He came to me because he sees me as his father. Charles felt an emotion that he could not quite label.
When Isaak spoke next, his voice was a reedy whisper. “I want this, Father.”
Charles looked up and studied the amber eyes that stared back at him. Without a word, he stood and went to the worktable where Isaak had so recently lain lifeless and battered. He gestured to it, and Isaak stood and removed his robe, replacing it on the hook by the door. Then, he climbed onto the table and stretched out.
In silence, Charles spun the cipher into the lock and opened Isaak’s chest cavity. He reached around and found the spool for incoming scrollwork. Carefully, he started the thin gold strip into the threading, then tightened down the scroll on its spool.
Finally, he closed the chest cavity and spun the lock. “Isaak,” he said, “run scroll seven six three.”
He heard the spool whir, heard the clacking of the metal strip as it began to unwind. Isaak seized for a moment, his limbs going rigid and his eyes lighting brighter than Charles had seen them. Then, the eye shutters closed and fluttered, the bellows wheezed, and Isaak slept.
Perhaps it is a dream, Charles thought.
Then, he went and sat by the fire to worry and wait for his metal son to awaken.
Because, Charles realized, that’s what fathers do.
Neb
Neb used his scout knife to carve a roasted Waste rat he’d snared in the quiet hour before dawn. The crackling meat smelled sour on the morning air, but Neb’s stomach growled at it.
He glanced back at the woman deeper in the cave. She was getting stronger and stronger. She’d polished off an entire rat on her own the day before, warning him between bites of his need to flee her sisters.
He was beginning to believe her. There was an earnestness to her voice that compelled him. So he did the math and factored his best guess of their speed beneath the magicks and hoped that his sense of distance here was accurate.
He speared the hindquarters of the Waste rat and slid it onto the tin plate he’d found in her pack. He carried it back to her and hunkered down to watch her eat.
She tore into the rat, peeling back the crispy skin to find the meat beneath.
He didn’t wait for her to start this time. He brought it up himself. “I think we should leave tomorrow,” he told her.
She looked up from the meat, her face smeared with grease. Her eyebrows furrowed, bending the symbols carved into her forehead. She finished chewing and swallowing. “Tomorrow will be too late. You’ve-” She closed her eyes in concentration. “Miscalculated.”
Tomorrow. It was possible, he realized. He was not familiar enough with the blood magicks to know exactly how fast they made these women who supposedly hunted him. He’d factored them as faster than a horse, perhaps nearly as fast as a mechoservitor. He wanted to ask, but earlier questions had been deflected in her constant press for him to leave while he still could. If they really could arrive as soon as tomorrow, Neb needed to leave.
But what to do about this scarred woman? He could not leave her. His eyes fell upon her exposed leg, and when he averted them, he saw her boots and her pack. He felt the idea land between his ears like a stone in a well. “It is time for us to be frank with one another,” he said. “Where were you going when the kin-wolves waylaid you?”
She looked up but continued to chew her food, her eyes hard.
He continued. “You called me an abomination, and you told me your sisters were hunting me to get to the mechoservitors,” he said. “But what about you? You claimed to be attending other matters?”
“They are not your concern,” she said in an even voice. “Your concern is to not be caught by my sisters if you love the light.”
Her words rocked him back on his heels. “The light?”
“You want frankness, Abomination?” She gave him a hard look, then put down the tin plate. “The Whymers are not the only ones concerned with shepherding the light. My family was set to this work long before the days of P’Andro Whym. I’ve spent myself for it, even against my will at times, and stand now on the brink of failure because of a stubborn boy.”
The emotion in her voice surprised him. It was raw, nearly desperate. And the ambush of her sudden forthrightness made him suspicious. “What happens if they find the mechoservitors?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. I only know that they mustn’t, or truly the light is snuffed. And I must not be found, either, until I’ve finished my work.”
He felt the bolt slide free in this particular Rufello lock. “You are working against them,” he observed. “But who are they?”
Her words were carefully chosen and did not answer his question. “I had limited time to bear my message before this delay; my work is now jeopardized.”
Neb sat back on his haunches, propping himself against the cool glass wall of the cave. He looked at her and felt himself blush as she returned the look. There where she sat, the blankets had fallen around her, exposing her scarred shoulders and the cotton sleep shift she’d changed into that morning after bathing herself from a metal cup of water he’d heated. The memory of that intensified the heat in his cheeks as he recalled sitting at the mouth of the cave, listening to her behind him as he forced himself to watch the ruined city beyond their hiding place.
His eyes moved to her breasts without any effort on his part and he forced them away, hoping she didn’t notice. He swallowed his sudden discomfort and forced himself to look at her face. It was regal, despite the scars, and she regarded him with an air that he found familiar.
But I find everything about her familiar. It was as if he knew her or should know her. The high cheekbones, the wide mouth, the long legs. The eyes were the right shape but the wrong color, and her red hair should be long and flowing and-
Neb gasped and wondered how it was he hadn’t seen it until now. “You are a Tam,” he said.
For a moment, she looked angry. Then, her features softened. “I am the thirty-second daughter of Vlad Li Tam,” she said. “I have spent my life for this brief season, and if it is to mean anything, we must not be here when my sisters arrive.”
He read earnestness in her face and voice and realized that he believed her. He’d read that Petronus, when he was young and Pope, could read a person’s character by the line of their jaw. He wished he had that skill now, and wondered what he would see. She held her head high, the jaw straight and firm.
He looked to her pack and boots again, then looked back to her. “Can you run?”
She nodded.
His decision was made quickly despite knowing it meant he would not be meeting Renard. He looked toward the mouth of the cave, his mind’s eye out in the east beyond the ruins where his friend pursued one of her sisters. He looked back to the Tam woman.
Their eyes met, and he willed strength into his, hoping it would lend power to his question. “Where are we running?”
Her nostrils flared, but she did not break eye contact. He watched her make her own choices regarding trust, her lips pursed for a moment. “The Keeper’s Gate,” she finally said, her voice low and steady. “I bear urgent word for Jin Li Tam, queen of the Ninefold Forest and Great Mother to the Child of Promise.”
Nodding, Neb started calculating exactly how much time it would take for them to pack their belongings and leave this place to the kin-wolves.
Seven minutes later, they ran west.
Rudolfo
Cold rain soaked Rudolfo despite the cloak he wore, and he tipped his head to let the water run from his hood. A chill wind found the gaps in the cloak and licked at the bits of skin it could find. He could read the weather here. Winter would come fast and harsh this year, and it made him nervous.