Antiphon

metal man and let the frustration show in his voice. “And you released this so-called moon sparrow without first consulting me?” He’d never felt disappointment toward the metal man before now. Still, alongside that disappointment, a suspicion nudged him. Something about the code in the message had brought about this reaction in Isaak. It had to be so. Isaak would not do such a thing of his own volition.

A machine with volition. After two years of. what? He struggled to find the word. Friendship. After two years of friendship with the mechoservitor, Rudolfo was surprised. Regardless, once he’d turned the bird loose with his reply, the metal man had immediately sought audience with his Gypsy King.

“I did. I do not know what came over me. I felt compelled.” Isaak hung his head. “I’m sorry, Lord Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo felt a stab of guilt at the sight of the metal man’s remorse and looked to Charles. “Could the code have compromised his scripting somehow?”

The old man nodded. “A code within the code, I suspect. Something to compel response if the message was received.”

Rudolfo stroked his beard. A message, given by a metal bird to a metal man, that could compel behavior? This was alarming. And equally alarming: Some or all of the mechoservitors who had fled Sanctorum Lux were even now approaching from the east, requesting his aid. He imagined them moving across the Churning Wastes, steam billowing from their exhaust grates as they ran at top speed, amber eyes bobbing like fireflies in the night. “What do they seek?”

He’d asked the question more to himself, though he knew their stated purpose. But Isaak still answered. “They seek sanctuary and safe escort to the northwestern edge of the Ninefold Forest,” he said. But he rattled and hissed when he said it, and Rudolfo glanced quickly toward Charles. The arch-engineer stared, tight-lipped, at his creation, and Rudolfo noted that he would need to ask about that look when he and Charles were next alone.

“And from our western neighbors?” Rudolfo looked to Winters. He’d seen enough of her these last few months that the mud and ash she once wore upon her face was a faded memory. Now, she was a young woman of coltlike awkwardness and uncomfortable silences, pretty but unaware of her prettiness at this intersection between childhood and womanhood. “Your kin-raven prophesies danger against Jakob and claims Machtvolk ambassadors are en route to warn us and offer aid?”

She glanced to Jin Li Tam and Jakob in the corner of the room. “It’s what the bird said. Yes.” She dropped her eyes. “I do not trust it.”

Rudolfo chuckled, but there was no humor it. “I suspect none of us do. Trust is not a commodity we can afford in our present economy.”

Machtvolk ambassadors, renegade mechoservitors and Y’Zirite evangelists in the Ninefold Forest. Rudolfo felt the stabbing ache of a days-old headache revisiting his temples. “What are we doing to prepare?” As he asked, he took up a piece of warm bread and broke it open, finding no satisfaction in the smell of it, and turned to the first captain of his Gypsy Scouts.

Aedric cleared his voice, putting down his wineglass. “I’ve tripled the watch on the manor and stepped up scout recruitment. We’ve been thinned by war, by maintaining the gate, and now this work in the Wastes. Have you considered calling up the local regiments?”

Rudolfo nodded. “I have. and will if necessary.” But he did not wish to if he could avoid it. Twice in as many years, his Wandering Army had surged forth from their forest homes. Fathers, sons, brothers all leaving their families behind to serve their king.

And their queen, he thought. While he’d scoured the sea to find her family, Jin Li Tam had become the second queen in Forester history to raise the Wandering Army and lead them into war. “I would prefer not to call them if it can be avoided. They’ve spent too many months away from home and hearth these two years.”

Rudolfo looked to Lysias and saw the storm brewing on his face. He wants to speak but is choosing not to, he realized.

In the past months, the man had proven invaluable to the Ninefold Forest. Initially, Rudolfo had felt skeptical about the man’s loyalties, having fought against him in the war that followed Windwir’s fall. But the general’s daughter, Lynnae, had served as Jakob’s nursemaid during his illness, and from the time Lysias first sought asylum with the Gypsies, he’d given himself fully to whatever task fell to him. Most recently, he’d organized the Refugee Quarter and had devised a system of employing and housing the sudden influx of residents in the various towns of the Ninefold Forest and had created a constabulary among them. “What are your thoughts on these matters, Lysias?”

Lysias looked around the room. Rudolfo watched the older man make eye contact with Aedric before speaking.

When he looked back to the Gypsy King, his eyes were hard. “I intend no disrespect, Lord Rudolfo, but your world has suddenly changed, and you have not changed quickly enough to keep up with it.”

Rudolfo raised a glass of chilled pear wine and paused midway to his lips. “Explain.”

Lysias glanced around the room and put down his own glass. “The days of riding your forest circuit of houses have passed. Your seventh manor is now your capital, home of the new library and the center of the Named Lands. The days of being overlooked and unnoticed are behind your people. Refugees roll in from neighboring lands in disarray and you do not turn them back. Laborers and students and wayward scholars follow them, hoping to build a better life near this new light you cast-you do not turn them back, either.”

Rudolfo swallowed his mouthful of wine. “We will not turn them back,” he said, feeling his earlier frustration build toward anger. “The Ninefold Forest has ever been a haven for those who’ve sought it.”

Lysias locked eyes with him now. “You could not turn them back even if you wished to, Lord. You have no real control of your borders. Scouts on broad patrol, scattered watch posts poorly manned. These evangelists slip in through the gaps. These metal men”-here he looked to Isaak-“they will come and go as they please as well. As will anyone else who wishes.” He lowered his voice. “You have enemies, Lord, who can place their so-called Blood Scouts any place at any time, and as good as your men are. they are not good enough. More than that, you’ve heard it from Tam himself and that fox Petronus-there’s more trouble on the rise, and I fear it’s looking for us. We’re being hemmed, Rudolfo, with wolves on the prowl beyond our ken.” Lysias reached for the bread and tore off a piece, holding it up. “And already, your resources are stretched like a thimble of butter over a mountain of rye.”

Aedric’s face was red with anger, and he started to stand. “You can’t-”

Rudolfo raised his hand. “It’s fine, Aedric.”

He knew the words were true. Certainly, his Wandering Army was the fiercest group of fighters in all the Named Lands, but these were men with homes and farms and families to tend. They were never intended to maintain borders or operate in a constant climate of vigilance and conflict. He looked at Lysias now with narrowing eyes. “You would not say this if you did not also have a solution.”

The old general nodded. “It is time,” he said, “for the Ninefold Forest to join the rest of the Named Lands.” And Rudolfo knew the words that were coming; he dreaded them and winced as Lysias spoke them. “It is time for you to outfit a standing army and establish a firm and permanent presence both within the forest around your assets and along your borders.”

Rudolfo glanced to Jin Li Tam where she sat. She looked away, but not before he saw agreement in her eyes. She’d suggested the same to him not long after they’d returned from the Council of Kin-Clave, and it had led to the first strong argument in their marriage. Her mouth was tight now.

He looked from her to the child in the built-up pine chair beside her. He, too, wore his green turban of office and his rainbow-colored scarves of rank.

Change, he remembered, is the path life takes. But at what point did that change rob life of its value? A standing army in the Ninefold Forest? A kept and guarded border? It was far beyond the life he’d inherited from his father and his father’s father before him. It smacked of everything they’d disdained about their joyless neighbors, everything they’d vowed they would leave in the Old World when they’d left its ashes and madness behind them.

What are you inheriting, my little late-coming prince?

Rudolfo sighed and finally spoke. “I do not wish it-and I do not accept that it is the only answer.” He paused, stared at the food on his plate that he knew he would not eat. When he looked up again, he glanced first to Aedric.