Canticle

Chapter 6

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam drifted in and out of sleep, waking to nurse Jakob when the River Woman’s girls brought him to her. Rudolfo had come and gone through the remainder of the night, leaving after they changed out her bed and bathed the sweat and blood of her labor from her exhausted body. She’d run with the scouts, fought with them, even; but nothing had prepared her for this exertion, both physical and emotional. And when it was done, to finally meet the person who had caused her such discomfort and have that memory fade into an intense and satisfying joy. Truly an overwhelming time; something, again, that she was not prepared for.

She held Jakob to her breast, offering the nipple to him. His eyes were still shut, and he was tinier than she thought a baby should be. More gray, as well, his skin the shade of paper ash. He took it, his mouth working at it with less vigor than she would have expected, and she settled back into the pillows that propped her up in bed. Outside, morning announced itself quietly.

There was a faint knock at the door, and it opened before she could answer. The River Woman entered. She looked as if she hadn’t slept yet, dark circles casting shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes. But more than weariness, she looked as if she bore a world’s weight upon her heart.

She is here to bear ill tidings. Jin Li Tam had spent her life reading people, looking for the signs of their honesty, their deception and their attempts to hide truth. The River Woman’s message was written into her posture, into the way she held her head and the way her hands restlessly picked at her skirts.

“Awake again, I see,” she said as she came to the edge of the bed. “May I sit with you?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Please.” She shifted while the older woman sat on a corner of the mattress.

The River Woman looked to the girl in the room. “Would you give us a few moments?” Jin measured the strain her voice and watched out of the corner of her eye as the girl curtsied and slipped out of the room.

Jin Li Tam’s eyes narrowed. “There is something wrong with my baby,” she said in a flat voice.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“He was nearly stillborn,” Jin Li Tam added. “You brought him back.”

The River Woman inclined her head. “He was,” she said, “and I did. Yes.” She looked at Jin Li Tam now, her eyes fixed on hers. “The time to be direct is upon us. Your child is sick, Lady Tam, and I cannot make him well.”

Even though she’d known at the core something was wrong, hearing the words sent a shudder down her spine. She felt the worry, hard and cold, in her stomach and found herself instinctively clutching more tightly to the tiny bundle that wheezed against her bosom. “How sick?”

I will be strong, she thought, and will not cry.

The River Woman’s voice was low and more matter-of-fact than Jin Li Tam expected after hours of tea with the old woman in her cat-dominated cottage at the edge of town. “We can keep him alive,” she said, “if we are diligent.”

Jin Li Tam felt her resolve slipping, felt the tears tugging at her, suddenly aware of how much her life had changed. “Have you told Lord Rudolfo?”

The old woman shook her head. “I have not. I wanted to speak with you first.” She paused. “Does he know what lengths you went to for this heir?”

“Yes,” she answered, looking in the direction of his study, remembering the night she’d slipped down there, barefoot and drawn by her conscience to confess her father’s last manipulation of the man she loved. He’d taken it well, but those were the days and nights when the distance had been the greatest, after Petronus’s execution of Sethbert and after her father’s retreat from the Named Lands. He’d accepted it with an aloof politeness that neither condemned nor praised her. Still, she’d felt better with that last deception between them now brought to light. Her eyes narrowed as curiosity over the River Woman’s question nudged her. “Why do you ask? Do you think there is a connection between-”

She interrupted herself, closing her mouth before she finished. Of course there was. Why else would she need to know how much Rudolfo knew? The tears came now, and nothing she did could stop them. She hung her head, held her baby close, and wept.

“Something in the powders lingered, became knit into your son.” She paused. “I know little of how these particular powders work, but they are working hard against him, now. I’ve heard of such things. It’s why the Androfrancines discouraged their use.” The River Woman moved closer and put a hand on Jin Li Tam’s leg. “There’s no way you could have known, Lady.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “Now, I have birds out to a dozen of my sisters as far away as the Divided Isle. They may know something I do not. But it would be best if I could contact whoever gave you the recipe. I’m hoping you can help me.”

An image of the iron armada, now seven months absent from their native waters in the Named Lands, flitted across her inner eye. Jin Li Tam forced her focus away from the waves of despair that threatened to capsize her. She blinked the water from her eyes. “I don’t think that is possible. Surely there’s another way?”

