Canticle

Chapter 3

Petronus

Fear, Petronus thought, is a powerful thing. It gripped him now, squeezing his chest and turning his stomach to water.

He squinted into the dimly lit room in the direction of the voice, gripping the fishing knife tightly in his hand. Shadows from the guttering fire danced in his one-room shack. His mouth was dry, but he spoke around it.

“Who are you to punish me for P’Andro Whym’s sins?” he asked. “Who are you to declare my kin-clave with him?”

“Who I am is unimportant.” This time, the voice came from a different corner of the room. “You are Petronus, King of Windwir and Holy See of the Androfrancine Order.”

Petronus sneered. “Windwir and the Order are no more. My question stands. Who are you?”

The voice moved again, and when it spoke, it did not answer Petronus’s question. “Put down your knife, old man. You can’t stand against me.”

Petronus knew it was true. He was in no shape to face down a magicked assailant. Those earth powders of the Old World, when ingested, rendered a man stronger, faster, quieter in addition to bending the light around him and making him all but impossible to see in bright daylight. Here, in a shadowed room, Petronus would be dead before he saw the faintest trace of his attacker.

But why hasn’t he simply killed me? Petronus swallowed. “I may not be able to stand against you,” he said, “but I’ll still take what flesh I can.”

The low voice chuckled. “My master sent a squad for the others. He sent me alone for you because you are old and alone.” There was a rush of wind, a strangely sweet odor, and Petronus felt fire on his cheek as cold, sharp iron drew a line of blood. He lunged forward with his own blade but found nothing. Another chuckle. “I can cut you all night, Last Son.”

Because you are old and alone. The words settled in. “Last Son?”

The wind rushed again. This time, the knife slid through the sleeve of Petronus’s nightshirt to draw a long, shallow gash down the length of his left upper arm. Wincing, Petronus swiped at the air with his blade again. He gritted his teeth against the pain. “Are you here to kill me or to hurt me?”

“Both,” the voice whispered.

In that moment, the door and windows of his shack burst inward. Glass and splinters showered the room as a hurricane swept in from the windless night outside. He heard the sudden, muffled sound of boots on wood and heavy breathing from at least three points around the room. The attacker cried out, and Petronus braced himself; but this time, when the wind surged toward him a wall met it and the magicked blades made a muffled clinking noise as they clashed. A single eye, bloodstained and blue, appeared near Petronus’s own eye. “Stay out of the way,” a new voice said. “Leave us to our work.” Then, the storm continued as something heavy hurled across the room to fall into his wooden chair and collapse it beneath the weight.

The voice was familiar to him. A voice from long ago that he could not place. Petronus pushed himself back into the corner, where his cot met the wall, still holding the knife out ahead of him though he knew it was a useless gesture. He watched the wind sweep his room, breaking furniture, scattering papers, shattering dishes as it went. It was impossible to know how many were in the shack now, but he heard the muffled grunts and cries of at least five men amid the magick-dulled clank of steel. Twice, he heard heavy bodies falling to the floor, and once he heard the hushed fluid whistle of a punctured lung. The fight seemed to last for an hour, though Petronus knew it could only be minutes.

The fire sparked and went out as something fell into it and the room went dark. The scuffling continued, then suddenly stopped.

Petronus heard scrambling and hushed whispers. He thought he heard the words “Both dead.”

The new voice was near him now when it spoke next. “Where is your constable?”

Petronus blinked, not sure he was truly being addressed until the voice asked again, this time louder. “Third house down from the inn,” he finally said. When he spoke, his voice shook.

“Balthus, quietly borrow the good man’s manacles.”

They’ve taken him alive. “I have rope in the boathouse,” Petronus offered.

“Rope won’t hold him. Not until his magicks wear off. And I don’t know how long the kallacaine will keep him down.” The familiarity of the voice nagged Petronus. He’d heard it long ago, but he’d also heard it more recently. He added it to what he already knew. They were magicked, and they were versed in pharmaceuticals. There were six of them, but two were now dead. And he knew their leader from somewhere.

