Rudolfo looked from the sopping blanket to the shimmering ship half a league out. The drizzle moved gradually toward downfall, and he felt the temperature dropping. He whistled his men in and pressed his fingers into their shoulders, passing instructions to them silently. They retreated and ten minutes later, the birds lifted out of the boathouse and scattered. Rudolfo used that time to scrawl a hasty note homeward and sent it with his own bird as the scouts handed their packs down into waiting hands.
Then, he and his men climbed into the longboat and took their place in the bow.
“You’re surely a long way from home during interesting times,” Rafe said as they pulled away from the dock.
I am indeed, Rudolfo thought. “Our world is changing.”
He could hear Rafe’s smile around his reply. “It is,” he said. “But as our gray-robed friends used to say, ‘Change is the path life takes.’ ”
Rudolfo grinned. “You’ve not changed so very much, it appears.”
Rafe chuckled. “Ten years ago and I’d have dropped you into the bay with me. I’m getting older. Slower.”
Rudolfo nodded. Rafe Merrique had been middle-aged the last time he’d seen him, just coming into the pinnacle of his success at sea.
They were quiet now as the oars whispered into the water, moving the boat forward. The rainfall increased and Rudolfo watched the drops splash into the whitecapped bay, watched the splashes leap half-heartedly back toward the sky before surrendering to gravity. When they came alongside, he felt the hull with his hands and let Rafe guide them toward the waiting rope ladder.
Rudolfo scrambled up and let the hands there at the rail steer him toward the hatch.
Belowdecks, he sat with his men near a small furnace in a long, paneled galley while dusky women served them steaming hot firespice and fresh black bread with sweet butter. The same women had shown them their cabins and offered them baths. Rudolfo declined, choosing instead to wait for Merrique.
When the door opened and a shadow slipped through, he put down his mug. “So exactly where are we going, Merrique?”
Rafe chuckled. “Still impatient, aren’t you? So impatient that you still reek of those damnable birds.” A chair moved across the floor and creaked as Rafe sat. “We sail for the Delta. Esarov himself has sent for you. He has something he’d like you to keep an eye on.” The pirate paused. “I’m not privy to more detail than that, but I do think your friend Petronus is climbing onto a narrow limb in a very high tree. And a storm brews for him there.”
Esarov. That name had come up more and more since the end of the war. His little revolution had sprung to life in the chaos around Windwir’s fall and had gained momentum once Sethbert was removed from the equation. Erlund hadn’t the stomach or resolve to treat ruthlessly with the root of that insurrection when it had first taken hold, and now open warfare was his only option. Esarov, a master statesman and strategist among other things, had bent his pen and his words in the direction of change, and slowly, the Delta followed.
And now, somehow, that Democrat was in league with Petronus. “What does Esarov play at with our former Pope?” Rudolfo finally asked.
“Something with high stakes,” Rafe answered. “I know that much. And I know Esarov was pleased to no end that you were already nearby. He offered me twice my normal fee to fetch you.”
“I wanted to speak with you about that,” Rudolfo said, resisting the urge to stroke his beard. “I will soon have need of a fast ship and a fierce crew, and I’m prepared to sign letters of credit for whatever price you require.”
Rafe Merrique chuckled. “Whatever price I require? What will my ship and crew be doing for you, exactly?”
Rudolfo thought for a moment that he saw the briefest glimmer of the pirate leaning forward intently. “I need to find Vlad Li Tam and his iron armada. Petronus may know where he’s sailed. Once I know, I will need someone to take me to him.”
The pirate snorted. “He could be anywhere by now, regardless of where he sailed for.” He waited, and when Rudolfo said nothing, he continued. “Still,” he said, “I’m certain we can come to some kind of arrangement.”
Rudolfo nodded, though he knew Rafe Merrique couldn’t see. “It will be good to sail with you again, Captain.”
The chair grated back. Already, parts of Rafe flickered back into focus as the magicks burned themselves out. Rudolfo thought he saw him incline his head, and he returned the gesture.
“I’m at your service, Lord Rudolfo,” the pirate said.
Rudolfo remembered the first time he’d heard those words. It was in a Delta tavern over two decades behind him. It was one of his first assignments for the Order; he’d been sent to meet his transport with Gregoric and a half-squad of scouts.
Rafe Merrique paused at the door. “By the way,” he said, “congratulations are in order. I’m sure he will grow into a fine, strong boy.”
In that moment, Rudolfo was glad for the magicks. They masked the shadow that crossed his face as fear and sadness washed him. He wasn’t sure how to answer.
