Renard stopped the vial and tucked it away. “Nearly,” he said. “But there are a handful left, including an old white one that the Waste Witch keeps handy for those of us who run the Wastes.”
Neb had seen sketches in the Great Library, but until now, he’d assumed they were renderings based on skeletal evidence and whatever knowledge the Androfrancines had dug up. Kin-wolves were easily twice the size of a timber wolf-a fierce predator with an uncanny intelligence and predisposition for violence bred into them by the blood magicks of the wizards who made them long ago.
Renard continued. “They are few in number but still the second most dangerous predator here in the Deeper Wastes. They won’t encroach one another’s territory out of respect, and their prey know better.” Opening his pack, he tugged out a thin mat and stretched it over the flat ground, then pulled out two tightly rolled blankets, tossing one to Neb.
Something the man said suddenly registered with him. “If they’re the second most dangerous predator here, what’s the first?”
Renard looked up, his eyes hard as stone. “We are.” He spread his blanket out over his half of the mat and then straightened, spreading out his hands toward the fading landscape. “Certainly there are other threats-the ghosts and monsters from the basement of the world-and the land itself is hostile enough. But as predators go, man-or what he’s become here-still reigns.” He unslung the thorn rifle and squeezed the bulb at its base gently. Neb heard the slightest whisper and snap of a thorn snapping home. He’d not had a close look at this particular wonder of Renard’s but he hoped to, now that the man became more free with his tongue. “Meat for dinner tonight,” Renard said. “You gather wood; I’ll be back shortly with our supper.”
Neb watched as Renard slipped away, moving at a leisurely pace into the jagged line of glass not far from their camp. When he disappeared into it, Neb spread out his own blanket and then cast about to gather the bits of gray scrub he could find. Thirty minutes later, he had a decent pile.
When Renard returned, he carried a bloody carcass by its long, slender tail. The Waste rat-nearly the size of a dog-had been skinned and gutted away from camp. “There’s fresh water a league or so west,” he said as he laid the meat onto a flat stone and drew out his tinderbox. “You may want to bathe and scrub out your clothes in the morning.” Renard took in Neb’s torn and stained uniform and wrinkled his nose. “Or maybe you should bury that. I’ve got spare trousers and a shirt for you that should keep you for a few days.”
Overhead, the stars pulsed to life in a deep purple sky. A blue-green sliver on the horizon promised moonrise, and as Renard set the rat to cooking in the crackling fire, Neb pulled off his boots and stretched out on the hard ground. Propping himself up on his elbow, he watched Renard as he took careful inventory of their shared pack. The man noticed and grinned. “We’ll outfit you at Rufello’s Cave,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow-more likely, the morning after. The glass will slow us down a bit.”
Neb had certainly heard of Rufello, that ancient scientist who’d captured so many of the secrets of the Younger Gods in his Book of Specifications. It was Rufello’s schematics, pieced together from a thousand parchments, that had brought back the mechoservitors. “Rufello’s Cave?”
Renard looked up. “There’s an Androfrancine supply cache there. They were careful that way.”
That made sense to Neb. The Churning Wastes were brutal, and the vast distances that the Order’s expeditions covered, along with the amount of time it took for most digs, made supply chain a challenge. He imagined a network of hidden supplies, tucked away and sealed against the elements and inhabitants of this harsh land.
Now, Renard drew a patch of cotton from his pocket and soaked it in water from the waterskin. He wadded it up and shoved it into a small hole at the base of the bulb on his rifle. “I’ll need to lacquer it tomorrow,” he said.
The smell of cooking meat made Neb’s stomach growl. He’d had nothing but jerky, nuts, and sour dried apple slices over the last four days, and even that had been sparing. And until Renard’s tongue had finally loosened, Neb’s initial protests-and the questions that accompanied them-had fallen on seemingly deaf ears. Now, just as he’d settled into the taciturn silence, his companion had started offering up information quite freely.
Why? He looked to the man and his eyes narrowed. “You’re much more talkative now.”
Renard chuckled. “You’re right. I am.”
Neb rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand. “Why now?”
Renard considered him, and for a moment, Neb saw something in his eyes that chewed at him. “Because now,” he said slowly, “we’re too far out for your friends to find you. or for you to find them.” He paused, poking at the rat with his knife. “Now,” he said, “I’m the only reasonable path left to you, and our work can truly begin.”
The words fell into Neb like a stone in a pond, their meaning rippling out into the corners of his heart. His mouth went suddenly dry. “Our work?”
“Aye,” Renard said. “Work your father pressed upon me when you were born.” He looked up at Neb, and his blue eyes were piercing. “Work he and your mother knew you were set aside for years before you were even conceived.”
