about respect. He carries the Seven Cacophonic Deaths of Xhum Y’Zir within him, and now this dream that has worked its way into your mechanicals at Sanctorum Lux has worked its way into him.” He felt the anger in his scalp again and forced himself to breathe in and out before continuing. “The others exhibited strange behavior as a result of this dream. Now he is, too. That library has been his home for nearly two years, and the work there has been his very soul.”

“People,” Charles said slowly, “often change direction.”

Rudolfo opened his mouth to say Isaak was a machine, that he wasn’t a person, but even as he started to speak, he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen Isaak as a person from the very first day he met the sobbing metal man. He’d dressed him in robes. He’d given him a name. He’d welcomed him into his family.

He is my friend.

He remembered the anxious days waiting for Charles to finally declare him functional again. He recalled vividly the sense of overwhelming relief when he’d learned the metal man had somehow absorbed the worst of the bomb blast, shielding his wife and son from an explosion that would have surely killed and buried them without the metal man’s intervention.

Rudolfo sighed and forced himself to make eye contact with the old man. In those brown eyes, he saw the same two things that hid behind his anger: fear and love.

Charles stared back and let the silence hang heavy for a full minute before speaking. “I apologize for not discussing this with you, Lord Rudolfo. He asked for this dream, and under the circumstances, I felt it was my duty to grant his request and protect his privacy. I do not know what this dream is up to, but my surest path to discovery is to monitor him-and the others-and learn what I can.”

Rudolfo studied the man, trying to keep hold of his anger, but already he felt it leaking away from him. He sighed, and it was loud in the tent. “You intend to go with him, then?”

Charles nodded. “I do,” he said. “Though I hope we will be back soon. I’m too old to be chasing after metal dreams.”

Rudolfo sighed again. “Very well.” He looked up and whistled. The scout guarding his tent poked his head in. “Send Isaak in.”

When the metal man walked in, Rudolfo noticed the change in him immediately. He carried himself differently, and when he spoke, his voice was also different-more sure and less accommodating. “Lord Rudolfo,” he said as he inclined his metal head.

It is confidence. Rudolfo returned the slight nod. “Isaak.”

“I fear,” his metal friend said, “that I must take my leave of you. I am grateful for your hospitality and have been honored to serve you and your family.”

Rudolfo thought there would be more conversation. That perhaps they would discuss this dream and what it meant and where exactly he went and how exactly he would help his cousins in their response to it. He thought they’d talk and find some kind of compromise. But in the end, he simply looked into Isaak’s amber eyes. “You know what you guard, Isaak,” Rudolfo said. “Do what you will-but guard yourself well, my friend.”

He thought that Isaak would hang his head or that he’d see some spark of grief in the guttering light of those jeweled eyes. But Isaak returned his gaze levelly. “I will always be vigilant, Lord Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Very well, then,” he said.

He offered no word of dismissal. He simply went back to the papers on his desk until the two left his tent. After they had gone, Rudolfo sighed again and called for the captain of the watch.

“Magick a half-squad,” he told the officer. “Follow them. Quietly.”

And only after he was alone again, Rudolfo held his head in his hands and wondered at how quickly such fierce anger could burn itself into sorrow and despair.

Neb

Neb swam in pain and tried to find some part of himself that he could cling to as the fire laced his body and his mind lurched from scene to scene.

“Where are they, Abomination?” the woman asked as she traced another cut into his skin with her salted knife. She leaned over him, touching her own small, dark carving to his bloody skin.

He was in a room now, and he recognized it as the one he’d seen Winters undressing in. Now, he stood behind her as she wrote at a small desk, her hand moving across the pages. The knife moved over his skin, and she spun away.

Neb screamed.

A new face swam into his view-one he’d not seen for some time, and it reminded him of the words his dead father had told him what seemed so long ago, before the knives, before the crooning voice and the cold, black stone kin-raven pressed against his skin. It was Petronus.

Petronus rides to you.

“Neb?” The old Pope looked even older now. He’d lost weight, and now he wore trousers and a shirt that was far too big for him. A vicious pink scar ran along his throat, and his hair and beard had become a tangled, unruly mess. “Neb, can you hear me?”

He felt the woman near him now, too, and he quickly averted his eyes, careful not to take in any of the landscape. “Don’t let them find you, Father,” he said.

And then, the knife was to its work again and he was back to screaming as Petronus also spun away.

“Do not show them what they want to see, son,” his father, Brother Hebda said. Suddenly, they were in the park near the Whymer orphanage where he had spent his childhood, there in the shadow of the Great Library and the Androfrancine Order. A summer breeze bent the birch branches.

Now, the woman was there with them, too. Only now she did not wear the dark silks or the close-cropped gray hair. Instead, she wore a simple black dress that hugged her curves in a way that made Neb suddenly uncomfortable. Her hair, now long and the color of ash, spilled down around her shoulders. “He will show us,” she said, “eventually.” When she smiled, she showed her teeth. She leaned in toward Neb there on the bench they shared. “And after we find the Abomination’s hand servants, we’ll come and find you as well, digger.”