“That is my hope,” he finally said.
After Rafe Merrique had gone, Rudolfo excused himself and returned to his cabin. He removed his boots and clothing and did the best he could with the waiting basin of warm water.
After toweling himself off, he crawled into the narrow bed and pulled the covers over himself. After a week on the ground, the bed was softer than a woman’s breast and smelled nearly as sweet. It gentled him into thoughts of Jin Li Tam. My wife now, he realized as he drifted into sleep.
But in Rudolfo’s dreams, his wife wept alone in a field of bones and he was powerless to help her.
Neb
Neb slowed his run as he crested the rise and sucked in his breath at the view ahead. Renard waited there, bent slightly with his hands on his knees, drinking air as he surveyed the landscape that stretched out beyond them.
Overhead, the sky washed itself in a blush of dusky rose as it emptied itself of birds.
Neb joined Renard, shielding his eyes from the reflection of the fading sun upon the jagged forest of rainbow-colored glass that stretched as far as he could see in all directions but the one they’d come from. Distant and moving across that treacherous ground, he could just make out Isaak’s metal form.
Renard followed his gaze, drawing his waterskin and passing it to Neb. “We don’t need to catch him,” Renard reminded him. “We only need to follow him, and he’s leaving us a good trail. He’s far better equipped to handle his so-called cousin than we are.”
For four days now, he’d wondered exactly what Renard had whispered to Isaak that sent him sprinting into the night. And he’d also wondered just how this Waster knew his father. Last, he’d wondered what had possessed him to abandon his squad and take off after their strange guide-and why it had seemed so easy, so natural to do so, despite the fact that his own men were in the midst of ambush. He’d chewed the root himself and followed after, the shouts of surprise fading behind him as he fled the battle.
As the bitter juice took hold, he’d felt a surge of strength and speed, easily catching up to Renard.
He told himself that his service to the light required it-that he had to stay near Isaak and that fleeing with Renard was the only way to do so. He told himself that Rudolfo and Petronus would both concur, even if Aedric did not. Still, it gnawed him. He’d thought all this as he stretched his legs into a full sprint and felt the breath of betrayal and desertion on the back of his neck like a wolf on his heels.
Of course, the ambush had been faked by Renard and his drunken friends, but he’d not learned that until yesterday, when Renard had told him with a casual chuckle in the face of Neb’s consternation.
They’d run that first night all the way through in silence, and then another day before they stopped to rest and to nurse water from the hidden places Renard showed him. But Isaak hadn’t stopped, and when Neb moved to go after him, Renard had stopped him.
“You’ll kill yourself in the dark or lose his trail,” Renard said. They were his first words since leaving Fargoer’s Town. “We sleep now until light. Then we track your metal friend easily. Eventually, he’ll lead us to the other.”
Two more days of racing full-sprint across the jagged, uneven ground, and each day they came within view of him just as the sun sank.
Neb took a pull from the tepid water and swished it around the inside of his mouth before handing the waterskin back to Renard. The water bore the burnt dust and salt flavor of the Wastes, but he swallowed it down anyway, grateful for it. “What was this place?” he asked.
Renard lifted the skin to his mouth, swallowed, and replaced the cap. “These are the outskirts of Ahm,” he said. “It was the capital of Aelys.”
Neb’s brow furrowed. He remembered this place from years before, when his father had brought him a square coin bearing the image of Vas Y’Zir, the Wizard King who oversaw Aelys for his father, Xhum Y’Zir, in the days of old, before P’Andro Whym and his scientists brought him and his six brothers down in a month of bloodshed. Brother Hebda had come by the coin during a dig and kept it back as a gift for the son he could not raise because of his Order’s vows. “My father came here,” he said.
Renard laughed. “Your father saw most of the Wastes, young Nebios. But aye, he was here.” He set out at an easy walk down toward the jagged jungle of glass. “And who do you think brought him?”
Of course. If Renard held the guide contracts with the Order it made sense that he would’ve escorted the very expeditions his father had worked on. He followed Renard, catching up easily. “Did you know him well?”
Renard found a clear patch of ground at the edge of the glass field and put down his pack. “Well enough,” he said. “He was a good man.”
Neb found a boulder and sat, watching Renard. The Waste guide drew a vial from one of his many pockets and shook out droplets at the four corners of the camp as he’d done each preceding night. In nights past, he’d not spoken about it, but now, his tongue loosening with each league they put between them and the Gypsy Scouts, he talked. “It’s kin-wolf urine,” he said.