Requiem (50 page)

Marta

Marta paced the room that had become her cell and cursed herself for her lack of resistance when they came for her.

She’d heeded Charles, gathering and stockpiling what she could and staying ready with an eye on the room where they kept Isaak. But she hadn’t expected Orius and his guards to pay her any heed after days and days of ignoring her. When they took her, it was quick and painless—for her, at least. She was pretty certain her feet and fists had made it slightly less painless for her captors.

If I’d had a scout knife they’d have never had me.
Of course, she knew it was the bravado built over time that made her more courageous in hindsight. When their hands had fallen on her and they’d dragged her to her feet, she’d been terrified.

And not long thereafter, she’d fallen into the dream.

Marta had no frame of reference for it. Tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of people gathered on a plain surrounding a massive white tree. A voice she recognized as Winters calling her people home to the moon. And a metal figure standing beside the young Marsh Queen that she recognized very well. She’d even called out to him, but the roaring wind had drowned out her voice, and as that wind blew over her, it had reduced her urgency to a sense of hope that made no sense given her present predicament. It was as if nothing else mattered.

When the seeds sprang to life at her feet and she awakened, Marta leaped up as if nothing happened at all and went back to her pacing.

She heard sharp voices on the other side of the door and moved to the rear wall. The door opened slowly, and a guard looked in.

An officer of some kind stood beside him, his face flushed and wet with sweat. “Bring her.”

“We will escort her to Brother Isaak,” another voice said from beyond the room.

Now, the officer paled, and Marta soon saw why. Three mechoser-vitors—similar but different from Isaak—stood in the shadows, their eyes an amber glow in the dim light. They wore robes and carried packs but were unarmed. Still, they loomed over the humans, and the officer and guards fell back before them. One of the metal men stepped forward.

“I am Enoch,” he said.

She stared, unsure what to do. Finally, she offered a half-hearted curtsy. “I am Marta.”

Enoch turned to the guard. “Where are Lady Marta’s belongings?”

The guard moved away quickly, returning with her pack and handing it to a mechoservitor who reached for it. The metal man inclined his head to the soldier and then turned to her. “May I carry you, Lady Marta?”

She nodded and closed her eyes as the metal hands reached out and lifted her and held her close. She could hear the whispering of gears and something that ticked and clacked beneath the hard, warm chest.

Enoch took in the officer and his guards once more, his eye shutters opening and closing as steam released from the exhaust grate in his back, whistling against the leather pack that partially blocked it. “It would not be prudent to follow us,” he told them.

Then, they ran.

She’d run with Isaak, but it hadn’t prepared her for this later generation. Enoch was not as fast; Isaak was faster. And he was not as fleet of foot, his balance more of an effort. Still, he was effective. He carried her through a series of tunnels that took them up and away from the massive cavern that had once held the Androfrancine camp, the other two metal men ahead of them and running point.

Marta wasn’t sure how long they ran—twenty minutes, perhaps—before they burst into another massive chamber. This one stretched out farther than the light would reveal, and it held a lake of silver. A barge was pulled up on the shore, a series of ropes and pulleys running from the wall out to an island of black stone. And near the point where they entered, she saw Isaak and the others standing over a handful of Androfrancines, including the one-eyed general, Orius.

“Isaak!” Marta pushed against Enoch, and the metal man stopped and stood her upon her feet. She threw herself at her friend, overcome suddenly with the urge to cry.

“Hello, little human,” Isaak said, his metal arms rising up to embrace her, pulling her in close to him. “Have you been harmed?”

She shook her head. “Have you?”

Isaak stared at Orius. “No. I have not.”

Marta blushed when she realized the others were watching her. It was in that moment that she took notice of Winters and Charles. Near them stood the ancient man Tertius and the gaunt man whose eyes looked older than his years—Hebda, she thought his name was. They were different from the other Androfrancines she’d encountered. Like Charles, they looked more the part of scholars than soldiers, and they stood apart from Orius and his guards.

Marta disentangled herself from the mechoservitor. “Are they letting us go now?”

Orius’s single eye blazed at her.

