The whine shifted into a staccato burst of chirps just as Jin Li Tam moved into a small clearing. There, at the center, an enormous bird pecked and clawed at a rotting tree trunk. The chirping rose in volume as if fear fueled it. She drew her knife slowly.
The raven was weathered, its feathers mottled and its large head scarred. It turned as she approached and regarded her with one midnight-colored eye. Its beak opened, and a static hiss leaked out as it cocked its head at her.
I’ve seen you before, she realized. She remembered the dream vividly. “What are you hunting, kin-raven?” she whispered.
And how do I know what you are called? The kin-raven was a bird from older times, from the Age of the Wizard Kings. Though some claimed to have seen them in the skies of late.
In the dim gloom of morning, she thought she saw a flash of silver behind the bird. Something twitching in the hollow of the trunk, just out of the larger bird’s reach.
Jin Li Tam balanced the knife in her hand and crouched. When she threw it, the blade flew straight and struck the kin-raven with its handle. The bird flapped and shrieked at her as she drew her second knife.
“Begone, kin-raven,” she said in a low voice.
It turned its head, casting a long glance at the tree stump. Then, as if understanding her, it launched itself into the sky to speed northwest.
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.
Again.
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 all’s clear before dawn. Standing, Petronus groped for his robe and pulled it on.
The dreams were harder now, more urgent in their demand to be heard.
But I can’t hear them. They were all light and shadow without sound, vague moving images, ending finally in one burst of sudden noise that drove him awake, shouting and sweating ahead of the dawn.
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.”