Canticle

“Dear Vlad,” she said, looking into the mirror and applying a paint to her lips that was the color of pooled blood. “Tonight your kin is finally healed, and soon that healing will save us all.”

Rudolfo waited as she pulled a thin robe over her naked form and watched her move to the door. After she’d slipped through it, he counted to five before following her out of the room.

Then, he moved quickly down the corridor to catch up with her, hoping for shadows to hide him as he ghosted along behind. Stretching out a hand, he lay his fingers along a blood pipe as he went and felt the warm pulse of language in it. The others were ready, Rae Li Tam tapped, and their enemy had not been alerted as yet. The children were located, and House Li Tam lay in wait, armed with what could be found easily. A few choice taps of his fingernail and Rudolfo gave the word for them to execute their orders.

Now the sound of the screams grew in his ears as they approached a wide stairwell that ended at a dark pair of ornately carved doors. They swung open at a whistle from the girl, and Rudolfo picked up his pace to slip into the observation deck behind her.

What he saw there nearly took his wind despite hours spent sipping wine while his own Physicians of Penitent Torture did their redemptive work.

Rudolfo stifled a roar and loosened the scout knives within their sheaths.

Vlad Li Tam

He could not remember the last time he’d slept or how long he’d been strapped into the viewing rack. He dimly remembered Ria leaving him in the care of a dark-robed blood-letter who continued her cuttings with more confidence than compassion, and he remembered longing for her hands and blade upon him, moving slowly and with love over-

No. This is not love, he told himself. It is a peculiar fixation that develops between captive and captor-a product of desperation and twisted hope. But it was a tempting fantasy to fall into.

I will grow my pain into an army.

But now, Vlad Li Tam knew there was no army coming from his pain. They’d run his children and grandchildren past him now in a seemingly endless stream, no longer taking their time with the knives but moving with machinelike precision.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, and his breath caught in his throat. “I’m back, Vlad,” Ria whispered.

He said nothing but twisted in the rack enough to see her feet and the beginnings of her calves peeking out from beneath the thin robes she wore.

He heard her fingers moving over the collection of knives as she selected one. “This will be our last night together,” she told him in a low, husky voice. “Tonight, all of this pain and suffering ends for you, and your kinship with House Y’Zir will be healed. Are you ready to take the mark of your last master upon you?”

He tried to speak and found his words garbled. But he knew what he meant to say, gods help him, and he knew it was the answer she hoped it would be. Yes. Anything. Just stop. Spare what little remains of my family and have your way with me.

But nothing so intelligible came out of him.

Then muffled explosions reached his ear, followed by the shrill whistle of Third Alarm. He twisted himself to watch her drop the knife and look up quickly, her eyes narrow. She jerked suddenly and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. A low and magicked voice whispered hoarsely, and Vlad Li Tam knew it but could not place it.

“Unbind him,” the voice said. “This dark work is ended tonight.”

Kill her, he willed the invisible intruder. Do not speak, do not request, simply slide the blade into her kidney and twist it hard. But at the same time he willed it, he willed that she escape, that she might lay her hand upon him again and gently teach him love and kinship beneath the blade.

Vlad Li Tam watched her struggle against her captor and saw a dot of blood well up on her dark-painted neck. “Unbind him now or I add your blood to rest you’ve spilled in this place.”

Below them, they heard the noise of fighting. The assailant let his hand off of her mouth. “Release him,” she told the guards.

Vlad Li Tam felt the table spinning upright and felt hands at the straps and buckles. When he fell from the rack, he landed heavily upon the marble floor with a gasp.

The voice spoke again. “Can you stand, Tam?”

And suddenly he knew that voice but could not believe his ears. He found the name and croaked it. “Rudolfo?”

The girl gasped her surprise. “Rudolfo, Shepherd of the Light? Father of Jakob, the Child of Promise?”

“I am Rudolfo, yes,” Rudolfo said in a low and bitter voice.

She raised her voice to the others. “Do not harm him. We know the cost of that.”

Vlad Li Tam gathered his strength on the floor and pushed against it with shaking arms. He raised himself somewhat, then slipped and fell facefirst into his own blood. He pushed with his feet and hands, groaning, until he crawled from the sticky mess at the foot of the rack.

“What cost?” he heard Rudolfo ask.

But the girl did not answer. “What does he look like?” she asked instead. “The Child of Promise? Is he pink? Does he glow with life and health? With his mother’s blue eyes and his father’s dark hair? Does he laugh? Or is he gray and mottled, gasping like a fish on the bank for his very life?”

Vlad Li Tam heard the growl in Rudolfo’s voice. “What do you know of my son, Marsh girl?”

She laughed, and it was music. “You came looking for his salvation, but there is none to be found upon the path you have chosen.”

Now Rudolfo ignored her. “Can you stand?” he again asked.

Vlad Li Tam gathered his strength again and pushed himself up, turning so he could sit. The girl stood awkwardly bent backwards, her robe now open as Rudolfo held her from behind. The guards stood near with hands upon their knives, eyes moving from the girl to Vlad Li Tam to the closed doors and the sounds of fighting outside.

Struggling to push himself up, he lost his footing again and slid down, his body shaking from the effort.

Then, the doors burst open and a tornado of violence swept into the observation deck.

He felt hands upon him and heard a voice whispering in his ear. “I will carry you, Father.”

He was lifted up then, cradled like a child in strong, sure arms, and he found himself suddenly weeping. The spasms of grief and relief washed over him and racked his body with great sobs as he clung to the neck of a son he could no longer recognize. Once, before this place, he’d known his children by their voice, their smell, the sound of their approach. But now all he smelled was blood and all he heard were the last poems of his fallen family ringing in his ears.

He became vaguely aware of the fighting around them, aware that Rudolfo stayed near him, holding the girl as a shield and clacking his tongue against the top of his mouth. And then they were fighting their way down the stairs and into the corridor he’d measured so carefully during his early days within this place. He heard the whisper and rasp of blades spinning around him.

Twice his son fell, spilling Vlad onto the ground but covering him with his own body as he did. Each time, the man hefted Vlad up into his arms, finally slinging him over his shoulder like a bag of oranges so that he could better keep his feet with a blade in his left hand.

They fought their way to the ground floor and burst outside into the warm night. The iron vessels were building steam, and one of the schooners was sinking in the harbor. The second wooden ship smoked but still floated, and a band of unmagicked men fought at its gangway on the dock. Vlad could not see the flagship but thought he heard the barking of its cannon.

A wave of invisible force met them on the path down to the dock. These soldiers had been waiting and had had the time to prepare themselves. Vlad felt the power of it, heard the muffled sounds of attack but saw nothing. Still, he rocked backward when that wall hit the son who carried him and toppled them to the ground. He felt a white searing pain as the sea-salted sand ground its way into his open cuts, and he cried out even though he did not want to.

Invisible boots kicked at him and his son, and he heard the crunch of bones breaking nearby.