Isaak said nothing.

Winters spoke up. “Yes,” she said. “They are. Reluctantly.”

Now Charles stepped forward. “You should leave,” he told the general and his men. “Take your engineers with you. And do not pursue us.”

Marta saw the anger rising from Orius. She could tell that he was a man unaccustomed to taking orders from others even as she could tell that Charles was uncomfortable giving those orders. Two of the Gray Guard reached down to help the general to his feet, and the old officer shook them off when he was standing. “You are a traitor to the light, Charles.” Then he looked to the mechoservitors. “As are your playthings.”

Charles snorted. “You lost the light long ago. And my so-called playthings have saved the best of Windwir.” He paused and glanced at Isaak. “And they may save the light as well.”

Now Orius laughed, and it was a bitter bark as he nodded toward the tall, silver mechoservitor. “They saved only a fraction of what
he
destroyed. Mark me, Charles. You will regret this day.”

Marta looked from Orius to Isaak, something cold and dark suddenly coming to life in her belly.
What he destroyed?
Her inner eye flashed back to the image of him kneeling on the hill overlooking the Desolation of Windwir, and she remembered the overpowering sense of sorrow she’d sensed in him. She’d been told over the last few years that the Androfrancines had somehow brought back the very spell that had created the Churning Wastes, that it was their arrogance and unwillingness to leave the past in the past that had killed her mother. But she’d never really learned exactly how, just that the Entrolusians were somehow involved; Sethbert had been tried and executed for it. Now she thought perhaps she knew more of how Sethbert had brought down the city but didn’t want to believe her friend was complicit.

Orius and the others left, and when they’d gone, she turned on Isaak. “What did you do?”

The mechoservitor looked at her and blinked. He turned away, and she sensed his shame even as it worked its way out into his body and his shoulders shook with his grief. When he looked back there were silver tears running down the metal man’s cheeks. “I destroyed the city of Windwir, little human.”

Marta’s world fell away, and she felt her legs grow weak. The anger she’d kept buried since those earliest days when the city had fallen surged suddenly to the surface, and she launched herself at him, her hands balled into fists that bruised themselves on the metal of his torso as she struck him again and again. A guttural, raging cry filled the cavern—the sound of a wounded and cornered beast—and she knew it was her own voice that gave it. Wounded and cornered because despite this terrible revelation, she could not relinquish her love for the metal man.

Isaak remained still before her as she struck him, and the dull ache in her fists told her she should stop, but she couldn’t. Large, rough hands settled onto her shoulders.

“Oh child,” she heard Charles whisper, “it wasn’t his fault. It was mine as much as anyone’s. I should have never let them bring back the spell.”

She turned on the old arch-engineer now. “And what of Orius? What was his part in it?”

Charles shrugged. “He is Gray Guard. He wanted to use the spell to protect the Named Lands.” The old man regarded her for a moment. “Walk with me.”

For the second time in a handful of minutes, she remembered the others who stood around her, and she blushed at what she’d let them see. She shot Isaak a glance that she knew carried the full duality of her love and hate for him and held her eyes upon him until he turned away, his metal head hung low. Then, she let the arch-engineer guide her away from the others and along the shore.

After they were out of earshot, Charles looked down at her and lowered his voice. “What I hate most,” he said, “is how they used him.”

She looked up at him and said nothing.

The Androfrancine sighed. “My apprentice—a gifted man, a devout man—betrayed me and all of the Named Lands. I was taken—drugged and hidden away aboard an Entrolusian merchant galley bound for the Delta. And Isaak was rescripted without his knowledge or his consent. He completed the last of the translation and cataloging of the spell, destroyed the original parchments, and went into the city’s central square to sing the Seven Cacophonic Deaths.”

The central square.
It was near the library and across town from the market district where her mother had gone to sell their second summer harvest. “And he survived it?”

Charles turned, and she turned with him, following his eyes back to the others. “His kind was designed originally to bear the spell. Of course, he was different then. He was more like the others—the closest approximation we could achieve. I did not build him as he is now.”

