Rafe Merrique paused at the door. “By the way,” he said, “congratulations are in order. I’m sure he will grow into a fine, strong boy.”
In that moment, Rudolfo was glad for the magicks. They masked the shadow that crossed his face as fear and sadness washed him. He wasn’t sure how to answer.
“That is my hope,” he finally said.
After Rafe Merrique had gone, Rudolfo excused himself and returned to his cabin. He removed his boots and clothing and did the best he could with the waiting basin of warm water.
After toweling himself off, he crawled into the narrow bed and pulled the covers over himself. After a week on the ground, the bed was softer than a woman’s breast and smelled nearly as sweet. It gentled him into thoughts of Jin Li Tam. My wife now, he realized as he drifted into sleep.
But in Rudolfo’s dreams, his wife wept alone in a field of bones and he was powerless to help her.
Neb
Neb slowed his run as he crested the rise and sucked in his breath at the view ahead. Renard waited there, bent slightly with his hands on his knees, drinking air as he surveyed the landscape that stretched out beyond them.
Overhead, the sky washed itself in a blush of dusky rose as it emptied itself of birds.
Neb joined Renard, shielding his eyes from the reflection of the fading sun upon the jagged forest of rainbow-colored glass that stretched as far as he could see in all directions but the one they’d come from. Distant and moving across that treacherous ground, he could just make out Isaak’s metal form.
Renard followed his gaze, drawing his waterskin and passing it to Neb. “We don’t need to catch him,” Renard reminded him. “We only need to follow him, and he’s leaving us a good trail. He’s far better equipped to handle his so-called cousin than we are.”
For four days now, he’d wondered exactly what Renard had whispered to Isaak that sent him sprinting into the night. And he’d also wondered just how this Waster knew his father. Last, he’d wondered what had possessed him to abandon his squad and take off after their strange guide-and why it had seemed so easy, so natural to do so, despite the fact that his own men were in the midst of ambush. He’d chewed the root himself and followed after, the shouts of surprise fading behind him as he fled the battle.
As the bitter juice took hold, he’d felt a surge of strength and speed, easily catching up to Renard.
He told himself that his service to the light required it-that he had to stay near Isaak and that fleeing with Renard was the only way to do so. He told himself that Rudolfo and Petronus would both concur, even if Aedric did not. Still, it gnawed him. He’d thought all this as he stretched his legs into a full sprint and felt the breath of betrayal and desertion on the back of his neck like a wolf on his heels.
Of course, the ambush had been faked by Renard and his drunken friends, but he’d not learned that until yesterday, when Renard had told him with a casual chuckle in the face of Neb’s consternation.
They’d run that first night all the way through in silence, and then another day before they stopped to rest and to nurse water from the hidden places Renard showed him. But Isaak hadn’t stopped, and when Neb moved to go after him, Renard had stopped him.
“You’ll kill yourself in the dark or lose his trail,” Renard said. They were his first words since leaving Fargoer’s Town. “We sleep now until light. Then we track your metal friend easily. Eventually, he’ll lead us to the other.”
Two more days of racing full-sprint across the jagged, uneven ground, and each day they came within view of him just as the sun sank.
Neb took a pull from the tepid water and swished it around the inside of his mouth before handing the waterskin back to Renard. The water bore the burnt dust and salt flavor of the Wastes, but he swallowed it down anyway, grateful for it. “What was this place?” he asked.
Renard lifted the skin to his mouth, swallowed, and replaced the cap. “These are the outskirts of Ahm,” he said. “It was the capital of Aelys.”
Neb’s brow furrowed. He remembered this place from years before, when his father had brought him a square coin bearing the image of Vas Y’Zir, the Wizard King who oversaw Aelys for his father, Xhum Y’Zir, in the days of old, before P’Andro Whym and his scientists brought him and his six brothers down in a month of bloodshed. Brother Hebda had come by the coin during a dig and kept it back as a gift for the son he could not raise because of his Order’s vows. “My father came here,” he said.
Renard laughed. “Your father saw most of the Wastes, young Nebios. But aye, he was here.” He set out at an easy walk down toward the jagged jungle of glass. “And who do you think brought him?”
Of course. If Renard held the guide contracts with the Order it made sense that he would’ve escorted the very expeditions his father had worked on. He followed Renard, catching up easily. “Did you know him well?”
Renard found a clear patch of ground at the edge of the glass field and put down his pack. “Well enough,” he said. “He was a good man.”
Neb found a boulder and sat, watching Renard. The Waste guide drew a vial from one of his many pockets and shook out droplets at the four corners of the camp as he’d done each preceding night. In nights past, he’d not spoken about it, but now, his tongue loosening with each league they put between them and the Gypsy Scouts, he talked. “It’s kin-wolf urine,” he said.
Neb looked up. “Aren’t they extinct? Didn’t they die out with the Old World?”
Renard stopped the vial and tucked it away. “Nearly,” he said. “But there are a handful left, including an old white one that the Waste Witch keeps handy for those of us who run the Wastes.”
Neb had seen sketches in the Great Library, but until now, he’d assumed they were renderings based on skeletal evidence and whatever knowledge the Androfrancines had dug up. Kin-wolves were easily twice the size of a timber wolf-a fierce predator with an uncanny intelligence and predisposition for violence bred into them by the blood magicks of the wizards who made them long ago.
Renard continued. “They are few in number but still the second most dangerous predator here in the Deeper Wastes. They won’t encroach one another’s territory out of respect, and their prey know better.” Opening his pack, he tugged out a thin mat and stretched it over the flat ground, then pulled out two tightly rolled blankets, tossing one to Neb.
Something the man said suddenly registered with him. “If they’re the second most dangerous predator here, what’s the first?”
Renard looked up, his eyes hard as stone. “We are.” He spread his blanket out over his half of the mat and then straightened, spreading out his hands toward the fading landscape. “Certainly there are other threats-the ghosts and monsters from the basement of the world-and the land itself is hostile enough. But as predators go, man-or what he’s become here-still reigns.” He unslung the thorn rifle and squeezed the bulb at its base gently. Neb heard the slightest whisper and snap of a thorn snapping home. He’d not had a close look at this particular wonder of Renard’s but he hoped to, now that the man became more free with his tongue. “Meat for dinner tonight,” Renard said. “You gather wood; I’ll be back shortly with our supper.”
Neb watched as Renard slipped away, moving at a leisurely pace into the jagged line of glass not far from their camp. When he disappeared into it, Neb spread out his own blanket and then cast about to gather the bits of gray scrub he could find. Thirty minutes later, he had a decent pile.
When Renard returned, he carried a bloody carcass by its long, slender tail. The Waste rat-nearly the size of a dog-had been skinned and gutted away from camp. “There’s fresh water a league or so west,” he said as he laid the meat onto a flat stone and drew out his tinderbox. “You may want to bathe and scrub out your clothes in the morning.” Renard took in Neb’s torn and stained uniform and wrinkled his nose. “Or maybe you should bury that. I’ve got spare trousers and a shirt for you that should keep you for a few days.”