The River Woman nodded slowly. “Certainly, one might be found. The birds are out. And I have the mechoservitors searching every inch of their memory scripts as well as the holdings that have drifted in from elsewhere. But most of the magicks and pharmaceutical knowledge were buried in Windwir.”

Jin Li Tam felt Jakob’s mouth falter, and she shifted her breast, surprised at how quickly she and her son learned this new dance between them. As he took to it again, she found her grief resolving into calculated inquiry. “What does this mean?”

The River Woman pulled a small pouch of powders from her satchel. “I’ve given you these,” she said. “You are passing them to Lord Jakob in your milk. It will keep him alive, but he will not be a strong baby.” She paused. “And you will need a wet-nurse to share this work.”

Jin Li Tam balked, feeling a sudden anger rise in her that she could not place initially. Fear? Panic? It took shape before her slowly, and she forced herself to sit with the feeling until the source of it was clear.

I am not enough.

The River Woman must have read it on her face. “These magicks are potent, Lady Tam, and they will harm you if you do not let others bear this burden with you.” She paused, letting the words find meaning. “This child will have a hard enough path. Let’s not have him grieve a mother he did not know.”

She heard hope beneath those words. Jin Li Tam looked up slowly, her eyes meeting the River Woman’s. “We will need to find someone.”

The River Woman smiled. “I have. There is a new girl in the refugee camp. Her husband was killed in the fighting on the Delta, and the moonshadow pox took her infant son four nights past. I tended to the child, but it was too late.”

Jin Li Tam studied the old woman’s face, reading it carefully for the hope she needed to see there. “And you think this will cure him?”

The cloud that passed through the River Woman’s eyes betrayed her words before she spoke them. “No,” she said, “it will not. It will merely keep him alive.” She frowned now. “I don’t know of a cure, Lady Tam, and eventually these magicks will also turn on him.” She offered a weak smile, and Jin Li Tam’s heart sank with it. “But it gives us time to find a better way.”

The small bundle in her arms shifted slightly, and Jin Li Tam looked down at the tiny face. A light coat of reddish hair, the slightest button of a nose, eyes squeezed shut as the small mouth took nourishment from her. She shifted her hand beneath the blanket that wrapped her newborn son and felt the soft, clammy skin of the back of his neck and head.

My father has killed my son, she thought, but before she could carry it further, the truth of it settled in. She could have refused-she could have left the path she’d been groomed for all her life-but blind obedience to House Li Tam had kept her on the road that brought her to this place. I have done this myself.

Over the course of those days since her father left, Jin Li Tam had spent much time thinking. Every man she’d taken to bed in order to better move the Named Lands along the course her father prescribed. Every man she’d killed for the same reason. Until she met Rudolfo, she realized, her entire life had been in service to this. But something in the Gypsy King’s eyes, in his flamboyant poise and his careful words, had put light on a hollowness she did not know she harbored. And though her father had planned her pairing with Rudolfo for years, had planned the heir that would tie their houses together, once she had given herself over to the Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, she had done so with an abandon that had nothing to do with Vlad Li Tam and his spider’s web of manipulation. It was a new thing that moved her.

Love.

Perhaps, she thought, her father had intended that as well. If so, she wondered if he knew now, wherever his iron armada had taken him, how much her love for Rudolfo had birthed her hatred of her father and his dark work in their New World.

She lightly stroked the back of her infant’s head, holding him close, willing her body’s warmth to lift the gray pallor and clamminess of his skin.

What now would this new love birth in her?

She realized with a start that the River Woman had spoken and she looked up. “I’m sorry, Earth Mother?”

The old woman smiled, and her eyes smiled, too. “We will do all that we can. He is a beautiful baby, Lady Tam, and you are a beautiful mother.”

The tears returned and she forced them away, swallowing hard. “Approach this girl on my behalf and arrange for us to meet in the morning,” she said. “Speak to Stewardess Jessa and have her prepare a room for this woman in the Family Wing. If she has any kin in the camp, arrange for their care as well.”

The River Woman inclined her head and stood. She placed the small pouch on a table near the bed. “One day on and one day off,” she said. “No more.” She went to the door and paused. “Shall I speak with Lord Rudolfo?”

