Antiphon (37 page)

Philemus rose to his feet, but Lysias continued sitting. “I’ve another matter to discuss with you, Lord Rudolfo,” the Entrolusian general said in a steady voice, his face a granite mask.

The prisoner.
Rudolfo nodded. “We will discuss the Y’Zirite matter this afternoon, Captain.”

Inclining his head, Philemus let himself out and closed the door behind him.

“What progress have you made with her?” Rudolfo glanced to the small Rufello chest in the corner. In it, they’d stored the woman’s personal effects. Silver ceremonial knives and iron scout knives, a battered copy of the Y’Zirite gospel and a small bird carved from black stone that was somehow disorienting to the touch. That and the other items one would expect in a scout or soldier’s kit, though each unfamiliar in their cut and make.

Lysias shook his head. “No progress. She’s well trained, this one.”

Rudolfo sighed. “Agreed,” he said. “But trained by whom?” When the magicks had burned out and she’d become visible to the naked eye, she hadn’t borne the characteristic face paints of a Marsher. Instead, her body bore other marks—symbols and runes he’d seen before, a latticework of scars carved into her flesh. It evoked memories of that island temple and his bride’s father, Vlad Li Tam, stretched upon a rack with similar cuts in his naked flesh. And those times she spoke, she did so in a guttural language he did not recognize—though it was obvious enough from the way her brown eyes moved that she understood each question they asked her in turns.

“I don’t think she’s been trained by any we know of,” Lysias said. “I think the theory of an enemy beyond the Named Lands remains our most reasonable answer.”

Rudolfo stroked his beard.
The Crimson Empress . . . and her Blood Guard.
It was obvious to him, as well. They had seen the ships. And now a force that breached his borders with ease and used the blood magicks without ill effect to pursue the four mechoservitors with dark intent. They’d destroyed the two from his library on sight, and from what his men had seen of the wreckage below, they’d even stopped long enough to gut them utterly. These were the same who also combed the Wastes, and though Petronus’s note requesting scout support had been carefully vague, Rudolfo suspected that the lad Nebios was caught up in this.

He also feared for Isaak now that he was somehow connected to this so-called metal dream. He only hoped the squad that followed after could hold their own against these women—he had no more that he could send.

“I concur,” Rudolfo finally said. “Though I do not know how a power of this size could rise up in the wastes of the world.”

Every child in the Named Lands knew that between Xhum Y’Zir’s Seven Cacophonic Deaths and the Wizard Wars two millennia before that, most of the world was left a desolate and lifeless scar. The lands beyond the Keeper’s Gate and the scattered islands of the Emerald Sea—according to the Androfrancine scholars who’d documented such things—were all that remained of a world that had once teemed with life.

Lysias shrugged. “I do not know either, but it seems true enough.” His eyes met Rudolfo’s. “Regardless, this is not the matter I would speak with you about.”

Those eyes were hard again and narrow. Rudolfo found himself wanting to look away. “Yes?”

The old general paused, as if looking for the best words. “Philemus is correct—your resources are spread too thin. But there is more that he is not saying, either from respect or from hope that he will not need to.”

Rudolfo felt something stirring in his stomach—some unpleasant emotion that he could not name. He could not imagine any of his men not speaking freely with him. His eyes narrowed. “And what is it he is not saying?”

Lysias’s mouth was grim, the line of his jaw firm. His level stare
burned into Rudolfo, and finally the Gypsy King looked away. When he did, Lysias spoke. “That you yourself,” he said, “are now spread too thin, Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo’s eyes shifted back. “What do you—?”

Lysias leaned forward even as his voice dropped. “Your men need a leader. Not a drunk.”

Rudolfo’s mouth opened and then closed.

Lysias continued. “These two years have been hard on you. Great loss and great responsibility. And now great uncertainty. Until now, you’ve risen with strength to the challenge.” The old man’s brow furrowed, his eyes suddenly fierce. “Show me the general who routed my divisions at Windwir. Show me the man who snuck into my Overseer’s camp to free his metal men.”

Lysias stood. And his eyes held Rudolfo’s once again. “Do not let loss or the fear of loss cause you to forget who you are, Rudolfo. You are too good a man for that.”

Then, the general let himself out into the winter morning.

Rudolfo sat back in the chair and blinked, his eyes suddenly wet. He glanced to the half-empty bottle of firespice.

Then, he forced his eyes back to the report on his desk and bent his mind to finding a way through the thorny Whymer Maze his life had become.

After days of narrow passages zigging and zagging downward, they spilled finally into a wide cavern that stretched far beyond the reach of Charles’s lantern.

He’d never dreamed such a place had lain beneath his feet so long. The caves and passages were man-made—or god-made—and seemed to stretch out and down endlessly. Certainly, time had done its work. They’d navigated their way around cave-ins and unexpected crevasses.

For the first few days, the prospect of it all was quite exciting. A vast new space to explore—and if it
did
hearken back to the time of the Younger Gods there was no telling what else might be found here. But now, he was ready for the sun again. He was even ready for the cold again. The deeper they’d gone, the warmer it had become, and the air was heavy and stale.

Charles held the lantern as high as he could and squinted ahead.
Soon, it would be time to stop and sleep again while Isaak stood watch over him. “How long have we been down here again?”

Isaak clicked for a moment. “Eleven days, six hours, four minutes and twelve seconds,” he said.

Charles chuckled and stopped walking. “We should be looking for a good place to stop.”

He wasn’t as eager to stop in the open spaces, though he didn’t know why. They’d been escorted to the last point Rudolfo’s men had mapped, and then he’d followed Isaak’s lead. The metal man moved with confidence, backtracking only twice when the passageways were blocked by collapses. And so far, though occasionally strange noises reached their ears, they’d encountered no one. Still, he slept while Isaak kept watch, usually in the corner of a narrow tunnel.

