Rafe Merrique’s first mate had gone to fetch him even as the crew readied the ship to sail. While she waited, she watched the campfires in the Gypsy camp. The other camps were gone now-the Entrolusians had left last, though they’d left a man behind, unbeknownst to their Overseer. Sethbert’s most celebrated general, Lysias, had petitioned Rudolfo for asylum earlier in the day, and her husband had assented when she’d told him that he was their nursemaid’s father.
“I will find work worthy of his rank,” Rudolfo had told her after.
Pylos and Turam had left before the others. Rudolfo had given his best effort to restoring peace with them but to no avail. She had known that it would be that way. She’d seen the look of wrath on Meirov’s face, the venomous daggers of her eyes, when Jin Li Tam’s son had been healed and given back to her.
She heard her father’s footsteps on the gangway and looked to him. He walked slower and his shoulders were weighed down. He held a packet of papers in his hands. “I didn’t think you would come, but I’m glad that you did.”
She nodded. “I received your note.”
He stepped closer and passed the papers over to her. “These are all your sister could think of to help Jakob.” She took the packet and looked down at pages crowded with ink. “I know it’s irrelevant now, but she spent her last days looking for a cure, and I thought you should have them.”
Jin Li Tam blinked. Looking for a cure? “But I received her note, Father. She told me there was no cure.”
“By the bird?”
She nodded, and Vlad Li Tam shook his head. “The birds have become unreliable, Daughter,” he said. “They cannot be trusted.” Behind him, she heard the whistle of “all hands,” and he looked over his shoulder. “I’ve shared what I know with Rudolfo. Our messages are compromised, and birds are being diverted; forgeries are misdirecting us. Your husband is going to task the mechoservitors with establishing new codes.”
She nodded. “That would be prudent.”
The first mate reappeared now. “We’re ready to sail, Lord Tam.”
Her father nodded. “I’m glad you came,” he said.
Then they embraced and he climbed the gangway. She watched while they raised it and left before the anchors rose.
As she returned to the camp, she pondered.
The note was a snare. The realization struck her like a fist. She’d received the note that morning. It was in her pocket when the Y’Zirite, Ria, interrupted their council. She had put her foot into it and it had done its work.
There is no cure. No, but when she saw a cure before her very eyes-saw Petronus rise up from the dead-and heard the Machtvolk queen’s words, she’d had to act. The forged note from her sister was the snare that had caught her, luring her to a decision that had been so easy to make.
Ask me to save him and I will.
And kneeling, she had taken the devil’s feet into her hands and wet them with her tears, begging for the life of her son.
When she reached her tent, she did not recognize the girl with her calico dress and long brown hair who waited for her there. But when the girl stood, her awkward and coltish posture betrayed her. “Winters?”
The girl smiled, and Jin Li Tam marveled at the transformation. She thought at first she might ask but then decided against it. She had more pressing matters. She needed to see her son. Winters curtsied. “Lady Tam.”
Jin Li Tam looked around the room, an uneasiness growing quickly to alarm. “Where are Lynnae and Jakob?”
Winters blinked. “Both with their fathers. Lynnae is talking to General Lysias. And Rudolfo took Jakob to walk the perimeter.”
Jin Li Tam released her held breath and forced calm. Why had she felt panic? What was it that made her need her son so badly in this moment? She pushed the question aside for later and looked back to Winters. “Tell Rudolfo I’m looking for him if he returns before me.”
Winters nodded, and Jin Li Tam slipped back into the night.
Singing started up around the campfires, and she made her way north to the line. Rudolfo would walk from the south to the west, then to the north and east-she would hope to catch him on his return.
As she walked, she thought about this sudden need she had for her son and the panic that had arisen within her. Certainly it made sense after him so recently taken by the Blood Scouts and after seeing him sick for so long. Of course she would fear losing him after these threats.
But what of the need she had tonight of all nights to hold him?
She worked the maze as she walked and found her answer quickly. It was because she knew that the look of him, the smell of him, the softness of his skin beneath her hand would remind her that what she’d chosen had been the only good and reasonable path she could take. That the little life she had made with Rudolfo was worth any debt she could incur, even if it was to those who’d murdered her family, left Windwir desolate and seeded violence and chaos into the Named Lands.
But it was more than needing a reminder that she’d made a good choice, that she’d known and taken the right path. It was a reminder that there was still good in this broken place and that even in times of great darkness there could be moments of excruciating light and unbreakable hope.
Like light in the eyes of a husband home from the sea. And hope in the smile of an infant sleeping in his mother’s arms.
Jin Li Tam moved across snowfields bathed blue and green, and when she reached the line, she found the soldiers there and whispered encouragement to them.
Walking the perimeter, she stopped here and there to greet the men and ask them if they were ready to ride on the morrow, ready for waiting beds and lonely wives, ready for home and hearth. The men bowed to her and called her queen as she went, and after she passed, she heard them whispering in low and respectful tones.
But she pushed aside the voices behind her and moved forward through the snow, her eyes searching for the moon-washed, striding figure of her Gypsy King and her ears listening for the sound of Jakob’s laughter.
Rudolfo
There was singing now from the campfires, and Rudolfo stepped in from the line to hear it. He stared down into the face of his son and returned the smile he saw there. It was an odd moment, this, a father walking the line with his son. It brought back memories of similar walks with his own father, though he’d been old enough to not need carrying. He cocked his head and listened to the song on the wind. It was an old Gypsy tune about the year of the fallen moon sung in a minor key-slower than the version his mother had sung him.
How long since she sang this to me? He could not remember, and he felt a tug of loss when he sought her face in his memory and could not find it. But he remembered these lyrics. They spoke of love requited, though with sacrifices made, of bargaining pools in the basement of the world and ghosts that swam a haunted sea. It was a song about tears and separation, desperate hope and misguided faith. It was a song about the love between a Weeping Czar and a Moon Wizard’s daughter.
Jakob laughed, and Rudolfo laughed, too. “You like music, then. So did your grandmother.”
He resumed walking, but now he left the line and made a new path in the snow. He looked down into his son’s face again. “I’ve awaited your coming for some time,” he told the infant. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
And so unexpectedly. At the end of a river of blood, in the shadow of desolation, an heir to the Gypsy throne. And to the light, as well, Rudolfo knew, for the Great Library he built would be the legacy he left his son.