“Hold fast, Nebios,” his father told him.

And then he, too, spun away.

“Hold fast,” the woman said, repeating his father’s words, “and let me hurt you more, Abomination.”

Then, the blade was no longer on him. And neither was the token. He lay still, certain that any moment both would be back to spin him into a pain-frenzied, stomach-lurching dervish. When it didn’t happen, he risked opening his eyes.

The sun was high and the sky spread out over him, a canopy of fierce blue that stretched beyond his peripheral vision. A breeze moved over him like hot breath on his cuts.

These were the times he tried to sleep, though he had no idea how much time passed between cuttings and how much sleep he actually found. At first, he’d used that time to try to ascertain something about the women who held him. But he’d given up on that some time ago now. The rest seemed more useful to him-it gave his mind the focus he needed, despite the pain, to keep his mind away from the one place they wished him to take them.

And it was working. But it took everything inside of him.

Still, he realized, each hour under the knife, it grew harder and harder.

He heard low voices talking nearby in an unfamiliar tongue, and then, a cool hand was on his arm, quickly pressing words he could not understand into his skin. He turned his head and saw the thirty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam gazing down upon him. For the briefest moment, he saw concern in her eyes. Then, all emotion vanished from them.

“You will show us what we’re looking for eventually, Abomination,” she said in a flat voice. Then, she leaned closer, her mouth so close to his ear that none could hear but him. “It will not be long, Nebios. I swear it to you.”

When she left, he fell into a light, dreamless sleep. He drifted there, feeling the heat gradually leaking out of his wounds and momentarily forgetting the dull ache of the rocky ground that bit into his back. He’d just reached a moment of oblivious peace when he was jarred awake by the sounds of pandemonium.

He opened his eyes, suddenly alert, but could see nothing but a twilight sky and its tentative moon. Still, he instantly placed the snarling and howling of kin-wolves mixed with the sounds of battle nearby.

Twisting his body, he pulled at the ropes that held him, but the stakes were driven too deep. He felt a light breeze, and a strong hand clamped down suddenly over his mouth. A strong arm snaked across his chest to hold him still.

Neb felt an instant of panic when he could not see the figure that now kept him from speaking or struggling. He felt the hot breath of a mouth against his ear and heard the muffled but familiar voice.

“I followed them to you,” Renard whispered. “You’ve been impossible to get close to until now.”

Neb stifled a sob at the sound of the Waste guide’s voice and tried not to cry. Relief flooded him, and he felt his body trembling from it.

Renard’s hand stayed firm over his mouth. “Listen well, lad,” he said. “They’ll not kill you until they have what they want from you. I’m no match for them on my own, and I’m not sure the wolf trick will work more than once. Stay alive. I will be back for you.” He paused, and Neb felt another hand giving a reassuring squeeze to his shoulder. “I will be back for you,” Renard said again.

The hand loosened over his mouth, and Neb felt terror racing through him.

Don’t leave me.

He wanted to shout the words, to shriek them, but instead, he swallowed against the fear. He’d watched a small number of blood-magicked scouts cut easily through a room of armed men at Rudolfo’s Firstborn Feast. He quickly ciphered the odds and knew that Renard-a far more savvy scout and soldier than Neb-was right. He’d most likely used the urine of a female kin-wolf in heat to draw down a handful of males, but they would be no match for the four women who held him. Renard would not fare much better on his own.

Petronus rides for you. Once more, his father had spoken from his grave in Windwir. As the hand left his mouth and the arm lifted from his chest, Neb swallowed and formed words that he hoped Renard could hear within the raw rasp that his voice had become from days of screaming. “Petronus rides for me,” he croaked.

If Renard heard, he did not answer. Already, there was yelping and yowling as the defeated wolves realized their mistake and fled the knives of Neb’s captors.

Neb tried to will the trembling from his body, tried to take hold of the sobs that threatened him with a storm of tears.

He failed, but when he wept now, it was from the sure knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He simply had to hang on, to keep averting his inner eye and inner ear from the mechoservitors at their work and the song that compelled them.

Neb closed his eyes again, and the next time he awoke, it was beneath the knife.

But this time, Nebios Homeseeker did not scream.

Charles

They rode the last two leagues in somber silence, Rudolfo and Isaak side by side in the lead and Charles behind them. They left their horses at the opening of the canyon, handing the reins over to scouts freshly recovered from their magicks and dressed in robes that matched the Androfrancine and his metal son.

I am too old for this, Charles thought. But it was something he’d thought often since that day his apprentice had drugged him and spirited him out of Windwir. Before his secret imprisonment by Sethbert and later, his nephew Erlund, he’d not considered himself especially old.

Perhaps losing everyone and everything you love in a span of hours changes one’s perspective on time, he thought.

Rudolfo led them forward over freshly salted ice until the canyon walls narrowed and the downward slope was sealed away from the white sky as the base of the Dragon’s Spine swallowed them.

