After how long asleep? No, not asleep, he remembered. Drugged. The bittersweet taste of the kallaberries felt dry in his mouth, and invisible hammers pounded at his skull. He groaned and stretched.
His hands and feet were tied now, and a makeshift blindfold pulled at his ears. Tepid water-about two inches of it-sloshed across his naked skin as the ship rocked back and forth. He could not feel the vibration of the steam engines through the hull, nor could he hear them.
He swallowed and licked his dry, cracked lips. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth.
I must speak. The effort drew bright flashes of light behind his eyes. “I am Vlad Li Tam,” he croaked. “First Father of House Li Tam.” He coughed. “Release me.”
He heard a high giggle and a girl’s voice, soft and soothing to his ears. A hatch opened, and light footfalls splashed in the water. “Already you understand,” she said, “and yet you don’t.” The voice lowered. “In time, you will indeed be released. And I will help you find your way.”
Vlad shivered despite the heat. “Who are you? Where is my First Grandson?”
“I am your Bloodletter, Vlad Li Tam, and your Kin-healer, too. And your First Grandson finishes the work given to him.” She giggled again. “Soon enough he will return bearing gifts for you.”
He heard her move closer, and now he could smell her. It was a jungle smell, a floral smell, sweet and thick. He heard the rustle of cloth and felt the rim of a cup pressed to his dry mouth. “Drink this.”
At first, he resisted. But the coolness of the liquid seduced his lips, and he took in the water she offered. He swallowed it. “Where are you taking me?”
She laughed again. “It is not your place to know it,” she said. “Not yet. But when we arrive, our work together begins.”
She spoke with an odd accent that he could not place, though he was versed in most. He heard the rustling of cloth again as she stood. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t go.”
When she spoke next, it was the lowest and sweetest of whispers. “A day is coming when you will beg me to leave you. You will long for this time of rest and will not see it.”
The door opened and closed behind her as she left.
Vlad Li Tam listened but heard nothing from beyond the closed door. Within the room, he heard only his beating heart and ragged breath. The girl sounded young-maybe even younger than the youngest of the island girls he’d honored kin-clave with in recent days past. And she spoke with an accent that he could not place.
He stretched and shifted in the shallow water, pulling at the ropes that held his wrists and ankles tight. They were skilled knots, but he’d expected no less. He wondered if his own grandson had tied them himself or if it had been the girl. Or were there others?
There must be, he realized. This was not one of his iron vessels, and the ship would require a crew.
Question upon question gathered in the storm that took his mind now. More questions than answers, and at the heart of it, an impossible betrayal.
The slender black volume, the cold and calculating words, the memory of them brought back his First Grandson’s words. Your own father betrays you.
Impossible. But the book danced before his eyes, and something within him assured him that it was so. His father’s work had certainly been with Petronus along with a thousand others, but what if it had also been with Vlad, in the same way that Vlad had sharpened his forty-second daughter for her work? What if all of this was merely part of a larger task than he had ever imagined? And what if it had been intended that, in the fullness of time, he would complete his work with Rudolfo and the new library and remove himself and his kin from the Named Lands?
Already, he found himself slowing his breathing as he eased his mind into this new puzzle to solve.
How many of his children were a part of this? His grandchildren? He drew up the inventory and began ticking at it, calling up the faces and the names of his sons and daughters, and of their sons and daughters. And as he conjured them up, he separated them out and built his list of suspects.
When he was a boy, Vlad Li Tam had adored his father as much as he feared him, but more than that he genuinely admired the man. The admiration flowed for many things, but one in particular came to mind.
Tal Li Tam had brokered his family well, strategically marrying not for position but for trait and adding children quickly to his fold from a scattering of bloodlines. He’d had over a hundred wives and over three hundred children-the largest family House Li Tam had ever known, calling for an expansion of their properties on the Emerald Coasts. And yet his father had known each and every one of them by name and had always seemed aware of their circumstances.
Until today, Vlad Li Tam believed he’d been the same way, but now he knew that beyond the names, and beyond whatever facts he thought he’d known, some within his family-perhaps those he’d trusted the most-had betrayed him. More than that: They’d done so at the behest of this father he had so admired, if Mal Li Tam’s words could be trusted.
And Windwir was a part of that betrayal as well. He suddenly remembered holding his first grandson’s shaking hand the first time Vlad showed him the golden bird and its mechanical tricks. The boy had cried. He wondered now if the boy had cried later when the golden bird whispered its dark news of finished work. Vlad had feared that somehow his family had been used-or might be used-by some outside threat. He’d not imagined that the threat might be from within.
He felt the anger pulsing in his head, and in the stifling room his heartbeat felt like an incessant fist upon the door. Then he closed his eyes behind the blindfold and willed his breathing and heart rate to slow. Let rage, he thought, become awareness. He went back to his inventory.