“Let me see your arm,” the voice said.

A spark flared, and the lantern glowed to life. The room was a shambles of papers, broken glass and pottery, overturned furniture. His front door was down and his three windows were out.

Petronus extended his arm, feeling the sting of the cut. “It’s not bad,” he said. He felt fingers gently pushing back the bloody sleeve and opened his mouth to ask who exactly his rescuer was when the realization struck him like a trout strikes a line. Grymlis.

Petronus didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until he heard the old soldier’s grunt. “Yes, Father.”

He still calls me by my title. The last time he’d seen the Gray Guard captain, he’d sent him and his soldiers away. With Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts to protect the new library there’d been no role for the scattered leftovers of the Androfrancine army.

Once, years ago, Grymlis had been the captain who carried out one of Petronus’s darker orders. The Marshers had attacked the Order’s protectorate and ransacked a convoy; Petronus had sent the Gray Guard up into their lands to burn out a village as reprisal. They’d left the dead unburied, adding grievous insult to their message, and the young Pope had ordered that weathered captain to show him the village so that he would understand fully what he’d done.

Not long after, Petronus had left the Order and Grymlis had gone on to serve Introspect, and for a time, Sethbert’s puppet, Pope Resolute.

“The last time I saw you,” Petronus said, “you were burying your uniform in the Ninefold Forest.”

Grymlis chuckled. “Aye, Father.” He was cleaning and dressing the wound now, his face close enough that Petronus could see its dim outline in the lantern light.

A question chewed at him. Dozens did, Petronus realized, but he pushed them aside and ordered them as best he could. “How did you know to be here tonight?”

“I’ve had two men on shifts in Caldus Bay since the week you returned from the Forest,” Grymlis said.

Magicked this entire time, Petronus thought. There was a clatter in the doorway and soft footfalls as Balthus returned with the manacles. “Chain him in the boathouse,” Grymlis said, “and gag him.” The old soldier finished bandaging Petronus’s arm and then stood. “When you’re finished, load Marco and Tyrn into the boat and cover them. We’ll bury them in the bay.”

Petronus opened his mouth to protest, but Grymlis must’ve seen it. “They’ve no kin to claim them. Their kin were in Windwir.” Grymlis paused. “And it’s better that we not be seen.”

Petronus watched as the room began to right itself. The unbroken pieces of furniture were tipped back into their proper places, and the broom on his wall, seemingly of its own volition, went to work on the floors. He stood and joined in, gathering up the scattered pages of his work.

Another question. “You’ve had two men watching me for more than half of a year,” he said. “But you knew to have more here tonight.”

Six men, he thought. And that had been barely enough for the task at hand.

His attacker came under a new kind of magick or-here, his stomach sank-a very old kind. But not even the Androfrancines had dabbled much in blood magick, not until Xhum Y’Zir’s spell. He’d read stories, of course, from the Year of the Falling Moon and the early days of the War of the Weeping Czar. Blood magicks fivefold more potent than the powders they made from the earth, making one man a squad in and of himself. If he hadn’t hesitated, if he hadn’t taken the time to speak, I would be dead now.

Grymlis spoke. “Trouble brews in the Named Lands and beyond. We had a bird four nights back. Someone means to finish the work Sethbert started.”

Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children. The words penetrated him like a knife, and his eyes went involuntarily to the satchel. Someone meant to exterminate the last of the Androfrancine remnant. “But who?”

“It smells of Tam,” Grymlis said. “But the note was unclear. It bid us watch over you. It arrived coded and in Whymer script.”

Petronus shook his head. “I don’t think Tam is behind it. I believe what he told me; Vlad Li Tam dismantled his network and left the Named Lands with his sons and daughters.” He thought about it for a moment. “And the warning was anonymous?”

“Yes.”