Jin Li Tam shook her head. “No. I will do it.” This is my grief to bear him.

“As you wish, Lady.” Bowing slightly again, the River Woman left, and her girl returned.

When the young apprentice came to take the baby, Jin Li Tam bid her wait. He’d finished nursing now, and she held him to her shoulder, rocking him and patting his back lightly. She did so longer than she needed, willing the tears away but failing utterly at it.

My sister Rae, she thought. She will know what to do. Disguised as a young male acolyte and placed by their father, she’d studied the Androfrancine alchemy as a girl and had practiced it for nearly half of a century. But her sister, along with the rest of her siblings, had fled the stage her family had so long set with their careful props and practiced deceptions.

Jin Li Tam gave over her baby to the waiting girl and settled back into her bed, but no sleep came to her when she closed her eyes.

Instead, her mind went unbidden to the dream that seemed so long ago and so real.

“Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,” the kin-raven had told her. “Fortunate are you among women and highly favored is Jakob, Shepherd of the Light.”

Perhaps I misspoke. Perhaps the kin-raven’s message is more welcome than I thought. She played the words out again and again.

Strange that those dark words, with their promise of a future for the frail life she’d made, should now become her truest source of hope.

For the longest while she lay there, listening for the noises her child might make and acutely aware of the gentle rustlings of the young apprentice who tended him. But it was a divided awareness. No matter how hard she tried, she could not erase the blasted plain of Windwir and its crimson sky from that dark space behind her eyes. And when she finally drifted off, the smell of ashes and blood followed her into that restless sleep.

Lysias

General Lysias of the United City-States waited by the door for Erlund’s aide to announce him. The hunting lodge was stirring to life. An early-morning bustle of servants and guards flowed around him as they went about their routines, and he watched them, their faces drawn and their eyes hollow from too many nights with little sleep and too many tasks for the people at hand. They lost more and more each day as the staff either fled farther south on the Delta to join the Secession-ists or fled the Delta altogether for a new start in one of a dozen demesnes willing to host the ragged refugees.

At least, Lysias thought, Erlund was more thoughtful than his late uncle when it came to these matters. Still, he realized it would not be enough. When the former Overseer had learned of soldiers deserting their posts during the War of Androfrancine Aggression, he’d maimed their family members as an example to others. Erlund at least had the sense to let them go.

I should join them, Lysias thought, but shook it away as a reminder of how little sleep he’d had of late. Dereliction of his duty was not an option. He would stay in his uniform, by the side of the Overseer, until the very end, no matter how bitter. Even, he knew, if it meant facing the axe of these so-called revolutionaries. He’d helped install the current Overseer and had helped bring down another to do so.

I will not make that mistake again.

Quietly, he cursed Sethbert’s folly, though he knew he was as much to blame as the other generals who listened to the madman’s ravings and agreed to the war in the first place. In the end, he’d helped the old Androfrancine captain set things right, watching while Grymlis helped the pretending Pope, Resolute, step down by way of suicide. And he had personally led the party of guards to arrest Sethbert for the crime of genocide, based on Resolute’s suicide letter. The very letter he’d received from Vlad Li Tam himself, along with the ancient hand cannon, in the secret parley that removed Sethbert and installed Erlund with House Li Tam’s help.

He’d seen that it was the best path for the Delta, and he had taken it in the hopes that it was not too late.

He’d been wrong.

Now civil war swallowed the Entrolusian Delta, with three of its city-states now pitted against six that remained loyal to the old ways and the line of Overseers it had produced in its thousand years of unity. Soon, another would fall to the idealists and their rhetoric.

And two nights ago, they had gone too far.

They had hired Marsher rogues to assassinate the Overseer.

The ornate double doors to Erlund’s private office opened, and the aide stepped out. Like all of the others Lysias had seen, the young man looked haggard. “The Overseer will see you now, General Lysias,” he said, holding the door.

Lysias nodded curtly and entered, his boots whispering across the thick carpet that marked the end of the wide hall and the beginning of Erlund’s private study. The room was lavishly furnished. Mahogany paneling and framed oils of Erlund’s predecessors and their families gave the room a broad, warm atmosphere that was more a ruse to lull the unsuspecting than any real gesture of comfort. A wide oak desk carved from the old-growth timber of the Ninefold Forest occupied the center, and behind it, heavy curtains sealed out the light from a window that would have normally afforded a view of the private forest that served as the Overseer’s hunting grounds. At the desk, the Overseer himself sat at breakfast amid a stack of papers. The youngish man looked up.

