Neb took it, held it to the light until he could see the dark eye. “Thank you, Brother Hebda.”
His father nodded. “You’re welcome.” His voice lowered and he looked around. “Do you want to know what else we found?”
Neb nodded.
“The arch-scholar didn’t let me get too close to it, but buried in the back, behind the shrine figure, they found a Rufello lockbox.”
Neb felt his eyes go wide. “Really?”
Brother Hebda nodded. “They did. And it was entirely intact.”
Neb had caught glimpses of the mechoservitors Brother Charles, the arch-engineer, had reconstructed from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. They were kept in stalls in the lower parts of the library, but once, during a research trip in the care of an acolyte, he’d caught a glimpse of one. It clanked when it walked, steam hissing from its exhaust grate as it moved. It stood about three spans high and it was bulkier than the metal men from the days before P’Andro Whym and Xhum Y’Zir. Still, it was close enough to the drawings that Neb could see the similarities. Neb watched it select a book and slip back into one of the library’s many disguised elevators.
“Do you think it may have some of his drawings inside?” Aiedos Rufello was one of Neb’s favorite figures from Old World history. His work was old when P’Andro Whym was a boy, and he’d given his life to understanding the scientific mysteries of the First World.
“Unlikely,” his father said. “You know why. Show me how well they’ve trained you in that school of yours.”
Neb studied the coin, digging in his memory. He found what he was looking for and looked up with a grin. “Because the Y’Zirites would have no interest in preserving Rufello’s science-based work. Xhum Y’Zir saw the Scientism Movement as a threat against his magick, and later, some of its scattered followers murdered his seven sons.”
“Exactly,” his father said, a proud smile spreading across his face. “But isn’t it interesting that all those years later, whoever built the shrine used Rufello’s science-based work to protect something they had hidden there.”
“Why would they do that?” It had to be important to them, Neb thought.
Brother Hebda shrugged. “It could’ve been an aberrant Gospel or perhaps part of the Lesser Spell Codex. Regardless, they had me race it back here under a full complement of Gray Guard Elite. We rode day and night; we even magicked our horses for silence. One of the mechoservitors is going to cipher its lock code, but I doubt what’s inside will ever be announced.”
Neb frowned. “I wish I’d been there.” This was one of the digs he’d applied to attend as an intern.
His father nodded. “Someday they’ll approve your grant. ‘Patience is the heart of art and science alike,’
” he said, qu K1; Somoting a passage from the Whymer Bible. “I hope so.”
Brother Hebda slipped his arm around Neb’s shoulders. He rarely touched the boy, and Neb thought maybe it was harder to be a parent than an Androfrancine. But now, he pulled Neb close and squeezed his shoulders together with his thick arm. “Give it time, Neb. And if it doesn’t happen in the next year or two, it won’t matter. I may not have any sway with your headmaster, but I do know a few archeologists that owe me a favor. Once you’ve reached your majority, we won’t need the headmaster’s leave. I’ll arrange something.” He grinned. “It may not be very glamorous, though.”
For a moment, Neb felt like his father might actually love him. He smiled. “Thanks, Brother Hebda.” Setting down the pear, Neb felt a stab of loss at the memory. That numb, hollow feeling still licked at the
edges of him, but at the core, he felt the twisting of a hot knife.
He would never see Brother Hebda again. There would be no more chats in the park in the shadow of the Orphanage. That first time he’d put his arm around him was the last time. And there would be no assignment with him in the Churning Wastes.
Neb tried to push his grief aside, but it pushed back. And he could not stop the tears when they arrived.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam had been sure that of all nights, this would be a night that Sethbert would summon her. She suspected that her father would want her to do what was expected and use the opportunity to learn more about the Overseer’s plot. But a part of her wondered if she didn’t already know enough, wondered if
she shouldn’t, instead, slide a knife between his ribs. Of course, at least half the few times-of late-he’d summoned her, he’d had her carefully searched as well.
But Sethbert didn’t summon her. Instead, he called a council of his generals and waved Jin Li Tam away in dismissal. She was grateful for it.
She closed the tent flap, tying a set of ankle bells to the silk rope so that the door couldn’t move without the subdued tinkling. Jin Li Tam had been trained since girlhood to use all of the accoutrements of her courtesan role to keep herself safe and the information flowing back to House Li Tam.
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?”