Lamentation

suitor.

And now she shared a tent with a metal man made from yesterday’s magick and science.

She looked over at him. He sat still, his eyes glowing faintly. “Do you sleep?”

A bit of steam escaped his back and he whirred. “I do not sleep, Lady.”

“What do you do, then?”

He looked up, and limned in the light of his eyes, she could see the tears. “I grieve, Lady.”

She was taken aback. Sethbert’s mechoservitor had never shown any sign of emotion. This was new and frightening to her.

“You grieve?”

“I do. Surely you know of the Desolation of Windwir?”

She had not expected this. “I do know of it. I grieve it as well.”

“It was a terrible thing.”

She swallowed. “It was.” A thought struck her. “You know,” she said, “you’re not alone. Sethbert has others-he has all of the others, if I remember right.”

Isaak nodded. “He does. Lord Rudolfo assured me of it. He intends for them to help me with the library.”

Library? She sat up. “What library?”

Isaak clicked and clacked as he shifted on his stool. “Between us, we contain perhaps a third of the library in our memory scrolls from our work in catalogs and translations. Lord Rudolfo has asked me to oversee the reconstruction of the library and the restoration of what knowledge remains.”

She leaned forward. “Rudolfo is going to rebuild the library in the far north?”

“He is.”

It was an unpredictable move. She wondered if her father knew of this. It wouldn’t surprise her if he did. But the more she learned about this Rudolfo, the more she thought that perhaps this one could even outthink her father, and play the board three moves beyond his five.

That made him a strong suitor.

And his decisiveness. To rebuild the library, three days after the fires of the first had finally died, in the far north, away from the squabbles and politics of the Named Lands. The descendant and namesake of Xhum Y’zir’s desert thief, suddenly host and patron to the greatest repository of human knowledge.

A strong suitor indeed, she thought.

“He is a good man,” Isaak said, as if he were reading her mind. “He’s told me that I’m not responsible for the Desolation of Windwir.” He paused. “He tells me Sethbert is.”

She nodded. “Rudolfo speaks the truth. I’m not sure how, but Sethbert destroyed Windwir. He was working with an Androfrancine apprentice.”

More steam shot from Isaak’s exhaust grate. His mouth opened and closed as his eyes shifted. More water leaked out from around the jewels. “I know how Sethbert destroyed Windwir,” Isaak said, his voice low.

And in that moment, because of the tone in his voice or perhaps the way his shoulders chugged beneath the tattered Androfrancine robe, Jin Li Tam realized that she knew, too. Somehow Sethbert had used this mechanical to bring down the city.

She looked for something to say to the metal man, something by way of comfort, but could not find the words.

Instead, she lay awake for a long time after that and wondered at the world they’d made.

Chapter 8

Rudolfo

First battles, Rudolfo thought, set the tone for the entire war.

Rudolfo sat astride his horse and watched the line of forest. Gregoric and his other captains gathered around. “I’ve had a vision,” Rudolfo said to his men in a quiet voice. “The first battle shall be ours.” He smiled at them, his hand upon the pommel of his long, narrow sword. “How shall we realize this vision of mine?”

Gregoric nudged his horse closer. “By striking fastest and first, General.”

Rudolfo nodded. “I concur.”

“We’ll send the scouts in first and drive them west like pheasant. Sethbert is no strategist, but his general Lysias is Academy bred-very conservative. He’ll see the ploy and try to engage the scouts, judging them to be the inferior force. He’ll think to put them between the ruins and the river and call up his contingency to keep the battalion occupied.” His voice was low, and Rudolfo watched him make frequent eye contact with the others, measuring them.

One of the other captains smiled. “First battalion will fall back at rapid retreat after a modest effort to hold their ground. If Lysias sees that what he thought was a brigade is only a battalion, he’ll most likely pursue.”

“Or divide his force when he sees that the scouts are our primary assault,” Gregoric said. “Or both perhaps.”

Rudolfo smiled, remembering the song very well. “Feint with the cutlass, strike with the knife.”

“Then, strike with the cutlass, too,” Gregoric said, finishing the lyrics out.

Rudolfo nodded. His father, Jakob, and his First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts had taught them the song to keep time with their blade and footwork. Later, Rudolfo realized, it had really been a strategy lesson, teaching him the Hymnal of the Wandering Army. Three hundred and thirteen songs had never been written down in the two thousand years that Rudolfo’s people had occupied the Ninefold Forest. They were written in the hearts of the living, moving fortress that first Rudolfo had built so long ago, the Wandering Army, and sung down to his recruits from the first day of training forward.

“If he pursues the retreating battalion-as I’m sure he will,” Gregoric continued, “he’ll find three more waiting and we’ll net that fish.”

“Excellent work, captains,” Rudolfo said. “I will ride with the scouts and open this war in a way that is fitting for the general of this Wandering Army.”

Gregoric nodded and the others did the same. It pleased Rudolfo that none of them worried about him entering the field. It meant they understood him and respected him as a soldier and a general.

“Very well,” Rudolfo said. He turned toward his aide. “And afterward,” he said, “I will dine with the men.”

Two hours later, Rudolfo hid in the copse of trees surrounded by magicked scouts. He sat on his horse but the scouts around him were on foot. Their magicks would move them at nearly the speed of a horse and hide them from the eye. But at those speeds they would not be quiet. They would sound like wind rushing across the ground.

Gregoric looked at Rudolfo. “General, would you give the whistle?”

Rudolfo smiled and nodded. “For Windwir, my Gypsy Scouts,” he said quietly, and then whistled, low and long.

He kicked his horse alive and bolted toward the Entrolusian infantry encamped in the forest across the meadow, smiling at what they would see.

A horse, a single rider galloping forward with a narrow sword lifted high in the air. Around him, a wind low to the ground and roaring towards them.

He lowered himself on the back of his horse, holding his sword low and across the stallion’s dark side. He heard his Gypsy Scouts around him, catching slight glimpses of the ones nearest-though very slight.

They raced the meadow, entering the woods at breakneck pace. A few magicked Delta Scouts shouted because there wasn’t time to send up birds. Rudolfo assumed one must’ve decided to brave the rushing, invisible river because he heard the briefest clash of steel and a magick-muffled scream. The first of the Entrolusian soldiers rallied to that shouting, and Rudolfo rode straight into the center of them, Gypsy Scouts mowing over them like a wind of blades. Rudolfo turned then and rode back, laughing and waving his sword. He chose a man and rode him down, then took the ear off his sergeant.

“Where’s your captain?” Rudolfo shouted.

The sergeant sneered and lunged forward with his sword, drawing a line of blood along the horse’s side.