Slippers and all, she wore her riding silks to bed, her hand wrapped around the handle of her slender, curved knife. Before the banquet, she had hidden a small bundle wrapped in a dark cloak beneath her bed. She could magick herself, slip past Sethbert’s patrols, and be to the Wandering Army before morning.
But only if Rudolfo sent a man. And if he Kan.p hdid, she would be sure of the hidden message she’d found in his hastily tapped words.
A sunrise such as you belongs in the East with me, Rudolfo had said. But he’d pressed the word “sunrise” harder and he inverted the word “east,” and turned his fingers ever so slightly on the word “belongs,” giving it a sense of urgency.
The message was that there was compelling need for her to leave the camp and travel west before the sun rose.
But the message behind the message was even more intriguing: Rudolfo somehow knew an ancient form of House Li Tam’s nonverbal sublanguage. The “accent”-if you could call it that-was off, giving it an older, more formal tone.
Before the banquet, when she’d made her preparations to leave, she had expected to flee south and west, making her way back to the Emerald Coasts under magicks until she was far enough away to not be recognized.
But now, another offer seemed to be clearly-and cleverly-presented.
This Rudolfo, she thought, may be a bit of a fop. But there was hardness in his eyes and practiced purpose in the way his fingers moved along her wrist.
She willed herself into a light sleep, one ear turned toward the bell on her door.
Jin Li Tam awoke to the hand over her mouth. She brought the small knife up and as she stabbed with it, another strong hand snaked in to grip her wrist. She struggled against the intruder. “Easy, Lady Tam,” a voice whispered. “I bear a message from General Rudolfo.” She stopped struggling. “Would you hear it?”
She nodded and he released her. “I would hear.”
The Gypsy Scout cleared his voice, then recited the message. “General Rudolfo bids you good evening and assures you that his proposition is true. He bids you to choose well between he and Sethbert and to consider your father in all of this. It is true that the Wandering Army is small, but as you well know, House Li Tam will launch its Iron Armada to honor its secret kin-clave with Windwir, and when they blockade the Three Rivers and its Delta, it won’t matter how small General Rudolfo’s army is. Sethbert will be divided, fighting the fight in two theaters.”
Jin Li Tam smiled. Her father was right about this Rudolfo. He was a formidable leader.
The Gypsy Scout went on. “Meanwhile, should you choose well, you shall be his guest until this unpleasantness passes and you can be reunited with your father.”
She nodded. Of course, her father’s secret kin-clave was with the Androfrancines, but Rudolfo’s messenger was proof that other alliances were being sought. House Li Tam, a shipbuilding concern that had established a successful line of banks over five hundred years ago that-known for their political neutrality-even handled the massive Androfrancine accounts. Because House Li Tam had no formal, acknowledged kin-clave with any of the powers, they were free to collect and share information on all of them to the highest bidders.
“What does Rudolfo get out of this for himself?”
She could hear the Scout’s smile around his reply. “He said that when you asked that question, I should tell you that one dance with the sunrise will warm him all the days of his life.”
She chuckled. “I see. A king who wishes he were a poet.”
“We will be waiting to the west for you, should you accept General Rudolfo’s offer of aid.”
And then she was alone in the dark again. Once more, the bell didn’t ring.
Jin Li Tam didn’t need any time to make her decision. It had already been made before the scout arrived. But she’d wondered earlier if Rudolfo would make the third gesture, and the scout in her tent was sufficient. Typically, there would be less subterfuge involved, perhaps even a formal gathering. But each of Rudolfo’s three gestures bore a subtlety that could be open to interpretation. The first had been the offer to dance in the presence of Sethbert. The second had been another message he had tapped into her wrist, the last words: And I would never call you consort.
She had her third gesture. If there had been only one or two gestures within the night, it would have meant nothing. But the third gesture contained yet another hidden message, and she knew for certain now that this Rudolfo was a Whymer Maze of hidden paths behind secret doors. That last hidden message was clearly present, wrapped in the cloak of courtesy to her father. It was the third gesture of a night, a clear point made with subtle grace.
Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses had announced himself as a potential suitor, following the ancient kin-clave rite prescribed for a Lord seeking alliance between Houses in order to defeat a common foe.
That meant that if she wished to, she could invoke the Providence of Kin-Clave, and by doing so, state without words that she was accepting him as a suitor.
Jin Li Tam wondered how much of this her father already knew, and decided that it had probably been his idea in the first place.
Chapter 6
Rudolfo
Rudolfo slept for two hours in the back of a supply wagon, dreaming of the redheaded Lady, before Third Alarm woke him. He leaped from the pile of empty sacks, drawing his sword and dropping lightly to the ground.
He raced past mustering soldiers and stopped at his own tent. He’d long ago learned the value of not using his own bed or tent in the field. Gregoric stood waiting.
“Well?” Rudolfo asked.
Gregoric grinned. “You were correct, Lord. Entrolusian scouts. Magicked.”
“Did they see what they came to see?”
Gregoric nodded. “And left quickly when I called the alarm.”
“Very good. That will give them cause to scamper quickly home. And our own scouts?”
“Also magicked and right behind them.”
Magicked scouts were nearly impossible to spot when you did not expect them. But Rudolfo had expected them. They had come. They had seen Isaak. They had left. And five of his best and bravest Gypsy Scouts had followed after.
“Very well. I will want to hear their report personally.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Rudolfo turned and entered the tent. The metal man’s eyes glowed softly in the dark. “Isaak, are you well?”
The metal man whirred to life. The eyes blinked rapidly. “Yes, Lord.”
Rudolfo walked over to him and squatted down. “I do not believe you are responsible for the devastation of Windwir.”
“You indicated that may be the case. I only know what I remember.”
Rudolfo thought about this for a moment. “What you don’t remember is possibly more relevant. The missing time between seeking Brother Charles and finding yourself in the streets uttering Xhum Y’zir’s spell.” He looked at his sword, watched the light from Isaak’s eyes play out on its burnished surface. “I do not think it was a malfunction. Sethbert-the Overseer of the Entrolusian City States-has a man who knows how to write those metal scrolls. He ev Sscrethen has a metal man of his own.”
“I do not understand. The Androfrancines and their Gray Guard are so careful-”
“Guards can be purchased. Gates can be slipped. Keys can be stolen.” Rudolfo patted the metal man’s knee. “You are quite a wondrous spectacle, my friend, but I suspect you understand little the capacity we humans have for good or ill.”
“I’ve read about it,” the metal man said with a sigh. “But you’re right; I do not understand it.”