Canticle

and he gave way to the one that terrified him the least. “What work is that?” he asked.

“The work of Homeseeking,” he said.

How does he know this? Neb blinked. And how could my parents have known? His head suddenly swum, and the other question found its way to his tongue, though when it fell out his mouth it sounded more like a statement. “You know my mother.”

A cloud washed Renard’s face, and he closed his eyes a bit longer than he should have. When he opened them, his face was clear again. “Yes, lad. I knew her.”

More questions flooded Neb, but there were too many to ask and it left him in silence, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. Certainly, sharing dreams with Winters gave him a seat at the front of Marsher mysticism and prophecy. He knew she believed him to be the Homeseeker. But beyond his own dreams and the belief of the girl he loved, he’d not had any other evidence. Now, a man he barely knew and did not necessarily trust told him that this was a work both his father and his mother had known about before Neb was even born.

It staggered him.

After a while, Renard used his knife to move their dinner away from the fire so it could cool. He looked over at Neb. “She was beautiful and smart,” he finally said. His voice was heavy with memory.

“What happened to her?” Neb asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But then Renard fell silent. After the meat had cooled, he tore the Waste rat in half and they ate quickly and quietly.

The meat was greasy and carried a strong, sour flavor, but Neb tore into it as if it were a roasted Ninefold Forest hare. He couldn’t remember a better feast despite the silence.

When he finished, Neb crawled into his blanket and counted stars until thoughts of Winters kept stealing him away. He wondered what she was doing now and how she was. The deeper into the Wastes they ran, the less dreams he could remember. He willed himself to dream of her tonight, that he might find her somewhere in that middle place between their dreams-or even share a dream-and tell her how afraid he suddenly was. Until now, he’d believed that chance had brought him here in pursuit of the two metal men with this quandary of a man, Renard. But now, he sensed destiny in it beyond himself and his Marsh Queen.

And he knew my parents. He did not trust the Waste Guide Renard, but he did believe him.

Neb lay awake long after Renard’s breathing became slow and easy and long after the moon reached its zenith in the night sky. He thought about it all and wished for sleep and dreaming.

But when sleep finally took Neb, it gave him no dreams whatsoever, and he awoke again and again at the strangeness of it.

Chapter 14

Lysias

Lysias felt out of place without his uniform, and he hoped it didn’t show. The tavern bustled around him with a life of its own as he waited in the shadows.

The note had come by courier rather than bird, delivered by a young lieutenant that Lysias knew had kin with Esarov’s Secessionists. Another family divided by the civil war-something Lysias understood far too well.

It was, after all, family that had brought him to this place.

He watched the room around him, knowing full well that it watched him back. Or at least, someone did. Esarov was crafty and would not arrange a meeting if he could not control it. And following the instructions to the letter, Lysias had come alone. It completely violated every instinct he had as a general-riding out to a strange city for a clandestine meeting with the leader of a revolt that threatened the fabric of a society he had pledged his life to protecting. Meeting in a dark, dockside tavern out of uniform and surrounded, no doubt, by those sympathetic to a cause he was completely convinced would ruin them all.

Yes, as a general, trained in the Named Lands premier Academy, this was all completely against the grain of instinct.

But, Lysias knew, a father’s instincts can trump career in those few, brief seconds between heartbeats. He’d had to come.

He’d taken great care to cover his tracks, confident that Ignatio’s men were out there even now, trying to find their assigned quarry. Erlund’s spymaster trusted no one-it was his basic operating principle-and the marriage of Lysias’s daughter to one of Esarov’s now-deceased cohorts made the general particularly of interest.

I am a compromised liability, he thought with a forced smile.

Still, risks aside, he was here now, waiting for Esarov.

I wish to propose a cessation of hostilities, the coded note had read, but require an intermediary with Erlund. The note had contained instructions for further communication and had closed cryptically: I have information regarding the location and well-being of your daughter.

As much as he wished that his duty to the state now drove him, it was that closing sentence that brought him to this place.

Children, he thought, are the hunter’s snare for a man’s heart.

When the woman approached him with her long legs and confident smile, he raised his hand to dismiss her. She was young-younger than his daughter-and though the occasional mattress tussle was not beyond his interest, Lysias had never felt completely comfortable if a cash transaction was involved. There were plenty of lonely wives or willing servants when the mood struck, though he found that the older he got, the less the mood seemed to strike. Still, this one was attractive enough and didn’t have the used, hollow eyes of someone who’d worked in the business for any amount of time.

But even as he raised his hand, he saw her lips purse and saw her head give the slightest shake. He waited until she approached. “Looking for company?” she asked in a low voice.

He glanced around the room. A few sailors took notice, but he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the tight dress and the curves it accentuated that drew their stares. He nodded. “I am indeed.”

She sat, and as she did, her fingers moved. We make small talk a bit; then you ask the barmaid for a room key.

He studied her eyes and saw that they were hard. Agreed, he signed in return.

They talked in low tones about the weather and the war until Lysias heard readiness in her replies. Then, he raised a finger and nodded when he caught the barmaid’s eye. She studied the two of them with a knowing smile and then waddled over with an iron key. She looked to Lysias and waited until he produced a heavy coin from his pocket. Burying the payment into her apron pocket, she passed the key to him. “An hour,” she said, looking to the woman. “And be mindful of your noise.”

The girl wrinkled her nose but smiled. “I don’t think this one will give us that problem.”

Laughing, the barmaid returned to her work, and the girl stood, stretching out her hand to Lysias.

He was surprised at how awkward he felt suddenly, and he wondered if it was because it had been a while since a beautiful woman had offered him her hand. His last woman, he realized, had been a drunken hurry during a lull in the last war. And that had been more to give his officers a sense of his humanity so that he could exact deeper loyalty than for his own personal satisfaction. He took her hand, and it was soft and small within his.

But her grip was firm.

Lysias stood and let her lead him up the stairs.

She let them into the room and locked the door behind.

A single candle guttered on a small table beside the room’s narrow cot. A robed man sat on a wooden chair, opposite the bed. “General Lysias?” the man asked, looking up.

The hair was longer, but Lysias recognized the man, though he’d aged a bit since his days upon the stage. “Esarov,” he said. “You take a great risk coming here personally.”

Esarov shrugged. “We own this quarter. We’ve twenty of our best in this fine establishment to mitigate