He felt a light touch at his elbow and glanced to his right.
Rudolfo and Aedric had joined them. The Gypsy King and his First Captain looked haggard and worn, though they now wore fresh clothing. Rudolfo held a rolled-up quilt in his hands and handed it somberly to Neb.
This is for Hanric, he signed slowly. Present it on my behalf, Lieutenant. It belonged to my father.
Neb nodded, hesitant to speak and unable to sign. Finally, he risked a whisper. “Yes, General.”
Rudolfo’s brown eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles beneath them, offsetting the deep lines of worry on his face. Behind his short beard, his mouth was tight and grim. Rudolfo returned Neb’s nod, cast Aedric a sidelong glance, and the two slipped back into the maze.
As they vanished, Neb looked back to Winters. As she continued speaking, the men continued digging and some of the women began stripping Hanric down, putting his bloodstained clothing to the side in a pile. A bucket of steaming water appeared, and Neb watched as they scrubbed the hairy corpse clean of both the blood and the telltale filth that set Marshers apart from the other residents of the New World. After, they scooped dirt into the bucket and mixed it into mud with their hands. Keening beneath a sky that now shifted into deep, star-specked gray, they smeared the mud over Hanric’s naked form as Winters’s voice rose in pitch.
Her glossolalia passed and she looked out at the small group, her eyes wet. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in shadow is past,” she said, “and he shall walk the Beneath Places in search of Home. How shall he find his way?”
A woman stepped forward with the discarded stub of a candle, bowing deeply, and placing it at Winters’s feet.
Winters returned the bow and continued. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in hunger is past,” she said, “and he shall hunt the Beneath Places in search of food. How shall he strike his prey?”
An older man stepped forward with a handful of smooth stones and an old leather sling, laying it beside the candle with a bow.
Her voice became sorrowful now. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in the sunlight is past and he shall rest in the cold of the Beneath Places. How shall he warm his soul?” Her eyes found Neb and met them. They were wide and there were worlds of grief within them.
On shaking legs, Neb forced himself forward. He took the quilt and laid it at her feet, his eyes never leaving hers. He bowed, sadness pulling again at his heart and eyes.
She nodded to him and he stepped back. As the ritual continued, he tried to pay attention. Other gifts were brought forward; and then, as the diggers finished the grave and the women finished the mudding, songs and stories of Hanric ben Tornus and his shadow-reign upon the Wicker Throne were lifted up to the winter morning. As if paying obeisance of their own, the swollen stars winked out and the sliver of blue-green moon slid from the sky and into the ground.
When it was time, they wrapped Hanric in Lord Jakob’s quilt with the candle in one hand and the sling in the other, and lowered him into the ground with his other gifts. Then, each in turn cast a shovel of dirt upon his sleeping form and let the Beneath Places swallow their friend.
When they were finished, one by one the Marshers drifted off, leaving Neb and Winters beside the new-turned earth. They sat, side by side, on the meditation bench, and finally Winters sighed.
“I know you need to go,” she told him.
He slipped his arm up around her narrow shoulders. “I do. But I do not wish it.”
She chuckled and it almost sounded bitter. “What we wish does not often enter into matters, Nebios ben Hebda. Your lord bids you go.”
He looked over to her. There beside him, she seemed much smaller than when she stood before her people. “But what does my lady bid?”
She smiled. “I bid you take the path you are called to. I bid you find our Home as the dreams have told us you will.”
But what if the dreams are wrong? He did not ask it. He would not ask it. Instead, he made a statement that he willed into a promise. “I will be back within a week,” he said.
She moved closer to him, leaning in, and he felt her shiver. “I will be gone by then.” She paused, shifting uncomfortably. “I fear something dark becomes of my people, though I do not know what it is. My own kind have brought this about. I must know why.”
Word that the assassins were Marshers had spread quietly through the ranks of the scouts, and certainly it was a darkness she needed to plumb. She was the Marsh Queen, with her work awaiting. He was an officer of the Gypsy Scouts-of the Forest Library-with his own.
Neb wanted to protest it. He wanted to strip off the scarf of his rank, take up the bucket of now-cold mud and smear himself with it. He wanted to pledge his knives to her service and follow her back to the Marshlands to hunt down whoever was responsible for last night’s attack.
But I am pledged to the library. Not the library, he thought, but the light of knowledge it represented and the man who would shepherd that light here in the Ninefold Forest, away from the political turmoil of the Named Lands. And if the dreams of her people were true, the Ninefold Forest Houses also guarded the way to the Home he was meant to find them. He sighed and pulled her close again, taking in the earthy scent of her.
After a minute or two of silence, Neb stood and Winters stood with him. When she turned to face him, he matched her movements and they put their arms around one another.
“I will see you in our dreams,” she whispered. “Be well and safe, Nebios ben Hebda.”
