Canticle

these people had traded for in years past. From the outside, they would appear to take their rest among the Dayfather’s people for a fortnight. But in that time, his sons and his daughters would do the work he had made them for. They would build alliances; they would gather information; they would compile their findings and compare what they learned. When their stay here was complete, House Li Tam’s network would include this small island and its remote tribe. And this people’s knowledge and history would be added to the matrix that he built.

When light flashed back to him, confirming his command, Vlad Li Tam tucked the mirror away. So far, in seven months of searching, he’d found nothing substantial but had not wavered in his conviction. Somewhere out here there had to be proof.

He’d studied Sethbert’s so-called evidence of Androfrancine aggression carefully and had reached the only possible conclusion: The Androfrancines were afraid of something. Something so threatening to them and their light that they would bring back Y’Zir’s spell and create a generation of mechoservitors to carry it. Their maps, with their strategic lines drawn and delivery points marked at key locations, indicated a fear of invasion along the Outer Emerald Coast with a secondary incursion onto the Delta. And Tam knew now that someone had bent his own network of children to bring down Windwir. But who and why?

It was folly to believe that the Named Lands, set apart from the rest of the spell-blasted continent by the Keeper’s Wall, was the only place left where life could be sustained. The Wizard King, in his wrath, had brought down the world; but like these islands now grown apart from the Named Lands, there had to be pockets of life elsewhere.

And so the question was: Which pocket of life had engineered the end of the Androfrancine Order and the destruction of its Great Library? And how had they controlled his family to accomplish this horrific task?

So far, his search had borne no fruit, but Vlad Li Tam was a patient man.

I will have the truth, he thought.

But when he did, Vlad Li Tam wondered, what would he do with it?

Rudolfo

It happened faster than Rudolfo thought possible. One moment, he was leaning over to whisper something to Aedric about the quality of Hanric’s singing, and in the next, the music and laughter of the feast vanished beneath the sudden call to Third Alarm. The double doors of the Great Hall burst inward, and a muffled pandemonium swept into the room-his own Gypsy Scouts at the center of it, knives dancing and connecting with invisible blades. They already bled from a dozen cuts of varying severity, their winter uniforms slashed and stained with their blood. The invisible assailants did not stop, and judging by the flood of sentries and armed servants now pouring into the room, they had not stopped since breaching the border.

Aedric pushed away from the table, reaching for the ceremonial knife he wore and whistling the men to guard their king.

Guard our guests first, Rudolfo signed as he drew the narrow sword he’d chosen to decorate his outfit. Aedric nodded.

The tornado moved through the large room, breaking tables and scattering food, shattering dishes and bottles as the unmagicked Gypsy Scouts sought to contain this sudden invisible threat.

How many? It was impossible for Rudolfo to say. But they were strong and fast and silent and deadly, cutting through servant, scout and guest alike as they made their way to the head table.

Hanric bellowed, knocking the table over and reaching for the silver axe of the Marsh King’s office. The giant Marsher was on his feet, his escort surrounding him with weapons drawn as the clamor approached.

Across from Hanric, Ansylus the Crown Prince of Turam shot Rudolfo a surprised glance as he climbed to his feet. “What manner of-”

Before he could finish, his own guards were down beneath a storm of steel. The Crown Prince himself flew back against the wall, tossed by unseen shoulders, bucking and twitching as hidden knives found him and pierced him with surgical precision. Three Gypsy Scouts pressed the attacker as Rudolfo’s guest slumped to the floor, eyes already glassy in death.

Rudolfo lunged in with his sword and felt it strike cloth and then flesh. He pushed and twisted, withdrew, then thrust again. Something heavy and panting collapsed, lifted itself from the floor, and staggered through the wall of men that surrounded it. They fell easily before its strength, then rallied and rode it back down to the ground, where it twitched and burbled.

Around the room, clusters of men pressed similar attackers with similar result.

Rudolfo turned to Hanric and his bodyguards.

Two of the three guards had fallen, and the last stood between the shadow of his king and the blades of these invisible assailants. Rudolfo moved in with his sword, letting it dart here and there at what he hoped were the backs of knees and the smalls of backs, and he whistled for Aedric. As Aedric and three other Gypsy Scouts approached, the Marsh Queen’s shadow’s last remaining guard fell with a cry. Before the body hit the floor, Hanric’s axe swept up to wet itself on one of the attackers. The axe hummed from the blood, and Rudolfo stared at the double-headed weapon. There in the silver reflection he saw too many arms, too many torsos. Too many knives.

The axe reveals them. Even as he realized it, he shouted it to the room. “You can see their reflection in the axe.”

He moved in closer and found himself against a wall of transparent flesh. He pushed at it with his sword.

Sudden hands that he could not see lifted Rudolfo from the floor with a strength far beyond that of any scout magick he knew. Then he heard the muffled sound of a slap and a distant voice. “No,” the voice whispered. “Not him.”

Rudolfo fell to the floor as the hands released him. He whipped his sword up and felt it snag in cloth and skin. “Who are you?” he hissed at the unseen foe.

Hanric bellowed, and Rudolfo looked up to see a jagged red tear erupting down Hanric’s forearm. Aedric and the others were pressing to reach him, held back by a storm of knives. All of the fighting now centered on the man the Named Lands considered the Marsh King.

Rudolfo pushed forward as another cut opened Hanric’s chest. Roaring his rage, the Gypsy King dodged and thrust with his narrow sword, whistling out the chorus of “The Fourteenth Hymn of the Wandering Army.” His men rallied to the strategy, but even that failed.

Two more fell to Hanric’s blade before they overcame him. He went down with a shout, and Rudolfo growled low in his throat.

Then, the invisible wall struck Rudolfo again, pushing him over and aside as the attackers retreated. The Gypsy Scouts pursued them as they fled the Great Hall. Rudolfo nodded at the axe clutched in Hanric’s hands. “Take that,” he shouted to another scout. “Use it to search every inch of this manor. Then search the town.”

He stood still for a moment, stunned by the events. He’d fought in dozens of skirmishes, had even led a few wars, and last year he’d worn the magicks to raid Sethbert’s camp. In all of his years under the knife, he’d not encountered anything like this. And now two of the Named Land’s leaders lay dead in his own home. He took in the room, eyes wandering the scattered bodies and food, the broken tables, the clusters of guards and guests and servants. He could hear loud voices on the other side of the barricaded door.

He saw Neb, shaking and white, his own ceremonial knife still hanging loosely in his hand. His uniform was torn, and he bled from a few cuts. “Where’s Isaak?”

Neb pointed, and Rudolfo spotted him across the room. “Ask him to join me,” he said. Neb nodded and went as Aedric approached.

Rudolfo looked at his First Captain. He was more shaken than his father would’ve been, but still grim and resolved. “What do you know, Aedric?”

Aedric’s brow furrowed. “Little so far, General. The western watch sounded Third Alarm and launched their birds, but the aggressors outran word of their arrival.”

“They outran the birds?”

Aedric nodded. “Yes, General.”

“On foot?”

Aedric nodded again.