As he whistled his horse to a gallop, Rudolfo wondered what path he would take. His own words came back to haunt him: I am uncertain. It was a strange sensation, not knowing the best path to take.
He felt the sun on his face and savored the wind that pulled at his silk clothing and his scarf of rank. Silent for a time, Jakob gurgled and laughed again.
When Rudolfo placed his hand over his child’s chest he felt strength there. His fingers moved, and he tapped a message there. Whatever I do, I do for your future.
He could not bring himself to laughter now with the gravity of that thought. Instead, he kept his hand there and urged his stallion faster, finding delight in the voice of his son and purpose in the heart that beat lightly beneath the palm of his hand.
“My best and truest compass,” Rudolfo said in a quiet voice.
Then, he turned his horse toward the line of old-growth forest and raced homeward to his waiting work.
Neb
Holding his thorn rifle loosely, Neb lay still and studied the dust cloud that moved across the shattered landscape of the Churning Wastes. The afternoon sun baked the ground beneath him, and from his vantage point in the hills, he watched heat waves rising from the sand and rock floor of the valley below. There, against the backdrop of that shimmer, a figure ran under cover of magicks.
This was the third time they’d encountered magicked runners in the Deep Wastes in as many weeks.
Shielding his eyes, he chewed the black root and watched. Using fixed patches of scrub or outcroppings of rock to mark distance, counting silently beneath his breath, Neb ciphered out the runner’s speed as he had with the others. He moved too fast for the scout magicks Neb had trained under during his short time with the Gypsies. Faster even than the black root would allow.
Neb had a theory but didn’t want it to be true.
If his theory was correct, the scout below would not only be fast-he would be strong, too. Stronger than four men. And he would be dead in three days’ time, once the blood magicks burned their way through his organs.
Neb shuddered. A sudden memory of Rudolfo’s Firstborn Feast gripped him-the sudden clamor of third alarm as the doors burst inward, the invisible wall of iron that pushed through the Gypsy Scouts as if they were made of paper, assassinating Hanric and Ansylus. It had been a dark night of violence throughout the Named Lands.
Blood magicks. Forbidden by kin-clave in the New World and the product of older ways-the way of the Wizard Kings with their cuttings and bloodlettings and bargains made in the Beneath Places.
He glanced to his right where Renard lay, also scanning the landscape below. The Waste Guide wore the tattered robe of an Androfrancine and the sturdy boots of a Delta scout. He lay with a spyglass to his eye, his own thorn rifle within easy reach. Renard’s mouth was a grim line.
“Three now,” Neb said in a whisper.
Renard’s eyes narrowed as he pulled back from the glass. “More are coming, I suspect.”
But from where? And more importantly, why?
After Renard’s leg had healed from his brutal encounter with the mechoservitor at D’Anjite’s Bridge, they’d spent months in the deeper Wastes. By day, Neb learned not only how to survive, but how to thrive in the harshness of the blasted lands. He’d learned how to trap, how to hunt, and how to find the scant pockets of life that sprang up hidden in the Wastes. Renard had shown him the secret gun grove nestled in an arroyo at the base of the Dragon’s Spine and had taught him how to harvest both the rifles and their thorn pods from the tangled thicket they grew in. Then, he’d taught him how to use them.
At night, Neb held the silver crescent to his ear and listened to the strains of the song that trickled out from it, trying to find his way into the dream he knew lay beneath that haunting music. Even now, he heard it faintly, though the crescent was wrapped tightly in thick wool and buried in his pack. He’d deciphered bits of the code within the song-series of numbers without meaning to him-but so far, he’d not been able to interpret what response the canticle required.
It chewed him, not knowing.
But somewhere out here, he knew there were metal servants who did know the response. Yet in months of searching, there had been no sign of the metal men themselves, only evidence of where they had been. Carefully concealed digs. Empty supply caches. He and Renard moved from place to place, tracking them as they could.
Between them and the song, Neb already had two Whymer Mazes to solve. Now the runners presented him with yet another.
Already, the figure below had disappeared behind a massive outcropping of fused glass and stone, and Renard tucked the spyglass back into his pouch as he pulled himself up into a crouch. Neb did the same.
Renard scratched his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. “You say the blood magicks will kill the user in three days’ time?”
Neb nodded. “That’s what Aedric told us.” Even the scout magicks that Neb had trained under could eventually kill a man if he hadn’t been raised up in them from an early age and if he didn’t exercise caution and moderation in their use.
Renard backed away from their vantage point and bent to pick up his pack. “It makes no sense,” he said. “We’re weeks from anywhere-at least two from the coast and three from the Keeper’s Gate. Three days wouldn’t get them very far.”
Neb chewed his root and pondered this. His Franci training took hold, and he remembered their seventh precept. The simplest path is most often the best to take. “Perhaps it’s a different kind of magick, then. Or”-here, the root became more bitter in his mouth “-perhaps they’ve found a way to prolong their exposure to the magicks.”
Renard stood upright now, his eyes to the north. “That seems likely. We should get word to the Gypsies. One was an oddity; two was a problematic coincidence.” He looked to Neb. “Three is a pattern.”
Neb pulled his own pack on and cinched the straps tight on his shoulders. “Rudolfo will want to know what these runners are up to.”
“Yes.” Renard’s voice sounded far away.
When Neb looked up, he realized the man watched him carefully. He’d run with Renard for long enough to read him and could see the discomfort in his eyes now. “I think we need to find that out, too,” the Waste Guide said. “Something tells me it can’t possibly be good.”
Neb felt the slightest tickle of fear in the deeper part of his stomach and at the base of his spine. “What are you proposing?”
“There’s still a Gypsy camp at Sanctorum Lux,” Renard said. “You know the way. And you can handle yourself in the Wastes, Neb. You’ve taken to it like a kin-wolf cub.” He nodded to the north. “I can track our new friend for a bit, see what he’s up to. You bear word to the Gypsies and meet up with me at the Dreaming Well in three weeks’ time.”
Neb blinked and felt the fear spreading farther into him. No longer a tickle, now it was as cold and pervasive as the Second River in winter. He’d spent months in the Wastes with Renard and certainly had known at some point they’d part company, even if only for a season. Still, now that the moment stared him down, his mouth was dry and his feet felt rooted. “Are you sure-”
Renard offered a grim smile. “You’re ready, Nebios.” He dug about in his pouch and pulled out a smaller cloth sack tied shut with a bit of twine. He passed it over to him. “You know how to use the powders. Be wary of mixing them with the root for too long-they burn harder and will wear you down faster. If you run into anything you can’t handle use the magicks.”