Antiphon

their eyes in shame and others gazed upon her in pride.

They shuffled their way out of the crowd, and when they were safely into the forest beyond the gathering, Winters slumped against her and nearly fell. The girl was of small frame, but the dead weight of her staggered Jin, and she held her for a moment.

Then, she felt a hand upon her shoulder and looked up into the face of a weeping young Machtvolk soldier. She’d seen this one before, guarding the door that led into the abandoned throne room and the caves that wound their way down to the Book of Dreaming Kings.

The young man scooped the girl into his arms, and Jin heard the sorrow catch in his throat as Winters cried out at his touch. “I will bear you, my queen,” the young man said in a voice that stumbled with emotion.

Jin inclined her head. “Thank you.”

He returned the gesture and then set out down the wooden boardwalk in the direction of Ria’s lodge.

Jin paused before turning to follow him. The night was filled now with song instead of screaming, and she looked back in the direction of the singing.

This must be ended.

She did not know now how that could happen exactly. It was a vastly larger proposition than she had conceived when she’d first seen the beginnings of this resurgence last year. And she’d had no suspicion that anything could be darker and more frightening than the pillar of smoke and fire on the day that Windwir fell. But that pyre, it seemed, had only been the beginning of a darkness she could not comprehend and could not bear to be a part of.

The last thing she noticed, gleaming wetly in the scattered moonlight that penetrated the evergreen canopy, was the footprints in blood leading backward along the way that they had taken.

“We walk a path of blood,” Jin Li Tam whispered, and as she said it, a shudder ran its course along her body, like the kiss of a silver blade over a cold and salted wound.

Chapter 27

Neb

An unsettling calm flooded him, and Neb looked down to where he stood upon the silver pond before looking back up to the waiting mechoservitors.

He could feel their song now vibrating up through his feet, and he could hear the whispering of their processing scrolls in the aether.

And from where he stood, he could sense a myriad other vibrations in the strange waters.

You stand upon the veins of the world. They are yours to command now, something whispered within him. And the aether is yours to walk, but you will need assistance there.

He cocked his head. “Father?”

I am with you, Son, but only for a short while. I cannot follow where you must go. A strong sense of urgency flooded him, and he felt the pull of his inner eye eastward across the aether. But whatever lay there was out of reach.

Neb walked to the waiting mechoservitors, and as he did, they both knelt. He took his robe from them and clothed himself. One reached within a pouch to withdraw a small object and hold it out to him in a closed metal fist. “I’ve held this for you, Lord Whym,” the mechoservitor said, its voice reedy.

When the small black bird fell into the palm of his hand, the world shifted and Neb fought the vertigo that seized him. His mind flashed back to his last encounter with it, lying naked and staked in the Churning Wastes while the Blood Guard took their knives to him and pressed a similar bit of carved stone into his skin. Now he saw the meaning of it.

The stone extends my sight within the aether. They’d used it to find the location of the antiphon.

Yes. Once more, the whispering of his father’s ghost.

Neb felt the slightest tingle beneath his scalp, soft fingers on his brain, pulling at him, and he gave himself to it. This is how you look, the whisper continued. And Neb understood, bending the lens of the dreamstone east.

He found Petronus first. The old man stood at the foot of a tall door, surrounded by a ragged group of Gypsy Scouts, Gray Guard and sailors looking out of place. The song poured out from the old man.

No, he realized, it poured out from the pouch the old man held.

Neb smiled. “You hold the dream, Father Petronus.”

Petronus jerked alert and looked around, his eyes wide.

“Do not be afraid, Father. It’s only me.”

His voice was incredulous. “Neb?”

There was a low rumbling, and Neb saw that the gate was slowly swinging open. And though he could not see behind the gate with his eyes, the aether showed him. A single metal man dressed in Androfrancine robes worked the large wheel that opened the way to them. Beyond him, others took down the scaffolding and camouflage to reveal a large metal vessel that was tethered to the ground. Overhead, the moon filled the small circle of sky visible from the bottom of the hollow mountain.

Amber eyes turned upon him. “The antiphon is ready for you, Nebios Homeseeker, son of Whym.”

But before he could speak, those ghostly fingers were in his mind again, pulling him away, and he looked south to see a storm of wind that raced across the shattered plains, raising clouds of dust. Time, his father’s ghost told him, is of the essence.

“But how will I-?”

The ghost anticipated him. You will swim the veins. I will show you. Already, the fingers were back, and Neb felt as if parts of his mind long left dark were suddenly lit, though poorly. He saw the veins and the pools they linked to, a world shot through with silver, and he knew that it was made for him. He held dominion over every aspect of it, and it served him with gladness. The vast network of pools were his for traveling if he bent them to his will.

He was before Petronus again as the man and the others moved quickly into the large cavern behind the door. “I will be to you soon,” he said, “but they will be to you sooner. You must hold the gate against them.”

Petronus opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, a scream rose from the west so loud that it blotted out the song. The old man’s eyes went wide and Neb faltered. He lost hold of the aether and found himself suddenly pulled back to the cave and the mechoservitors who still knelt before him.

The scream was still with him even in that place, and the sound of it raised the hair on his arms. There was familiarity in the shrill cry, and the power of it drowned out all other sound within the aether.

He released the stone and fell to his knees to bury his face in his hands and somehow rub the pain from his skull.

You are new to the dreamstone, the whisper told him, but with time you will learn how to control it.

He couldn’t find his voice. Instead, Neb poured focus into his own thought. Who is it?

It is irrelevant; time is of the essence. The antiphon awaits.

But the familiarity of the voice chewed him, and with shaking fingers, he reached out again to take up the carved kin-raven.

Her scream flooded him when his fingers closed around the stone. Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he forced himself to steer into the scream and follow it west across the aether. What he saw broke him, and his own cry joined hers.

He knew her instantly, stretched out upon the table, and the shock of seeing her there blinded him momentarily to the massive crowd that watched. He saw the lines of words upon her bleeding skin, saw the strong, sure hand that wielded the silver knife, and it summoned a memory of pain and despair. He felt the bite of the hard ground in wounds now healed, felt the burn of salted blades upon the softest of his skin, and heard the questions