Jin Li Tam recovered her knife and approached the stump. There, huddled in the hollow, a tiny bird shivered and chirped. It sparked and popped as it moved, the flashes illuminating its delicate, silver form.
The chirps slowed slightly, and she suddenly realized they were much more than the sound of fright and panic. The numbers were clear despite the speed with which they streamed from the tiny beak.
She knelt and stretched a hand into the hollow but did not take hold of the small mechanical bird. Instead, she flattened her hand in the way her father had shown her when she was a little girl standing with him at the open cage of his golden bird, which had been at least twice-maybe three times-larger than this one.
“Where have you come from, little sparrow?” she asked it, forcing calm into her voice. “And where are you going?”
The numbers ceased, but the beak remained open. A metallic voice leaked out. “Mechoservitor Number Three, Seventh Forest Manor, Ninefold Forest Houses,” it said. “Message follows.”
It sparked again.
Jin Li Tam withdrew her hand and sat back. Mechoservitor Number Three? She knew that title: It was Isaak’s designation before Rudolfo had named him there in the Desolation of Windwir, where they had all first met nearly two years ago.
The numbers started up once more, and she regarded the small and huddled form. Again, she stretched her hand out. “I am Jin Li Tam,” she said, “queen of the Ninefold Forest. I can take you to Isaak”-she corrected herself-“Mechoservitor Number Three.”
But even as she said it, she wondered if the tiny mechanical could possibly understand her. Her father’s bird-now caged in Isaak’s office in the basement of the Great Library-had understood basic commands but did not have even a fraction of the range that a larger mechanical like Isaak had when it came to memory, speech and analytical function.
Still, her musing was cut short when the chirping abruptly ceased and the bird shuddered one last time. A final pop and spark, and it lay still within the hollow. One tiny jeweled eye went dark.
Biting her lower lip, Jin Li Tam stretched out her fingers and carefully pulled the delicate bird from its hiding place. Its tiny feathers were of a silver so intense that it threw back the reflection of her eye as she studied it and wondered if it could be fixed.
Isaak had repaired her father’s bird. Charles, the man who had built Isaak and the others, surely had similar skills. He was the last of the Androfrancines in the Ninefold Forest, the rest of the remnant having followed Petronus east into the old Pope’s exile in the Churning Waste.
They would know what do, she told herself.
Cradling the silver bird in her hands, Jin Li Tam cut short her morning run and let this new mystery wash away her rage and shame for the moment. As she turned toward home, she wondered what word this tiny messenger carried to Isaak, and why.
Whatever it carried, the kin-raven had brought it down just short of its destination, and she knew of a certainty that there was intent behind that hunting. That the dark bird of prey had sped west and north did not surprise her at all.
As the sun rose behind her, the tiny bird in her cupped hands took on the mottled shading of a red morning sky as light pierced the forest canopy, and Jin Li Tam felt cold fingers moving over her skin.
It was the color of blood.
It was the color of her dreams, as well.
Chapter 2
Petronus
Petronus awoke, shivering in sheets soaked from his own sweat. He kicked them away and sat up, his hand moving instinctively to the scar that burned at his throat.
Eyes closed, he gulped in the warm night air and listened to the kin-wolves howling in the distant Wastes. His hand moved along the rough skin of his neck, then moved to the scar over his heart that burned even hotter. Forcing his eyes open, he reached for the cup of tepid water on his nightstand and drained it with one long gulp.
Outside, the Gypsy Watch on the Keeper’s Wall whistled the last
The dreams were harder now, more urgent in their demand to be heard.
Walking to his cabin’s door, he cracked it open and looked out on the small compound he and the other Androfrancines shared, huddled against the Keeper’s Gate where Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts could watch over them. Of course, the only true threat against them lay within the Named Lands, on the other side of the locked and guarded gate that barred entrance to the Churning Wastes. But still, what remained of the Gray Guard took their turn at the watch, and a makeshift wall of tall pine logs stood nearly finished around the perimeter of the Androfrancine camp.
Petronus moved out into the predawn morning. Cool air from west of the Keeper’s Wall stirred his wet, tangled hair, which he pushed out of his eyes as he moved forward, barefoot.
“Chai’s nearly ready,” Grymlis said in a low voice when Petronus approached his watch fire.
Petronus chuckled. “You’re expecting me now.”
Grymlis shrugged. “You come each morning at the last whistle. How were they this time?”
Petronus moved to a round stone near the fire and sat, noticing the two mugs set out within reach of the boiling kettle.
How were they? He closed his eyes and let the memory of that light wash over him. He winced at it, his hand moving again to his breast as if it were enough to quell the heat that rose from his scars. Then, the roar of cacophony-the voice of many waters-and the terror it raised within him as he clawed his way shrieking for wakefulness. He swallowed and opened his eyes, forcing them to meet Grymlis’s across the fire. “About the same,” he said.
“I wonder what your Franci dream mappers would say about these?”
Petronus wondered the same. He had at least two dozen volumes scattered around his small cabin, books he’d asked Isaak to send with the regular supply wagons. But dream interpretation relied on knowing enough of what was dreamt to identify the images and archetypes within it. Still, he parroted what he did know. “They’d say it was brought about by the trauma of the event, that it was a deeply planted anxiety response that will work its way out in time as my body and mind gradually accept what happened to me.”
Grymlis chuckled. “And what do you say?”
His eyes went to the edge of the watch fire’s light. “I’d say it was most likely a side effect of whatever blood magick they used to bring me back.”
It’s what he told himself. Because in truth, he felt no trauma from the act. The memory of it unfolded for him upon request-her hand moving slowly up, the cold ache of the blade as it opened him, the added layer of cold when the winter air touched his open wound. He could smell the blood, could hear the heavy indrawn breath of the surprised room, the slow wail of Rudolfo’s son Jakob, and could feel his need for reckoning pulsing out onto the sawdust floor with his blood after his legs gave out and he fell.
Then, there was a consuming light and then nothing and, just beyond, a choking, gasping return.
But no trauma. A miracle, to be sure, and certainly not a comfortable one. But apart from the discomfort-and the dreams-his life felt normal enough.
Still, Petronus had not expected his life to go in such a direction.
A new voice joined them, and Petronus jumped. “You would not be far from the truth,” it said. “Exposure to
