The metal man’s golden lids flickered over his jeweled eyes in surprise. “Lord?”
“Your name. What is your name?_ thyour na221;
“I am Mechoservitor Number Three, catalog and translations section.”
“That’s no name. I am Rudolfo. Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses to some. General Rudolfo of the Wandering Army to others. That Damned Rudolfo to those I’ve bested in battle or in bed.”
The metal man stared at him. His mouth-shutters clicked open and closed.
“Very well,” Rudolfo finally said. “I will call you Isaak.” He thought about it for a moment, nodded, sipped more wine. “Isaak. Tell me how exactly you managed to raze the Knowledgeable City of Windwir and single-handedly wipe out the Androfrancine Order?”
“By careless words, Lord, I committed these crimes.”
Rudolfo refilled his glass. “Go on.”
“Are you familiar, Lord, with the Wizard Xhum Y’Zir?”
Rudolfo nodded.
“The Androfrancines found a cache of parchments in the Eastern Rises. They bore a striking resemblance to Y’Zir’s later work including his particular blend of Middle Landlish and Upper V’Ral. Even the handwriting matched.”
Rudolfo leaned forward, one hand stroking his long mustache. “These weren’t copies?”
The metal man shook his head. “Originals, Lord. Naturally, they were brought back to the library. They assigned the translation and cataloging to me.”
Rudolfo picked a honeyed date out of a silver bowl and popped it into his mouth. He chewed around the pit, spitting it into a silk napkin. “You worked in the library.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Continue.”
“One of the parchments contained the missing text for Xhum Y’Zir’s Seven Cacophonic Deaths-”
Here Rudolfo’s breath rushed out. He felt the blood flee so quickly from his face that he tingled. He raised his hand and fell back into the cushions. “Gods, a moment.”
The metal man, Isaak, waited.
Rudolfo sat back up, d
The metal man shook in one great sob. “I am now, Lord.”
A hundred questions flooded Rudolfo. Each shouted to be asked. He opened his mouth to ask the first but closed it when Gregoric, the First Captain of his Gypsy Scouts, slipped into the tent with a worried expression on his face.
“Yes?” he asked.
“General Rudolfo, we’ve just received word that Overseer Sethbert of the Entrolusian City States approaches.”
Rudolfo felt anger rise. “Just?”
Gregoric paled. “Their scouts are magicked, Lord.”
Rudolfo leaped to his feet, reaching for his thin, long sword. “Bring the camp to Third Alarm,” he shouted. He turned on the metal man. “Isaak, you will wait here.”
Isaak nodded.
Then General Rudolfo of the Wandering Army, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, raced from the tent bellowing for his armor and horse.
Petronus
Petronus sat before his small fire and listened to the night around him. He’d ridden the day at a measured pace, not pushing his old horse faster or farther than it needed. He’d finally stopped and made camp when the sky purpled.
Not far off, a coyote bayed and another joined in. Petronus sipped bitterroot tea with a generous pinch of Holga the Bay Woman’s herbal bone-ache remedy boiled into it. It washed the old man in warmth deeper than the dancing flames could touch.
He watched the northwest. The smoke had largely dissipated throughout the day. By now, he thought, Rudolfo and Sethbert would both be there with their armies, ready to assist if there was anyone or anything left to help.
Of course, he doubted they would find anything and he suspected he knew why. The longer he thought about it, the more sure the old man became. And each league that carried him closer to Windwir paralleled an inner journey across the landscape of his memory.
“We’ve found another Y’Zir fragment, Father,” Arch-Scholar Ryhan had said during the private portion of the Expeditionary Debriefing.
Petronus was forty years younger then, more of an idealist, but even then he’d known the risk. “You’re certain?”
The arch-scholar sipped his wine, careful not to spill it on the white carpets of Petronus’s office. “Yes. It is a nearly perfect fragment, with overlap between the Straupheim parchment and the Harston letter. It’s only a matter of time before we have the entire text.”
Petronus felt his jaw clench. “What precautions are you taking?”
“We’re keeping all of the parchments separate. Under lock and guard.”
Petronus nodded. “Good. They’re not safe even for cataloging and translation.”
“For now, yes,” Ryhan said. “But young Charles, that new Acolyte of Mechanics from the Emerald Coasts, thinks he’s found a way to power the mechoservitor he’s reconstructed using firestones. He says according to Rufello’s Notes and Specifications, these mechanicals can be erased after a day’s work, told in advance what to do and what to say, and given even the most complex instructions.”
Petronus had seen the demonstration. They’d needed a massive furnace to generate the power, but for three minutes, Charles had asked the blocky, sharp-cornered metal man he’d built to move his hands, to recite scripture and to answer complex mathematical equations for the Pope and his closest advisors. Another secret they had mined from the days before that they would keep close to their hearts, releasing it to the world when they felt it was ready for the knowledge.
“They could read it,” the arch-scholar said. “Under careful instruction. If Charles is right, a mechoservitor could even be instructed to summarize the text without out reproducing it verbatim.”
“If all of the parchments were ever found…” Petronus let the words trail off. He shook his head. “We’d do better to just destroy what we’ve found,” Petronus said. “Even a metal puppet dances on a human string.”
The look on the arch-scholar’s face when he said that was the beginning of Petronus’s self-inflicted slide away from Androfrancine grace.
Coyote song brought Petronus back from the past. The fire was burning down now and he pushed more wood onto it. His fists went white as he clenched them and looked to the northwest again.
They had found the fragments of Xhum Y’Zir’s spell.
They had not been careful.
They had unleashed Death upon themselves.
And if Petronus was right about the power of those words, there was nothing left of all their labor. The Androfrancines had spent two thousand years grave-robbing from the Former World and there would be precious little now to show for it.
The rage of P’Andro Whym fell upon him and Petronus bellowed at the sky.
Neb
Your story is what you are worth to him.
The redheaded woman’s words stayed with Neb long after she said them.
He’d bathed himself, waiting until the serving woman who brought the water saw him tugging at his filthy robes. The ash and dirt from his body turned the water a deep brown as soon as he settled into it. When he dried himself with the rough army towels, he saw even more ash had turned the white cotton a light gray. Still, he was cleaner than he’d been.
The robes they’d brought him were too large, but he cinched the rope belt tighter and then dumped his own wash water into the patch of ferns behind the tent.
After, he’d tried to nibble at a bit of bread, but his stomach soured after a few bites. Clutching his two books, Neb curled himself onto the cot. He thought about the redheaded woman’s words and wondered what made his story so valuable to the Overseer. And why had he seemed so flustered when he learned that Neb couldn’t speak? Worse, why had he seemed so excited to hear it in the first place? He knew the lady might tell him if he could ask her, but he also wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Eventually, he rolled over and tried to sleep. But when he closed his eyes, there was no dark, never any dark. It was fire-green fire-falling like a giant fist onto the city of Windwir, and lightning-white and sharp-slicing upward at the sky. Buildings fell. The smell of burning meat-cattle and people alike-filled his nose. And there, in the gate down by the river docks, a lone figure rushing out, ablaze and screaming.