He’s aging fast. But that did not surprise the general. Erlund was a different generation than his uncle, and he’d inherited a nation ravaged by his predecessor’s greed and paranoia. Had Sethbert managed his planned annexation of the Ninefold Forest and inherited the Androfrancine’s holdings through his cousin’s contrived papacy, it might have been different. But now the Delta died slowly, and the rest of the world followed after in the aftermath of the Desolation of Windwir. And this young man carried the weight of that upon his shoulders.

Because this new breed cares, Lysias thought.

Erlund looked up, and the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out from a pale face. “Good morning, General.”

Lysias inclined his head. “Lord Erlund.”

Erlund gestured to a leather-backed chair before the desk, and the general sat. “Have you learned anything further?”

Three days ago, they’d received an anonymous note by way of an unmarked bird. The message warned of an assassination and bore evidence of a deal brokered between the revolutionaries and what appeared now to be Marsher skirmishers under some kind of new scout magic. They’d had just enough time to hide Erlund away safely at sea in his yacht, replacing him with one of the half dozen doubles they’d employed from time to time as precaution during these troubled times.

And two nights ago, an invisible and razor-sharp storm had breached the estate’s perimeter, leaving a shredded, bloody mess of all who stood between the attackers and their target.

“The Delta Scouts found them a hundred leagues north late last night,” he told the Overseer. “They were dead. Six of them.” He paused. “He’s confident that it’s all of them.”

Erlund looked surprised. “Dead? Our best scouts couldn’t touch them. How is this possible?”

Lysias shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the captain that served as his aide had awakened him with the note. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve dispatched a wagon to bring the bodies back. They were Marshers, just like the letter indicated. They died on their feet, and according to Captain Syskus they are uninjured beyond minor cuts and scrapes.”

Erlund thought for a moment, his spoon pausing midway to mouth. “I will want the House Surgeon’s thorough report,” he said.

Lysias nodded. Perhaps that crafty old cutter could find some trace of whatever magick the assassins had employed. He’d seen nothing like it in all his years, and it hearkened back to ancient history lessons in the Academy, tales of yore from the days before the Age of Laughing Madness when the Wizard Kings ruled the Old World with their Blood Guard and their spells of dark power, brokered in the Beneath Places under the earth. “You shall have it, Lord.”

“Good.” The Overseer spooned the gray, steaming oats into his mouth and chased it with what looked like honeyed lemon beer. “When do you think it will be safe to return to Carthos?”

Lysias had thought about this, knowing the answer he was about to give would not sit well. “I don’t,” he said. “I think staying here is more defensible.”

Erlund shook his head, putting down his tankard. “I’ll not hide here much longer, Lysias. Esarov and his intellectual troublemakers need to know that they have failed and that the Delta’s Overseer is very much alive and in power.”

In this, he is like his uncle. Lysias felt frustration brewing within him and forced his voice not to show it. “It is not prudent, Lord. The city-states are no longer safe for you. At the very least, have Ignatio put another double in your palace until we know more of the nature of this threat.”

Erlund’s eyes narrowed. “General Lysias?” he asked, his voice low.

Lysias met his eyes and held them. “Yes, Lord?”

“When have you ever been able to sway me from what I considered to be the right path?”

Lysias finally looked away and in doing so, accepted the rebuke. “Never, Lord.” But it may yet be your undoing, he thought. It had certainly undone Sethbert.

“Very well.” The Overseer then changed the subject deftly. “And what news from the cities?”

“Samael and Calapia are stabilizing with the increased troops enforcing martial law,” he said. “Berande will secede within the month, regardless of what we do.” Erlund looked up at this, his eyes betraying his question before his mouth could speak it. Lysias continued. “The governor there has no will to resist, and the people are calling for elections, echoing the Reformist rhetoric about the original Charter of Unity and the Settlers’ original intent.”

