Jin watched a blush creep into the girl’s face even as her brown eyes darted away. “Is there. ” She paused. “Is there any word of Neb?” Her eyes returned, meeting Jin’s for a moment, and the blush rose even further on Winters’s cheeks. “I know he’s missing and that Aedric seeks him.”
Of course. The boy. Jin Li Tam tried to force a smile but knew she failed. “I’ve an entire company seeking him. I know he was well enough when he left Aedric in pursuit of Isaak and the other mechoservitor.” She wasn’t sure what else to say. These were hard times for love; bitter soil for it to grow in. And these weeks with Rudolfo off seeking a cure for Jakob-long stretches with no word from her new husband-she knew the sharp teeth of worry that chewed this young woman. I should say something to comfort her. “I know that if he could, Neb would get word to you. The birds don’t seem to hold their magicks there. We’re doing our best to find them.”
“He’s no longer even in my dreams,” Winters said, looking away. The voice was so nearly a whisper, and there was a profound sadness in it.
“Maybe your dreams are affected by distance,” she offered, but doubted it would help.
Winters shrugged but said nothing, and Jin Li Tam was uncertain what to add. She wasn’t very familiar with the Marsh Queen’s dreaming beyond what everyone knew about the War Sermons and the Book of Dreaming Kings. She knew even less of these supposed shared dreams she had with the boy, though she’d known there was a bond between the two of them from their time at Windwir. She’d certainly heard talk of the young romance even before she’d known of the girl’s true identity. But Jin’s attention over the last several months had been preoccupied with preparing the manor-and her own soul-for the small package of struggling life she now held. And the work of sorting what her life had been and what it was becoming. If those weren’t enough, the circumstances of the Firstborn Feast and Jakob’s troubled birth had also done their part to keep her focus elsewhere.
Still, she certainly understood the power of dreams. Her own had turned dark and violent that night-and had stayed that way. Even this morning, she’d clawed her way to wakefulness with her last memory still vivid before her closed eyes: a dark bird gobbling eyes in a field of faces that she knew too well.
She realized that the girl still waited for some further response. What do I tell her? There was more strength and certainty in her voice than she had hoped for when she finally found the words she needed. “We will find him, Winters, and we will bring him home safe.”
The girl inclined her head. “Thank you, Lady Tam.”
Jin Li Tam returned the bow, then looked to the face of her son, swaddled in the thick woolen blanket that had once held Rudolfo as his parents rode with him from Forest House to Forest House, presenting the younger twin along with his older brother, Isaak, to the Forest Gypsies they would someday serve. He was asleep now, his lips bubbling contently as his breath whispered in and out between them.
She saw the interest on Winters’s face and turned slightly so that the girl could see the infant more clearly.
“He’s so small,” the Marsh Queen said.
“Yes.” She paused. “There is little time before we must leave; would you like to hold him?”
The girl blanched, her face moving between fear and delight. “I don’t think I can. I’m-”
Jin clucked her tongue. “Certainly you can. Follow me.”
She led the way back around the tent, leaving the scouts at the flap as she and Winters entered.
Lynnae and the River Woman sat at a table together beneath a guttering lantern measuring out fresh scout magicks carefully into the small, string-tied satchels. They looked up briefly, but went quickly back to their work. In the corner, a small stove warmed the large space and a pail of wash-water along with it. Jin motioned to a narrow cot near the fire. “Sit,” she said. “And scrub your hands. There’s soap there, too.”
Winters propped the axe against the nearby table. Jin watched her washing up, wondering absently exactly how the Marshers managed with their own young in the midst of such filth. Unlike most in the Named Lands, she did not for a second believe that they were still caught up in the Age of Laughing Madness, left over from their dark master’s last and most desolating spell. She knew they were driven by a different insanity: the slightly more tolerable mystic variety.
When the girl’s hands were clean, Jin leaned over and shifted Jakob over into her arms. She tried not to wrinkle her nose, making a mental note to have Lynnae clean the blanket later.
Winters held him, awkwardness visible in every aspect of her posture. “He’s so small,” she said again. But this time, Jin noted the light growing in her eyes and the smile that pulled at her mouth.
“Have you never held a baby?”
Winters shook her head, her eyes never leaving Jakob’s face. “I’ve seen plenty of them. But I grew up alone. My friends were mostly books and dreams. And Tertius, my tutor.”
Jin wasn’t surprised. The sheer size of her own family insured her own exposure to the young, but she could see how, isolated and kept apart as Winters had been, a girl could reach the age of her own fertility without having seen up close and personally what her own body was capable of making with a little help. She suddenly grinned and felt a bit of wickedness rise up within her. “Perhaps I should send another company east to find young Nebios and fetch him back here for you,” she said, “so that you might make one of your own.”