I am your Bloodletter, the girl’s voice echoed beyond that fist. I am your Kin-healer.
How did she factor into this equation? And what were these titles she laid claim to? She was certainly not a part of his family-but when she spoke of his grandson, her voice had been familiar and intimate. He buried that realization for another time and stretched against the ropes again, grunting and splashing in the water. They did not give, and he doubted that they would ever give. Somehow, he knew that whatever happened now happened with all of the care and precision that House Li Tam was known for. There would be no escaping. Whatever awaited him would be faced, and his work was to survive it for nothing less than to understand what was happening to his world as a result of his family and its actions. He gave himself to it and swore himself to live beyond whatever this laughing girl and his first grandson had planned for him, so he could solve this maze.
“When we arrive,” she had said, “our work begins.”
“Yes,” Vlad Li Tam said to darkness that surrounded him.
“Yes,” he thought he heard it whisper back.
Rudolfo
The snow had become cold rain when Rudolfo and his scouts rode into Caldus Bay. The village had grown in the years since Rudolfo had last visited, but it was still small. The high docks lay nearly empty with winter, and the low docks held their scattering of local fishing boats. A sprawl of larger two-story wooden buildings marked the center of town, and smaller houses encircled them and stretched out from them along the edges of the shore and north to melt into the forest.
In the late-evening gloom, the wet air carried their breath and filled their lungs and mouth with the heavy taste of burning alder. Rudolfo whistled his men down from their horses, and the Gypsy King and his squad walked past lamp-lit windows and barking dogs, their boot-heels loud upon the cobblestones to announce their arrival.
When a tired-looking woman opened a door to peer out Rudolfo called to her. “Good woman,” he said, tipping his cap beneath the hood of his raincloak. “Could you direct us towards your local inn?”
She pointed. “Yonder and left at the council hall.”
Rudolfo smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
By the time they reached the inn, two boys-dripping wet and muddy from running in the rain-were there to tend the horses. He handed over the reins and watched his men do the same. Then, he put his gloved hand upon the door latch and pulled open the door. The muted conversation within ceased as bleary eyes looked up from wooden tankards.
Lanterns lit a rough, wood-paneled room that smelled of fresh-baked bread and oyster stew. Small groups of men and women sat at the counter or at pine tables placed throughout over worn plank floors. They studied Rudolfo in the doorway and he moved in, mindful of their stares. His men followed him, and he let Jaryk guide them toward an empty table large enough to accommodate the group. Rudolfo approached the bar, his eyes calculating the evening clientele.
He drew a purse from beneath his cloak. Normally, he preferred letters of credit, but in the smaller towns, coins were still very much the custom of the day. He smiled at the large man wiping glasses behind the counter. “Good evening,” he said. He pulled down his hood, feeling the cold water trickle down his back, beneath his cloak and woolen shirt. “I’m looking for food and lodging for me and my men. A common room will suffice if you have one.”
The innkeeper nodded, and his smile widened as Rudolfo tipped a handful of coins onto the granite bar. “I’m certain we can accommodate you,” he said with an accent that hinted of an earlier life on the Delta. “We’ve a peppered oyster stew and fresh sour bread. Cold beer, too. And there’s a bunkroom in the back that will sleep your dozen with ease.”
Rudolfo inclined his head. “We are also looking for someone.” He watched as the man’s eyes narrowed slightly, watched the smile slip just a fraction on his mouth. “An old man. A fisherman named Petros.”
Rudolfo studied the innkeeper, registering the shifting of his eyes and the way the tip of his tongue poked out to wet his lips. He looked away, and Rudolfo smiled at it. Then, he looked back, something harder in his eyes. “You’ll not find anyone of that name here in Caldus Bay.”
Rudolfo raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps he goes under a different name?” Then, his hands moved in the subverbal language of the Entrolusian Delta. I seek the former Pope Petronus, and my need of him is urgent.
The innkeeper scowled, and his voice became a low growl. “If you’re about lodging, food and drink, I can help you. If you’re about finding ghosts, I cannot.”
Rudolfo’s voice lowered to match the innkeeper’s. “I assure you,” he said, “that I bear him no ill will.”
The innkeeper put down the glass and leaned forward. “And I assure you,” he said, “that he is not here.”
Rudolfo offered a tight-lipped smile and pushed the small pile of coins toward him. “Thank you, sir. Food and lodging it is.”
They sat at their table in the corner and talked quietly as the innkeeper’s daughter-a full-sized girl in calico-served them wooden bowls of stew and silver platters of bread. The strong flavor of the oysters put Rudolfo off, but he found it bearable with the bread and the beer to balance the taste.