Antiphon

incessantly asked as the kin-raven was pressed to each wound.

Neb blinked. “Winters,” he whispered.

Their eyes met for the briefest moment before her back arched and she screamed again. The man who stood over her wore a red robe and set to his work with a quiet smile. Now Neb took in their surroundings and saw the gathering. He saw the platform, saw Jin Li Tam as she whispered with a woman he did not know before handing a baby-Lord Jakob, he realized-over to her. Another woman, one who could be an older twin to Winters, stood by watching the man at his knife work.

Abomination.

It was a metal voice that filled his mind, overpowering even the screams.

Neb looked around and singled out a lone robed figure on a hillside. “Who are you?”

I am one who watches. Your woman is beneath the knife. Come and save her, I bid you. There was a tone of amusement in the voice. Surely your baptism has revealed your heritage. Surely you have now attained dominion over the ancient ways.

Come and save her, Abomination.

Neb saw the distant flash of jeweled eyes from beneath the cowl.

Do not listen, the ghost of his father whispered.

But Neb did not know how to do that. The sound of the screams tore at him from the inside, wrenching a sob from him even as he pulled back from the aether.

“Time is of the essence,” he told the metal men. “I must leave you now. Join Rudolfo in his work. He will hide you among the others.”

He turned to the bargaining pool and stepped out onto it, willing its silver water to bear his weight. He clutched the kin-raven in his fist and felt the veins of the world shifting and whispering beneath his feet.

He looked first east to the pool buried deep beneath the antiphon, then looked west to find the pool closest to Winters.

All will be lost, the voice inside told him, if you do not reach the antiphon.

He heard the truth in it, though he also knew from the canticle that played among his abacus, his metal servants, that only part of the antiphon was truly complete. Silence to the south told him that his abacus had failed there, that Frederico’s kin had yet to attain the staff. And in the midst of the madness to his west, a dream could not be found.

He felt the weight of it, but a greater weight settled upon him, and it surprised him after so long away from the girl.

“No,” Neb said, “all will be lost if I lose her.”

Then, he bent the fingers of his mind west and pulled at the vein that would carry him there. Light swallowed him as he descended suddenly into the pool and rushed at him, roaring, as he shot west, now blue-green lightning in a twisting stream of silver.

When he stood at last upon the pool he’d called for, he stretched out a hand over it.

“Clothe me,” Nebios Whym cried out, though he was uncertain why he did so.

The blood of the earth heard him and gave itself to him, rising from the pool to enfold him in its embrace. It crept over him, into his ears and nostrils and mouth, and he pulled it in to himself with a reflex he did not know he had.

He felt strength flooding his body even as the makers and workers within that fluid shored him up and fit his hands for war. He felt his mind clearing, felt the gentle rhythm of his breathing as it steadied.

He stared down at his hands and flexed them. The sheath that encompassed them flexed as well, fluctuating between a bright white that blinded and a silver so pure that its intensity reflected his surroundings and bent light around him.

He took the dreamstone from his pocket now, letting his fingers brush its dark surface. Winters’s screams still flooded the aether, and he winced as he turned in the direction they came from.

Two leagues hence he knew a ladder and hatch awaited him. Beyond that, the woman he loved and must soon leave lay writhing beneath knives his own body remembered too well.

“I am coming,” he whispered to her where she lay stretched upon the table.

He ignored the metal laughter that tickled in the back of his brain and, instead, gave himself over to the surge of strength within his legs, the sudden sureness of his feet in dark places, the sweeping song that filled him up to overflowing and threatened to burst his heart.

Vlad Li Tam

A wall of water struck him and then lifted Vlad Li Tam up, bringing him down hard, and he moved into a breaststroke in the direction of Behemoth. The sea was hot enough to burn him, and his nose stung from the briny steam that lifted from it.

What in hells is it?

It thrashed the waters, and as a wave lifted him up, Vlad saw that the beast-something like a snake-had turned in their direction, its maw grinding open. Ahead, Mal Li Tam swam for the open mouth, and Vlad tried to recall what Obadiah had told him about Behemoth.

He will take you into the basements of the ladder.

His first grandson spilled over into the gaping mouth and vanished.

Vlad felt the strain in his chest as he swam for it. He did not know what lay in the basements of the ladder, but he knew that the dream required it and that the d’jin had brought him to the dream and to this place. He swam and felt his muscles straining.

When the next wave raised him up, he was nearly upon it. And then when it dropped him, he found himself tumbling into a metal mouth lined with algae and sea moss. He caught at it with his hands to slow his fall, but the water pushed him deeper in, and the slick sides of the inner mouth afforded him no grip. Vlad felt himself tumbling and then felt his fall slowing as the beast leveled out.

At one point, he thought he brushed up against a soft, yielding form that flinched at his touch, but then he fell away from it and found himself suddenly caught by a pocket of water. His fingers were still curled tightly around the handle of his knife, and when his feet pushed against the soft, slippery floor, he kicked against it gently and let that kick carry him to a surface that was not far out of reach. Even under the hot water, he could hear the loud grind and clank of Behemoth’s machinery, and when he found the warm, brine-thick air, he drew it in quietly.

There was a faint glow to the algae that cast eerie light upon the large chamber he found himself in. Several spans away, he saw his grandson crawling onto a metal platform as a new sound joined the dull roar that enveloped them-a high-pitched whine.

The water level started dropping.

Vlad took stock quickly. He had his knife and he had the advantage of the scout magicks for at least another handful of hours. But his grandson had years, and more than that, he seemed to have some sense of what he was here to do. Even now, the young man was walking along the far metal wall, and Vlad watched him stop to work the wheel of a large hatch. When it swung open, red light poured out from it, and Vlad watched as Mal Li Tam disappeared into it, pulling the hatch closed behind him.

He made his way to the platform and climbed onto it, walking to the hatch. He could feel his years now in his muscles and joints as they protested with each step, and he forced his breath in and out slowly as he lay his ear to the warm metal door. Beyond it, he heard nothing but the sounds of massive gears and the shifting plates of the segmented metal snake.

As a Tam, he’d had special dispensation from the Pope and had seen many of the mechanical wonders of the Old World and the older world that lay beneath the ruins of it, but he’d seen nothing like this. He’d thought his iron armada or their mechanical men to be a great wonder, but this Behemoth was like nothing he’d imagined, and he suspected that this was merely the anteroom.

He counted to a hundred before he put his hands upon the wheel and turned it slowly. Then, cautiously, he pulled open the hatch enough to look inside. A long corridor stretched out, and it moved and twisted even as the beast did. Its walls were lined with doors, illuminated dimly by red jewels set into the ceiling. At the far end, a door stood open where Mal must’ve gone, and Vlad quickly slipped into the hallway and pulled the hatch closed behind him.