Canticle

Jin Li Tam drifted in and out of sleep, waking to nurse Jakob when the River Woman’s girls brought him to her. Rudolfo had come and gone through the remainder of the night, leaving after they changed out her bed and bathed the sweat and blood of her labor from her exhausted body. She’d run with the scouts, fought with them, even; but nothing had prepared her for this exertion, both physical and emotional. And when it was done, to finally meet the person who had caused her such discomfort and have that memory fade into an intense and satisfying joy. Truly an overwhelming time; something, again, that she was not prepared for.

She held Jakob to her breast, offering the nipple to him. His eyes were still shut, and he was tinier than she thought a baby should be. More gray, as well, his skin the shade of paper ash. He took it, his mouth working at it with less vigor than she would have expected, and she settled back into the pillows that propped her up in bed. Outside, morning announced itself quietly.

There was a faint knock at the door, and it opened before she could answer. The River Woman entered. She looked as if she hadn’t slept yet, dark circles casting shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes. But more than weariness, she looked as if she bore a world’s weight upon her heart.

She is here to bear ill tidings. Jin Li Tam had spent her life reading people, looking for the signs of their honesty, their deception and their attempts to hide truth. The River Woman’s message was written into her posture, into the way she held her head and the way her hands restlessly picked at her skirts.

“Awake again, I see,” she said as she came to the edge of the bed. “May I sit with you?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Please.” She shifted while the older woman sat on a corner of the mattress.

The River Woman looked to the girl in the room. “Would you give us a few moments?” Jin measured the strain her voice and watched out of the corner of her eye as the girl curtsied and slipped out of the room.

Jin Li Tam’s eyes narrowed. “There is something wrong with my baby,” she said in a flat voice.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“He was nearly stillborn,” Jin Li Tam added. “You brought him back.”

The River Woman inclined her head. “He was,” she said, “and I did. Yes.” She looked at Jin Li Tam now, her eyes fixed on hers. “The time to be direct is upon us. Your child is sick, Lady Tam, and I cannot make him well.”

Even though she’d known at the core something was wrong, hearing the words sent a shudder down her spine. She felt the worry, hard and cold, in her stomach and found herself instinctively clutching more tightly to the tiny bundle that wheezed against her bosom. “How sick?”

I will be strong, she thought, and will not cry.

The River Woman’s voice was low and more matter-of-fact than Jin Li Tam expected after hours of tea with the old woman in her cat-dominated cottage at the edge of town. “We can keep him alive,” she said, “if we are diligent.”

Jin Li Tam felt her resolve slipping, felt the tears tugging at her, suddenly aware of how much her life had changed. “Have you told Lord Rudolfo?”

The old woman shook her head. “I have not. I wanted to speak with you first.” She paused. “Does he know what lengths you went to for this heir?”

“Yes,” she answered, looking in the direction of his study, remembering the night she’d slipped down there, barefoot and drawn by her conscience to confess her father’s last manipulation of the man she loved. He’d taken it well, but those were the days and nights when the distance had been the greatest, after Petronus’s execution of Sethbert and after her father’s retreat from the Named Lands. He’d accepted it with an aloof politeness that neither condemned nor praised her. Still, she’d felt better with that last deception between them now brought to light. Her eyes narrowed as curiosity over the River Woman’s question nudged her. “Why do you ask? Do you think there is a connection between-”

She interrupted herself, closing her mouth before she finished. Of course there was. Why else would she need to know how much Rudolfo knew? The tears came now, and nothing she did could stop them. She hung her head, held her baby close, and wept.

“Something in the powders lingered, became knit into your son.” She paused. “I know little of how these particular powders work, but they are working hard against him, now. I’ve heard of such things. It’s why the Androfrancines discouraged their use.” The River Woman moved closer and put a hand on Jin Li Tam’s leg. “There’s no way you could have known, Lady.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “Now, I have birds out to a dozen of my sisters as far away as the Divided Isle. They may know something I do not. But it would be best if I could contact whoever gave you the recipe. I’m hoping you can help me.”

An image of the iron armada, now seven months absent from their native waters in the Named Lands, flitted across her inner eye. Jin Li Tam forced her focus away from the waves of despair that threatened to capsize her. She blinked the water from her eyes. “I don’t think that is possible. Surely there’s another way?”

The River Woman nodded slowly. “Certainly, one might be found. The birds are out. And I have the mechoservitors searching every inch of their memory scripts as well as the holdings that have drifted in from elsewhere. But most of the magicks and pharmaceutical knowledge were buried in Windwir.”

Jin Li Tam felt Jakob’s mouth falter, and she shifted her breast, surprised at how quickly she and her son learned this new dance between them. As he took to it again, she found her grief resolving into calculated inquiry. “What does this mean?”

The River Woman pulled a small pouch of powders from her satchel. “I’ve given you these,” she said. “You are passing them to Lord Jakob in your milk. It will keep him alive, but he will not be a strong baby.” She paused. “And you will need a wet-nurse to share this work.”

Jin Li Tam balked, feeling a sudden anger rise in her that she could not place initially. Fear? Panic? It took shape before her slowly, and she forced herself to sit with the feeling until the source of it was clear.

I am not enough.

The River Woman must have read it on her face. “These magicks are potent, Lady Tam, and they will harm you if you do not let others bear this burden with you.” She paused, letting the words find meaning. “This child will have a hard enough path. Let’s not have him grieve a mother he did not know.”

She heard hope beneath those words. Jin Li Tam looked up slowly, her eyes meeting the River Woman’s. “We will need to find someone.”

The River Woman smiled. “I have. There is a new girl in the refugee camp. Her husband was killed in the fighting on the Delta, and the moonshadow pox took her infant son four nights past. I tended to the child, but it was too late.”

Jin Li Tam studied the old woman’s face, reading it carefully for the hope she needed to see there. “And you think this will cure him?”

The cloud that passed through the River Woman’s eyes betrayed her words before she spoke them. “No,” she said, “it will not. It will merely keep him alive.” She frowned now. “I don’t know of a cure, Lady Tam, and eventually these magicks will also turn on him.” She offered a weak smile, and Jin Li Tam’s heart sank with it. “But it gives us time to find a better way.”

The small bundle in her arms shifted slightly, and Jin Li Tam looked down at the tiny face. A light coat of reddish hair, the slightest button of a nose, eyes squeezed shut as the small mouth took nourishment from her. She shifted her hand beneath the blanket that wrapped her newborn son and felt the soft, clammy skin of the back of his neck and head.

My father has killed my son, she thought, but before she could carry it further, the truth of it settled in. She could have refused-she could have left the path she’d been groomed for all her life-but blind obedience to House Li Tam had kept her on the road that brought her to this place. I have done this myself.

Over the course of those days since her father left, Jin Li Tam had spent much time thinking. Every man she’d taken to bed in order to better move the Named Lands along the course her father prescribed. Every man she’d killed for the same reason. Until she met Rudolfo, she realized, her entire life had been in service to this. But something in the Gypsy King’s eyes, in his flamboyant poise and his careful words, had put light on a hollowness she did not know she harbored. And though her father had planned her pairing with Rudolfo for years, had planned the heir that would tie their houses together, once she had given herself over to the Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, she had done so with an abandon that had nothing to do with Vlad Li Tam and his spider’s web of manipulation. It was a new thing that moved her.

Love.