A Whymer Maze, Petronus thought. And with the Named Lands sliding further and further into political and economic collapse it would be hard to know what nations had working intelligence operatives. Pylos, Turam and the Entrolusian Delta had their hands full with insurrection and revolution. And based on the birds he’d received over the last fortnight, the unrest was spreading into the Emerald Coasts and spilling over to the Divided Isles and their frontier counties.

Perhaps it was the Gypsy? Rudolfo’s Ninefold Forest Houses were the only houses thriving-and how could they not? Petronus had passed to him all the wealth and holdings of the Androfrancine Order, including House Li Tam’s sizable wealth.

Certainly, their last meeting on the Prairie Sea just hours after Petronus had executed Sethbert had been tense.

The Gypsy King had drawn his sword upon approach, and Petronus thought for a moment that the enraged Rudolfo might actually kill him for ending the line of papal succession. But Rudolfo was a clever man-at some point he would understand that Petronus had granted him a favor by snapping the Order’s neck, leaving him unshackled by two thousand years of Androfrancine tradition and backward dreaming.

“Could it have been Rudolfo?” he asked. “Could he have warned us?”

“It’s possible, Father. He has the assets for intelligence, certainly. But why the cover of anonymity? You gave him Guardianship during the war.” Now Grymlis’s voice choked with anger. Petronus could hear leagues spent on the Fivefold Path of Grief in the old captain’s voice. “And who would punish us beyond Windwir?”

It is all related.

“Perhaps,” Petronus said, “we’ll know more once our guest wakes up.”

“Meanwhile,” Grymlis said, “you should pack. We’ve scouted a new location for your work.”

He knows about my work. Of course he does, Petronus realized, if he’s been watching all this time. He opened his mouth to protest and then closed it. Grymlis and his men had saved his life tonight. At the very best, he’d be dead now but for them. At the very worst, his attacker would have been most effectively meting out his promise of pain.

He reached out a shaking hand, found Grymlis’s shoulder and squeezed it. “I’m glad you didn’t listen to me when I sent you and your men away.”

He could hear Grymlis’s forced smile. “I did listen to you, Father. I listened until you laid down your ring and robe. Beyond that, I listened to myself.”

Petronus blessed his own fallibility and, without protest, set himself to packing his belongings for another journey he was too old to make.

Neb

Neb took the stairs two at a time as the gathering crowd parted before him and the half-squad he led. The events of the night had left him shaken, and he still felt the fear in his belly. He’d seen nothing like it, though he’d watched squads of magicked scouts-had even run with them-in the days since Windwir’s fall. But this was another kind of magick, something dangerous and old. Something that took men far beyond what the River Woman’s powders, ground from the earth, could do.

Blood magick. He’d read stories about the Wizard Kings and the deals they brokered in dark places, boons purchased with blood. Twice now he’d seen it. His first experience still haunted his nightmares, carrying him back to the ridgeline above Windwir where he witnessed the last spell of the world’s last wizard consume Windwir before his eyes. Carefully crafted in seclusion by Xhum Y’Zir to avenge the murder of his seven sons, the Seven Cacophonic Deaths had leveled the city, leaving it-and Neb’s soul-utterly desolated.

Now, he’d seen blood magick at work for a second time.

Certainly, it was on a much smaller scale, but he had seen the Marshers at war alongside Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts. Both were formidable forces, and yet a small group of blood-magicked assassins had penetrated the heart of the Ninefold Forest and murdered Hanric and the Crown Prince of Turam in a hall full of armed men. And those forces had barely repelled them-but not before the assassins had done their work.

He ran the halls until he reached the servants’ quarters near the suite of rooms where Rudolfo’s house steward-Kember-had housed Hanric as a guest of honor. Two Gypsy Scouts guarded the door. “Are the Marsh King’s servants within?” Neb asked.

One of the guards nodded. “They are. We’ve told them nothing.”

Neb swallowed. “Good.” I don’t want to do this, he realized as he stared at the heavy, closed door. How did he tell the girl he loved that the man she considered a father and a friend was dead?

