Canticle

into the Wastes,” he said.

Still, there it was, and Neb thought about Isaak and the others he’d spent so much time with these past seven or eight months. He recalled the flashing eye shutters, the hiss of vented steam, the pens flying across the paper, clutched in metal hands. “A mechoservitor could cipher the locks.”

Renard chuckled. “Why would a mechoservitor need supplies?”

It was a good question. “How many of these caches are there?”

“At least a dozen,” Renard said. “Scattered strategically, all under lock and stone.”

Neb nodded, suspicion growing within him. He was willing to wager that were they to find the others, they also would be empty of anything useful. He thought of the metal man that Isaak now pursued. It had run into the Wastes with purpose, moving as if it had a destination in mind. Moving too fast for men but not too fast for its own kind.

“There was too much here for one mechoservitor,” Renard observed. “It would’ve taken years to empty this cache.”

“Then it had help,” Neb said. Already, his brain stretched into speculation, but he couldn’t find a satisfactory reason why.

Renard shifted and extended the torch farther, the metal footprint taking on deeper shadows as he did. “It would’ve needed all the help it could get.” He stood. “Still, there was enough here to supply multiple expeditions. What use could a mechoservitor have for foodstuffs and tools?”

But Neb wasn’t convinced at this point that the supplies had been taken in order to use them. Another idea brewed beneath the surface, and he vocalized it in a quiet voice. “Maybe it didn’t need the supplies. Maybe it just needed us not to have them.”

But not us specifically, he realized. The Androfrancines or whoever else might come wandering into the Wastes relying on these caches to survive-and work-in this hostile place.

Still, for now there was no answer and nothing of use to them here in Rufello’s Cave.

But somewhere a day or two ahead of them, Neb suspected, the answer raced across the broken landscape, its bellows wheezing and its metal legs pumping.

“We should get running,” he said to Renard. “We’ve time to make up.”

Renard smiled, and for a moment, in the dancing light of their dying torches, Neb saw traces of a kin-wolf’s ferocity in the man’s eyes and teeth.

“Let’s run then,” Renard said.

And they did.

Vlad Li Tam

He lost all sense of anything but anguish, hot and white. He was not even sure of his own name until she called him by it.

“Vlad,” Ria said. “You closed your eyes.”

She leaned over him with a knife, and he started. The words that came out of him were a garbled shriek, snot and spittle flying. His beard was wet with tears.

Smiling, she withdrew. “No matter. We’re done for now.” She looked over the railing, but now that her knife was down, he looked away. He could not bear it. Still, her voice was full of pride. “Eight today, Vlad.”

Their victims were getting younger and younger. This last batch had just barely left their teens.

He felt a howl rising, but some part of him reasserted itself and forced it down. “The children, too?” His voice cracked.

She laughed. “No, Vlad. Do you take us for monsters? Those below the age of reason will take the mark of House Y’Zir, just as we all have.” Here, she opened the top of her robe and revealed her breast to him. There, over her heart, he saw the cutting and knew it from some distant memory of a life before this island, this room, this bloodletting.

I am your Kin-healer, her voice echoed in his memory.

She continued. “You’ll take the mark, too, before it’s finished.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Dear Vlad, we’ll cut the children and then we’ll send them away.”

His eyes moved toward her, and again he felt himself stirring to life. Where? He heard his voice croak the question.

She stroked his hair. “Someplace where they will learn a new way.”

An Old Way, he thought. Vlad Li Tam was back for just a moment. long enough to file that knowledge away.

Then, he hung limp in the harness. Strong hands held him up while strong fingers worked the buckles. The robed men lifted him and carried him the seventy-three steps back to his room, depositing him on the floor there.

Ria stepped over him as the door swung shut and the lock turned. She walked to the small dining table laden with exotic foods and sat down. He could not remember exactly when she had started dining in his room-the days had blurred into a scarlet haze. Vlad closed his eyes and tried to let the aromas from the table fill him, but they could not expunge the overriding odor of blood. He rocked back and forth there, curled up on the floor, and tried to find focus.

“I think tomorrow,” Ria said, “you will be ready for your first cutting.”

He felt the moan rising up within him and knew it for longing. If the blades are on me they will not be elsewhere. But he knew it was a false hope. He knew that his children, grandchildren, great- grandchildren would all take the knife sooner or later. Some to their death, others to take the mark of the Wizard Kings upon their hearts.

He heard the sound of wine being poured, of meat being sliced, of a plate being prepared. “The cooks have outdone themselves. Are you certain you won’t join me, Vlad?”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, though he knew he hadn’t held it down. The part of him that watched and waited, buried underneath the surface, knew that would have to change soon. He said nothing.

She ate slowly, making conversation as she did. “Today went very well, though I’m surprised. I thought the young ones would have more stamina than that.”

He closed his eyes against the wave of nausea that hit him. The smell of their blood was everywhere. And if she weren’t here, grounding him with her voice and presence, the sound of their screaming would chase him into some dark, hazy place within that he was never quite sure he’d come back from.

Again, he said nothing. She continued to eat. “Mal will return soon with more,” she said. “Our kin-raven scouts them even now.”

Finally, he found words, twisting in a way that he could look up to her from the floor and meet her eyes. “How many more?”

Her laughter was dark music. “All of them.”

All of them.

She continued. “Except the Great Mother and the Child of Promise, of course.” She looked at him, her fork poised halfway between plate and mouth. “But in the end, that broken kinship will be healed.”

Great Mother. Child of Promise. He wanted to ask but did not. Instead, he filed it away with the other scraps of knowledge.

She ate in silence after that, and when she finished, she stooped over him and kissed him on the forehead. “I will see you in the morning, Vlad. Get some rest. Try to eat. Tomorrow, I let your blood.”

He recoiled from her touch but did not have the strength to strike out despite the will. She frowned, straightened and went to the door. She tapped at it and waited for the men to let her out.

After she had gone, Vlad Li Tam returned. He stepped into himself slowly and gathered about him the bits of broken man as an old woman gathers a shawl around cold shoulders. He tested out his feet and his hands, he worked his mouth and rolled his eyes. Then, slowly, he crawled to his feet and went to the table. He passed the wine and food, taking instead a pitcher of water that was nearly too heavy to lift.

Returning to the floor, he slouched against the wall, within eyeshot of the door, and sipped the water from the pitcher, holding it with both hands.