Antiphon

And he was gone again, falling away to land upon a jagged sea of razor-edged glass. “He’s wandering in the aether,” a woman’s voice said. “Awake and casting.”

“Yes,” another said from the eastern end of D’Anjite’s Bridge.

Then a third spoke, and Neb saw the locked well she camped near. The very place he’d found the silver crescent. And this time, he saw the woman who spoke. Her close-cropped hair was blonde, and the cuttings upon her flesh were similar to those upon the woman he watched over.

“We know you see us, Abomination, despite our magicks,” she said as her smile widened. “And we see you as well, there in your glass cave.”

It is the stone. Somehow, the count had escaped him, and he still held his finger to it. Neb yanked back his hand and scowled down at the carving.

What had he just seen? And was it real? Mechoservitors in dark, forgotten places who spoke of dream tamps. The ghost of his dead father warning him of runners in the Wastes-something Neb already knew, in an uncharacteristic prophetic failure. And a Winters who no longer wore the mourning hope of her promised home.

And what had the woman in the Wastes called him? Abomination.

He tucked the book into his pouch alongside the flask, but for the longest time he sat and stared at the carving, suddenly unwilling to touch it again.

Finally, he scooped it up into a bit of cloth and tipped it into his pouch as well.

Then, he settled back against the wall, his thorn rifle across his lap. Beyond his cave, a kin-wolf bayed beneath a rising moon. Behind him, the scarred woman whimpered and cried out in her sleep at whatever darkness rode her dreams.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam sheathed her knives and wiped the sweat from her face and neck. The evenings grew cooler now as the winds picked up, sweeping south from the Dragon’s Spine. With the sky still purple from the setting sun, she felt that breeze now as it kissed her wet skin.

Taking in a great lungful of lavender and roses, she tested herself to see if the evening’s knife dance had settled her.

Yes, she realized, I feel better.

After the audience with Ria and her evangelists, Jin had left Jakob with Rudolfo and stormed away to rage privately for an hour. But it had not been enough. In the end, between breaks spent feeding Jakob, a run and a dance or two with the knives had dulled the anger as she suspected it might. There was a time when she would not have known that about herself, but there was also a time when she wouldn’t have realized that she went to anger first when she became afraid.

She was there in the room with Rudolfo for hours biding her time. How long had she hidden there? How much had she heard? And had she hidden in other rooms, too? Was she here now, watching? She felt another stab of anger.

Jin Li Tam took another breath. Then, she looked to the house. The windows were lit now, beckoning, and she found the one she knew belonged to Rudolfo. No doubt, he sat in his study and took dinner in the midst of reports and messages to digest and respond to.

She set out for the manor and paused near the edge of the Whymer Maze. Faint footfalls reached her ears, and she saw a young woman emerge from it. Winters, she realized, no doubt returning from Hanric’s Rest at the center of the maze, near the Whymer meditation bench.

There is much to meditate upon.

Jin whistled the low, soft note of a Gypsy Scout on alert.

Winters looked up, startled. “Lady Tam,” she said.

Jin stopped. The look upon the girl’s face was consternation and fear. To a degree, it made sense-Ria claimed to be her older sister, thought dead in infancy, and certainly by now Rudolfo had told her about their magicked guest. Still, she had to ask. “Are you okay, Winters?”

The girl shook her head, and for a moment, Jin thought she might burst into tears. “I don’t think I am. I failed my people. And I think I saw Neb.”

Neb? Jin Li Tam looked around. “You think Neb is home?”

Winters took a deep breath. “No, not like that.” She swallowed. “More like a dream. He was in a cave made of glass. There was a woman with him. Only, he didn’t look like himself. His hair’s too long, and he’s too gaunt. He looked at me and said my name, and then he was gone.”

Jin knew the two of them had somehow shared dreams together before he’d entered the Churning Wastes. Until recently, Jin hadn’t put much thought into Marsher mysticism with its glossolalia, prophecies and Homeseeking. But she’d also not believed there was a magick strong enough to bring back the dead or heal the mortally ill. She felt her eyebrows furrow. “It’s been a long time since you’ve shared dreams with him, hasn’t it?”

“Seven or eight months,” Winters agreed. “But this was not a shared dream. It was like a dream, but I was awake.” She looked away and Jin read the discomfort. “A. vision, I think.”

She knew the girl was no stranger to such things and wanted to ask more to get to what part of this made her uncomfortable, but then it struck her. There was a woman with him.

She thought about telling her that she should not concern herself with it or leap to any specific assumption about the woman, but instead, she changed the subject. “And you feel you gave up on your people?”

She watched the discomfort melt into sadness. “I did. I did not have to give up on them. But I did. I came here and hid myself underneath a mountain of books.”

Jin Li Tam chuckled, and it was sardonic. “You’ve not failed them yet, and I don’t think it’s fair to say you’ve given up on them, either.” She watched the girl’s eyebrows knit together. “Maybe you don’t remember, but you had few choices left on that day, and you needed time to absorb that great loss and craft an appropriate response to it. You came to your only kin-clave in the Named Lands and took asylum. This is not failure or abandonment.”

She saw a bit of hope spark there, but it went out too soon. “I can’t even fathom an appropriate response to this.”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “For now. But you will.” She locked eyes with the girl, willing courage and hope into her that she did not herself have to give. “Give it time. Meanwhile”-here she hefted her knife belt, dangling the sheathed blades-“it’s time for you to get back to your knife lessons.”

They’d started practicing together in those early days after Winters had first settled into the Forest life, but they’d stopped for the wedding and the royal family’s tour of the Ninefold Forest. Getting back to the knives-and out of that basement-would be good for the girl.

And, Jin realized, it was good for her to have someone to teach. “So tomorrow morning, then?”

Winters offered a weak smile. “Tomorrow morning.”

Jin Li Tam inclined her head. “Good. And don’t fret about the boy.”

Inclining her own head, Winters turned and moved in the direction of Library Hill. Jin Li Tam watched her go. Then, she set out for the manor.

She had told Winters that in time, the young, deposed Queen would find an appropriate response to what had happened to her last winter. On that day that Winters lost everything, Jin Li Tam had bargained with a devil and saved what mattered most to her.

Like Winters, she could not fathom what her response might be, and now, with the anger burned away, her fear moved toward sadness she could not afford to feel, and she tried to keep it at bay. Focus on what you have gained, she told herself. Life for your son.

She paused at the hidden entrance and the series of narrow passageways that would take her to Jakob’s room and then to her own bathing chambers, and turned again to take in the nightfall.

She tried not to think of her father and the scars that covered him, or of the mass graves she’d never seen upon that distant island, or of the orphaned children now nearby who bore the scar of Y’Zir over their hearts. She tried not to think of them and failed.

For all that I gained, I’ve lost as well. And for that, a response was certainly called for. But what response?

Wiping a stray tear from her cheek, Jin Li Tam begged an answer from the first star that poked its light