Antiphon

“You mean with Isaak?”

“Yes,” Rudolfo said. “With Isaak.”

Charles sighed. “I am not certain.”

Rudolfo leaned forward, feeling the small table bend beneath his weight. “You made him. Surely you have some speculation? He’s left the library in the care of the others and intends what exactly? And why?”

Charles paled, and Rudolfo was pleased that his tone induced such a response. “He intends to follow the other mechoservitors into the Machtvolk Territories. He is deciphering their dream along with notes hidden in Tertius’s volume on the Marshfolk prophecies.”

The dream. He’d heard reference to it that night in the forest when the four mechoservitors had approached seeking safe passage. He’d heard other references as well. That it was coded into a song-one he actually sang to his infant son, one his own mother had sung to him and his brother when they were very young. “How did he come by this dream?”

He knew the answer already but wanted to hear it from Charles directly. The man made no excuse and no attempt to cover the truth. “I installed it in him after the explosion at the library.”

Rudolfo’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do this without discussion with me?”

Charles raised his eyebrows. “I was not aware that discussion was required, Lord.”

“He is the most dangerous weapon in the world,” Rudolfo said in a low voice that betrayed his anger. And he is my friend, he didn’t say. “I have strong interest in his safety.”

“As do I,” Charles answered.

Rudolfo continued, feeling the interruption in the tingling of his scalp. “Anything that might alter his normal functions is of concern to me. I should have been consulted on this decision. Ultimately, I am responsible for him as the inheritor of the Order’s holdings and the Guardian of Windwir.”

Charles inclined his head. “I would argue that ultimately I am responsible for him as the one who made him. But arguing this point would be fruitless. I failed to consult you; I intended no disrespect by this.”

Rudolfo did not expect his fist to come up and then down upon the table. When it did, they were both surprised at the resounding noise of it. “Damnation,” he shouted. “This is not about respect. He carries the Seven Cacophonic Deaths of Xhum Y’Zir within him, and now this dream that has worked its way into your mechanicals at Sanctorum Lux has worked its way into him.” He felt the anger in his scalp again and forced himself to breathe in and out before continuing. “The others exhibited strange behavior as a result of this dream. Now he is, too. That library has been his home for nearly two years, and the work there has been his very soul.”

“People,” Charles said slowly, “often change direction.”

Rudolfo opened his mouth to say Isaak was a machine, that he wasn’t a person, but even as he started to speak, he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen Isaak as a person from the very first day he met the sobbing metal man. He’d dressed him in robes. He’d given him a name. He’d welcomed him into his family.

He is my friend.

He remembered the anxious days waiting for Charles to finally declare him functional again. He recalled vividly the sense of overwhelming relief when he’d learned the metal man had somehow absorbed the worst of the bomb blast, shielding his wife and son from an explosion that would have surely killed and buried them without the metal man’s intervention.

Rudolfo sighed and forced himself to make eye contact with the old man. In those brown eyes, he saw the same two things that hid behind his anger: fear and love.

Charles stared back and let the silence hang heavy for a full minute before speaking. “I apologize for not discussing this with you, Lord Rudolfo. He asked for this dream, and under the circumstances, I felt it was my duty to grant his request and protect his privacy. I do not know what this dream is up to, but my surest path to discovery is to monitor him-and the others-and learn what I can.”

Rudolfo studied the man, trying to keep hold of his anger, but already he felt it leaking away from him. He sighed, and it was loud in the tent. “You intend to go with him, then?”

Charles nodded. “I do,” he said. “Though I hope we will be back soon. I’m too old to be chasing after metal dreams.”

Rudolfo sighed again. “Very well.” He looked up and whistled. The scout guarding his tent poked his head in. “Send Isaak in.”

When the metal man walked in, Rudolfo noticed the change in him immediately. He carried himself differently, and when he spoke, his voice was also different-more sure and less accommodating. “Lord Rudolfo,” he said as he inclined his metal head.

It is confidence. Rudolfo returned the slight nod. “Isaak.”

“I fear,” his metal friend said, “that I must take my leave of you. I am grateful for your hospitality and have been honored to serve you and your family.”

Rudolfo thought there would be more conversation. That perhaps they would discuss this dream and what it meant and where exactly he went and how exactly he would help his cousins in their response to it. He thought they’d talk and find some kind of compromise. But in the end, he simply looked into Isaak’s amber eyes. “You know what you guard, Isaak,” Rudolfo said. “Do what you will-but guard yourself well, my friend.”

He thought that Isaak would hang his head or that he’d see some spark of grief in the guttering light of those jeweled eyes. But Isaak returned his gaze levelly. “I will always be vigilant, Lord Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Very well, then,” he said.

He offered no word of dismissal. He simply went back to the papers on his desk until the two left his tent. After they had gone, Rudolfo sighed again and called for the captain of the watch.

“Magick a half-squad,” he told the officer. “Follow them. Quietly.”

And only after he was alone again, Rudolfo held his head in his hands and wondered at how quickly such fierce anger could burn itself into sorrow and despair.

Neb

Neb swam in pain and tried to find some part of himself that he could cling to as the fire laced his body and his mind lurched from scene to scene.

“Where are they, Abomination?” the woman asked as she traced another cut into his skin with her salted knife. She leaned over him, touching her own small, dark carving to his bloody skin.

He was in a room now, and he recognized it as the one he’d seen Winters undressing in. Now, he stood behind her as she wrote at a small desk, her hand moving across the pages. The knife moved over his skin, and she spun away.

Neb screamed.

A new face swam into his view-one he’d not seen for some time, and it reminded him of the words his dead father had told him what seemed so long ago, before the knives, before the crooning voice and the cold, black stone kin-raven pressed against his skin. It was Petronus.

Petronus rides to you.

“Neb?” The old Pope looked even older now. He’d lost weight, and now he wore trousers and a shirt that was far too big for him. A vicious pink scar ran along his throat, and his hair and beard had become a tangled, unruly mess. “Neb, can you hear me?”

He felt the woman near him now, too, and he quickly averted his eyes, careful not to take in any of the landscape. “Don’t let them find you, Father,” he said.

And then, the knife was to its work again and he was back to screaming as Petronus also spun away.

“Do not show them what they want to see, son,” his father, Brother Hebda said. Suddenly, they were in the park near the Whymer orphanage where he had spent his childhood, there in the shadow of the Great Library and the Androfrancine Order. A summer breeze bent the birch branches.

Now, the woman was there with them, too. Only now she did not wear the dark silks or the close-cropped gray hair. Instead, she wore a simple black dress that hugged her curves in a way that made Neb suddenly uncomfortable. Her hair, now long and the color of ash, spilled down around her shoulders. “He will show us,” she said, “eventually.” When she smiled, she showed her teeth. She leaned in toward Neb there on the bench they