His mind flitted back to the Firstborn Feast. It is all connected. Those men had been Marshers, and there were Marshers here. Blood-magicked men had swept the Tam ships to surrender just as they had killed Hanric and the others. Rudolfo would not be surprised at all to find that their blades were all iron, the wizard-bargainer’s steel.
He suddenly recalled something the first mate had said and moved his hands. Attend me, Scout.
There was a warm rustle of wind, and fingers pressed into Rudolfo’s forearm on the table. I am here, General.
He reached out, found a shoulder and put forward his question. The subverbal they used; you recognized it, yes?
Yes. A pause. Y’Zir.
Rudolfo nodded. Yes. A language used still by the Wandering Army of the Ninefold Forest and by the Marshfolk, both peoples once allied with Xhum Y’Zir. recipients of the New World for their servitude and friendship with that dark house. He dismissed the scout with a gesture.
Rafe Merrique looked to Rudolfo. “A resurgence is under way. It makes sense that it would with Windwir gone. The Androfrancines kept watch on those things.”
Rudolfo thought about the packet of papers now in Brother Charles’s care and looked over to the old man. Their eyes met, and the Arch-Engineer inclined his head ever so slightly. What if the resurgence had not simply sprung up in this fertile post-Androfrancine soil? The structure on the island was at least fifty years old, and while an Y’Zirite resurgence could have grown and blossomed here in the Ghosting Crests, outside the purview of the Order, such a thing seemed unlikely.
No, Rudolfo thought, the answer is darker yet.
An Y’Zirite resurgence somehow established enough of a foothold within the Named Lands to bring down Windwir. It bent Sethbert into the plot, using him and his paranoia to bring back a dead master’s last spell. How far could it run?
The details were not difficult for Rudolfo to cipher. They’d infiltrated the Order at some level. And certainly House Li Tam had been compromised along with the United City-States.
It staggered him, but he forced his mind back to the moment. The woman who could cure his son was in a holding cell beneath that white temple-if she hadn’t already gone beneath the knife. He could not bring himself to worry about anything but that. Rae Li Tam’s freedom and Jakob’s life had to be his primary concern.
And yet.
If this resurgence had manipulated the most powerful nation in the Named Lands into bringing down Windwir with such carefully orchestrated precision-using one of the Named Lands’ most powerful families to do so-and if they had also systematically and with ease led the assassinations that dark, winter’s night.? The possibility of it grew in his stomach, cold as a pit of ice. He looked to Rafe Merrique. “What do you propose?”
Rafe sighed. “I propose that we come back with a fleet and an army, bring them down, end this dark business they’ve begun.” He paused and ran a hand through his gray bristling hair. “But that doesn’t free your alchemist. We’re here now, and we have surprise on our side.”
Rudolfo thought for a moment. “They have numbers on us. And their iron vessels are lethal in close quarters.”
“If they can see us,” Rafe added.
Rudolfo nodded and looked to Charles. “Can you operate them? Can you teach others to do so?”
Charles nodded. “I could. But it would take time.”
He looked to Rafe Merrique again. “And could you get men aboard them?”
The first mate’s voice piped up. “They are lightly manned, more a watchman than any kind of opposing force.”
Rafe’s brow furrowed as he thought. “We could take half of them-any more would be unrealistic. But once the boilers are fired, there will be no element of surprise.”
“Then we wait until the last minute to fire them; but once we did, could you hold them?”
He thought for a moment. “It could be done but not easily. They have the schooners and blood magicks to contend with.”
Charles cleared his voice, and all eyes looked to him. “You have cannon powder?”
Rafe shrugged. “Some.”
The Arch-Engineer continued. “And there’s more upon the iron ships?”
Rudolfo nodded. “Yes, if they’ve not unloaded it for storage.”
The Gypsy Scout shimmered now at the table as the powders began to burn out. He leaned forward when he spoke. “They were taking on supplies earlier, not unloading them.”
Charles smiled, and it was grim in the dim-lit galley. “Then I can help you disable the schooners and any of the Tam vessels that will be left behind. I’ll need some time and a few other items.”
“I think we have our plan,” Rudolfo said in a low voice. It sounded more sinister than he intended it. “Rafe, you will see to the vessels. Disable any opposing force on the shore, make sure their ships cannot pursue.”
“That,” Merrique said, “is only half of a plan, Rudolfo.”
Rudolfo sighed. If Gregoric lived, that First Captain would have scowled now and tried to talk him out of the course so clearly laid out in his mind. Maybe it was because of his origins, a young orphan king faced with insurgency within his people, or maybe it was because of his father’s firm guidance and insistence upon what was right. He didn’t know for sure, but the end result was the same: He rarely doubted the right path to take in any given situation, and this was no different. He loathed Vlad Li Tam, had vowed to kill him, but he could not bring himself to leave the man’s family in the hands of these blood-bent cultists.
He looked up at Charles and Rafe. The sailors were shifting back into focus now, too, as the powders lifted. “I will take my Gypsy Scouts, and we will free those we can.”
Rafe choked on his beer. “Three men against a hundred? Are you mad, Rudolfo? Has grief and desperation for your son clouded your judgment?”
No, not him, the assassin had said back in the Great Hall on the night all of this had begun. And the Ninefold Forest Houses had not only survived Windwir’s fall but had benefited from it. There had to be a connection between this resurgence and his family’s dark heritage-but what?
“Perhaps,” Rudolfo said, “I am mad.” When he looked up and his eyes met Rafe’s he watched the man blink and look away at the ferocity of what he saw there. “Regardless, I am going to do what I can.”
And hope, he thought, that it will be enough to save my son.
As their voices lowered to tones reserved for careful strategy and well-timed movements, Rudolfo steeled himself for the work ahead and summoned up the gray face of his ailing son once more for assurance that this path before him was true.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam spent the morning on the line, riding with her closest commanders as she inspected the ragged border they’d established between the armies to the south and the Marshlands to the west.
Reinforcements to those armies had arrived and already been cut through. Three times in as many days, her lines had been breached, and try as they might, the Wandering Army could not hold them. Neither did the blood-magicked foe linger to engage the Gypsies. They’d pressed on in their raids against the Turamites and Pylosians. Because they had no intention of returning, they did not need to leave an opening behind. They surged through and did not even bare their invisible weapons. With their hands, they shoved the Forester soldiers easily aside with minor injuries, and their hapless pursuit of them yielded no results.