When they reached the cave, it was crowded with men and buzzing with activity. A wooden frame had been set up over and around a large circular hole in the floor, and a system of pulleys had been rigged to move equipment in and out of the ground. Tables and chairs were strewn around the cavern, and men sat at some of them going over crudely sketched maps. Even as they stood, men started climbing from the well, ducking beneath the frame as they scrambled over the edge. They were followed at last by a mechoservitor-Number Eight, Charles thought-and a heavyset man with thick, curly hair, his face and hands black with grime. The man approached them.

“Lord Rudolfo,” he said, inclining his head.

Rudolfo returned his nod. “Turik, how goes our exploration?”

“We’ve mapped extensive tunnels and chambers six leagues south and east. The western passages have been more difficult-a lot of debris and water-but we’re making headway.”

Rudolfo turned to Charles and Isaak. “This is Turik, chief engineer of our operation here. He’s spent most of his life underground in our mines in Friendslip.” He offered a grim smile. “Who’d have thought that for two millennia we’ve had a Whymer Maze beneath us.” He looked back to his engineer. “This is Brother Charles, formerly arch-engineer of the Androfrancine Office of Mechanical Science and Technology and now attached to the new library. And Isaak, of course.”

The man studied the two of them. “I received your message, Lord, and hoped to speak with you about it. I don’t think it is prudent for-”

Rudolfo raised a hand and interrupted him. “It is not prudent. But neither will I prevent them. Isaak is most insistent about his ability to find their destination. I want your men to escort them as far west as you have mapped. but no farther.” Rudolfo looked at Isaak, and Charles saw concern in the Gypsy King’s eyes. “From that point, they are on their own.”

On our own. It did not appeal to him, traveling underground passages into unfamiliar territories. But Isaak would go either with or without him, and the same curiosity that had driven him into engineering in the first place so many years ago drove him now. Something had happened to his mechoservitors. He had resisted Introspect’s order to send them alone and unsupervised into the Churning Wastes on the Sanctorum Lux project, but in the end, Holy Unction compelled his compliance. He had trained them to maintain themselves, had scripted them each for scheduled visits to the Keeper’s Gate for a clandestine escort to his offices in Windwir for routine checkups. And something had happened. Somehow they had stumbled across the data coded into that song and had created a new script for themselves based upon it.

And it changed them. As it was now changing Isaak.

Isaak spoke, drawing Charles back to the present moment. “I am confident of my direction.” He reached into the leather satchel he carried over his shoulder and drew out the book that the mechoservitor had given him. “There are rudimentary maps ciphered into the text of this book.” He extended it to Rudolfo. “The mechoservitors attached to your operation should be able to decipher at least some of them. When they are finished, the book should be destroyed.”

Charles felt his own eyebrows rise. Rudolfo raised his as well, a hand moving instinctively to his beard. “You would destroy a book?” the Gypsy King asked.

Isaak nodded. “I would destroy this book.”

Charles saw the question on Rudolfo’s face but asked it first. “Why?”

Isaak blinked, his eye shutters clicking. “Enemies of the light beset us. They must not be permitted to prevail.” He paused, his body shaking slightly as his bellows wheezed. Charles saw water at the lower corners of his eyes, where he’d installed the tear ducts as per Rufello’s Book of Specifications. “My analysis of your physiological and verbal cues indicates that you are displeased with me, Lord. It was never my intention to-”

Rudolfo raised his hand again. “Isaak,” he said. His voice was low, and Charles thought for a moment that he might’ve heard it crack with emotion. “I am not displeased with you. I am displeased with this outcome and concerned by your decision.” He waited a moment. “You understand some of my concerns, I think. Those that I have discussed with you.”

Isaak nodded. “I will guard it, Lord. I swear. And the library will function adequately without my presence. I have reproduced from my memory scrolls all appropriate holdings contained therein and have left them with Mechoservitor Number One.”

All appropriate holdings. Charles had not seen the scrolls but felt confident that all matters regarding the spell and the dream had been carefully expunged from the scripts Isaak had left behind.

“But there is another concern,” Rudolfo said, “that I have not discussed with you.”

Isaak cocked his head, and Charles was struck yet again at how human his creation seemed. No, he realized, not seemed. Was. And becoming more so. “What concern is that, Lord Rudolfo?”

Charles watched the hardness soften in Rudolfo’s eyes and watched the line of his jaw relax as the Gypsy King stepped closer. Isaak towered above the shorter man. Stretching himself to full height, Rudolfo embraced the metal man. “That I will miss my friend until he comes home to me.”

For a moment-just a moment-the arch-engineer thought there were tears in the man’s eyes. There was no mistaking Isaak’s tears.

And when he was partway down the ladder, wrapped in the warmth of an unexpected wind that rose from beneath them, Charles discovered his own tears.

Blinking them away, he followed his dreaming son into the Beneath Places and wondered what they would find there.