Winters shrugged. “I saw Neb in my dreams. I saw Windwir fall. Neb and I have seen our promised home. And many of our Dreaming Kings have seen these days, too, and written them in their Book.”
“Perhaps,” Rudolfo suggested, “these dreams are not always reliable.”
“And yet,” Winters answered, “the moment before we went into Third Alarm a premonition took hold of me.” Rudolfo leaned forward as she quickly recounted it.
“A wind of blood?” he asked. He whistled and the door opened. A Gypsy Scout poked his head in. Find out what manner of blades the assassins carried, he signed. The scout nodded and closed the door. He looked to Winters. “I’m not given to superstition, but this bears inquiry. I will ask Isaak to look into it. Perhaps it is something referenced in the library’s holdings.”
A night of inquiries, he thought. He still had the matter at the Keeper’s Gate to resolve.
There was a knock at the door-this time, firmer. Rudolfo looked up. “Yes?”
Aedric stepped into the room. “I saw Neb on the landing. I’ve sent him to pack for tomorrow.”
Winters looked up at this, and Rudolfo noticed the surprise on her face. It alarms her that he is leaving. But of course, Rudolfo knew she would not ask where he went.
“I do not think I will be joining you,” Rudolfo said. “I’m needed here.”
Aedric nodded, closing the door. He looked to the girl now, as if seeing her for the first time. The First Captain looked surprised and then suddenly uncomfortable. You may wish to hear this news alone, he signed.
Rudolfo saw Winters following his hands, but saw no comprehension on her face. “You truly meant what you told me?” he asked her. That you mean to announce yourself? he added in the Wizard King’s sign.
“Yes, Lord,” she said in a quiet voice.
Rudolfo motioned to a chair across from them. “Sit, Aedric, and pour a drink.” He inclined his head toward the girl. “Things are not what they seem.”
Aedric sat and poured firespice into a cup. “They are not, indeed,” he said.
Rudolfo nodded. “This is Winters,” he said.
“Yes, our young lieutenant is quite taken with her.”
“Well, she is more than she appears. May I present Winteria bat Mardic, the Marsh Queen.” Rudolfo offered a tight smile as Aedric’s eyebrows shot up. “Hanric was her. ” Rudolfo reached for the word but couldn’t find it.
“Shadow,” Winters said, her voice heavy. “He was the image we needed to convey to the rest of the Named Lands until I reached my majority.”
Aedric paled, looked to Rudolfo, then back to the girl. He looked troubled.
“What is it, Aedric?”
Aedric looked away. “We are in pursuit of the attackers. The Gypsy Scouts are magicked and trailing them at a distance. Half-squads are searching every structure in the town and every room in the manor. And the River Woman is here to tend Lady Tam. When she’s finished, she will autopsy the dead assassin and look for traces of the magicks in his organs.”
Rudolfo nodded. “Summon the Chief Physician for the cutting.”
Aedric inclined his head. “I’ve done so already, General.”
Winters interjected here. “Where is Hanric?”
Aedric glanced to Rudolfo and he nodded his assent. “He lays where he fell. We did not wish to offend your custom.”
Winters nodded. “Thank you, First Captain.” She looked to Rudolfo. “Would you honor us by hosting Hanric’s rest?”
Rudolfo knew little of the Marsher ways. Until the war, he’d encountered them infrequently. Most notably, his father had once captured Winters’s father and brought him before the Physicians of Penitent Torture to teach him respect for the Forest Gypsy’s borders. He knew what most did-that the Marshers wore dirt and ash, did not bathe and scratched out lives of violent subsistence in the infertile north. They were mystics, caught up in ecstatic utterances and prophecy, bellowed out with magicked voice by their king in his long-winded War Sermons. He knew of their promised home. And he knew that they buried their dead immediately-and buried their dead enemies as well. To not do so was a grievous insult.
“Certainly,” he said. “His rest may be anywhere you choose.”
She inclined her head to him. “I am grateful, Lord.”
Aedric cleared his voice, and Rudolfo looked to him now. “There’s more, General.”
Here it is. Here is what troubles him. “Go on,” Rudolfo said, glancing towards Winters.
“We brought the axe down to get a look at one of the bodies.” Aedric looked both to her and then to Rudolfo. He signed the words first. They were Marshers, he said.
Rudolfo looked at the girl.
This is where your heart is broken. The weight of this, of learning that the one you loved as a father was cut down by your own kind. Images flashed across his mind. Memories of fire and Fontayne the Heretic-the seventh son of Vlad Li Tam-shouting at the mob as it beat Rudolfo’s father to death. He studied the last traces of Winters’s innocence and then spoke the words to condemn her.
“Tell her, Aedric,” Rudolfo said.
And then he closed his eyes so that he would not see her change.
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam met his sixth daughter when she stepped from the long-boat that brought the first load of children. He extended a fresh mango to her and she accepted it with the slightest inclination of her head.
“Thank you, Father,” she said. She’d aged gracefully, her once-red hair now white as she neared her own sunset. She wore the saffron robes befitting her rank in his House.
He returned the slight bow and turned to the boatload of children. “And how are you all this morning? Did you sleep well?” He tried to make eye contact with as many of them as he could, trying just as hard to hear them as they talked over one another in their enthusiasm. “Good, good,” he said, clapping and smiling. Then, he pointed to the trailhead that led to the village. Drums announcing the new kin-clave were already pulsing through the jungle, and smoke from the massive cook-fires smudged the morning sky. “Go and find friends,” he said. “But don’t forget your manners and your lessons.”
Laughing, they spilled from the boat and raced up the beach, the oldest hanging back to keep their eyes on the youngest. Vlad Li Tam watched them go as the oarsmen pushed off and turned back for the anchored ships in the harbor.
Three of his ships were already steaming farther south, each adding to their maps and gathering the data necessary to determine their next stop. He would send another three now that kin-clave here was established. They would find the largest, most populated islands, observe the inhabitants from a distance and compile those findings for his inspection.
The remaining half dozen vessels would take what maintenance rotation they could without a dry dock and guard House Li Tam’s work in the village.
His daughter smiled at him. “How did it go?”
“It was fine. I will need more powders soon.”
She shook her head. “Strange customs,” she said.
Not so strange, he thought. He’d sent his sons and daughters into hundreds of beds to form alliances and gather information. Their courtesan activities were not even well-kept secrets in the Named Lands. “Perhaps more straightforward than we’re accustomed to,” he said as he looked out across the water. He looked back to her. “What are your plans?”
“Baryk and I will attend the feast together,” she said. “Then he will scout the island with our oldest sons.”
Baryk had been a warpriest on the southernmost tip of the Emerald Coasts, the massive peninsula that was home to House Li Tam and a scattering of tropical city-states and loose confederations. When Vlad had announced his family’s retreat from the Named Lands, they had given away their possessions and lands to join him. All but one of his children-even those who’d left his service to pursue independent lives with their own families-had returned home at his call. And he was grateful for it. It spared him the grief of assassination.