Antiphon (17 page)

“I still believe this is folly, General,” Aedric started, but Rudolfo cut him off with a hard look.

“Can you keep my son safe
here
, Aedric?” he asked, leaning forward suddenly. “
Can
you?” Winters heard the anger rising in the Gypsy King’s voice, and it startled her. When the first captain said nothing, Rudolfo settled back into his chair. “I do not doubt for a moment that the Machtvolk are a threat to the Named Lands. But they do not at the moment appear to be a threat to us. Somehow, my house is tangled in their house and in their so-called gospel of a new Y’Zirite age.” He paused. “And,” he said, “their borders are secure. Their blood magicks are formidable.”

Jin Li Tam looked to the two men. “It could not hurt for us to have a better sense of what is happening behind those borders.”

As the woman spoke, Winters saw the careful mask she wore.
She is mistrustful.
“Then you will go?” she asked, her breath catching for a moment in her words. “You will take Jakob with you?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Aedric, too, along with a company of Rudolfo’s best and strongest scouts.”

Winters felt fear for them, cold as the rain that soaked her clothing despite the fire’s warmth.

“This brings me to my second question for you, Lady Winteria,” Rudolfo said. “I will be frank. Your sister has asked that you accompany them. I believe you would be invaluable to them, but I could never command such a thing of you.”

And now she felt the fear herself, remembering that day Seamus made his sobbing confession to her and revealed the mark upon his breast. And that later day when she raised the Firstfall axe to Ria, losing it and her people.
He wants me to go.

“I concur with my husband,” Jin Li Tam said. Winters looked up. The woman inclined her head, her red braid shifting across her shoulder. “Your aid would be indispensable. You know the territory, the people.”

Winters took a deep breath, feeling the weight of this new information as it settled onto her shoulders. It brought back memories of the Wicker Throne she’d carried to the Spire the day she had announced herself as the Marsh Queen. She remembered its weight, remembered the blood she’d shed for it through those biting leather straps.

In the end it was not hard at all for her to decide. That memory pulled her shoulders straight and she sat up. Her eyes met Rudolfo’s, and she inclined her head slowly toward him.

“Of course I will go,” Winteria bat Mardic, queen of the Marshfolk, said.

Petronus whistled his horse faster and blinked the sweat from his eyes. They’d pushed the beasts to keep up with Geoffrus and his ragged band of root runners, remagicking the horses at least twice now for speed and stamina as they rode east in search of Neb. If they didn’t slow soon, they would kill the beasts.

He watched the ease with which Geoffrus took the terrain in a long-legged lope, wondering how long the man could run like that.

The scattered platoon of Gray Guard rode hard with the half-company of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts, the rainbow uniforms of the scouts contrasting with the ash-colored guard against the drab desolation of the Churning Wastes. The sun was high now, and it glistened off the glass hills and razored dunes of the decimated cities that once covered this land. It approached winter just two hundred leagues east, and here, the sky blistered at noon.

It had been years since he’d been in the Wastes, and there was a tragic beauty in it that he did not miss. It was a stark reminder of the Wizard King’s wrath but also a reminder of the strength of those scattered survivors, gathered together under the leadership of P’Andro
Whym to dig what could be saved from the ruins and ride west with it to the New World behind the Keeper’s Gate. Both human achievements—a penchant for self-destruction and a tenacious will to survive that penchant.

He heard a whistle and looked up. Geoffrus was slowing and motioning for them to do the same. He pointed north as he did.

Petronus slowed his horse and looked. There, across the landscape, four robed figures moved, tossing dust or steam up behind them as they went. They moved fast, faster even than the root moved Geoffrus and his men. They were perhaps a league away, and he realized suddenly where he’d seen that loping run before.

Mechoservitors.
Running in the Churning Wastes. Running toward the Keeper’s Wall.

Instinctively, he raised an arm, but they paid him no mind.

He’d read the preliminary reports on the findings at Sanctorum Lux and knew about the metal man who had deactivated itself—the remains had been gone when the landing party of Tam survivors and Gypsy Scouts reached that burned-out ruin. And he’d heard about their so-called dream, though he wasn’t clear exactly what they meant by it.

Somewhere in the Wastes, Charles’s first generation of mechoservitors worked at something secretly, and he suspected that this strange figure, Hebda, knew more than he’d revealed in the hallucinations Petronus had experienced. As Pope, Petronus had made it his business to know every office and every ministry beneath his sanctioned oversight, and he’d heard nothing of this Office for the Preservation of the Light.

But he’d known Hebda’s name, though he could not remember why he did.

The farther he moved away from the Wall, the more clear his memory became, though it still confused him. And even as his memory cleared, the dreamlike episodes ceased. He’d experienced neither vision nor dream since leaving their camp. Still, he knew enough. They’d charted his course, and something inside of him strongly believed that Arch-Behaviorist Hebda spoke the truth—Neb was in danger, and Petronus was compelled to act.

He’d not talked to the boy since that last day he’d seen him, there in the crowded silk pavilion of the last Androfrancine Council, Neb shaking with rage as Petronus called for an Androfrancine to take Sethbert’s life and thus claim the ring and robes of office. He’d known the boy would’ve stepped forward—the Overseer had killed Neb’s father when
he brought desolation to Windwir—and Petronus had taken lengths to spare him that vengeful path. He winced as he recalled the day he excommunicated Neb, after months of faithful service leading the grave-digging of Windwir with the grace and care of an academy general.

It broke me to break him.
Petronus swallowed the pain of that memory, trusting that he was right in the end—that the boy was made for more than backward dreaming.

Geoffrus and the others were speeding up now, and Petronus felt the heat of his horse between his thighs. Still, he whistled the roan forward and leaned low into the saddle.

