Requiem (24 page)

“This mechoservitor is in sworn service to House Y’Zir and the Crimson Empress. It is malfunctioning and must be returned to the magister of Y’Zir.”

She didn’t understand the words, though she’d heard about the Crimson Empress from some of the other girls who’d attended the Y’Zirite school. But the words weren’t as important to her as what she saw. Something about the metal man twisting on the ground made her sad. “Let him go,” she said.

But even as she said it, Marta saw the metal man climbing to its feet. It tugged and pulled at invisible captors, fighting in silence. Its metallic voice had a note of panic in it. “Marta?”

“I’m over here,” she said.

The metal man shook the last of the nets from itself and moved toward her quickly. Marta felt herself being lifted by invisible hands.

The woman spoke in a harsh language now, then paused as if waiting for a response. When none came, she repeated herself.

“I do not understand you,” the mechoservitor said.

“The girl is with me now,” the woman said. “Do you know your designation?”

The mechoservitor stepped forward. “I do not know my designation.”

Marta felt the scout’s hands tighten on her, pulling her back toward the forest. “Your designation is the Watcher. You have been assigned to the Named Lands in preparation for the Advent of the Crimson Empress. You have been damaged and are required to return to the imperial magisters. Your compliance is required.”

“No,” the mechoservitor said. “Give me the girl.”

Before the woman could answer, he surged forward, and Marta heard bones breaking even as the woman cried out. Metal arms scooped her up, and they were running again. From time to time, she felt the slightest of breezes, and now, when it happened, the mechoservitor—the Watcher, they called it—moved toward the noises. At least twice, she’d heard more bones breaking and heard more thrashing in the snow.

Finally, they broke from the trees again, and after hours of no pursuit, the metal man slowed as he approached a ridgeline. When she felt it was safe to speak, she looked up at the metal man. “Did you kill those scouts?”

“No,” it said. “I broke their legs.”

She felt more relief than she realized she would. And she realized that she truly hadn’t known what his answer would be, though she’d hoped against hope. “Is what she said true?”

“I do not know,” it said. “It may be.”

“Then why didn’t you return with her?”

The metal man stopped and looked down at her. “Because I am compelled by my dreams to keep searching.”

She stopped as well. “The ones you paint in blood?”

It nodded. “In them, I seek something. I do not know what, but I think it seeks me as well.” The metal man straightened and turned back to the slope. “I urge you to discontinue following me.”

She shrugged. And when the metal man continued walking, she kept pace with him.

They climbed the ridgeline in the predawn gloom, and when she looked down, Marta’s throat knotted up at what she saw.

There was only one place it could be. The snow buried its scar now, but ahead of her a vast plain stretched out, flattened two years ago. Now, it lay full of a hundred watch-fires and a thousand tents. She knew it, and it clenched at her stomach.

Windwir.

She didn’t know they would see it, though part of her had longed to as much as another part dreaded the idea.

Marta felt the weight of it and fell to her knees. “She’s buried here,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Who?”

She couldn’t stop the tears, and it angered her. “My mother. The Pope and his army buried her along with the others. My father joined them for a fortnight.”

The metal man looked out across the plain, and Marta saw a shudder ripple over its liquid metal skin. Tears coursed its own face as it sank to its knees beside her. “I am sorry, little human.”

They knelt and wept together, though she didn’t understand what a metal man could ever weep for. When they finished, they stood and moved south along the ridgeline, away from the grave and its grave-robbers.

As they walked, she looked at the Watcher. “Are you damaged?”

“No,” it said. “I am not.”

And she wanted to, but Marta chose not ask the mechoservitor why it limped.

Petronus

A cool breeze slipped beneath the jungle canopy, adding comfort to the shade where Petronus waited. From his perch, he could see the ship below at anchor and the mechoservitors who waited on its deck.

They’d been reluctant to stay behind, but Neb had insisted upon it, and Petronus suspected it had to do with the spider, Aver-Tal-Ka. It didn’t sit right with him, but this was Neb’s work; Petronus’s part here was accidental. And none of what he’d experienced since the day he saw the pillar of smoke on his northern horizon had sat right, so why would he look for such now? And it wasn’t as if anyone else shared his concerns. Rafe Merrique was fishing while the scouts sharpened their knives and the solitary sailor napped in the sun.