They moved out into the room, picking their way around the loose rocks and debris that crowded the floor. In the distance, dripping water sent its echoes across the stone and occasional breezes moved the heavy air around them, tickling the hairs on Charles’s ears and neck. It was these rooms that disturbed him the most—vast in size and beyond his vision. Isaak set their course by his internal map, and Charles hung back from him. They moved at a quick but careful pace.

They walked an hour before they heard the commotion behind them. At first, after so long with nothing but ghost noises, Charles was uncertain of it. But then he heard a Forester whistle and a hissed command. “Douse that lamp.”

He wasn’t sure why exactly he trusted it, but he did. He closed the shutter on his lantern and then felt Isaak’s hand close over his wrist. “We should move, Father.”

They moved quickly away as the sound of commotion grew behind them.

Fighting.
But who? The one sounded like a Gypsy Scout, and he wouldn’t put it past Rudolfo to have them followed. But whom were they fighting with?

He couldn’t wait to find out. He let Isaak lead him, his legs suddenly shaking from both weariness and fear. They moved quickly across the cavern and slipped into another narrow passageway.

As they walked, Isaak’s stride became more confident, though Charles wondered at the route he chose. They were climbing now, then twisting and doubling back, moving quietly but quickly through the dark, their path barely illuminated by the mechoservitor’s amber eyes.

Behind them, the sounds of fighting faded and finally, after what
seemed like hours, they stopped for Charles to catch his breath and sip at one of the canteens that Isaak carried for them along with the rest of their supplies.

When Charles spoke, his voice was a whisper that echoed nonetheless. “I think Rudolfo had us followed.”

“I am certain of it, Father,” Isaak said. “It would be out of character for him not to. But it appears that they, too, were followed.”

No,
Charles thought.
We were.
But by whom? Someone obviously who was a match for Rudolfo’s best, though he didn’t imagine the Gypsy Scouts were well suited to tunnel fighting. Still, he’d heard determination and a healthy dose of fear in the voice that called out to him. He found himself grateful that they were between them and whatever foe pursued them, but he also felt a twinge of guilt for fleeing the fight.

Alongside that guilt, though, he felt his own fear—the one that whispered to him that they could not outrun whatever it was that pursued them through these tunnels. An old and unarmed man following a mechoservitor’s dream.

After another two hours, they stopped again. As he leaned against the wall, Charles felt the heaviness first in his feet and legs and then upon his chest as he tried to breathe. The warm air combined with their forced flight left him wet with sweat, and he felt his heart pounding in his temples.

But even as he stopped and tried to control his ragged breathing, he heard something.

Only this time, he realized, it was from ahead of them.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered to Isaak.

What little light they had vanished, and Charles sat with that darkness, cocking his head as he listened. Faint, but somewhere up ahead he heard voices.

Nearly a dozen days with no signs of life, and in the span of hours this place has become too crowded,
he thought. And these voices were not even attempting to be quiet. He heard them growing in volume, and when the first, faint glow of lamplight appeared in the distance, he held his breath for a full minute before realizing that he gained nothing from it. Slowly the light grew.

Isaak’s hand was back now, closing over his wrist with an urgency that surprised him. The metal man’s gears clicked softly, and there was a hiss as steam released from his back. He pulled them back into a wide crack in the wall.

The voices were clearer now, and Charles was able to pick them out.

“There were four of them, for certain,” one said. “See the footprints here?” It was a male voice. “They were traveling west.” There was a pause.

Another voice spoke. “That damned behaviorist thinks they’re in the Marshlands now.”

Charles could hear footfalls now, and the light came into focus around two figures moving along the passage. “They most likely are. But I don’t know what General Orius would have us do about it.”

Orius.
Charles felt his held breath go out of him. Orius was a familiar name. A tall man, a bit on the large size, with graying hair and an eyepatch as a reminder of some skirmish he’d nearly lost with a Marsher during his youth. When had Charles seen him last? Surely it was in Windwir’s final weeks, probably in the Papal Offices. General Orius, commander of the Gray Guard of the Androfrancine Order, still lived.

He forced his attention back to their conversation. “—observe and assist quietly,” the other was saying. “We don’t have the resources for more than that. And he was very clear: We’re to stay below and avoid being seen.”

They were moving closer, and as they passed, Charles saw their uniforms and saw the scarves that denoted them as advance scouts. They didn’t carry packs but did wear canteens and knives on their black leather belts. One held a map and the other held the lamp.

It means they’re either not far from home or not far from camp.

For a moment—just a moment—Charles entertained the idea of stepping out of the shadows and introducing himself, demanding that they take him and Isaak to Orius. Just the notion that the man had somehow survived Windwir—and with at least some trappings of his Gray Guard intact—stirred up a need in him that unsettled him with its strength.

But he bracketed those feelings and let suspicion drive him. Behind them somewhere, the Gypsy Scouts had engaged or been engaged by someone or something. It was just as likely more of Orius’s men, and if that was the case, Charles was not certain he could count on a warm welcome.

Still, Orius apparently lived and was pursuing the same mechoservitors that he and Isaak pursued. Gray Guard scouts wandered the Whymer Maze of caves and passages deep beneath the Named Lands. And behind him, Gypsy Scouts—or something worse if Rudolfo’s men had not prevailed—followed after.

Not for the first time since descending the ladder—and certainly not for the last—Charles wondered if he would ever see daylight again or if he’d simply followed Isaak into a warm and winding grave, saving everyone the bother of finding a shovel for the work of burying him.

Closing his eyes, he held his breath and waited for the men to pass.

Then Charles gave himself back to Isaak’s care and let his metal son lead him by the hand.