Canticle

He told himself that his service to the light required it-that he had to stay near Isaak and that fleeing with Renard was the only way to do so. He told himself that Rudolfo and Petronus would both concur, even if Aedric did not. Still, it gnawed him. He’d thought all this as he stretched his legs into a full sprint and felt the breath of betrayal and desertion on the back of his neck like a wolf on his heels.

Of course, the ambush had been faked by Renard and his drunken friends, but he’d not learned that until yesterday, when Renard had told him with a casual chuckle in the face of Neb’s consternation.

They’d run that first night all the way through in silence, and then another day before they stopped to rest and to nurse water from the hidden places Renard showed him. But Isaak hadn’t stopped, and when Neb moved to go after him, Renard had stopped him.

“You’ll kill yourself in the dark or lose his trail,” Renard said. They were his first words since leaving Fargoer’s Town. “We sleep now until light. Then we track your metal friend easily. Eventually, he’ll lead us to the other.”

Two more days of racing full-sprint across the jagged, uneven ground, and each day they came within view of him just as the sun sank.

Neb took a pull from the tepid water and swished it around the inside of his mouth before handing the waterskin back to Renard. The water bore the burnt dust and salt flavor of the Wastes, but he swallowed it down anyway, grateful for it. “What was this place?” he asked.

Renard lifted the skin to his mouth, swallowed, and replaced the cap. “These are the outskirts of Ahm,” he said. “It was the capital of Aelys.”

Neb’s brow furrowed. He remembered this place from years before, when his father had brought him a square coin bearing the image of Vas Y’Zir, the Wizard King who oversaw Aelys for his father, Xhum Y’Zir, in the days of old, before P’Andro Whym and his scientists brought him and his six brothers down in a month of bloodshed. Brother Hebda had come by the coin during a dig and kept it back as a gift for the son he could not raise because of his Order’s vows. “My father came here,” he said.

Renard laughed. “Your father saw most of the Wastes, young Nebios. But aye, he was here.” He set out at an easy walk down toward the jagged jungle of glass. “And who do you think brought him?”

Of course. If Renard held the guide contracts with the Order it made sense that he would’ve escorted the very expeditions his father had worked on. He followed Renard, catching up easily. “Did you know him well?”

Renard found a clear patch of ground at the edge of the glass field and put down his pack. “Well enough,” he said. “He was a good man.”

Neb found a boulder and sat, watching Renard. The Waste guide drew a vial from one of his many pockets and shook out droplets at the four corners of the camp as he’d done each preceding night. In nights past, he’d not spoken about it, but now, his tongue loosening with each league they put between them and the Gypsy Scouts, he talked. “It’s kin-wolf urine,” he said.

Neb looked up. “Aren’t they extinct? Didn’t they die out with the Old World?”

Renard stopped the vial and tucked it away. “Nearly,” he said. “But there are a handful left, including an old white one that the Waste Witch keeps handy for those of us who run the Wastes.”

Neb had seen sketches in the Great Library, but until now, he’d assumed they were renderings based on skeletal evidence and whatever knowledge the Androfrancines had dug up. Kin-wolves were easily twice the size of a timber wolf-a fierce predator with an uncanny intelligence and predisposition for violence bred into them by the blood magicks of the wizards who made them long ago.

Renard continued. “They are few in number but still the second most dangerous predator here in the Deeper Wastes. They won’t encroach one another’s territory out of respect, and their prey know better.” Opening his pack, he tugged out a thin mat and stretched it over the flat ground, then pulled out two tightly rolled blankets, tossing one to Neb.

Something the man said suddenly registered with him. “If they’re the second most dangerous predator here, what’s the first?”