So Petronus sat and waited, wondering about Neb, wondering about the spider, and wondering about the girl they’d gone to find. And he wondered what came next. Surely, the tower.

And the hounds.

He heard a distant rustling deep below, drifting up through the open hatch, and climbed to his feet. The spider’s legs preceded it, and after it pushed its torso through the hatchway, it turned and swung the metal hatch shut. It had Neb’s pouch—the one that Petronus himself had carried for a time—slung through one of its arms. Within it, Petronus heard the whispering song and felt fear.

Petronus stepped forward now. “Where’s Neb?”

Aver-Tal-Ka shivered, every hair upon its body standing upright as it did. The pink slit of a mouth whispered open. “I have lost him.”

The fear moved to anger quickly. “You
what
?”

Emotions stormed around the spider. Petronus felt them, cold and sharp. Terror, despair and guilt. His mouth fell open at the force of them.
I have lost him. I have lost them both.

Now the anger was a rage, and he saw Aver-Tal-Ka flinch from it. “How is that possible? Where are they?”

The spider babbled.
I underestimated her. I underestimated the power of the call.
With each word, Petronus felt the guilt growing into shame, tinged with anger.
I told him not to wake her, but I just did not realize—

“Where have they gone?”

“They’ve fled using the blood of the earth.” The spider shuddered again, and the intensity of the emotion subsided. “I do not know where they’ve gone. Her father likely prepared a place for her—someplace safe.” It looked away, then back to Petronus.
I must not speak of these things with you, Downunder.

“No,” Petronus said, feeling the heat of rage in his tingling scalp. “You
must
and you
will.
” He tried to find more words but wasn’t sure how to convey the weight of need. His mind flooded with the song even as his eyes went again to the pouch Aver-Tal-Ka now carried. Buried in that song, a metal dream had shown the mechoservitors how to build a vessel he’d always considered more myth than real. Much had gone wrong—the missing staff, the missing dream, crashing rather than landing here—but Petronus also knew much had gone right. Neb had survived dark circumstance long enough to meet his true father and receive the blessing in the Beneath Places that transformed him into so much more than the orphaned, bereft boy he’d met in Sethbert’s camp so long ago. And the ship had carried them here, to the moon, bringing men and mechoservitors to a place that hadn’t been visited in unknown millennia.

Where are the words?
He dug more and found the best ones he could. “I need that boy to reach his tower and open it,” Petronus said. “I need him to do his part for the light or the dream or whatever the hells it is that drives him.” His hands were fists now, and his nails dug into his palms. “I don’t know why I need this, but there is no escaping it.”

The spider’s voice was low. “The call will eventually take them to the Firsthome Temple. It is inevitable that they return there.”

Petronus remembered the word from earlier but didn’t know what it meant. “What call do you speak of?” Even as he asked it, he suspected it was the canticle, but the spider’s answer surprised him.

“The call to mate,” Aver-Tal-Ka said. “The People’s drive to procreate is in direct proportion to the size of their population. Surely you saw his draw to her?”

He had. The boy’s face had lit up when the hatch opened. And in that light, there had been a joy coming off of him in waves combined with a need. He understood. “They are possibly the last of their kind.”

Yes. Certainly the only of their kind here in this place.

Petronus felt his eyebrows furrow. “Can they unseal the tower?”

Only the dream that Shadrus swallowed can unseal his temple
, the spider answered
. They may still enter through the pool beneath it, if that still lives. But sealed, the temple cannot serve. And without the rod, it will not serve either of them.

The dream and the staff. Both, according to Neb and his mechoservitors, should have come with them on the ship. But there was nothing to do for it now. “Surely there must be another way to unseal the temple?”

Aver-Tal-Ka looked away. “Only the dream that Shadrus drank.” At the mention of it, the spider unslung the pouch and placed it at Petronus’s feet.

Only the dream that Shadrus drank.
Petronus took up the pouch and tucked the spider’s words away for another time. “Then our best course of action is to go there and see for ourselves. If what you say is true, they’ll meet us at the tower eventually.”