There at Hanric’s Rest, at the heart of the Whymer Maze, they kissed again. When they finished, Neb pushed a strand of dirty, unkempt hair from her narrow face. “Be well and safe, my queen,” he said. His voice caught on the words as he said them. Some part of him, deeply buried, knew they now moved through a time that was anything but safe. Still, he said it again, using her formal name: “Be safe, Winteria.”
At her nod, he left the young queen alone with her shadow and made his way back out, mindful of the thorny walls that squeezed him, body and soul. He walked briskly to the courtyard, where the horses and wagon awaited him. Isaak sat astride a great stallion, holding the reins of Neb’s mount. A cold morning breeze whipped the edges of his dark Androfrancine robes.
Neb took the reins and quickly checked the travel kit one of the men had fixed to the back of the saddle. Satisfied, he swung up onto the horse. When Aedric looked at him, Neb nodded and the First Captain whistled the men forward.
Without a word, and without looking back, Neb rode eastward with his company into the red light of the stirring sun.
Rudolfo
Late-morning sun slanted through the windows of a room that smelled of incense and sweat. Rudolfo sat in an armchair near the bed, holding Jin Li Tam’s hand, feeling his knuckles threaten to pop with each contraction as she groaned in her labor and squeezed his hand. He looked up, glancing first to the River Woman, who watched and waited near the foot of the bed, then to his betrothed, the formidable daughter of House Li Tam.
She lay in sweat-soaked sheets, her red hair wet and matting her forehead and cheeks. Her cotton shift clung to her body, the pink of her skin showing through where the damp cotton stuck to it. Her muscles were taut, her eyes squeezed shut and her jaw set.
“You’re doing fine, dear,” the River Woman said, but Rudolfo heard trouble in her tone. A platter of assorted cheeses and a carafe of lukewarm pear wine sat untouched on a small table within easy reach. There was a light knock at the door, and he looked up to see the River Woman frown at yet another interruption in a night and a day of interruptions.
One of the River Woman’s girls opened the door a crack and hushed words were exchanged. She glanced to Rudolfo. “Your Second Captain, Lord.”
Rudolfo started to stand, but Jin Li Tam’s grip prevented him. “No,” she said. “You’ll not leave again.” Her blue eyes were narrow and the firmness in her tone brooked no dissent. “Send him in,” she said.
The River Woman’s voice was also firm. “Lady, I do not think-”
Rudolfo glanced from woman to woman. The outcome of this moment’s match of wills was not difficult to surmise.
“These are not the best of circumstances for an argument,” Jin Li Tam said, anger and pain giving her voice an edge. “Send him in.”
The River Woman relented, and Philemus, the Second Captain of the Gypsy Scouts entered, discomfort obvious in his stance and stammer. “General,” he said with a nod, then paled as he glanced to Jin Li Tam. “L-lady, I apologize for-”
“You owe no apology, Captain,” she said. Her body spasmed again and she growled. “Bear your message quickly.”
He swallowed and nodded. “Our scouts have overtaken the assailants. There were four. They are all dead.”
Rudolfo raised an eyebrow. “Dead?” Unbidden, his mind flashed back to the scrambling fight of the night before, to the strength in their attackers that so completely overran them, so casually lifted and tossed them aside as if Rudolfo and his best and brightest were made of paper instead of flesh and bone. His men could not have taken them, not as they were. Unless. “Had their magicks burned off?”
Philemus shook his head. “No, General. But they were easy enough to track. They seem to have died suddenly and in midflight, near the edge of the Prairie Sea. I’ve ordered the men to bring back the bodies.” He hesitated. “The Physician Benoit is also here now. He will start his examination once the magicks have worn off.” He looked to the River Woman. “And once your. work. is finished here, certainly,” he added.
Jin Li Tam jerked again, arching her back. This time, she cried out even louder, and Rudolfo glanced to her again. He’d watched a hundred skirmishes from the hillside, eventually cursing and riding down into the thick of it when the waiting proved too much for him. But this was a battle he could not ride into, and he found frustration in that powerlessness. And until now, he’d heard his men speak of these moments. But as he’d grown older and accepted that an heir was unlikely though not for lack of practice, he’d brushed aside what little he’d heard from the new fathers in his household or his army. Though he suspected that even if he had listened intently, even taken notes upon the subject, it could not have prepared him for this.
He looked to the River Woman and saw the strain on her face, the cloud in her eyes, in that brief unguarded moment. When she saw he was watching, she smiled, but it failed to convince him.
Something in this does not bode well, he thought.
Rudolfo turned to Philemus. “In Aedric’s absence, you bear my grace in all matters pertaining to this investigation. Work with House Steward Kember on all other matters, and from here forward, do not disturb us unless it is absolutely essential for the well-being of the Houses.”