He and your mother. Brother Hebda had never mentioned Neb’s mother, and Neb had been too polite to ask. No, he realized, not polite but careful. He’d simply been too afraid that if he asked about her, his father would stop visiting him. It was a rare thing for one of the Order to acknowledge the children born outside their so-called vow of chastity. Rarer still that one of those men would take the time to visit his son in the Franci Orphanage. Neb swallowed at the dryness and cleared his voice. Two questions tugged at him for attention, and he gave way to the one that terrified him the least. “What work is that?” he asked.
“The work of Homeseeking,” he said.
How does he know this? Neb blinked. And how could my parents have known? His head suddenly swum, and the other question found its way to his tongue, though when it fell out his mouth it sounded more like a statement. “You know my mother.”
A cloud washed Renard’s face, and he closed his eyes a bit longer than he should have. When he opened them, his face was clear again. “Yes, lad. I knew her.”
More questions flooded Neb, but there were too many to ask and it left him in silence, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. Certainly, sharing dreams with Winters gave him a seat at the front of Marsher mysticism and prophecy. He knew she believed him to be the Homeseeker. But beyond his own dreams and the belief of the girl he loved, he’d not had any other evidence. Now, a man he barely knew and did not necessarily trust told him that this was a work both his father and his mother had known about before Neb was even born.
It staggered him.
After a while, Renard used his knife to move their dinner away from the fire so it could cool. He looked over at Neb. “She was beautiful and smart,” he finally said. His voice was heavy with memory.
“What happened to her?” Neb asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
But then Renard fell silent. After the meat had cooled, he tore the Waste rat in half and they ate quickly and quietly.
The meat was greasy and carried a strong, sour flavor, but Neb tore into it as if it were a roasted Ninefold Forest hare. He couldn’t remember a better feast despite the silence.
When he finished, Neb crawled into his blanket and counted stars until thoughts of Winters kept stealing him away. He wondered what she was doing now and how she was. The deeper into the Wastes they ran, the less dreams he could remember. He willed himself to dream of her tonight, that he might find her somewhere in that middle place between their dreams-or even share a dream-and tell her how afraid he suddenly was. Until now, he’d believed that chance had brought him here in pursuit of the two metal men with this quandary of a man, Renard. But now, he sensed destiny in it beyond himself and his Marsh Queen.
And he knew my parents. He did not trust the Waste Guide Renard, but he did believe him.
Neb lay awake long after Renard’s breathing became slow and easy and long after the moon reached its zenith in the night sky. He thought about it all and wished for sleep and dreaming.
But when sleep finally took Neb, it gave him no dreams whatsoever, and he awoke again and again at the strangeness of it.
Lysias
Lysias felt out of place without his uniform, and he hoped it didn’t show. The tavern bustled around him with a life of its own as he waited in the shadows.
The note had come by courier rather than bird, delivered by a young lieutenant that Lysias knew had kin with Esarov’s Secessionists. Another family divided by the civil war-something Lysias understood far too well.
It was, after all, family that had brought him to this place.
He watched the room around him, knowing full well that it watched him back. Or at least, someone did. Esarov was crafty and would not arrange a meeting if he could not control it. And following the instructions to the letter, Lysias had come alone. It completely violated every instinct he had as a general-riding out to a strange city for a clandestine meeting with the leader of a revolt that threatened the fabric of a society he had pledged his life to protecting. Meeting in a dark, dockside tavern out of uniform and surrounded, no doubt, by those sympathetic to a cause he was completely convinced would ruin them all.
Yes, as a general, trained in the Named Lands premier Academy, this was all completely against the grain of instinct.
But, Lysias knew, a father’s instincts can trump career in those few, brief seconds between heartbeats. He’d had to come.
He’d taken great care to cover his tracks, confident that Ignatio’s men were out there even now, trying to find their assigned quarry. Erlund’s spymaster trusted no one-it was his basic operating principle-and the marriage of Lysias’s daughter to one of Esarov’s now-deceased cohorts made the general particularly of interest.
I am a compromised liability, he thought with a forced smile.
Still, risks aside, he was here now, waiting for Esarov.
I wish to propose a cessation of hostilities, the coded note had read, but require an intermediary with Erlund. The note had contained instructions for further communication and had closed cryptically: I have information regarding the location and well-being of your daughter.
As much as he wished that his duty to the state now drove him, it was that closing sentence that brought him to this place.
Children, he thought, are the hunter’s snare for a man’s heart.
When the woman approached him with her long legs and confident smile, he raised his hand to dismiss her. She was young-younger than his daughter-and though the occasional mattress tussle was not beyond his interest, Lysias had never felt completely comfortable if a cash transaction was involved. There were plenty of lonely wives or willing servants when the mood struck, though he found that the older he got, the less the mood seemed to strike. Still, this one was attractive enough and didn’t have the used, hollow eyes of someone who’d worked in the business for any amount of time.
But even as he raised his hand, he saw her lips purse and saw her head give the slightest shake. He waited until she approached. “Looking for company?” she asked in a low voice.
He glanced around the room. A few sailors took notice, but he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the tight dress and the curves it accentuated that drew their stares. He nodded. “I am indeed.”