When those first founders had established their cities, they’d formed a document that, as everything else, had evolved into something entirely different. Of course, these were the early days when the Androfrancines were a fledgling company with its ragged ash-hued army carving out a fortress in the deep woods of the Second River’s isolated valley. Every noble on the Delta learned that charter inside and out from boyhood.

Erlund growled. “Idealist rubbish. This unrest is not about liberty or enforcing some naive interpretation of a charter intended for another time.” Anger flashed in the Overseer’s eyes. “This unrest is a looking backward to better, simpler times in the face of economic decline and abject poverty.” He waited a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say what was on his mind. Then, he said it. “My uncle brought this about when he destroyed Windwir and took us into war against the Gypsies and the Marshers.”

There was a light tap at the door, and Erlund tapped a small brass bell. It rang clear and the door opened. His aide stepped inside. “Lord Erlund, your next appointment is here.”

Erlund nodded and leaned forward. “Ignatio,” he said. “With his intelligence briefing.”

Another similarity to Sethbert, Lysias thought, keeping the military and intelligence compartmentalized. Erlund was brutally careful in this, so much so that if the bird hadn’t come directly to Lysias with its warning, he had no doubt that Erlund’s man, Ignatio, would have handled the evacuation and the manhunt. Erlund would have insisted on it.

“Thank you for your time, Lord Erlund,” he said. As he turned to the door, he saw the dark-robed spymaster. Ignatio was Erlund’s own man. He’d had Sethbert’s spymaster killed early on, not trusting him to take well to the new administration. Ignatio was the illegitimate son of a Franci arch-scholar, and it gave him an edge. Even now, his eyes moved over the room and over Lysias. And as Lysias moved past him, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“General Lysias,” he said. “I heard your men found the attackers. That is most excellent.” It was a message, Lysias realized: I heard.

Of course you heard it, Lysias thought. But he smiled. “It is fortuitous.”

Ignatio bowed slightly and entered the room, taking the seat that Lysias had stood from. Lysias left, making his way through the wide hallways of the hunting lodge until he found the landing and the staircase that would lead him to the front doors. He had a desk covered in reports waiting for his review, and he made mental note to have his closest officers cull the ranks again for any of Ignatio’s spies. They would be shipped out to enforce martial law, and some night in the weeks ahead, they would go out on patrol and not return.

Ignatio was shameless in his espionage, and try as he might, Lysias was unable to even those odds. For the past seven months, there had been strange goings-on between Ignatio and Erlund. Lysias had glimpsed it again and again. An entire basement had been quickly absorbed by the intelligence officer’s men, and a week ago, six of those men had been killed, their bodies hauled out beneath blood-soaked sheets to disappear wherever it was that Ignatio had made a hundred other bodies go. And as much as it had distressed the spymaster, it enraged Erlund. Lysias had reports of black-cloaked riders sent out from Erlund’s private guard, spies that hunted north, west and east. Those that rode east had still not returned.

As he left the hunting lodge and made for the nearby barracks, Lysias tried to look at the sky and find something beautiful in the crisp winter day. It had rained, melting the last night’s snow quickly, and the morning smelled like pine needles and loam.

Maybe I am too old for this work now. He hadn’t felt that way before Windwir, and especially before leading those guards into Sethbert’s bedchambers to arrest the madman. He’d felt it then, the weariness creeping up on him; he had not equated it with age. But the capstone was when his own daughter took up with a Secessionist librarian, fleeing with him to Parmona when that city threw down its governor and his brigades. That was the day he first felt old. And the look in her eye that last time he saw her, so much like her mother, sparked another feeling within him that he desperately wished to misplace. But these days, he carried it around with him and it weighed him down; he could not defeat it despite the strategy and forces he mustered.

I have helped to make this happen.

Pushing back that sudden stab of guilt, General Lysias grabbed hold of what had always sustained him in times past.

He was, after all, first and foremost a man of duty.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo stood in his dressing room and let that moment of silence and stillness wash him. He’d spent much of the day dispatching birds and discussing his investigation strategy with Captain Philemus. Sometime in the night or early morning they expected return birds as they probed the Forest Gypsy’s slight but effective network of spies and informants elsewhere in the Named Lands. He anticipated their news, but there were other birds coming-birds that he did not look forward to once Turam’s ailing king learned of his only heir’s demise.

