Now Jin Li Tam found herself blushing. She couldn’t find any words, and she was unable to meet the open adoration in the woman’s eyes. She looked instead to Winters, who’d stepped into the room to stand beside her. The anger she’d seen was now tucked away, and Jin Li Tam noted the skill with which Winters concealed it.
Ria went to an empty section of table with three small chairs, motioning for them to sit. Once they had, the children sat, too. “I thought,” the Machtvolk queen said to the children, “that we might sit with you and hear what you are learning.”
The teacher beamed. “I was teaching them about the Great Promise.”
Ria inclined her head. “Please continue.”
The teacher returned the slight bow and walked to her table. Sitting down, she picked up the newly bound book. “Join me, children, in the fourth verse of the sixth chapter of the Last Gospel of Ahm Y’Zir.”
Jin Li Tam remembered that title and glanced to Winters for confirmation.
Now, she listened as the teacher selected a child to read the verse they were to discuss. The little girl stood, looked to Jin Li Tam, her face red, and then she recited from the book. “And at the end of days, a Crimson Empress shall rise from the south and a Child of Promise from the north to reunite a kinship long severed. And their reign shall heal this broken earth and restore the Machtvolk to their rightful home.”
Jin Li Tam watched the room as the child read and saw that both the teacher and Ria closed their eyes for the recitation. When she finished, they opened them. “Excellent, Nandi,” the teacher said. “So who can tell me what is the rightful home of the Machtvolk?”
A boy raised his hand. Jin Li Tam thought he couldn’t be older than eight. When the teacher called upon him, he answered in a loud, clear voice. “Our rightful home is in service to House Y’Zir as hand servants to the Crimson Empress and her betrothed.”
“Yes,” she said. “Very good.”
For the next thirty minutes, the teacher asked questions and various students raised their hands. As they asked and answered questions, she found herself caught up in the elaborate story of their gospel, and it disturbed her. On the one hand, she could see the comfort it would bring to know their station, to hope for a better, healed world and to be connected in some way to that healing through their service. But on the other hand, she saw that they were teaching these things to children. Certainly, adults would also believe it-surely the evangelists she and Rudolfo had spoken with believed with their whole hearts. But those adults would turn quicker to doubt than a child would. What they taught these children, now at such a young age, would stick to their hearts like the snow falling outside. Wizard Kings worthy of worship, kin-healing and magick by the shedding of blood-it would follow them throughout their lives.
This also disturbed her, and she found herself pulled into the Whymer Maze yet again.
At the end of the lesson, the teacher invited Jin Li Tam and Jakob to the front of the class. She presented them with a copy of the gospel they’d read from-bound in cured leather and translated into Landlish from the ancient language of House Y’Zir.
After they bundled into their robes, they trudged back through the snow to Ria’s lodge, where they were met by a warm foyer and yet more servants to help with robes and boots. While the others moved off to the dining room, Jin Li Tam excused herself to feed Jakob. At home, she would have thought nothing of feeding him anywhere she happened to be. But here, with the way these people looked at her and her son, she craved privacy.
She slipped down the hall and opened her door, turning to close it and suddenly stopping when she was caught off guard by the slight breeze that followed her in. “I’ll trust you to turn your back, scout,” she said as she went to the bed and pulled Jakob from his harness.
“Apologies, Lady Tam,” the Gypsy Scout said in a voice muffled with magick. “First Captain Aedric bid me bring word directly to you.”
Jin Li Tam laid her son on the bed and shrugged out of the harness, setting it aside. Then, she checked his diaper and unbuttoned her shirt before raising him to her bared breast. She winced as he took the nipple, feeling the beginnings of his teeth. “What have you learned?”
“We spent today scouting unusual bird migration to the northwest and found something of note. A series of caves outfitted as a messaging station.”
She heard hesitation in his voice, despite the magicks. “What else?”
“There is evidence of messages being intercepted and altered,” the scout said. “And birds are being diverted here somehow.”
She’d known that the birds had become unreliable. She remembered well the forged note she’d received in her sister’s hand just before Jakob’s healing, telling her there was no cure. Setting her up to turn to Ria’s blood magick as her last and best hope.
She closed her eyes against the pull of Jakob’s mouth. “Is there more?”
“More evidence of compulsory worship for those who are not quick to convert. Forced cuttings. We think there may be a fledgling resistance movement at work, as well.”
She nodded. “Very well. Tell Aedric to keep the scouts out and gathering intelligence where they can. I will figure out how to get word to Rudolfo.”
“Aye, Lady.”
She looked over her shoulder in the direction of his voice. “Now, stay put until I’ve finished and I’ll let you out on my way to lunch.”
She turned her attention back to her boy and found herself wondering how it was that he had become so important in this story that she was only now just beginning to grasp. It was an ancient story that stretched back beyond the Age of the Wizard Kings, if today’s lesson was to be believed. And it was a story that her father’s father had embraced to such a degree that he had arranged to sacrifice his first son and most of his family in order to heal kinship with House Y’Zir. He’d engineered within the Named Lands the beginnings of the fall of the Androfrancines and, through her father, both Rudolfo’s reign and her own betrothal to him. He’d arranged for her, through her father, to bear Rudolfo an heir. And had also arranged the transfer of the library, the Order’s holdings, and their own family’s vast wealth into the Forester’s hands.
She wondered if her grandfather bore the coming sacrifice of his family like a great mountain upon his back. Or did he find joy in it? Or both?
She wondered what it meant to believe in something so completely as to make such choices, to love something so wholly as to give everything for it.
Then Jin Li Tam looked to the face of her suckling son and understood what could bring her to that place.
Still, it did not comfort her to know it.
Winters
Outside, wind rattled the shutters and Winters felt sleep pulling at her even as she turned another page in the gospel she read.
She’d read the book innumerable times now, gleaning what she could from the cryptic passages and prophetic promises. She wasn’t sure why she poured herself into it; it seemed the only thing she could do. Somehow, she thought, if she could just understand these new beliefs among her people, she might know how to free them from its hold.
No, she told herself, not new, but old. Some aspects older even than their sojourn in this land.
Still, how long had this resurgence lain in secret, gorging itself on her tribe beneath her and Hanric’s oblivious eyes? At least back to the time of her father, she knew. And had he been aware of it? Had he, like Jin Li Tam’s grandfather, been an active participant in this faith? She could not believe that, but neither could she believe how wrong his dreams had been, how wrong her own dreams had been, in light of what now happened in their world. Some part of her still wept for the home she was so certain would rise, and for the boy now lost to her whom she’d so completely believed would take them there.