Hanric’s face flashed behind his eyes, and Neb suddenly remembered the off-key, bellowed song the giant Marsher had been singing when the attackers burst into the room. He felt a lump in his throat and knew that his eyes would leak water if he didn’t rein himself in. You are an officer of the Ninefold Forest Houses, he chided himself. You are a man.

He put his hand on the doorknob and looked to the half-squad of men accompanying him. “Wait here.”

Opening the door, Neb slipped in and closed it behind him. The room smelled of damp dirt, and he saw the Marshers gathered in the sitting room with Winters at the center as they talked silently with their hands using a nonverbal language Neb could not read. They were in various states of dishevelment, as was their custom. The ash and dirt they rubbed into their skin and hair gave them a fierce and wild look that caused most to keep their distance. Their willowy queen looked perplexed and curious, but her eyes came alive when she saw him. Their hands dropped as she stood.

“Nebios,” she asked, “what is happening? There are guards at the door who won’t let us leave.”

Neb swallowed again and nodded slowly. “We need to talk,” he said, his eyes shifting to the small group of servants that surrounded her. “And after, Rudolfo bids you join him in his study.” The words felt awkward. “I’ve a half-squad outside to escort you.”

Her eyes narrowed at this, and he wondered what she read on his face. whatever it was, her nostrils flared and her eyes went wide when the gravity of his demeanor took hold of her. She looked to her people and Neb did the same. They looked away from him, shifting uncomfortably in the silence. There was a note of panic in her voice that surprised him, as if she anticipated dark tidings. “What’s happened, Nebios?”

He moved into the room and opened one of the many doors leading into the private bedchambers of the servants’ suite. He held the door for her as she entered. Then he pulled it shut behind them, standing close to her but uncertain of how to speak and how to be.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. And suddenly, knowing it was just the two of them, he lost control of the sob in his throat and the tears in his eyes for just a moment, but it was enough. He saw her lower lip trembling.

She knows something has happened. Tell her. He willed himself to find the words, and when he did, they tumbled out like drunks from a closing tavern. “We’ve been attacked,” he said. “Men under some kind of magicks-blood magick, I think-penetrated the forest, outran the watch birds and killed the crown Prince of Turam at the banquet table.” He choked here, hating himself for not being able to keep his own emotions in check, hating himself for bringing news to her that he knew would bring suffering. “They’ve killed Hanric, too.”

For a moment, Winters looked like a cornered fawn. Her eyes went wild as she looked to and fro; then the air whistled out of her. Neb reached out to her, but she pushed him away and sat heavily on the floor.

Not knowing what else to do, he sat with her. Once again, he tried to draw close, but she resisted and he realized she was whispering words that quickly ran together, words that sounded like glossolalia they had shared before.

But as he listened, the words took shape, and Neb realized she was speaking of a wind of cleansing blood, an iron blade that pruned. And as she spoke, she held herself, rocking back and forth, her eyes narrow and flitting about the room.

After minutes that felt much longer, he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She looked up, her eyes wet and red. There were tracks of white, clean skin where the tears had washed the dirt from her cheeks. When their eyes met, her lower lip quivered again and she let him pull her into his arms. They huddled on the floor and held each other, Neb finally surrendering to the grief that washed them both.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said after a dozen minutes had passed. She disentangled herself from him and leaned back against the wall, looking to the door. “I need to tell my people.”

Neb moved over to sit next to her. “I think you should talk with Rudolfo first.”

She sniffed and nodded. Neb watched her, realizing how little he knew this girl. The dreams were. What were they? They certainly bared their unconscious hopes and fears to one another there, mingled with metaphysics that Neb himself could only embrace at this point without fully understanding. “Earlier, before the alarm sounded, I had a visitation.”

He blinked. “A vision?”

She shook her head. “No, just words. and a sense of foreboding.” Her brow furrowed as she pulled down the memory. “A wind of blood to cleanse,” she said. “And cold iron to prune.”