Between the birds and Philemus, he’d also managed to sit long enough to hear the Physician’s report on his autopsy of the one Marsher already cooling in the ice house. It was perplexing news.

“I’ve seen nothing like it,” the Physician told him, and the River Woman next to him nodded her agreement. “His heart gave out, along with the rest of his organs.”

Rudolfo had made the first suggestion that came to mind. “Poison, then?”

But the Physician shook his head. “I think it was the blood magicks.”

Hours later, the puzzle stayed with him and he sighed, looking to the dressing room’s one small window to gauge the day’s remains. It would be dark soon, and he still needed to sit with Winters, discuss his strategy and hear her thoughts before she left tomorrow with her people. He did not envy the path ahead of her.

If these assassins were truly Marshers, she not only had trouble within her borders but would soon have it without. Turam would not take well to the death of their future king, despite the internal troubles they had themselves.

And Rudolfo’s kin-clave with the Marshers would need to be honored, pulling the Ninefold Forest Houses into a political situation that was tenuous at best.

But before all of that, there was another matter to attend to.

He went to his father’s wardrobe, the one where he’d kept those few personal belongings of his parents that meant something to him. His father’s sword hung there, along with the emerald-encrusted scabbard. His mother’s hunting bow hung near it. On the shelves within stood a scattering of their favorite books-some that they had read to Rudolfo and Isaak when they were young boys. And behind those books lay the box.

He stretched up on tiptoes, reaching over those bound volumes, to find it. Then he pulled it down and opened it.

He’d not looked in the box for twenty years at least, though he’d known for nearly a year that he would need to. For the briefest of times, he’d looked forward to this. Then, that day at Vlad Li Tam’s bonfire had burned that hope away, turning it into something different.

Until the boy arrived.

Surprised at the trembling of his hands, Rudolfo reached into the box and lifted out a smaller box. Within it lay the two simple bands of silver that his mother and father had exchanged upon the day of his birth, even as the Gypsy Kings and Queens before them had done. Slipping the smaller box into his pocket, he carefully closed and replaced the larger back in its proper place.

As he left the dressing room, he thought about what came next.

He paused in the large bath chamber that separated his suite of rooms from those of Jin Li Tam. He splashed his face in water touched with lilac oil, pausing to take in his hollow eyes in the small mirror.

It wasn’t that he did not love Jin Li Tam, he thought, though it was a different love than what it might have been. It was a love having more to do with trust and effectiveness than passion or romance. Though there were times, as during her labor, where those feelings of intense longing would take him and he would find joy in her form, in her way with words, in the brightness of her eyes.

But those feelings, he reasoned, were not required. And if anything, they were not to be counted upon when it came to matters of state or duty. Still, he held hope that one day, what had started between them with the fire of a sunset would rekindle.

He went to the door on the other side of the bath chamber, the one that led to her room. He knocked lightly, and when she bid him enter, he pushed aside his introspection.

Jin Li Tam was not alone with Jakob-but he had not really expected her to be. A young woman who looked ill at ease was there with the River Woman, and the three of them were gathered around Jakob. He closed the door behind him.

As he approached, a look passed between Jin Li Tam and the River Woman. He’d seen the look before-from the River Woman, admonition and from Jin Li Tam, resolution.

Jin Li Tam looked to him now, and he watched her hands move, low and to her side. I have a difficult matter to discuss with you.

Soon, he replied. He forced a smile. “How is our son this evening?”

“As well as can be expected,” the River Woman said. The old woman looked tired, but that did not surprise Rudolfo-she’d spent the last three days at the manor, grabbing a few hours of sleep where she could but working night and day to care for the infant.

Jin Li Tam tried to return Rudolfo’s smile, then turned to the young woman. “Lynnae,” she said, “I would like to introduce you to Lord Rudolfo.” She looked to Rudolfo again. “I’ve taken the liberty of securing Lynnae’s help with our child. I hope that is acceptable.”

Odd, he thought, that she would seek a stranger with a house of servants at her disposal.

Rudolfo studied the girl. She was young, her dark, curly hair spilling out from beneath a scarf, offsetting her olive skin. Her clothing was simple fare, though it was taking on a threadbare quality from constant use; she shifted uncomfortably on her feet. She was pretty, he noted, but haunted by grief and too little sleep. Like the rest of us, he observed.