A part of him wanted to resist this. Part of him wanted to climb down into the Beneath Places, take an armed party and search for the boy himself. But he knew that would be fruitless and a waste of time.

Aver-Tal-Ka continued sending off waves of fear and despair, but they subsided now into something less oppressive in their magnitude.
That is sound reasoning.

Petronus nodded. “And on the way, you will tell me what you know.” When he said it, he heard the familiar tone of command in his voice, and it pleased him.

“I will tell what I may,” the spider replied. “But when the tower is unsealed, the library herself will tell you whatever you wish if Lord Whym or Lady D’Anjite permit it.”

The library herself.
The words came with an emotion of wonderment that sent gooseflesh along his arms, and Petronus felt a shiver pass over him. Even Aver-Tal-Ka’s fur rose at the mention of it.

Petronus did not wait for the spider. He turned and made his way down the slope, whistling the longboat back to fetch them. Rafe rowed it himself, his face clouded with worry. He looked first to Aver-Tal-Ka and then to Petronus. “Where’s our lad and his lady?”

Aver-Tal-Ka steadied the boat as Petronus climbed in but said nothing.

“They’ve fled,” Petronus said. “We’re sailing for the tower.” He looked at the spider. “We hope that we’ll find them waiting there for us.”

They rowed back in silence, but as soon as Rafe’s feet hit the deck, he started barking orders. Petronus watched the men scramble. Even Aver-Tal-Ka leaped to work.

Petronus wanted to join in, stretch his muscles on the anchor ropes, but he had other work to do. He saw the mechoservitors clustered together, eye shutters opening and closing as they talked among themselves in a code he could not understand.

I have to tell them.

One of them separated from the others as Petronus approached. Steam released from its back as its bellows wheezed air into its voicebox. “Father Petronus,” it asked, “where is the Homeseeker Nebios Whym?”

“He’s gone with the girl. We’re going to meet him at the tower.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Certainly not the anger he’d experienced. But the metal man’s jeweled eyes simply went bright and then dim. After a moment, it inclined its head. “Thank you, Father. I will tell the others.”

Its response piqued his curiosity. “You are unaffected by this?”

“Yes,” it said. “The dream is the dream.”

“I don’t understand.” And he didn’t; it sounded like more Marsher mysticism.
But damn me, I’m starting to believe it myself.

The metal man continued. “The dream has carried us this far. It will carry us through, Father.” Then, the mechoservitor turned and walked back to its brothers.

They slipped to sea as the world set and the sky burned the color of dried blood. As they sailed, Petronus wondered how it was that men with no faith could create machines that believed.

And he both marveled and shuddered at the faith that grew within him as a result of it all.

Chapter

13

Rudolfo

Rudolfo sipped chilled pear wine and feigned interest in the dinner conversation.

Yazmeera and her senior staff took their meal in a rooftop garden beneath a lavender sky—a low table surrounded by cushions and spread with dishes he’d never seen in a lifetime of hedonism. Soft music drifted up from a trio of musicians stationed below, at a distance so as not to overpower.

Rudolfo used his chopsticks to lift a steamed oyster to his mouth and savored the spicy lime sauce that mingled with the oyster’s juice when he bit into it. He’d been sampling various dishes and wines for the last two hours, and if it had been under different circumstances, he would have considered it one of the better meals of his life.

But instead I sup with my enemy.
And so he ate with careful ear and careful tongue, saying only what he needed to say in order to learn what he needed to know. And so far, he knew that Erlund had vanished and was presumed dead by his own hand, leaving a leadership vacuum on the Entrolusian Delta that Esarov had stepped in to fill. There were still skirmishes, but over half of the city-states had fallen, and once they fell, there was little resistance offered. The bodies were still burning in what used to be Pylos, stacked by laborers who had arrived after the first wave of soldiers and scouts. Turam’s sickly king was in hiding even as his army crumbled before the onslaught of Y’Zirites. And the Emerald Coasts were falling into place as well, with northern Machtvolk forces keeping them pinned to their peninsula while Yazmeera’s armies flooded its independent city-states. No one cheered, but one by one the powers of the Named Land quietly surrendered to the superior force that confronted them.