Until recently, he’d had no reference point for the glossolalia and prophecy that were a part of the Marsh Queen’s daily life. Those concepts were utterly foreign to him. The Androfrancines who had taught him in their orphan school applied reason and science to myth and mysticism. The idea of writing it down and looking to it for some sense of tomorrow seemed completely irrational to him until he experienced it himself.

Xhum Y’Zir’s Age of Laughing Madness had touched him there in the shadow of Windwir’s pyre just over a year before, opening a door inside of him that he wasn’t sure could ever be closed. From the moment of that first hot wind, he’d been unable to form coherent sentences, instead spewing jumbled bits of P’Andro Whym’s Gospels blended with ecstatic utterances and flashing images that words could not contain. It had passed after a short time, but it had changed something inside of him, something as stark as the brown hair now bleached bone-white by the events of that late morning. Later, his dead father had appeared in his dreams, and so had the Marsh girl, Winters, though he didn’t know it until after they met in the Marsher war camp. Since meeting her, he’d lived on the edge of something he had no skill to comprehend. They are connected, this attack and her visitation. Rudolfo would need to know about this.

Thinking of his waiting general, Neb suddenly blushed. He reached a hand up and brushed the tangled strands of her dirty hair out of her face. Her eyes and nose were red now. He cleared his voice. “I think we should go,” he said. “Lord Rudolfo is waiting to speak you about this.”

She looked at Neb. “Does he know that you know about me?”

Neb shrugged. “I’ve never spoken of it.” Then, as an afterthought: “He’s never asked.” But of course he knew. He had to know. Why else had he sent Neb for her specifically?

She nodded, then slowly pushed her way up to her feet. Neb stood, too, and turned toward the door.

Her hand caught his own. “Thank you for being the one to bear me this message,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I felt I must,” he said.

Their eyes met for a moment; then he watched her look away and compose herself to face her people. “I will speak to my people first,” she said. “I will not speak to Rudolfo until those who loved and served Hanric know of his fall.”

Neb nodded. Then he opened the door and watched her square her shoulders and set her jaw against the task ahead.

A wind of blood to cleanse; cold iron to prune. Neb shuddered, and her premonition took him. It was a woeful feeling that reached beyond the loss of Hanric into the very heart of the Marshfolk. Something dark and brewing, he thought. And the sorrow on Winters’s face betrayed something within her.

She knows, Neb realized.

This woe now was but the first of more to come.

Jin Li Tam

The sky over the Desolation of Windwir was a slate of smeared red, and Jin Li Tam could not tell if it was sunrise or sunset that made it so. The horizons to her east and west gave no clue to the time of day, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Hazy light washed the forest of bones in blood and turned the placid surface of the nearby Second River black. Tendrils of pink mist crawled the ground, swept in eddies by a cold wind that moved freely among the skeletons, raising a low hum. She shivered from both the chill and the sight of Xhum Y’Zir’s handiwork. Her breath caught in her throat, and she found herself wondering if being here was safe for her baby.

In that moment, Jin Li Tam rested her hand upon her swollen stomach, willing her son to kick, to show some sign of life.

This isn’t right, she realized. They’d buried the dead here, Neb and Petronus, while the war raged on around them. There was no field of bones. The gravediggers had seen to it, she was certain. Who has undone their work?

She heard a distant sound over her shoulder and turned to the northeast. Faintly, she heard the clamor of Third Alarm in the direction of the Ninefold Forest, hundreds of leagues distant, past thick forest, rugged hills and the expansive Prairie Sea that surrounded the Gypsy King’s scattered forest islands. Dark clouds hung ominous and impenetrable in that direction.

I’m needed at home, she thought. But the forty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam was uncertain how she’d come to be here in the first place, and now her very feet resisted her efforts to move them homeward. The air grew colder around her, and she realized she was wearing the thin green silk riding skirt and blouse she’d worn that night so long ago when Rudolfo had danced with her in Sethbert’s banquet tent.

A sunrise such as you belongs in the East with me, he’d told her that night. She put her hands on her stomach again and suddenly found that it was flat and firm. When she looked down, she saw that her skirts were black with blood. She felt it, warm and sluggish, as it moved down her legs to pool around her feet.

