A sunrise such as you belongs in the East with me, he’d told her that night. She put her hands on her stomach again and suddenly found that it was flat and firm. When she looked down, she saw that her skirts were black with blood. She felt it, warm and sluggish, as it moved down her legs to pool around her feet.
When she opened her mouth to scream, a giant black raven landed on the cracked cornerstone of a shattered building and cocked its head. Jin Li Tam swallowed her scream and willed the strength of focus her father had brutally trained into his sons and daughters.
A kin-raven. She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did. It was larger than any raven she’d seen, and it stared at her, its beak opening and closing. She saw the scarlet thread of war tied to one foot, the green thread of peace on the other. She also saw, by the way it held its head, that its neck had been broken and that its feathers were mottled and singed. One of its eyes was missing. It croaked at her.
“You are extinct,” Jin Li Tam said slowly. “And this is a dream.”
The beak opened, and a tinny, faraway voice leaked out. “And it shall come to pass at the end of days that a wind of blood shall rise for cleansing and cold iron blades shall rise for pruning,” the kin-raven said. “Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children. Thus shall the Throne of the Crimson Empress be established.” The bird stopped, hopped backward on its feet, then forward, cocking its head again and fixing her in its flat black eye. “Fortunate are you among women and highly favored is Jakob, Shepherd of the Light.”
The first wave of pain hit her and she clutched at herself. “Begone, kin-raven,” she said, gritting her teeth against the spasm that gripped her belly. “Your message is unwelcome in this House.” She wasn’t sure where the words came from, but she laid hold of them and said them again, loudly, forcing her feet to carry her toward the bird as she raised her hand. “Begone, kin-raven. Your message is unwelcome in this House.”
Then the kin-raven did something birds should not be able to do, not even in dreams. It smiled. Then it unfurled its wings, and they hung over Windwir’s bones to cast long shadows east and west. “I leave you now,” it said, the metallic voice leaking out from the opened beak. “But soon I shall dine upon your father’s eyes.”
Jin Li Tam lunged forward, the pain growing as she moved, then lost her footing as her slippers found no traction in the puddle of her blood and water.
She screamed her rage and felt hands suddenly upon her, pulling her, shaking her.
“Lady Tam?” The voice was faraway to the northeast. “My lady?” Behind the voice, the clamoring of the alarm went suddenly silent and Jin Li Tam opened her eyes.
“Are we at Third Alarm?” she asked the girl who attended her. She sat up, taking a quick inventory of herself and her surroundings. The pain was real, and she felt wetness beneath the blankets. Holding her breath, she pushed them down and looked. No blood, but her water had indeed broken.
The girl took a step back and nodded. “Yes, Lady. We’ve been at Third Alarm. But the grounds and manor are safe now.”
“We were attacked?” Grimacing against the pain, she carefully moved to the edge of the bed and reached for her nearby robe.
The girl nodded again. “Yes, Lady. The scouts at the door have not offered any details.”
Not yet, they haven’t. She stood, felt the rush of blood to her head, then sat again. She motioned the girl closer. “Help me up.”
The servant offered her hands and leaned back to help Jin up. She pulled on the robe and winced. The girl looked alarmed when she saw the wet bed. “Shall I call the River Woman?”
Jin Li Tam nodded. “Yes. I think it’s started early.”
The girl guided her to the wall by the door, and Jin put her hand against it, resting her weight there while the girl opened it and poked her head out, calling for a scout.
She’d spent most of the last month in bed, and she could feel the weakness in her legs. Her baby had been too quiet, there had been occasional spotting, and the River Woman had doled out powders and ordered bed rest. She’d plowed through at least a hundred books, the ink and paper smelling fresh from the mechoservitors who reproduced them from memory for the new library.
She was a tiger who hated cages.
But the look on Rudolfo’s face each time he saw her, each time they sat and spoke of the son to come, was enough to sustain her.
This, too, shall pass, she told her weak legs and swollen stomach, the waves of nausea and the intense aversion to smells that had never bothered her before. Soon enough, she said to the cage her bedchambers had become.
Until she met the Gypsy King and fell in love with him the night he gave the metal man back his Androfrancine robes, Jin Li Tam had never considered the possibility of motherhood. In those days, she’d been about her father’s business-joining herself to whatever man or woman he chose for her, using her role as a courtesan and occasional consultant to play her part in House Li Tam’s work of guiding the river of politics and strategy in the Named Lands.
Hidden in her father’s library, before the day he donated it to Rudolfo and Isaak’s restoration work, there had been another library-a small room she’d seen only once or twice as a little girl. There, in slim black volumes etched in the coded scripts of House Li Tam, was the secret history of the Named Lands written with the blood and effort of her family. Her father had burned those books the day Rudolfo confronted him, but the river had moved. Her father had made her betrothed, shaping him in his earliest years with grief, tempering him with loss and making him a strong, formidable leader. And her father had shaped her as well, an arrow for Rudolfo’s heart, and had blessed their union.
War is coming, his note had said to her so long ago. Bear Rudolfo an heir. And she had agreed initially because it was her father’s wish. Later, as her love for the Gypsy King grew alongside the growing suspicion of her father’s motives, she’d realized that the child she intended to bear was for Rudolfo and Rudolfo alone.
There was joy in it somewhere, though in this moment she felt disoriented and afraid and in pain. The dream was like no dream she’d ever had, and she’d slept through Third Alarm. Jin Li Tam, trained in scout magicks and the arts of espionage, had slept through an attack on her new home.
The Gypsy Scout entered. “The River Woman is already on her way. I will have her come to you first.”
Jin Li Tam bit back another wave of pain. “What has happened?”
“I am not at liberty to-”
She cut him off quickly and coldly. “Aeryk, you see my present state and you know Lord Rudolfo will hide none of this from me. Do not make me stand here and ask again.” The words were sharper than she would’ve liked them, but after her first week in bed, the household and its guards were accustomed to it.
He swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Lady. We’ve been attacked. A squad of magicked assailants penetrated the forest perimeters and attacked the Firstborn Feast. Hanric the Marsh King and Ansylus, Crown Prince of Turam, have both been assassinated and their bodyguards slain.”
Panic tugged at her. “What of Rudolfo?”
“General Rudolfo is unharmed and leads the investigation.” The guard paused, guessed her next question and continued. “The attackers came under magicks we’ve not seen before. The River Woman comes to see what light can be shown on this.”
A wind of blood to cleanse. The words from her dream came back to her, and Jin Li Tam’s mouth fell open. She closed it. She heard commotion in the hall and saw a squad of Gypsy Scouts move past, huddled closely around a slight, bright-colored form. Rudolfo’s stride and his green turban gave him away as he moved past in the direction of the private study in the suite of rooms adjoining her own.