Canticle

turned even as Neb opened his mouth to speak. “We’ve a lot of ground to cover,” their new guide said over his shoulder. “Let’s run.”

He set out at a jog that stretched into a sprint, and Aedric whistled them forward. At first, Neb wondered how it was this strange Waster thought he’d keep ahead of magicked horses moving at full speed. But even as they spurred their mounts forward, he saw that Renard had no difficulty matching his pace to theirs. His feet slapped the broad paving stones of the Whymer Way, and he threw back his head, laughing wildly as he ran.

Your father told me to expect you.

Later, he would ask about that. But for now, something was happening to him. Something he could not fathom nor explain.

As Neb leaned forward in the saddle, something caught in his soul and expanded. It was as if they’d crossed an invisible border that marked their true arrival in the place he’d longed for since earliest childhood. The air carried the smell of burnt spices and ancient dust. It tasted bitter on his tongue when he opened his mouth, and the sun, hanging like a golden wafer in a bright and cloudless sky, called for him to laugh as well, to give himself over to something feral and mad in this place and run with the wind to places long forgotten. To the graveyards of the former Age’s light.

This place will seduce me and swallow me if I let it, he realized.

And with that realization, Neb forced the smile away from his lips and bent his mind to watching the road roll past beneath the whispering hooves.

Rudolfo

When they rounded the bend in the lane and approached the small shack and its nearby boat house, the memory of the place struck Rudolfo like a fist.

I’ve been here before.

His men had followed the magicked Gray Guard back to this place and had watched it through the night from the cover of a nearby thicket. In the late morning, after he’d availed himself of the innkeeper’s best fare-poached eggs and broiled salmon with seasoned potatoes and sweet, black beer-Rudolfo and the rest of his men had joined them. Two birds had gone out from the back window of the boat house, and there was no movement whatsoever in the shack. Its windows and door had been boarded up, and no smoke leaked out from its stone chimney.

Had he known back then that this was Petronus’s home? He didn’t think he had-he thought he would’ve remembered such a thing. But those had been dark and tumultuous times, and there had been days, washed in the grief and rage of Windwir’s loss, of Gregoric’s loss, that he’d not even remembered his own name.

Still, he remembered this place. He remembered the men outside the door, waiting. He remembered the stink of feces and urine in the boat house and the croaking of Sethbert where he hid in the corner, demanding to see Rudolfo, threatening to hurt him but having no blade in his hand with which to do so.

“I will hurt you with words,” the mad Overseer had croaked.

And he’d spoken truly. Those words had twisted Rudolfo’s life into a black and angry river, for it was there that he first learned of Vlad Li Tam’s work in his life and of House Li Tam’s role in the murder of his family.

The memory of that day tasted like copper in his mouth, and he swallowed it. He looked to the men that flanked him and signed for them to watch and wait. They scattered, taking up positions and melting into the underbrush to guard their liege.

Rudolfo went to the boat house door and rapped upon it lightly. “It is Rudolfo,” he said in a quiet voice. “And I no longer have the time or forbearance to wait.” He paused, then offered, “I’ve a medico among my scouts and you’re ill.”

At first, he heard nothing behind the heavy wood. Then, he heard faint coughing and quiet, careful movement. There was the sound of a bar being lifted and the door opened a crack. “You followed me for nothing,” the voice said plainly. “I’ve no word for you, Gypsy King.”

Rudolfo easily pushed the door open, and the Gray Guard fell back. The odor of sickness and bird droppings choked him as he stepped into the room, letting the sunlight spill past him. The haggard man was nearly visible as the magicks gradually released him. Still, it could be too late. The magicks required years of gradual, measured use to build up immunity to their darker side effects, and these Gray Guard couldn’t have been using them for more than a handful of months. The Order stood above such things, though they tolerated-and even encouraged-their neighbors to use such reminders of the former times. The Gypsy King whistled, and one of his men slipped forward. “Are you alone?” he asked the Gray Guard.

The Gray Guard said nothing, and Rudolfo’s eyes narrowed. He let menace and honey mingle in his voice. “I have kin-clave with your master, regardless the Order’s standing. I am the Guardian of Windwir and the heir of P’Andro Whym’s holdings. I expect you to deal truthfully with me according to the Articles of Kin-Clave and tell me what I need to know that I might be on my way. I’ve business to attend with Petronus, and I’ve been gracious thus far. But I will not let the stubbornness of a dying man bring about more death.” He took another step closer to the man. “I will speak and you will answer,” he said. “Are you alone?”

The man coughed, bending as he did, and when he vomited onto the floor Rudolfo saw blood flecked with white foam. “There are two of us. Jarryd is sick, as well.” He nodded to the far corner of the room.

Rudolfo stepped over the puddle of blood and let the medico in. The scout took the man by the elbow and guided him to the shadow-wrapped pile of blankets where the other guard slept. “Do you have what you need to treat them?”

“Aye, General,” the scout said. “What I lack, the Bay Woman will have.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Send for what you need.”

While the medico went about his work, Rudolfo looked around the familiar room. It wasn’t very different, but of course it had not been so long ago that he’d stood here. The boat was there, overturned, and the small sail was folded neatly. The mast lay along the far wall and the oars hung from pegs throughout. Other pegs held the various nets and rods of a fisherman. But in the back, where the smell of birds hung strong, Rudolfo saw one large difference.

What had once been cabinets and a tool bench had been cleared to make room for bird coops, and nearby were stacks of parchment and spools of thread. Scarlet for war, green for peace, white for kin-clave, blue for inquiry, black for danger. The rainbow colors of kin-clave-the rainbow colors of the Forest Houses-were all there along with a half dozen pens and a dozen bottles of ink.

Rudolfo moved closer and heard the cooing of the birds. Even as he approached he heard a soft thud and looked up to see a brown sparrow tangled in a catching net that hung from a small opened window. He went to it, ignoring the sound of a struggle behind him as the sick Gray Guard sought to rise and attend the tiny messenger.

Or prevent me from attending, Rudolfo thought.

Clucking his tongue, he stretched his fingers and lifted the bird from the net. It lay still and chirped in the palm of his hand. He pulled the blue thread from its foot. The small scroll came with it, and he gently lowered the bird into an open cage. He placed it onto its perch, then set the note aside.

As a boy, he’d loved the birder’s coops as much as he’d loved Tormentor’s Row or the secret passages that laced the Forest Manors where he’d spent his childhood. He’d learned how to mix the feed and how to find the voice that would send them to the places he would have them go. And he’d learned the codes-dozens more than he’d needed to know.

“First,” Garvis the Birder had told him through his broken old teeth, “you feed them, you water them. They work hard for His Lordship, bearing the word. After they’re fed,” he said in a rhyming, singsong voice, “the message is read.”

So even now, Rudolfo reached into the smaller feed pouch and pulled a pinch of the treated grains that gave them speed and uncanny direction. He placed the tiny bit into the small wooden thimble and added a larger pinch from the other sack. He mixed them with his little finger and placed the thimble into the cage. Then, he filled a small wooden cup with water and placed it beside the grain.

After, he closed the cage and picked up the note. He ran the thread between his forefinger and thumb, looking for knotted words. Nothing. Next, he opened the note carefully and read it through once. It was a letter to the fisherman Petros about a borrowed book-An Exegesis of the Metaphysical Gospels of T’Erys Whym by the scholar Tertius-stating that the book would be returned within the month on a vessel bound for Caldus Bay and sailing out of Carthas on the lower Delta of the Three Rivers. The note was written in