Renard looked up, his eyes hard as stone. “We are.” He spread his blanket out over his half of the mat and then straightened, spreading out his hands toward the fading landscape. “Certainly there are other threats-the ghosts and monsters from the basement of the world-and the land itself is hostile enough. But as predators go, man-or what he’s become here-still reigns.” He unslung the thorn rifle and squeezed the bulb at its base gently. Neb heard the slightest whisper and snap of a thorn snapping home. He’d not had a close look at this particular wonder of Renard’s but he hoped to, now that the man became more free with his tongue. “Meat for dinner tonight,” Renard said. “You gather wood; I’ll be back shortly with our supper.”

Neb watched as Renard slipped away, moving at a leisurely pace into the jagged line of glass not far from their camp. When he disappeared into it, Neb spread out his own blanket and then cast about to gather the bits of gray scrub he could find. Thirty minutes later, he had a decent pile.

When Renard returned, he carried a bloody carcass by its long, slender tail. The Waste rat-nearly the size of a dog-had been skinned and gutted away from camp. “There’s fresh water a league or so west,” he said as he laid the meat onto a flat stone and drew out his tinderbox. “You may want to bathe and scrub out your clothes in the morning.” Renard took in Neb’s torn and stained uniform and wrinkled his nose. “Or maybe you should bury that. I’ve got spare trousers and a shirt for you that should keep you for a few days.”

Overhead, the stars pulsed to life in a deep purple sky. A blue-green sliver on the horizon promised moonrise, and as Renard set the rat to cooking in the crackling fire, Neb pulled off his boots and stretched out on the hard ground. Propping himself up on his elbow, he watched Renard as he took careful inventory of their shared pack. The man noticed and grinned. “We’ll outfit you at Rufello’s Cave,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow-more likely, the morning after. The glass will slow us down a bit.”

Neb had certainly heard of Rufello, that ancient scientist who’d captured so many of the secrets of the Younger Gods in his Book of Specifications. It was Rufello’s schematics, pieced together from a thousand parchments, that had brought back the mechoservitors. “Rufello’s Cave?”

Renard looked up. “There’s an Androfrancine supply cache there. They were careful that way.”

That made sense to Neb. The Churning Wastes were brutal, and the vast distances that the Order’s expeditions covered, along with the amount of time it took for most digs, made supply chain a challenge. He imagined a network of hidden supplies, tucked away and sealed against the elements and inhabitants of this harsh land.

Now, Renard drew a patch of cotton from his pocket and soaked it in water from the waterskin. He wadded it up and shoved it into a small hole at the base of the bulb on his rifle. “I’ll need to lacquer it tomorrow,” he said.

The smell of cooking meat made Neb’s stomach growl. He’d had nothing but jerky, nuts, and sour dried apple slices over the last four days, and even that had been sparing. And until Renard’s tongue had finally loosened, Neb’s initial protests-and the questions that accompanied them-had fallen on seemingly deaf ears. Now, just as he’d settled into the taciturn silence, his companion had started offering up information quite freely.

Why? He looked to the man and his eyes narrowed. “You’re much more talkative now.”

Renard chuckled. “You’re right. I am.”

Neb rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand. “Why now?”

Renard considered him, and for a moment, Neb saw something in his eyes that chewed at him. “Because now,” he said slowly, “we’re too far out for your friends to find you. or for you to find them.” He paused, poking at the rat with his knife. “Now,” he said, “I’m the only reasonable path left to you, and our work can truly begin.”

The words fell into Neb like a stone in a pond, their meaning rippling out into the corners of his heart. His mouth went suddenly dry. “Our work?”

“Aye,” Renard said. “Work your father pressed upon me when you were born.” He looked up at Neb, and his blue eyes were piercing. “Work he and your mother knew you were set aside for years before you were even conceived.”

He and your mother. Brother Hebda had never mentioned Neb’s mother, and Neb had been too polite to ask. No, he realized, not polite but careful. He’d simply been too afraid that if he asked about her, his father would stop visiting him. It was a rare thing for one of the Order to acknowledge the children born outside their so-called vow of chastity. Rarer still that one of those men would take the time to visit his son in the Franci Orphanage. Neb swallowed at the dryness and cleared his voice. Two questions tugged at him for attention,