He stepped forward with a flourish and inclined his head toward her. “Lady Lynnae,” he said. “If Lady Tam requires your assistance, then my House is at your beckoning.”

She blushed and curtsied. “Thank you, Lord. You have already been a gracious host to us.”

Entrolusian by her accent, he thought, with a touch of the Southern Coasts. Most likely a refugee from the Delta, then. He watched her leave, and after another glance between the remaining two women, he watched the River Woman leave as well. Suddenly, for the first time since the night of the birth, Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam were alone with their baby.

Jin Li Tam patted the bedcovers beside her. “Come and hold your son, Rudolfo.”

Come and hold your son. The words stirred something inside of him to life again, like that night she had labored for the baby’s delivery. He went to the bed and sat next to her, receiving the bundle that stirred slightly in his unexpected arms. The skin color was more pallid than gray now, but the hollow eyes were the same. Rudolfo looked up. “Do you know what ails him yet?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “We do.” He read the grief and worry on her face and steeled himself. “It was the powders,” she said.

Rudolfo’s heart wrenched. “The powders?”

“Yes. The ones I gave you.” She paused. “The ones my sister provided the scrip for.”

Rudolfo blinked. “Will he improve?”

She shook her head, and when the last light of the evening sun caught her face, Rudolfo saw the shame in her eyes. “No, he will not. I must find my sister.”

Jin Li Tam’s words elicited his memory of those iron ships at anchor and the lines of servants who loaded up the docks for the long boats to ferry what goods they could out to the deeper waters where Vlad Li Tam’s fleet awaited. “She is with your father,” he said, though it was more a question than a statement.

“I think so,” Jin said. “But I’ve sent a bird to be certain.”

“If she’s left with him,” he said, “it’s a vast ocean.” He studied the small face, watched the tiny chest labor for breath, wanting to ask how much time they had but afraid to. “Only the gods know where he’s fled to.” But even as he said it, the words felt wrong. Not fled.

He glanced over to his betrothed as she spoke. “I will find him,” she said. “I have to.”

There was resolve in her voice, and it camouflaged a desperation that Rudolfo doubted others would hear in her. He heard it, though, and knew to go carefully over that ground. “Have you discussed your travel plans with the River Woman?”

Her eyes narrowed and her jawline set with determination. “There is nothing to discuss.” She paused. “I can do this, Rudolfo. I’m getting stronger every day.” But her pale skin and her hollow eyes suggested otherwise.

He smiled and tickled the infant’s chin. Even as the words formed themselves in his mind, a strategy-haphazard and impossible to measure success against-formed in his mind. “I do not doubt that you can do this,” he lied. “I merely inquire as to how you would accomplish this while caring for our son. I only question whether or not this is a journey he should make. Your father and his household have been at sea for seven months. They could be anywhere by now.”

He could hear the anger rising in her voice. “You suggest that we simply send our scouts to find him?”

He shook his head. “No. I suggest that we not send you and our ill child. Think for a moment,” he said, “and you will see the logic in my words.” He slowly counted to ten and then continued. “It would be a better use of our resources to have you remain in the Ninefold Forest and see to our interests here, caring for our boy.”

For a moment, the spark in her eye turned to panic, and Rudolfo first saw the danger of a cornered mother whose child is threatened. Then, it subsided. When it did, he continued. “There is a storm brewing here,” he told her. “Ansylus’s death and that of Hanric, even, are going to put all eyes upon the Marshers during a time when the world needs a scapegoat for its woe, and we are the Marshers only kin-clave. Your skills in that dance far outstrip mine, though certainly I know the steps.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you proposing?”

He played out the strategy, testing the corners of it in his mind. There were certainly other ways, but he could not bring himself to trust anyone else with the treasure of his son’s life. He could not send scouts, as she suggested. It would not suffice.

And it was true-he was an astute player of Queen’s War when it came to the political machinations of the Named Lands, but Jin Li Tam was vastly better. He was not needed here personally, though a part of him bristled at the idea of leaving given the present status of this game board. Still, he was resolved. He said the words slowly, feeling the irony of them against the back of his throat. “I am proposing,” he said, “that I go and find your father.”