When she opened her mouth to scream, a giant black raven landed on the cracked cornerstone of a shattered building and cocked its head. Jin Li Tam swallowed her scream and willed the strength of focus her father had brutally trained into his sons and daughters.

A kin-raven. She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did. It was larger than any raven she’d seen, and it stared at her, its beak opening and closing. She saw the scarlet thread of war tied to one foot, the green thread of peace on the other. She also saw, by the way it held its head, that its neck had been broken and that its feathers were mottled and singed. One of its eyes was missing. It croaked at her.

“You are extinct,” Jin Li Tam said slowly. “And this is a dream.”

The beak opened, and a tinny, faraway voice leaked out. “And it shall come to pass at the end of days that a wind of blood shall rise for cleansing and cold iron blades shall rise for pruning,” the kin-raven said. “Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children. Thus shall the Throne of the Crimson Empress be established.” The bird stopped, hopped backward on its feet, then forward, cocking its head again and fixing her in its flat black eye. “Fortunate are you among women and highly favored is Jakob, Shepherd of the Light.”

The first wave of pain hit her and she clutched at herself. “Begone, kin-raven,” she said, gritting her teeth against the spasm that gripped her belly. “Your message is unwelcome in this House.” She wasn’t sure where the words came from, but she laid hold of them and said them again, loudly, forcing her feet to carry her toward the bird as she raised her hand. “Begone, kin-raven. Your message is unwelcome in this House.”

Then the kin-raven did something birds should not be able to do, not even in dreams. It smiled. Then it unfurled its wings, and they hung over Windwir’s bones to cast long shadows east and west. “I leave you now,” it said, the metallic voice leaking out from the opened beak. “But soon I shall dine upon your father’s eyes.”

Jin Li Tam lunged forward, the pain growing as she moved, then lost her footing as her slippers found no traction in the puddle of her blood and water.

She screamed her rage and felt hands suddenly upon her, pulling her, shaking her.

“Lady Tam?” The voice was faraway to the northeast. “My lady?” Behind the voice, the clamoring of the alarm went suddenly silent and Jin Li Tam opened her eyes.

“Are we at Third Alarm?” she asked the girl who attended her. She sat up, taking a quick inventory of herself and her surroundings. The pain was real, and she felt wetness beneath the blankets. Holding her breath, she pushed them down and looked. No blood, but her water had indeed broken.

The girl took a step back and nodded. “Yes, Lady. We’ve been at Third Alarm. But the grounds and manor are safe now.”

“We were attacked?” Grimacing against the pain, she carefully moved to the edge of the bed and reached for her nearby robe.

The girl nodded again. “Yes, Lady. The scouts at the door have not offered any details.”

Not yet, they haven’t. She stood, felt the rush of blood to her head, then sat again. She motioned the girl closer. “Help me up.”

The servant offered her hands and leaned back to help Jin up. She pulled on the robe and winced. The girl looked alarmed when she saw the wet bed. “Shall I call the River Woman?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Yes. I think it’s started early.”

The girl guided her to the wall by the door, and Jin put her hand against it, resting her weight there while the girl opened it and poked her head out, calling for a scout.

She’d spent most of the last month in bed, and she could feel the weakness in her legs. Her baby had been too quiet, there had been occasional spotting, and the River Woman had doled out powders and ordered bed rest. She’d plowed through at least a hundred books, the ink and paper smelling fresh from the mechoservitors who reproduced them from memory for the new library.

She was a tiger who hated cages.

But the look on Rudolfo’s face each time he saw her, each time they sat and spoke of the son to come, was enough to sustain her.

This, too, shall pass, she told her weak legs and swollen stomach, the waves of nausea and the intense aversion to smells that had never bothered her before. Soon enough, she said to the cage her bedchambers had become.

