Canticle

keep it in the dark and secret places where pain can grow fastest and strongest. He would-

Chimes sounded-these louder than the one that summoned him from his makeshift nest of blankets in the corner of his suite. He felt the blade lift and focused on the warm blood that trickled down his side to be caught in the gutters and fed into whatever twisted repository they used for their dark purposes.

In saner, clearer moments he’d pondered their use of it. He’d not studied the resurgences that had gone before, but he’d known one truth-none of them had brought back the Old Ways with such elaborate care and attention to detail. These were not men and women hidden in the forests offering their glossolalia to dead Wizard Kings and cutting themselves to mingle blood over a campfire.

These Y’Zirites were different. Something darker, more sinister, more compelling than any resurgence he’d ever heard tell of. From their elaborate rituals right down to the genuine love and affection Ria held in her voice when she spoke tenderly to him about the kin-healing she now performed.

“We are saving you with agony,” she had said once, “and your agony, in turn, will save us all.”

As if summoned by memory, he felt her breath close upon his ear and smelled the cool apple scent of her mouth. “They’re here, Vlad,” she said. Her voice was heavy with something akin to ecstasy. “Your grandson has brought them home to you.”

He could not prevent the sob; it shook him, and as it did, fire spread across his back as pain raced along the intricate network of carefully carved words and symbols she’d written into him with her knives.

I will grow my pain into an army.

But some part of him knew it wasn’t true. There would be no army. He would watch his family die one by one beneath these brutal blades, and then, when all were gone and all of the youngest had taken their marks and boarded their ship for gods knew where, he would take his own mark and offer his throat for one final cut.

And some other part of him begged for that day to come sooner rather than not.

He heard soft footfalls behind him, and Ria kissed his cheek before turning away. “Are they landing, then?”

“Yes, Lady.”

“Tell Mal that I would dine with him in my chambers once he has refreshed himself.”

“Shall I summon the Physician and prepare a batch for the tables?”

Vlad Li Tam felt the spasm and knew he’d sobbed again. He held his breath, fighting back the tears as he waited for her to speak.

“No,” she said. “I think we can give our honored guest time to meditate and prepare his heart for this last of our work together.” He heard the footfalls again, and once more she leaned over him. Now, she leaned before him and he forced his eyes away from the breasts that hung ripe and firm from within her open robe. He went to her eyes, but the love within those wide, brown windows confounded him and stirred something he could not let himself lay hold of.

I am growing to love her in some dark and poisonous way.

Of course, he’d heard of such things. He’d even used similar tactics with others, though it had grieved him. Pain was a powerful hallucinogen in the hands of a skilled manipulator.

He gritted his teeth and forced down his body’s unbidden response to the hand she laid upon his cheek. She brought her eyes close to his. “We are nearly finished here, Vlad. I wish that I could continue our work together, but I fear I will be called away soon to attend other matters.” She put her lips upon his and pressed her tongue against teeth he closed firmly against her. When she pulled back, she smiled. “But I have cherished our time together; healing your kinship with House Y’Zir has been the greatest honor I could know. at least until I see the Child of Promise with my own eyes.”

Vlad said nothing. Instead, he forced that part of him that ached for her also into that deep cave full of pain. It was not love, no matter how it felt or what he thought. It was something more fierce and terrifying than that and it also would grow his army very well.

He felt the hands upon him now. He felt them working the buckles and straps, lifting him again as they had so many times before. And he felt his eyes rolling and his tongue lolling about in his mouth, felt the deep and salted fire roiling over his body, over the thousand cuts that made and unmade him.

Tomorrow, he knew they would start again. Tomorrow, a fresh batch of his tribe would be laid out upon the altar of his heart to have poetry cut from them amid their cries for him to help, to save them from this darkest nightmare they had fallen somehow into.

I will grow my pain into an army, he thought, and I will take this island in my wrath. I will end you. You will burn beneath the fury of your very knives.

But even as he thought it, he heard the mocking laughter of a thousand dead and once more found himself weeping where there were no tears left to weep.

Neb

The farther east they raced, the hotter the days and nights became. Neb tried to mark his surroundings but found this new means of transportation wasn’t conducive to charting his present path.

Of course, he wasn’t confident that he would necessarily need to know his way back-despite this supposed authorization he enjoyed this side of the D’Anjite’s Bridge.

When Neb regained consciousness that first night, he’d opened his eyes upon a star-strewn night sky, the blue-green moon swollen and heavy as it prepared to sink beneath a purple ribbon of horizon. When his demands to be put down were not heeded, he squirmed and twisted, surprised that his best efforts did nothing to put the mechanical off its footing. Those first struggles were met with firm metal hands that forced stillness into him as he rode the swaying metal shoulders.

Finally, he’d settled into the ride, shifting himself to minimize the bruising where the hard steel pushed into his flesh.

When he didn’t drowse, he spent the time letting his mind wander across the vast landscape of questions that stretched out before his inner eye. Much had transpired in such a short time, and he still reeled from it. And the only words the mechoservitor had offered him had been the brief exchange that first day when he’d asked about Isaak and Renard.

“They are operational,” the mechoservitor answered. “The damage is minor but sufficient to prevent unauthorized travel.”

A thought had struck him then. “Couldn’t I have authorized them?”

Neb felt the hot steam against his side as it hissed out of the exhaust grate below him. The mechoservitor’s voice sounded reedy as its bellows worked. “Authorization may only be granted by sign and seal of the Office of the Holy See or by Papal Designee under Holy Unction of his Excellency, Introspect III.”

Beyond that, Neb’s questions remained unanswered as they lurched swiftly across rocky terrain. Still, he played them out behind his eyes and used what Franci meditations and ciphers he could to make sense of them.

Somehow, he’d been authorized to be here where the others had not been. Renard had run these Wastes his entire life, and the metal man had named Isaak “cousin”-odd that they would not be permitted to pass. Obviously, the chasm marked some boundary, for the mechanical had led them a merry chase for days-or was it weeks now? — until suddenly stopping at that point to draw its brutal line in the dirt of that place.

And both the mechanical and Renard had made the same assertion that Winters had made over a year ago now when she’d acknowledged him as the Homeseeker. It boggled him that anything Androfrancine would acknowledge the prophetic trappings of Marsher mysticism, though now he felt the call of that title even more so. It was as if even dreamless here, the hope and promise of Home twisted and writhed like a sleeping snake. Something in this wasted land summoned him.

And where have my dreams gone? He felt that pang of loss again. No, he thought. The dreams were but a vehicle. The real question, not so very far beneath the surface, made his stomach ache.

Where had Winters gone?

His last dream of her had been the night she camped beneath the spire, preparing to make her final ascent and declare herself to be something that she did not feel ready to become. He’d seen those questions and fears within her dreams and was certain she’d seen his own because of the way their sleep touched. And the dreams felt