As the landscape flashed past, he wondered what exactly they would find in the far east where these mechoservitors had run from. He wondered about the runners and he wondered about the mysterious man who doled out hallucinations and dreams like candies from a dark and hidden pocket.

And most of all, Petronus wondered if they would reach Neb in time for whatever it was that he smelled coming on the dead winds of the Churning Wastes.

Charles blinked into his magnifying glass and bit his tongue as he worked the tweezers, inwardly cursing the clumsiness that age brought to his fingers.

He’d lost track of time now, these past days blurring into scattered hours of sleep here and there and meals taken hurriedly to the side of his workbench and the metal body stretched out upon it. Rudolfo occasionally stopped in to ask after Isaak, and at least once, Jin Li Tam had also snuck in, magicked scouts warbling the air around her as they shadowed her every movement. He remembered that they’d asked questions of him, faces lined with worry; but he couldn’t remember what those questions entailed now, nor could he recall the short, sharp answers he’d provided.

Initially, he thought he’d lost the mechoservitor. Now, he was convinced that the metal man would function, though he’d cannibalized the two others in order to accomplish even that much. The gears would whir. The bellows would pump. All of the mechanical parts would do their work.

But would it still be Isaak?

The fine, narrow strips of ancient paper-thin steel that comprised Isaak’s scripting scrolls had confounded him with its twisted tangle—along with what else he discovered there.

Somehow, they had fused themselves around the sunstone that powered his boiler, and it was not a new development—it appeared to be the result of past trauma, perhaps left over from the Seven Cacophonic Deaths. That made the most sense. Until now, Isaak had refused Charles—and anyone else—access to his inner workings. He performed his own maintenance, using mirrors and tools from the pouch he kept nearby at all times.

It made sense.
I would trust less, too, if I’d been used in such a way.

And now, with the work just moments from being complete, Charles wondered if his metal child would be . . .
himself
. . . when he fired the boiler and powered the scrolls. He frowned at the thought, exploring the odd emotion that snared him. He’d spent days bent over this mechanical, his back and legs and arms aching from too long on his feet, hunched over the work. Why? He’d not spent so much time over the others. Indeed, he’d scrapped them as needed to bring back this one.

Because Isaak is . . . special.
This machine had wept for a ravaged city and had put himself in harm’s way to save the lives of his—Charles reached for the word and found it—of his
family
.

He blinked again and suddenly realized his eyes were wet.

And now, if Isaak truly did still remain in that tangle of metal and wire, he would have to give him difficult news. And pass that same news to Rudolfo and the others.

The fused memory scrolls were functional, though Charles was uncertain exactly how that was possible. But the sunstone they were fused into now pulsed on borrowed time. There was no way to repair the hairline fracture Charles found there. And there was no way to replace the metal man’s heart without also replacing the memory scrolls.

Sighing, Charles fired the boiler and waited for the steam to build. When Isaak whistled and hissed, he held his breath and hit the switch.

The bellows pumped, and the amber eyes fluttered open, rolling a bit as the shutters worked. The mouth flap opened and closed and the ear flaps bent. Closing the chest cavity, Charles spun the dial on the Rufello lock he’d installed there. He’d repaired all but the limp, and he’d added nothing extra but the lock. Knowing what this mechoservitor guarded so near his broken heart had compelled him.

He watched the mechanical twitch and listened for any grinding gears or high-pitched whistles that might betray yet more work. “Are you functional?”

Isaak sat up on the table and blinked. “Mechoservitor Three is functional and ready for duty.”

Mechoservitor Three.

He felt his eyebrows furrowing. “What is your designation?”

“Designation Mechoservitor Three, Library Archives and Cataloging, Office of—” Isaak closed his mouth flap, then looked to Charles. The metal man shuddered, and he heard a grind within, followed by a popping sound. The jeweled eyes dimmed, then grew stronger. “I am Isaak, Father, but you know that.”

Charles released his held breath and wiped his eyes. “I do know that.”

Wisps of steam leaked from Isaak’s exhaust grate. “Why do you weep, Father?” He looked around the room, saw the two mechanicals disassembled upon the other tables, and turned back to Charles, waiting for an answer.

What do I say?
He wasn’t sure himself. “I think I’m just glad to see you, Isaak.”

“It is also agreeable to see you.” Then, another pop, and once more the eyes dimmed and then brightened. Isaak surged to his feet. “The library,” he said, his reedy voice laced with panic. “Lady Tam and Lord Jakob—”

Charles put a hand on Isaak’s metal chest. It was still cool to the touch but warming quickly. “They are alive because of you.” He paused. “And the library is under repair.”

Isaak looked to the other two mechoservitors. “And my brothers?”

Charles shook his head. “I salvaged what I could from them to repair you. It was a difficult decision. We’ll recover what we can from their memory scrolls, but their damage was extensive.”

Isaak blinked now, and Charles saw the water leaking from the corner of his eyes. “They are permanently nonfunctional?”

Charles nodded. “Come sit with me,” he said, and motioned his metal handiwork toward the plain wooden chairs near his crowded bookcases and guttering stove.

He pulled his chair close to Isaak and put a hand on the metal man’s leg. “I have more unpleasant news, Isaak.”
How do I say this?
He tried to tell himself it was merely a machine, but he knew better. “Isaak,” he said, then surprised himself with his next word. “Son,” he added. And now the water returned to his own eyes, and he sat with it for a moment while the metal man waited. In the end, he came back to science, as he ever had from childhood on. “You are aware of the inner workings of mechoservitor technology and the use of sunstones as a power source for your boiler?”

Isaak nodded.

“And you are aware, I’m sure, of the unusual nature of your own scripting mechanisms?”

Long metal fingers made their way slowly to the door in his chest, found the Rufello lock and paused. Isaak cocked his head.