She furrowed her brow, trying to understand. She suspected it was beyond her grasp, but even she could see the vast difference between the tall, slender silver mechanical and the shorter, blockier versions that had carried her here. “What is he now?”

“Something older,” Charles said. “Something not even I fully understand. But that is a recent development. When the Gypsy King found him, he was sobbing in a crater over what he’d done. Rudolfo says he immediately requested that he be held accountable for his crimes. Of course, ultimately it was Sethbert who was held accountable. He was the one who paid to make it happen. But even the overseer was just a puppet. We didn’t know that until it was too late. And once the Androfrancines were eliminated, the way was paved for the Y’Zirites.”

“And the Machtvolk?” she asked, remembering the sudden transformation of the north. “They are a part of this as well?”

The old man nodded. “Yes. The Machtvolk, the assassinations, the civil wars. They were part of a complex plot to soften us for invasion.”

She looked at Isaak. “He hates what he did.”

When Charles sighed, she heard the beginnings of a sob in it. “We all hate our part in it, Marta. And there were many of us who had parts.”

A thought struck her. “How is the dream a part of this?”

Just mentioning the dream resurrected some bit of the hope and euphoria she’d experienced in the midst of it, and she knew it did the same for Charles, because his face softened. “I do not know, child.” He nodded to Isaak and the others. “But they do. And I have to believe that whatever part it plays—the seeds, the return of Winters and her people to the moon and its temple—that part must be worth the price we’ve paid for it.” He paused. “At least I hope it is. It is hard for me to fathom.”

Marta nodded. It was hard for her to fathom as well. But she hoped the old man was right and that what was coming was worth its cost in blood and sorrow.

She watched Isaak and knew that as much as she hated what he had done, he must hate it more. And she found that alongside her rage, the love she held for him multiplied.

Love, Marta decided, made no sense at all. And yet she knew that because of it, there was nothing that would keep her from following her metal friend wherever he might go. And maybe, if she followed him long enough, her anger would quiet and only the love would remain.

Charles

The blood of the earth licked at the floor of the cave, and Charles watched it, mesmerized, as it advanced and then retreated over the stone surface. It was thick, moving like no liquid he’d ever seen. Certainly earlier generations within the Order had studied it, but the Articles of Kin-Clave forbid its use, and though the Androfrancines rarely followed the articles to the letter, they had largely done so when it came to this particularly dangerous substance. Still, it fascinated him. And his few talks with Isaak had him convinced that somehow, the blood of the earth had something to do with how his metal son was brought back, combined somehow with the Watcher.

Now, something about it soothed him as he sat and thought.

He heard movement behind him and looked up to see Tertius and Hebda standing over him. Near the entrance, Winters sat talking quietly with Marta. Isaak and the other mechanicals were loading the barge. They’d put the packs on first, then had moved along the edges of the cavern, pulling down the wire and bags of blast powder. Two of them stacked the explosives while the others rolled the wire.

The two men crouched beside him, and Charles brought his attention back to the moment at hand. “So what are you going to do now?”

Hebda shrugged. “We can’t go back to Orius.”

Tertius grunted his agreement. “The man’s rage over Windwir and his need to avenge it has taken him far afield, I fear.”

Yes.
Charles saw that plainly. “And I think he’ll have his vengeance. Once the water supply is poisoned, the Y’Zirites will have no advantage here but numbers. And even that will vanish without their spiritual and military leadership. Without their scouts.”

He shifted and let his eyes move to Winters again. Tertius followed them and cleared his voice. “We need to get her and those of her people we can out of the Named Lands.”

Charles nodded. “Yes,” he said. “We do.”

Hebda took a deep breath and then released it. “But how do we get them to the moon?”

Charles wondered that very thing. But they’d put Petronus and Neb on the moon. And seeing Petronus, though briefly, in the dream convinced him that anything could happen. The man had been just a few years older than Charles, and yet the man he’d seen being pursued when Winters intervened was at least forty years younger. He wished he could talk to his former Pope and hear about the moon and about what strange wonder had given Petronus back his youth. But then again, Charles had wished a lot of things.