Until she met the Gypsy King and fell in love with him the night he gave the metal man back his Androfrancine robes, Jin Li Tam had never considered the possibility of motherhood. In those days, she’d been about her father’s business-joining herself to whatever man or woman he chose for her, using her role as a courtesan and occasional consultant to play her part in House Li Tam’s work of guiding the river of politics and strategy in the Named Lands.

Hidden in her father’s library, before the day he donated it to Rudolfo and Isaak’s restoration work, there had been another library-a small room she’d seen only once or twice as a little girl. There, in slim black volumes etched in the coded scripts of House Li Tam, was the secret history of the Named Lands written with the blood and effort of her family. Her father had burned those books the day Rudolfo confronted him, but the river had moved. Her father had made her betrothed, shaping him in his earliest years with grief, tempering him with loss and making him a strong, formidable leader. And her father had shaped her as well, an arrow for Rudolfo’s heart, and had blessed their union.

War is coming, his note had said to her so long ago. Bear Rudolfo an heir. And she had agreed initially because it was her father’s wish. Later, as her love for the Gypsy King grew alongside the growing suspicion of her father’s motives, she’d realized that the child she intended to bear was for Rudolfo and Rudolfo alone.

There was joy in it somewhere, though in this moment she felt disoriented and afraid and in pain. The dream was like no dream she’d ever had, and she’d slept through Third Alarm. Jin Li Tam, trained in scout magicks and the arts of espionage, had slept through an attack on her new home.

The Gypsy Scout entered. “The River Woman is already on her way. I will have her come to you first.”

Jin Li Tam bit back another wave of pain. “What has happened?”

“I am not at liberty to-”

She cut him off quickly and coldly. “Aeryk, you see my present state and you know Lord Rudolfo will hide none of this from me. Do not make me stand here and ask again.” The words were sharper than she would’ve liked them, but after her first week in bed, the household and its guards were accustomed to it.

He swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Lady. We’ve been attacked. A squad of magicked assailants penetrated the forest perimeters and attacked the Firstborn Feast. Hanric the Marsh King and Ansylus, Crown Prince of Turam, have both been assassinated and their bodyguards slain.”

Panic tugged at her. “What of Rudolfo?”

“General Rudolfo is unharmed and leads the investigation.” The guard paused, guessed her next question and continued. “The attackers came under magicks we’ve not seen before. The River Woman comes to see what light can be shown on this.”

A wind of blood to cleanse. The words from her dream came back to her, and Jin Li Tam’s mouth fell open. She closed it. She heard commotion in the hall and saw a squad of Gypsy Scouts move past, huddled closely around a slight, bright-colored form. Rudolfo’s stride and his green turban gave him away as he moved past in the direction of the private study in the suite of rooms adjoining her own.

“Rudolfo,” she called, moving away from the wall now so that he would not see her needing its support.

But he did not stop. He swept past with his men and she heard him barking orders as he went. There was strain in his voice, and grief, and maybe even a touch of fear.

More pain, and Jin Li Tam swallowed it, willing herself to leave the room and follow Rudolfo into his study. But her legs refused and buckled. The servant and the scout moved nimbly to her sides and supported her weight even as the door to Rudolfo’s study opened and closed farther down the hall.

Jin Li Tam sighed and blinked back a round of surprising, sudden tears. She’d wept more the last six months than she remembered ever having wept before. Of course, she’d read the books and knew that it was normal for some.

Not normal for me, she thought, but none of this was.

This river will not be moved until its own time, she realized as she let them guide back to her waiting bed. And its time was soon.

Jin Li Tam resolved herself to meet it with what grace she could muster. She would wait in bed and breathe as the River Woman and the books had told her. She would send word to Rudolfo to join her when he was able.

She would bear the man she loved an heir and try to put the dream out of her mind. She would become a mother tonight and launch her son at the world, a sharp and true arrow for the light.

She would be brave and would not cry.

Failing utterly, and filled with rage at her failure, Jin Li Tam let the feelings of powerlessness win in their ambush of her, blushing that those who tended her must see her so weak.