Antiphon

to know what would be within it. Copies of their so-called gospels-perhaps even this newest by Ahm Y’Zir, the one that spoke of his family as a part of the Crimson Empress’s coming salvation. And there would be a set of silver knives wrapped in black velvet. Meditation candles made from wax and fat and blood, certainly, and vestal robes for whichever of his people served as the priest for this secluded shrine.

Shaking, he sat down on a bench and regarded the altar. He felt Philemus’s hand on his shoulder and forced himself to decipher the pressing fingers.

This, Philemus said with his hands, is much worse than we expected.

“Yes,” Rudolfo said in a quiet voice.

Friends now become enemies who sought to bring down his household. An enemy posing as his friend to the northwest, breaching his borders at will and sending their river of tripe into his lands by way of their evangelists. Beyond all of that, a potential enemy abroad-possibly dressed up as this Crimson Empress-and now this.

Evidence of Y’Zirite activity indeed, he thought, but stretching back decades in his Ninefold Forest. He reached up a tentative hand, finding Philemus’s shoulder. I want this site watched night and day. I want a list of every man, woman and child who visits this shrine, and I want to know where they are from. But even as he issued the orders, he knew that it was just one shrine. How many others could be hidden away from the more populated corners of the forest?

Philemus’s response was not quick. There was hesitation in the fingers when they finally moved again. Aye, General.

He dropped his hand back into his lap. Then slowly, he stood and turned his back upon the altar. He made his way out of the simple stone building and waited for the others to remove all traces of their passing in this place. Already, his mind spun strategy after strategy, trying to find some way-any way-to deal effectively with this latest discovery.

I am beset without and within, Rudolfo realized. And there may truly be no victory at the end of this. It bore all the markings of a carefully laid path, set into place possibly before he’d even been born. “Philemus?”

He felt the wind on his cheek. “Yes, Lord?”

“I will not be riding for the Seventh Forest Manor after all,” Rudolfo said. “I will stay north with the army. But I want you ride south and personally command a careful but quiet search of the Ninefold Forest for more of these shrines. We need to know where they are and who is involved.”

He felt the hand upon his shoulder again. You are asking me to use the scouts for intelligence gathering among our own people? With resources already stretched?

And they were stretched. He could only hope that Lysias’s recruiting strategies would help. But that was not the larger concern in his second captain’s mind. Using magicked scouts to follow his own people was a path no Gypsy King before him had taken. “I am not asking you,” Rudolfo said in a measured voice. “I am ordering you to.”

“Aye, General,” Philemus said, and Rudolfo heard the discomfort in his voice.

As they set out for camp, Rudolfo slowed his pace and hung back. With each booted foot upon the snow, he tried to find some kind of hope he could cling to that his position was not as untenable as it appeared.

But deep in his heart, Rudolfo knew the truth. And whatever part of his father that still existed within him felt despair and shame at what he knew must certainly be coming.

Petronus

A hot wind rose from the east and pressed down upon them as they made their way across a sea of razor- edged glass intersected by a road just wide enough for two to ride abreast. Petronus rode with his head low, a straw hat held tightly in place with one hand. To his right, Grymlis leaned forward in his saddle. Behind them, their ragged company of scouts and Gray Guard stretched out across the desert.

There was salt on the air and the dead dust of cities. When he was younger, Petronus had had a certain romance about this place. He’d dug in the woods behind his parents’ house as a boy, pretending he was an Androfrancine pulling fragments of the light out of the desolation. That romanticism led eventually to belief in their dream and his decision to join the Order.

Now, though, he saw only stark reminders of humanity’s capacity for apocalypse.

Petronus.

He looked around, suddenly aware of a tingling in his scalp and a tickling in his ears.

“Petronus?”

He looked up from his desk and the thick parchment reports that awaited his attention. “Yes?” He blinked, recognizing the man who sat across from him. “You’re Hebda.”

The man nodded, his face looking frantic despite the relative calm of the afternoon. “Listen to me,” he said. “Neb has somehow overpowered the dream tamps.”

“Dream tamps?” He’d heard these words, but what did they mean?

“Not just one,” Hebda said, his voice rising. “All of them.”

Petronus shook his head. Another waking dream. He’d just been in the Wastes. He still had the smell of dust and salt in his nose. “What does that mean?”

He looked somber. “It means we can’t contain the dream. It means they can follow it to the mechoservitors.” He leaned forward. “Listen.”

Petronus listened, tilting his head. Far away, on the wind, he heard a harp. “I know that song.”

“Yes,” Hebda said. “ ‘A Canticle for the Fallen Moon,’ in E minor, by the Last Weeping Czar Frederico.” He pointed to a report on the desk, and Petronus looked down at it. “We strongly suspect that Frederico did not actually compose the piece. We believe he heard it and learned to play it.”

Petronus tried to recall the details of that particular bit of Old World lore. These stories were ancient when the Churning Wastes were a densely populated continent under the watchful eye of the seven Wizard Kings and their father. He certainly remembered the myth of Frederico and Amal Y’Zir, how their tragic love brought about the Year of the Falling Moon. He looked to the report and scanned the first page. Something about an artifact found hidden away and the song it played, over and over again. He turned the page and scanned the next. “It somehow affected the mechoservitors at Sanctorum Lux?”

“Yes,” Hebda said. “Neb, too. His exposure to the Cacophonic Deaths greatly enhanced his sensitivity to it. You are sensitive as well, because of your own exposure to blood magicks, though until now the tamps have kept you insulated.”

Petronus thought about this. “But these tamps do not work with Neb?”

“They did at first.” Hebda looked around the office, as if expecting to see someone. Then, he lowered his voice. “Neb is special; he had latent sensitivity by nature of who he is and the explosion at Windwir. But he’s found something out there. Something similar, I think, to what I’m using now to speak to you.”

Special. Latent sensitivity by nature of who he is. Petronus took the words, examined them, filed them away. Instead, he forced himself to think of that massive black rock surrounded by an underground sea of quicksilver. Seen from above, at least in his imagination, it looked like a dark and staring eye.

Petronus looked up and met eyes with Hebda. “How many of you survived Windwir?”

Hebda looked around again. “It would be imprudent to discuss that under these circumstances.”

Petronus leaned forward, placing both hands flat upon his desk. “What is the operating mission and authority of the Office for the Preservation of Light?”

“Our authority is Papal by Holy Unction. Our mission is secret.”

“I am the Pope,” Petronus said, his voice rising.

“No,” Hebda answered. “You were the Pope.” Then he stood. “This is fruitless, Petronus. We do not have any more time for this.” He pointed to a map that suddenly, conveniently lay open, covering half the desk. “His last transmission point was here.” He pointed to a point on the map, and Petronus quickly memorized the surrounding area. “If they capture him, they will use him to find the mechoservitors. He has great reach with whatever it is he’s found. And if they find the mechoservitors, the light will be utterly lost to us.”

Already, he could smell the salt and dust choking out the scent of lavender and paper. But he had to ask at