Her look of surprise was obvious. “You vowed to kill my father upon your next meeting. He killed your family. He killed Gregoric.”

Each reminder stung, but he kept his eyes fixed on the tiny eyes of his infant son. “I may yet kill him when this is finished. But I will not rest until I have found him and found your sister.”

Jin Li Tam opened her mouth to speak, but Rudolfo spoke faster. “That brings me to another matter,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms so that he could dig the wooden box from his pocket.

She eyed the box with curiosity as he opened it. When he spoke, he heard his voice as if it were far away. “Jin Li Tam, of House Li Tam, mother of Jakob, I pledge my land and blade to you and offer you this ring as token of our marriage. Wear it and show the world that you of all souls bear my grace.” He’d never practiced the words before; he’d known them all his life. And certainly, Rudolfo had imagined this day would come soon enough, but he had thought to wait until they were past the shadow of Windwir’s fall.

Now he realized that they might never move past that shadow, that if anything, those shadows might lead to even darker times ahead. Slowly, he took up the ring his mother had worn all the days of her womanhood and extended it to Jin Li Tam. Their eyes met, and he saw that there were tears in hers. She extended her hand, and he placed the ring upon her third finger, pleased that it fit. “Now,” he said in a quiet voice, “you do the same.”

Her fingers shook slightly as she took the larger ring and placed it upon his finger. “Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, son of Jakob and father of Jakob,” she said, “I pledge my heart and hand to you and offer you this ring as a token of our marriage.” Their eyes met again. “Wear it and show the world that you of all souls bear my grace.”

Rudolfo inclined his head toward his wife. His wife did the same, and between them, Lord Jakob stirred and cried.

Rudolfo raised his hand and held it so that the light caught the simple silver band. He’d not seen it worn since the day they took it off his father’s cold finger. “For now,” he said, “this will be binding.” He smiled. “When I return, we will have a proper Gypsy wedding.”

She nodded. “When will you go?”

Rudolfo sighed. “Tomorrow. I will take a squad of Gypsy Scouts and make for Caldus Bay. I’ve already sent word to Petronus. He and Tam worked closely together during the war. He may know something.” He thought for a moment. “From there, I will hire a vessel.”

Suddenly, the magnitude of his impending journey settled over him. There were letters of authority to be signed and witnesses to gather for the marriage proclamation that would establish her powers as his queen. Scouts to select for the journey and clothing to pack. He’d not been to sea in a goodly while-he’d been young the last time, with Gregoric by his side. He looked down again at the pallid face of his son, the veins soft blue beneath the skin, and knew that nothing would keep him from this task, that he would move the moon to save his child’s life.

Rudolfo shifted and passed the baby back to Jin Li Tam. “I should go. There is much to do.”

Jin Li Tam cast her eyes away, and he could tell that she wished something that she thought foolish. She blushed at it before she asked. “Join us tonight,” she whispered. “Join Jakob and me. It’s not fitting that husband and wife spend their first night apart, regardless the circumstances.”

Rudolfo nodded. When he finished the multitude of tasks required to make her voice resonate as his own among his people and among the Named Lands, and when he finished preparing for a journey that was impossible to prepare for, he would return. He would take his dinner in her bedchambers and sip chilled peach wine while watching his family.

My family. He’d not used those words since he was a boy. He’d not considered himself as having a family for far too long, and the notion of it now stopped him. I have a family, he thought, beyond my Gypsy Scouts and my Forest people. Tonight, he would pull off his silk slippers and climb into bed with the two of them and memorize that moment for the long days ahead of him.

Then, in the morning, he would begin his search for Vlad Li Tam.

Rudolfo stood. “I will return shortly,” he said. Bending, he kissed her, and he was surprised to find her mouth soft and hungry for his own. Bending further, his kissed his infant son upon his clammy brow.

As Rudolfo straightened, he saw the three of them reflected back in the dressing mirror in the corner of the room. For a moment, he thought he saw his father until he realized it was himself.

He left the room quickly, barking orders to the aides and servants that gathered around him as he went. But he was going through the act of preparation without any heart in it.

For Rudolfo’s heart was not within him any longer.

Instead, it lay swaddled in blankets, nursing in the arms of a glorious sunrise.