The sky was purpling now, and she knew that when the sun rose, what little of the scout magicks that
remained would be half as effective. There was no time for preferred strategies in the face of this present crisis.
“I’m sure you can-”
She dropped before he could finish his sentence, and as she fell to her knees, she flicked her wrist and felt the small knife’s handle fall into the palm of her hand. Pitching forward, she ran the knife once around the back of his boot as she rolled toward the boy. As she came up, her hand wove the air, the blade slipping in and out of cloth as she cut where the magicked scouts should be if they were following their own field guides. The howls told her she was not far from the mark.
The one behind her-the one whose knife had pressed into her back-growled and lunged forward, knocking her over. And then she was all knees and elbows, whipping the cloak around his knife hand as she brought her own blade up to the side of his throat.
“Be still,” she said. “You don’t have to die here today.”
But he moved and she didn’t give it a second thought. Father trained his daughters very well indeed. Pulling herself into a crouch, she looked around the clearing. She could smell the blood and she could see the wet patches of black on the gray shadows that lay groaning and thrashing on the ground.
The boy was gone now. She could hear him running full on for the Entrolusian camp, and she knew that she could catch him. But what would she do when she did? The look on his face spoke to more than just having left something valuable behind. It spoke of compelling need, of resolution, of a decision being made.
She would let him run. But she would also do what she could to protect him right here, right now. It didn’t matter that the injured scouts had recognized her-she would be under Rudolfo’s offered protection in a matter of hours. But they had also recognized the boy. And for whatever reason, the boy was returning to Sethbert’s care.
One by one, speaking quiet words of reassurance to the hamstrung scouts, she moved from man to man and cut each throat with careful, practiced precision.
She wiped the blood from her knife onto a twitching, silk-clad corpse and stood, facing west. Then she ran, and the thought came to her again, unbidden but true:
Father trained his daughters very well indeed.
Rudolfo
It took less than two hours for the apprentice to teach Isaak his trade. When Rudolfo returned to his tent, the metal man sat at the table, sifting through the pouch of tools and scrolls, and the man was gone.
“Do you know enough?” Rudolfo asked. Isaak looked up. “Yes, Lord.”
“Do you want to kill him yourself?”
Isaak’s eyelids fluttered, his metal ears tilted and bent. He shook his head. “No, Lord.” Rudolfo nodded and shot Gregoric a look. Gregoric returned the nod grimly and left in silence.
The bird had returned in less than an hour. His question had gone unanswered. Sethbert’s reply had been terse: Return to me the man you took. Surrender the servitor that destroyed Windwir.
He’d had an hour to ponder the why. Ambition? Greed? Fear? The Androfrancines could have ruled the world with their magicks and mechanicals, yet they hid in their city, sent out their archeologists and
scholars to dig and to learn, to understand the present through the past… and to protect that past for the future. In the end, he found it didn’t matter so much why the City States and their mad Overseer had
ended that work. What mattered was that it never happen again. “Are you okay, Isaak?”
“I grieve, Lord. And I rage.” “Aye. Me, too.”
A scout cleared his voice outside. “Lord Rudolfo?” He looked up. “Yes?”
“A woman met the forward scouts west of Sethbert’s camp, Lord. She came magicked and asking for your protection under the Providence of Kin-Clave.”
He smiled but there was no satisfaction in it. Maybe later, when all of this unpleasantness had passed. “Very well. Prepare her for travel.”
“Lord?”
“She is to be escorted to the seventh manor. You leave within the hour. The metal man goes with her. Select and magick a half-squad to assist you.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“And fetch me my raven.” Rudolfo fell back into the cushions, exhaustion washing over him.
“Lord Rudolfo?” The metal man struggled to his feet, his damaged leg sparking. “Am I leaving you?”
“Yes, Isaak, for a bit.” He rubbed his eyes. “I wish for you to start that work we spoke of. When I am finished here, I will bring you help.”
“Is there anything I can do here, Lord?”
He doesn’t wish to go, Rudolfo realized. But he was too tired to find words of explanation. And the
metal man brought something out in him-something like compassion. He couldn’t bear to tell him that he was simply too dangerous a weapon to have on the battlefield. Rudolfo rubbed his eyes again and yawned. “Pack your tools, Isaak. You’re leaving soon.”
The metal man packed, then swung the heavy pouch over his shoulder. Rudolfo climbed to his feet.
“The woman you will be traveling with is Jin Li Tam of House Li Tam. I would have you bear a message to her.”
Isaak said nothing, waiting.
“Tell her she chose well and that I will come to her when I am finished here.” “Yes, Lord.”
Rudolfo followed Isaak out of the tent. His raven awaited, its feathers g [itsn="lossy and dark as a wooded midnight. He took it from the scout’s steady hands.
“When you reach the seventh manor,” he told his scout, “tell my steward there that Isaak-the metal man-bears my grace.”
The scout nodded once and left. Isaak looked at Rudolfo. His mouth opened and closed; no words came out.
Rudolfo held the raven close, stroking its back with his finger. “I will see you soon, Isaak. Start your work. I’ll send the others when I’ve freed them. You’ve a library to rebuild.”
“Thank you,” the metal man finally said.
Rudolfo nodded. The scout and the metal man left. Gregoric returned, wiping the apprentice’s blood from his hands.
“Sethbert wants his man back,” Rudolfo said. “I’ve already seen to it, Lord.”
Somewhere on the edge of camp, Rudolfo thought, a stolen pony ambled its way home bearing a cloth-wrapped burden. “Very well. Magick the rest of your Gypsy Scouts.”
“I’ve seen to that as well, Lord.”
He looked at Gregoric and felt a pride that burned brighter than his grief or his rage. “You’re a good man.”
Rudolfo pulled a thread from the sleeve of his rainbow robe. This time, no other message. This time, no question. He tied the scarlet thread of war to the foot of his darkest angel. When he finished, he whispered no words and he did not fling his messenger at the sky. It leaped from his hands on its own and sped away like a black arrow. He watched it fly until he realized Gregoric had spoken.