Petronus looked at the infant. “And if I give you what you require the child will be unharmed?”
She laughed. “What you give, you give for Jakob and for us all.” If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought love shone out from her eyes. “What you give, you give even for yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. Some part of him wanted to flee now, and his bladder suddenly demanded release. He remembered the place where he had stood when it was Sethbert, remembered the look in the dethroned Overseer’s eyes when he realized the knife had cut his throat, and he felt remorse again for the price he’d exacted-the price he had paid-in order to euthanize the Order and its backward dreaming.
It had been the right thing to do, he realized, even as now he knew this was the right thing.
“Then I offer my plea,” Petronus said. “I am guilty.”
The woman smiled.
He did not think he would feel the knife, but he did. It was a dull ripping with sudden cold against his open throat. He felt his knees buckle and saw his own blood.
Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children.
He saw Esarov moving around the table, his face twisted in rage. He saw Erlund’s stunned look and the ecstasy upon his spymaster’s face. And he saw the baby, held high like a standard, so that his shadow passed over Petronus.
A wind of blood to cleanse; a blade of cold iron to prune.
He heard the cries of those who bore witness, he heard air bubbling through his wound, and above it all Petronus heard the Child of Promise raise up his voice and wail as if with great sorrow.
Then, the Last Son of P’Andro Whym smiled at his reckoning and embraced the light that reached for him.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam tore her eyes away from Petronus’s twitching form at the sound of her child’s cry. Her body and mind flooded with emotion as the weight of the day’s events finally broke her.
It had begun with the bird. Weeks late, a reply from Rae Li Tam had arrived before dawn, pushed into her fumbling hands by the captain of the watch. She’d read it by firelight and wept.
The note was brief, but she recognized the handwriting as her sister’s, and the triple-coded response was in the standard script of House Li Tam. There is no cure. I grieve with you, Sister.
Beyond those terse words, there’d been no further information and no word from Rudolfo, either, in weeks now. She’d kept the messages going out to him in the hopes that one would find him. None had-or if they had, he’d not responded.
She’d carried the note with her in her pocket and had spent the day crying in her tent when she wasn’t presiding over the kin-clave.
Still, she’d steeled herself for her duties, though the weight of that knowledge crushed her. Rae Li Tam was perhaps the best apothecary in the New World, and if she said there was no cure, Jin Li Tam believed her. Not even the promise of Sanctorum Lux could hold her despair at bay.
So she had hidden her sorrow and faced her day.
And now, the tent stank of blood and mud and ash as Petronus kicked his last on the canvas floor. Her son wailed-great sobs that made his tiny body convulse in the gnarled and filthy hands of Ezra the Marsh Prophet. In his short time with her, Jin Li Tam had never heard him cry so forlornly, and it went deeper than any scout knife.
The so-called Machtvolk Queen glanced at her and then knelt over Petronus, flipping him over. “Do not despair, Great Mother. Salvation is upon us all.”
Then, she opened the old man’s blood-soaked robe, baring his pale chest.
Jin Li Tam willed herself to struggle, but somewhere between her brain and her body, the message fell flat and she hung limply in the arms that held her.
The woman’s hand moved with confidence and precision, running the knife over Petronus’s chest. His glassy eyes stared upward, his arms spread cruciform.
When the mark of Y’Zir was complete, the woman looked up to Jakob. “Bring the child of promise to me,” she said. Then, from beneath her armor, she drew out an iron needle and a small glass phial on a silver chain.
Dipping the needle into Petronus’s blood, the woman unstopped the phial and slid the needle into it, depositing a single drop. She stopped it up and stood, approaching Jin Li Tam. Behind her, Ezra cradled her crying son.
“Your child is going to die,” she said, leaning close enough that Jin could smell the honey of her breath. “Ask me to save him and I will.” She replaced the needle and shook the phial in her fist.
Jin Li Tam swallowed. This was a darker mysticism than the Marshfolk had shown before, and some part of her mind reeled away from it. “You cannot save him. He is sick.” She felt panic growing within her.
She smiled. “Ask me to save him,” she said again, “and I will.”
Then, she turned and unstopped the phial she’d shaken. This near, Jin could see the black fluid that beaded in the bottom of the phial. “You cannot save him,” Jin said again.
Using the needle again, Winteria bat Mardic drew out a single drop from the phial. She shook the needle over Petronus, and the drop fell upon the wound in his neck. Jin Li Tam gasped at the smell of ozone that filled the room and felt the fine hair on her arms and neck lift up as the wound in Petronus’s neck began to knit itself together. His body began to drum upon the floor as his legs kicked and his hands pounded. The Machtvolk Queen sighed and stepped over him to avoid his flailing.
But even as he flailed, Jin Li Tam watched his eyes as they rolled in his head and watched the pallor of his skin flush with new blood. He sat up gasping, his eyes wild, still covered in his own blood, and reached trembling hands up to the ragged scar upon his throat, the careful mark upon his heart.
The woman turned to Jin Li Tam, holding up the phial. “Behold the grace and mercy of House Y’Zir,” she said, extending the phial toward her. Her eyes narrowed. “Ask me to save him and I will, Great Mother.”
And in that moment, nothing else mattered to her. The eyes of the Named Lands were upon her and she did not know them. She saw only her son and the miracle now offered. All her life, she’d watched her father use his children to shape the world. She’d stood by the graves of many of them, expendable arrows shot with intent into the heart of the Named Lands. And though some part of her cried out against the abomination she now faced, a louder part clamored life for her son at any cost.
I am not my father’s daughter after all.
She felt the hands relax upon her, and she knew what must follow.
Do not look to the room, she told herself. She knew what she would see there. A mixture of wrath and fear and wonder. Instead, she forced herself to her knees before the Machtvolk Queen and took the woman’s feet in her hands.
“Save my son,” she said, weeping. “Please. If you can, save him.”
Nodding, the woman turned and dipped the needle once again, taking the last drop of that dark fluid upon it. While Ezra the Prophet cradled him close, the Machtvolk Queen shook the needle over his tiny mouth. The black bead fell upon his lower lip and Jakob, firstborn of Rudolfo, ceased his crying.
And when the Machtvolk Queen Winteria bat Mardic took him and passed him to his mother, Jin Li Tam already saw the gray fading from his face and hands, replaced by a healthy pink. His eyes, clear and wide and brown, were open and focused upon her and he smiled.
In that moment, she heard a voice cry out from the entrance to the tent and looked up to lock eyes with Rudolfo.
Weeping with joy and shame, she clutched her son to her breast and wondered what price she’d paid for this miracle.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo felt his legs turn to water and staggered back against the Gypsy Scout behind him. The man caught his king and steadied him upon his feet.
What he’d seen staggered him.
They’d landed where Windwir’s docks had once been, and the Kinshark had no difficulty finding a deep-enough berth close in to shore. The iron vessels-those that had not left with Charles for the Churning Wastes and Sanctorum Lux-had turned back leagues ago when their deeper keels threatened to run aground on a river that the Androfrancines no longer dredged.