Canticle

But then the triple-coded note had come last year, and she’d known for the first time that her father had encountered something that had changed him, some kind of respect-based fear that drove him to retreat. Within weeks of that fateful bird, and after a short but impassioned conversation culminating in their first raised voices as a couple, she and Baryk had packed what they could not live without, sold off what they could, and had arrived at the Tam Estates to see the iron ships laying in their cargo at anchor in the bay. They joined in the work of loading while her father, Vlad Li Tam, burned the books of his family’s work and prepared to flee the Named Lands.

Or did he go a-hunting? she wondered.

Perhaps, she thought, it was both.

Regardless, after seven months at sea, moving at a leisurely, methodical pace, something had happened. The armada was halved, and though some part of her felt the compulsion to know, she knew there was little chance of discovering what might have happened to her father and to the rest of her family.

Save what can be saved. There was finality in those words, and despite her best hope, she sensed that some night soon, once they were safely to sea and steaming toward points unknown to all but her, she would sit at her writing table in her cramped captain’s quarters aboard the new Tam family flagship. She would give herself, for a moment, to grief and compose a poem to honor her father’s passing.

Even as her mind laid out these nets, her feet moved across the sand and her voice rang out with command. Years away, and yet the mantle fell easily to her as the oldest of Vlad Li Tam’s surviving children in the absence of his First Son or his First Grandson.

When the beach was cleared, and when she walked the village paths to be sure none were left behind, she went to the last boat where it waited in the surf.

Confusion colored the faces of the Dayfather and his people. Sadness and surprise rode his young niece’s eyes. They’d expected a longer visit-more attempts to make permanent those bonds of kin-clave Vlad Li Tam had negotiated with the young girl-and despite Rae’s best diplomacy, they’d not understood and she’d refused to alarm them.

If there is danger to them, she thought, my warning will offer no aid. Best to leave with as little said as possible.

She stood in the surf now and felt the warm water licking at her feet and ankles. She raised her hand in farewell and watched as the Dayfather and his kin did the same.

Then, she let the young men in the longboat lift her aboard and she fixed her eyes to the northeast.

In the end, it was the sand that told her where they would flee. The one place that none traveled these days.

Home to the Named Lands, she thought, and then around the horn.

Above her, a dark shape circled in the sky. Larger and blacker than a seagull, it flew ever-widening circles.

A raven of some kind. Out of place this far at sea, but not impossibly so.

“You are a long way from home,” she said to the bird.

As if hearing her, the bird stopped its circling and shot south as straight and fast as an arrow.

What prey do you seek? And when she asked it, she knew she meant the question both for the bird and for her father, also fled south.

Sighing, she shifted on the uncomfortable wooden bench and gave her mind to the web of strategy and misdirection she must now lay down for her family on her father’s behalf.

Winters

The Chambers of the Book were stifling hot, and Winters found herself opening the front of her shirt, using the loose fabric to fan cooler air onto her breasts and into her armpits.

Outside, she knew there was fresh snow and a coming blizzard. How had it become so unseasonably warm here?

She walked quickly, following the cavern’s spiraling descent. She’d reached the Last Chapter of the book now, watching the dated spines of each volume. She stretched out a hand and let her dirty fingers trail over them.

She could not remember how many volumes there were now. But the Book of Dreaming Kings was a paper serpent over half a league long, shelves carved into the stone walls containing each volume.

As Winters walked, the cavern grew hotter, and an intense light built below. Music drifted up to her, and she recognized it as a solitary harp. A stinging breeze watered her eyes.

Her voice was muffled by a distant roaring but rang out above the flowing melody. “Hello?”

She heard a low whistle and looked to her left, where the cave spilled open into a midnight desert. Neb stood there beneath a blue-green moon, talking with a man she did not know but suddenly feared. He was slender as a willow and dressed in tattered robes. He carried a thorn rifle, though she did not know why it was called that or what it did. And he meant to take Neb from her to a place where her dreams could not find him.

As if he knew this, he raised a hand and pointed to the moon and it became a cold, dead thing-and etched into the white of the lunar corpse, a sign she’d so recently seen carved into the skin of Hanric’s killers.

She opened her mouth to speak, but then saw Isaak. He lay broken open, and the man she feared was crouched over him, hands up to his forearms, deep and working within the mechoservitor’s chest cavity.

His name is Renard, a voice called to her from below. She turned her eyes away from Neb’s dreams and saw her own unfolding.

The stairs spilled out into a reading chamber, continuing their downward spiral across an open space littered with cushions and chairs. In the corner, seated upon a three-legged stool, a robed man played his harp.

“Who is he?”

“One who will make you weep before all is done,” Tertius said. “But you will laugh again after.”

Winters moved cautiously into the room, her hand no longer tracing the spines of the Book. “You are dead, Tertius.”

“They say so,” he said. “Yes.”

“What is happening to the Book of Dreaming Kings?”

Tertius smiled. “ ‘The light devours and burns brighter for it,’ ” he said, and she knew the words. They were from one of the Errant Gospels, possibly from T’Erys Whym himself.

Even as he spoke, flames belched up the stairs and the room began to burn. As if compelled, the scholar Tertius gave himself over to the harp, his fingers flying across the strings.

And in the moment that her dream shifted again, Winters knew also the song he played, though like the thorn rifle, she did not know how or why she knew it.

It was “A Canticle for the Fallen Moon,” composed by the last of the Weeping Czars, Frederico. It was a song about love and loss, about being separated by vast distance and finding one another at last.

And suddenly, the song was gone; she was alone and struggling in her bedroll near a guttering fire.

A wolf howled in the hills below, and Winters shivered.

“You are far from home,” a voice said from someplace below her on the slope. She felt cold fingers move lightly on the skin of her neck and arms. By instinct, she reached for her knife, then relaxed as Neb materialized at the edge of the fire’s glow. He wore his dusty uniform, and his long white hair had fallen over one eye in a way that made her want to touch him.

“So are you,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder at the blasted lands that stretched behind him. “Yes.” He stepped closer, and the fire whispered out as he did. “The dreams have gotten stranger,” he said.

“This one is nice,” she answered. Neither needed to mention how rare the nice dreams were. They were scarce in the first place and had become more so since Hanric’s death. She patted the bedroll beside her. Neb pulled off his boots and crawled beneath the covers.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll reach the summit and announce myself.” She could not see it in her dream, but the Wicker Throne and its leather harness lay somewhere within reach. She was sure of it. She felt the bite of the straps in her shoulders and back from the long days of carrying it north to the spire.

Neb wriggled near her. “I’m in Fargoer’s Town. I’m on watch soon,” he said.

Then, without further words, they intertwined themselves and she felt the warmth from him spread out to contain her. They did not kiss, though they had in times past. And they did not move their hands over one another,