Canticle

He knows I’m not telling everything. Neb looked away, his cheeks hot.

It requires a response. A response given in secret to confound the enemies of the light-those who wished to snuff it out. Those who brought down Windwir. Those whose eyes and ears were upon the Named Lands now, though Neb was not certain how he knew it. He simply felt it and trusted that feeling.

This place has changed me.

And Neb suddenly knew that he would not be going with Aedric-that his time among the Gypsies was over as quickly as it had begun. Instead, he would return to the iron cap and learn the cipher and take the source of the dream to himself. He would learn the ways of the Waste from Renard and follow the dream until it took him Home. Nothing else mattered. Not Winters, not his adopted home among the Gypsies or his future as an officer of the Forest Library. He felt it in his feet where they stood upon this desolate landscape.

He lost himself within the calling and only brought himself up from it when the others began moving away, leaving him with Aedric and Renard. It was Aedric’s hand on his shoulder that finally jarred him into the present.

“Rest up,” the First Captain said. “There’s hot food in the Tam camp, and you can find a fresh uniform among the men. Tomorrow will be a long ride.”

Neb shook his head. “I can’t go with you.”

Aedric’s eyes narrowed. “You are an officer of the Gypsy Scouts, Lieutenant Nebios, and you will be riding with us tomorrow as such.”

I am Nebios ben Hebda, the Homeseeker, he thought. He shook his head again. “Tell Rudolfo that I’m sorry,” he said, “and that I’m grateful for all he’s done.” He let his eyes meet Aedric’s then, and this time he did not look away at the anger he saw there. “I’m grateful to you as well.”

With careful fingers, Neb reached beneath his arm and untied the tattered scarf of rank that hung there and extended it to Aedric.

The First Captain took it. “You are making a mistake, lad.”

“It would be a mistake for me to stay,” Neb said, and even he could hear the strength in his voice as he said it.

Aedric regarded him thoughtfully and finally nodded. “I will bear your message to the general personally.” His hard eyes softened. “And have you thought about the girl, your young queen?”

Neb swallowed. His own sacrifice to the dream. “Tell her I am called to find our Home.”

Aedric gave him one final look, nodded again, and walked away without another word.

Renard smiled at him. They were alone now. “You’ve heard it, then,” he told him.

Neb blinked. “You’ve heard it as well?”

“No,” Renard said. “But your father did.”

“I have to go back to it,” Neb said.

Renard nodded. “We will. I can’t run, but I can ride.”

Neb looked around the camp. He would need to say good-bye to Isaak at some point and secretly pass to him the memory scroll his metal cousin had intended for him. And he would want to eat with the men. But after that, he thought, it would be good to take the root and stretch his legs.

To let the history of this land seep into him through his feet as he ran toward that buried song.

His calling stirred within him, Nebios Homeseeker felt the joy of it pulling him and he smiled at it.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam brushed her long hair out and watched Winters holding her son. Her initial fears of the newborn had faded, and the same instincts that guided Jin as a new mother guided the young girl as she explored one of the wonders that her body could someday produce. She watched and forced a smile.

My son is saved; I should not need to force my joy. But she did. She saw her hands upon the Machtvolk queen’s feet and heard the catch in her voice as she pleaded for her son’s life. It shamed her, and yet she felt relief flooding her when his skin turned pink and when he found his laughter and his lungs; and even now, when she heard him giggle with Winters, she brushed up against a miracle.

And Petronus, too. She’d watched him die and then return from the dead.

She heard a clearing of the voice and looked up, startled.

Her father stood at the tent flap. He avoided eye contact with her, averting his eyes. “I know that I’ve earned every bit of your disfavor,” he told her, “but I beg audience with you, Daughter.”

As he stepped into the light, she could see the scars upon his face-wounds nearly healed and yet angrily red. She’d heard what had happened in her brief hours with Rudolfo before he’d left to try to salvage some kind of kin- clave among the others. She furrowed her brows now and tried to find anger for her father; she could not.

He’s had his reckoning. And she knew that someday, because of who she had begged to save her son, she would have hers. “Come in,” she said, “and meet your grandson.”

Winters nodded before Jin Li Tam said a word and brought Jakob back to her. “I will think about what we discussed,” the girl said.

Jin Li Tam smiled. “Do. I know you would be welcome. You would have a home there.”

Winters returned the smile and inclined her head. After she left, Jin Li Tam motioned her father to a chair. “Sit. You can hold Jakob.”

She watched her father wince when she said the name. Good, she thought. She did not think it out of bitterness but because he should understand the price that was paid. Jakob had been Rudolfo’s father’s name-a man her own father had killed using one of the Tam sons as a weapon.

Vlad Li Tam took the baby into his arms. He held the child for a few minutes in silence before he looked up at her. “Your husband told me once that if ever he were a father he would not use his children as pieces in a game.” He took a deep breath. “This was the same day that he vowed to kill me the next time he saw me because of what I had done to his family.”

“You deserve to die for that.” She said it without thinking and in a matter-of-fact tone.

He surprised her by nodding. “I do. But the next time he saw me, he did not kill me. He saved me and what remained of my family. our family.” He looked at her, and his eyes were suddenly hard. “I know you’ve thought yourself a strategic piece in some game of mine, and it is true. I raised you for this, shaped you for this day. And now I know that my father did the same to me. That I was a tower in his game, scripted like your metal men to perform a function. To make you and Rudolfo.” He leaned forward and kissed Jakob’s forehead. “And to make you, too, Jakob.”

She remembered well the note he’d left for her beneath the pillow of her guest bed in the Summer Papal Palace, warning her of war to come and ordering her to bear Rudolfo an heir. But why was he telling her?

Now when their eyes met, she could see that his were full of tears. “I regret every harm I caused another’s child or father or mother,” he said. “The grief of it consumes me now, and when I sleep at night, I hear only poetry and screams-only it’s not my children but someone else’s, and I have been the cutter, weaving a spell in blood and believing it would save the world.”

She felt tears pulling at her own eyes, and it made her angry. Sadness often did. Finally, she gave voice to her question. “Why are you telling me?”

He sighed. “Because I think sometimes you are afraid you will be like me.”

She remembered her exhilaration on the ride with the Wandering Army, remembered what it felt like to dance with the knives and bring down a Blood Scout in her wrath. “I don’t want to be like you,” she said.

And then he smiled and handed Jakob back to her. “You are not like me, Jin Li Tam. And I am proud of that.” He stood, and she saw a strange look pass over his face. “Do you remember where you got your name?”

She nodded. It had been a long time since she’d thought of that. “From the D’Jin of the Younger Gods, swimming in the deepest darks of the haunted oceans.”

He nodded. “I saw one before your sister pulled me from the sea,” he said. “It sang to me.”

Jin Li Tam did not know what to say. So she said nothing and simply stood.

Her father bowed to her. “He is a beautiful boy. He will be formidable and strong.”

She returned the bow but again could find no words. Her father had changed, and her brain spun now to decipher what he’d become.

Because he’s been broken.

And though these past months had worn her, they had not broken her. Seeing what her father had become,