Androfrancines. I rode here to honor my kin-clave when I saw the pillar of smoke. I found a metal man in the ruins who spoke backward, and I learned over time that Sethbert had paid a mechanical apprentice to rescript the metal man to bring down Windwir.” His eyes narrowed, never leaving hers. “On my honor, I did not do this terrible crime, Meirov.” He turned to Vlad Li Tam. “I am pledged to the light, Lord Tam. I will follow your Pope and will extend my Gypsy Scouts to him should he require their services.”
Vlad Li Tam nodded. “Very well.” He looked to the Marsh King, who said nothing. “I am certain that the Pope will reveal himself soon.”
Queen Meirov turned her horse and moved down the hill toward her waiting men. “I should hope so, Vlad Li Tam. If Sethbert indeed brought down Windwir and your Pope proves true, I will serve the light as well.”
Vlad Li Tam smiled. “Excellent. We will discuss remuneration for your assistance and arrange the appropriate letters of credit when the time comes.”
She gave Lord Tam one final, brusque nod and rode back in the direction of her camp.
Lord Rudolfo watched her go. He quickly signed a message to Vlad Li Tam.
Vlad Li Tam nodded.
When darkness settled on the city and when the Marsh King’s next War Sermon bellowed out into the night, Rudolfo and his Gypsy Scouts would liberate the mechoservitors that Sethbert kept hidden in his camp.
He turned his horse and started down the hill. He was surprised when the Marsh King fell in beside him. The large man looked at Rudolfo, sadness etching his face. “I care nothing for Popes or metal men,” he said. “But your success is mine and my people’s. Come to my camp and parley with me as you will.”
The Marsh King spurred his stallion to a gallop, and Rudolfo watched him ride until he was nothing but a speck on the horizon, moving north.
As he watched, he decided that he would indeed go to the Marsh King’s camp and parley, perhaps even bring a bottle of chilled peach wine, made in the orchards of Glimmerglam and shipped by barrel downriver to stock each of his nine manors.
Rudolfo wondered what he would wear for such an occasion.
Chapter 21
Neb
Neb woke up to a hand on his shoulder and sat up quickly. Winters crouched near him, dressed in a burlap dress that clung to her emerging curves. This close, she smelled of earth and smoke and sweat.
“I brought you breakfast,” she said, pointing to a chipped bowl set at a small table.
Neb rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You’re not eating?”
She shook her head. “I fast today. The world is changing.”
He kicked himself out of the blankets and stood. She stood, too. “Is the Marsh King back?”
“Soon,” she said. “Eat first.”
He went to the table and sat on the rickety wooden stool that waited for him there. The bowl was filled with boiled oats that still steamed, and the smell of buttermilk, honey and dried apples made his stomach growl. Near the bowl was a plate holding an assortment of roasted chestnuts, a chunk of bread and a bit of white, strong- smelling cheese.
Winters sat across from him, watching as he ate the food and washed it down with cold water from a metal cup.
“There was a parley this morning,” she said. “All of the lords attended, including Lord Tam of House Li Tam.”
“Did the Marsh King go?”
She nodded. “Our people were represented.”
He tried the cheese. Its sharpness saturated his mouth, driving out the sweet and sour flavor of the boiled oats. “What do you think will come of it?”
“Nothing but war,” she said. “Though when this hidden Pope declares, I think alliances will shift.” She looked at him. Her large brown eyes hardened. “Of course, the Marshfolk care nothing for Named Land statecraft and even less for Androfrancine politics.”
“Then why has the Marsh King brought his army south?”
Winters scowled. “Curiosity and kin-clave,” she said. “The Marsh King’s dreams have long foretold an end of the Androfrancine light. As have the kings that went before. For many years we even warred with the Androfrancines, thinking perhaps we could bring about that end.”
Neb looked up from his breakfast, surprised. He’d known all his life about the skirmishers, but had never heard a sufficient justification beyond ancient grudges and the residue of madness inEe oed. the Marsher line. “But why?”
She smiled, and in the soft light of the cave it carried a sweetness that he felt tugging at his heart. “Because when the light goes out,” she said, “the dreams of the Marsh Kings will be realized and we will be guided to our new home.”
She reached across the table now and laid her hand on Neb’s cheek. “Dear, dreaming boy,” she said. “If you could see the Marsh King’s dreams, you would weep with joy from the beauty of it. Your father has seen them, and the power of them brought him back from death to parley with you in your sleeping hours.”
Neb wasn’t sure which made him more uncomfortable, the Marsher mysticism or Winters’s hand cupping his cheek. He felt warmth moving through him, and something fluttered in his chest and stomach.
Winters dropped her hand, and he realized from the look on her face that she’d felt the discomfort, too. She looked away and blushed.
“I don’t understand,” Neb finally said. And he meant both the strange feelings this ragamuffin girl stirred up inside of him as well as the Marsh King prophecies.
“We are at the end of our sojourn, Nebios ben Hebda,” she said. “When all that was left of our peoples came to this New World from the lands beyond the Churning Wastes, the first Marsh King wore sackcloth and ashes, bathing himself in the dust of the earth that he came from and calling upon his children to do the same. Strangers in this land, we eschewed the Androfrancines and their light, loving shadow more because we knew the knowledge of the past could not create a safer future-it would merely remake the past. Even P’Andro Whym knew that a day was coming when his sins would be visited upon his children.” Her words tumbled out fast, her eyes alive as she spoke and her sentences rushing together. “A home-seeking is upon us and by the waking and the sleeping dreams, you are the one who leads our pilgrimage homeward.”
Suddenly she was speaking in tongues like the Marsh King, her eyes wide with wonder and fear. Neb saw the muscles tighten in her jaw and neck as she tried to fight the ecstatic utterance, but she couldn’t.
Neb opened his mouth to ask her if she was okay, if there was anything he could do, but his mind wasn’t able to pull the words together into a question. He felt something like panic growing in him, starting in his stomach and spreading throughout his body. He felt arousal and fear and rapture as his body tingled head to toe.
He opened his mouth to ask what was happening to him, and when he did he found himself suddenly speaking in tongues with the Marsh girl, their voices weaving in and out of one another as they finished one another’s sentences in a language that was no language but longing and terror and terrible sadness.
Her eyes Eoma tehad rolled back into her head now, and she fell away from the table to twitch on the floor. Neb felt his own muscles pulling him down as well, but he forced himself to his feet and went to Winters before falling to his knees before her.
Her arms snaked out around him, her strong fingers digging into his skin and pulling him down to the dirt. Holding her close to himself, Neb let his words wash through him and out of him, dancing with her own words as they held one another on the floor. Finally, the fit of language ceased and they lay still, eyes closed, their ragged breath the only sound in the room.
When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him. He felt the ache in his jaw and the rawness in his throat, ragged from words he was unaccustomed to speaking. “I don’t understand what happened,” he said, his voice rough and quiet. “I don’t understand how I could have any part in this.”
