He loves her. She doubted that he knew he did, but she could read it plainly upon him, and she remembered the ache of that kind of love, remembered its own genesis between her and Rudolfo in what seemed a lifetime ago. She put a hand on his arm. “She will be fine,” she said. “Scarred but fine.”
He nodded, and when their eyes met she saw more than his anguish; she also saw his rage. “Why did she choose this? Any of a hundred of us would have taken the knife in her place.”
Jin looked at the girl. She was moving in and out of awareness now that the kallacaine was taking hold, and her body flinched at Lynnae’s sponge as the woman cleaned her wounds and applied her ointments and powders. “I think she saw it was her place to do this for her people, to show both the faithful and the unfaithful among them.”
He nodded and looked to the door, then back to her. “There is much work to do,” he said. “There will be people gathering at dawn to leave with her.”
Yes. But how many? Jin was uncertain, but despite Winters’s choice she suspected the numbers who actually chose to leave their hearth and home to follow the girl would be low. But she also suspected, just as strongly, that it would only be a beginning. What they had witnessed this night would stay with her people, and over time, more would trickle out as the reality of what they saw settled into their hearts.
She looked to the young Machtvolk guard. “What will you do?”
His answer did not surprise her. “I will stay as long as I can,” he said. “I will be her eyes and ears here.”
She nodded. “I would have you bear word to Aedric if you see him.” Now she chose her words carefully. “Tell him that our stay here is finished and to prepare his men for travel.”
“Aye, Lady. I will tell him.”
She thought again for a moment. “Bid Charles and Isaak the same. They would be wise to leave by the way they came.”
He nodded again. “Aye.”
She studied the man. “And the Ninefold Forest is ever your friend, Garyt. You bear my grace and thus Rudolfo’s as well. If you have need, get word to him.”
He inclined his head. “Thank you, Lady. I fear that what we need may be out of his reach to give us.” He laid a hand upon the door latch and paused. “Bid my queen good health and safe journey,” he said.
Then, he slipped from the room.
He’d been gone less than five minutes before the sounds of third alarm grew beyond their window. It started in the distance and moved through the forest, a growing clamor that soon enveloped the lodge as she heard the running footfalls of soldier and servant alike. Jin went to the window and watched as squads formed up in the yard. She watched a handful of men drink down phials of blood magick and warble out of sight as they ran eastward.
There was a knock upon the door, and Jin turned from the window. “Come in,” she said.
The door opened, and Ria stepped into the room, her face washed in rage and worry. Behind her, still in his furs from the walk back, stood Regent Eliz Xhum. “How is she?”
The concern in the woman’s voice angered Jin, but she forced that anger from her voice, though her words were still frosted. “She will be fine.” She nodded toward the window. “What is happening?”
Ria scowled. “Our perimeters have been breached. And our-”
But she was cut off by a booming voice out of the east that shook the glass and raised the hair on Jin’s arms and neck.
“I come for Winteria bat Mardic, true Queen of the Marsh,” the voice cried out. “Where is she?”
She knew that voice, though she did not know the magicks that propelled it; there was a clarity and power in it beyond the blood-distilled voice magicks she was familiar with. She saw light moving toward them now and watched the Machtvolk scramble toward it. She heard the cries and grunts of those who found what they sought and then saw the light grow until it took the shape of a man.
His run slowed to a walk as he entered the clearing, and Jin blinked as she recognized the voice, though the man it belonged to looked nothing like the boy she’d last seen so many months before.
Neb?
But not the Neb she’d last seen the night of Jakob’s birth. He burned with a hot, white light now from his toes to the tips of his hair, and his eyes were the color of the moon as he strode roaring into the clearing. His silver robe caught the wind and flowed out behind him as he went; and as Ria’s men closed in, he swung his fists like clubs and scattered them like kindling. When the invisible wall of blood-magicked scouts pressed in, he tossed them into the trees, where they thrashed and fell.
By the time they were on their feet, he stood upon the porch. “I have come for Winteria bat Mardic,” he bellowed out again, and then he was in the lodge, roaring down the hallways.
Jin Li Tam looked to the girl. Her eyes were open now at a voice she also recognized, and she wrestled against Lynnae’s ministering hands in an effort to sit up. “Neb?”
Jin glanced at Ria and saw her face grow cold at the name. Her voice was low when she spoke. “Lord Xhum,” she said, “I think it would be best to remove you to a remote location.”
The regent smiled. “Nonsense. Let the Abomination come. The faithful have nothing to fear from him.”
The sound of fighting in the hallway intensified, and then suddenly, the regent and Ria were pushed aside as the room filled with light.
Up close, Jin could see now that a fine sheen of silver flowed over the young man, rippling and moving with him at each step, giving off a heat of its own. He pushed himself into the room, oblivious to all but the girl stretched out upon the bed. He went to her and fell to his knees, a single sob racking him as he did.
He laid his hands upon her stomach, his fingers outstretched over her wounded skin. “Be whole,” he whispered.
The silver shifted on his hands, and veins of it appeared on the surface of her skin as her body stiffened. Slowly, before their eyes, the wounds began to close, and as they did, he looked up to finally take notice of the room. His eyes locked with Jin’s, and what she saw in them chilled her, not because she’d never seen such rage-she had seen such many times-but because they were alien eyes now, inhuman and distant as stars. “Who did this cutting?”
Xhum stepped forward. “I did, Abomination.”
Neb was on his feet now and turning toward the man.
He intends to kill him. And a part of her knew that she should let him, that much of the evil that had come and that would yet come traveled with this man. But another part heard the words of Ire Li Tam, heard the passion and conviction of them, and could not risk that perhaps the woman was right, that the true end to this lay in Jin accompanying the man and waiting for her grandfather’s golden bird.
As Neb closed on the regent, she stepped between them and raised her hands to place them against the young man’s chest. She felt the heat of the quicksilver skin he wore and felt it yield at first and then resist her touch. “Nebios,” she said.
Neb stopped and seemed to notice her for the first time. “Lady Tam,” he said. “Stand aside.”
“Yes, Great Mother,” Eliz Xhum said. “Let him pass. I do not fear death at his hands.”
Jin shook her head. “No, Neb. She took the cuts willingly.”
Neb looked confused for a moment, and Xhum spoke into that confusion. “Yes, Abomination, it is true. She asked for my knife upon her skin. It was such soft skin, too, and her cries of pain were beautiful, were they not?”
Neb pushed at Jin, and she felt the strength of him but forced her feet to stand their ground. “No,” she said again in a quiet voice.
“I think,” the regent said, “you should kill me for what I’ve done. Your demon’s bargain in the Beneath Places should let you easily rip me limb from limb. Do it for what I’ve done to your woman. For the two hand servants whose heads decorate pikes in the lemon orchard outside my palace gates. For the dreams my Watcher has burned and the staff my high priest has taken.” He chuckled. “Or do it for the vessel that my Third Desert Brigade will soon dismantle and bury, the heads they’ll collect in that hidden place.” The chuckle became a laugh. “Kill me for whatever reason you choose, but know that in the end, the Child of Great Promise is upon the earth and the throne of the Crimson Empress is established. You and your kind are obsolete now, and the tower shall remain closed to you.”