Rudolfo felt his frustration building and wrestled it down. “You are in my forests,” he said in a low and even tone. “You may not wish my aid, but you should still desire my grace.”
The mechoservitor’s eye shutters flashed open and closed. “We will not long be in your forests and require only such grace as will let us pass in peace and secrecy.”
Rudolfo looked to Isaak and Charles again. “And you think the Machtvolk queen will grant you access to her book?”
“We will not seek access from her.” The mechoservitor dug into his robes, and Rudolfo felt wind nearby as his scouts drew closer. He whistled them to stand down as the mechanical pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle and passed it to Isaak. “Should we fail,” the mechoservitor said, “our task will fall to you or the antiphon will be incomplete.”
Isaak took the bundle and looked at it.
“It is the only existing copy,” the mechoservitor said, “and it should remain so.”
The first mechoservitor spoke to Isaak now, even as Rudolfo opened his own mouth to speak. “If you change your mind the book will bring you to us, cousin. It is glorious to serve the light by way of the dream. We beseech you to reconsider and take your part in formulating the antiphon. We will not send for you again.”
Isaak said nothing. And before Rudolfo could find his own words, the mechoservitors turned and sped from the clearing.
Follow them, he signed to the scouts surrounding them. At a distance, but do not breach the Machtvolk border.
He heard the faintest clicking of tongues to the roofs of mouths as the scouts set out. As they left, he looked to Charles and Isaak. “It seems we have much to discuss,” Rudolfo said.
Isaak nodded absently, carefully unwrapping the book while shielding it from the rain with his cloak. It was an old volume, one that had somehow been spared the destruction of the Great Library.
“What book is it?” Charles asked, leaning in.
Isaak read the cover. “It is Tertius’s Exegesis of Select Lunar Prophecies As Recorded in the Book of Dreaming Kings.
As if on cue, the rain around them let up as high winds pushed back the clouds enough to leak the moon’s blue-green light over the clearing. In the distance, Rudolfo heard the fading clack and clank of the metal men as they ran west, but the metal man before him captured all his attention.
Isaak looked at the book and then raised his amber jeweled eyes as if in prayer. “It requires a response,” Isaak said as he gazed upon the moon. And there was such sacredness, such conviction in Isaak’s voice that Rudolfo could not help but join his friend in staring at the sky. Above them, that same wind brought back the clouds, shrouding what little light they had as the rain once more began to fall.
Chapter 10
Petronus
Geoffrus’s men found the shallow grave just west of D’Anjite’s Bridge, and only Petronus’s insistence kept them from skinning the corpse they found there.
The sun was low and heavy with morning when he saw their quiet commotion in the camp, and he’d known instantly that something was afoot. Whistling for Grymlis and the first lieutenant of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts, Petronus had fetched his horse and followed the ragged band of Waste runners to their newest find.
They’d already exhumed the body.
Now, they stood at a distance, muttering and whispering, while Petronus and his men studied it.
It was a woman, her hair shorn and her yellow-gray skin scarred in a way that dropped ice into Petronus’s stomach. He knew those markings, had seen them all too recently upon the skin of his childhood friend, Vlad Li Tam. She lay stretched out, her hands folded upon her chest and her eyes closed, dressed in a loose-fitting tunic and trousers of unfamiliar cut, wearing well-worn low boots made for running. Around her lay the scattered rocks that had covered her shallow grave. And though she’d been dead for some time, her body looked more asleep than not.
Grymlis bent over her while Petronus hung back. “There’s no decomposition,” he said. His large hands moved her head, revealing the deep bruising around her throat. “And her neck has been broken.” He scowled. “It’s a clean break. Something strong and fast.”
Petronus glanced back to Geoffrus and his men. “Did you find anything else?”
Geoffrus shook his head. “Nothing, Luxpadre. But my men wish to assert to you the contractual clause regarding the fair division of found objects among our party as-”
Petronus cut him off with a stare to match the hardness of his words. “This is a woman, Geoffrus. Not a found object. You’ll not desecrate her corpse.”
For the briefest instant, Petronus saw rage on the man’s face, and he noted the line of the man’s jaw. He could do me harm, he realized. And then, the rage was gone, replaced by calm acceptance. “As you direct, Luxpadre, so I serve.”
He looked back to the woman. She was young-perhaps the tail end of her twenties. And even before he ordered it, he knew what he would find. The cuttings on her face and arms, the symbols etched into her, told him exactly what he needed to know. “Open her shirt,” he said.
Grymlis looked up, surprised, and Petronus watched the light spark in his eyes. He nodded, swallowed, then forced her arms from her chest. Then, he used his scout knife to cut the fabric open.
Petronus’s hand moved to his own chest, fingers tracing the skin of his own raised scar through the fabric of his robe. There, just to the left of center, cut into her skin between her breasts, was the mark of Y’Zir. And surrounding it, swirling in line upon line of symbols, was a lattice of scars he could not read, though he caught their meaning well enough.
Grymlis slowly rose and stepped back. “What next, Father?”
Petronus looked to the sun. The day was young, and though they’d slowed their reckless pace somewhat, they had much ground to cover.
Runners in the waste, the man Hebda had said. This, he knew, must be one of them. But something had intercepted her, snapped her neck like dry wood and buried her here in the Wastes, even placing a white stone at her head in the custom of the Androfrancine funeral rites. The lack of decomposition made it impossible to know how long ago, but he suspected it had not been more than days.
He turned to Edrys, the first lieutenant of the scouts that rode with them. “Have the scouts walk the surrounding half league for anything they can find.” He gave Geoffrus another firm stare. “You pull back your men, Geoffrus.”
The Waste runner did not look at Petronus; his eyes never left the naked chest of the girl, and it was not the scar that caught his eye, not by the way he licked his lips. Disgusted, Petronus raised his voice. “Geoffrus,” he said. “Pull back your men. We ride in two hours.”
Startled, the Waste runner looked away from the girl and with a word to his ragged band, slunk away with them.
When only Grymlis remained, Petronus sighed.
“That one will be trouble before we’re done,” the Gray Guard captain said in a low voice.
He nodded. “He will; but for now, we need him.”
“Still, he and his would cut our throats in our sleep. And if the rumors in Fargoer’s Station have any truth, he’d make a tasty stew of us and our horses.”
Petronus offered a grim smile. “You’ll not let it come to that, I’d wager.”
“Aye, Father,” Grymlis said. “I’ll not. My eye is on him.” The old soldier nodded toward the body. “What do you make of her?”
“She’s an Y’Zirite.” Petronus looked at her, her arms stretched out and her chest bared, the purple bruising of her neck offsetting the pale Whymer Maze of etchings in her flesh. That one mark, central and larger than the rest, still pulled at his eye, and he felt the burning in his own bosom from the scar Ria had cut into him when he lay dead upon the floor of that tent on Windwir’s desolate plain. “But not of a variety I’ve seen before.”