For a moment-a brief moment-Winters became a girl again, blushing and giggling. “I don’t think I would know what to do if-”
“Trust me, Queen Winteria,” Jin Li Tam said, still smiling, “you’d figure it out soon enough.”
And in a brief moment of her own, Jin Li Tam felt the weight of the New World slide off her shoulders as she and the Queen of the Marshfolk laughed until even Lynnae and the River Woman had no choice left but to join them.
When that moment passed, she strapped on her knives, checked her armor and passed Jakob over to his nursemaid’s care. Then, still flushed from their laughter, she and Winters called for their horses and set out in the direction that duty called them to.
Winters
A light snow fell as they rode silently south to parley. Above them, the sun hung veiled in gray behind the overcast sky. Around them, they heard the sounds of a forest leaning toward spring and the steady footfalls of their horses.
Winters rode beside Jin Li Tam, occasionally glancing over at her. The Gypsy Queen wore a coat of silver scales and a pair of scout knives with worn handles. Her long red hair was pulled back into a braid, crowned with a circlet that matched her armor. She rode proud and tall in the saddle. There was stern beauty in the steel of her posture.
I am nothing like her, Winters thought. What had Rudolfo called her? Formidable? And yet, not so long ago, she’d seen beneath the calm mask Jin Li Tam wore. When she’d first approached the Gypsy Queen, Winters had seen anguish and doubt upon the woman’s face. There was a desperation in the way she had clutched her child even in the midst of her deliberate pacing. But she’d also watched as Jin took that anguish and doubt and stored it away as soon as her work called upon her to do so. It was a mastery of self that Winters could only hope to someday attain.
And the baby. When she’d taken that small, warm bundle into her arms, had seen those tiny fingers and that tiny mouth, it had sparked something within her. Not the ribald, baser instinct that Jin had teased her about, but something else, something deeper even than that compelling human need to become one with another and out of that, to make life.
Deeper than that, it had awakened within her a sudden and strong need for family-for an abiding connection to others that transcended her experiences to date. She’d thought she’d felt that with her people, but now she was uncertain of it.
Upon the death of her father, when she was very young, Hanric had done his best by her. He’d given over any personal desire he might have had for a family of his own to serve her father and later, her, so there really had been no woman to play the role of mother to the young queen. No siblings to shape her sense of place in the world. And knowing no different path, she’d grown up amid the Book of her predecessors and what other volumes they could pillage or purchase. She’d learned about her monthlies from their Herb Lady the day after it had first begun. She’d learned the fundamentals of procreation from Tertius, laid out for her in the practiced language of Androfrancine scholarship without any of the trappings of love or marriage or wonderment. And until that day she and Neb had fallen to the ground, tangled in glossolalia and prophecy, she’d given no real further thought to it. But gradually, as he’d filled her dreams and they had become even further tangled up in images of a Home they would someday share, she’d grown to feel a bond like nothing she’d felt before. And now, she realized, this was essentially a part of the same dance.
We long for connection. She saw it in Jin Li Tam’s face as she fed her baby. She felt it herself as she laughed with the women in the tent, clutching precariously to that life in her arms.
If anyone had asked her even as early as last autumn, she’d have sworn she felt that connection with her people. But now, with Hanric in the ground and her boots fresh from the Androfrancine graveside at the Summer Papal Palace, she questioned that connection. Somehow, within her very people, her family, a vicious and twisted thing grew in shadows, and neither she nor her Twelve had known of it. She saw once again the look of despair and fear upon Seamus’s face as he pulled back his grandson’s shirt for her. She thought of the prophet, Ezra, and the milk white of his eyes. She remembered the ecstasy upon his face as he showed her the markings of ownership upon his breast.
No, she realized, not just of ownership. but of belonging. A passionate and powerful connection to something.
She shuddered. Begone, kin-raven.
A low whistle drifted through the forest, and she realized they now approached the edge of a small clearing. At its center, a handful of horses gathered beneath the flags of Pylos and Turam. She glanced again to Jin Li Tam, saw that calm determination upon the woman’s face, and allowed that to settle her.
Jin Li Tam looked to her and must have read the worry there in her eyes. “Follow my lead if you are uncertain,” she said. And as she spoke, her hands moved subtlety around the reins and along the neck of her horse. I will see you through this.
Winters blinked, uncertain why this surprised her. Rudolfo knew the nonverbal language of House Y’Zir, so it stood to reason that his bride would as well. “Thank you, Lady Tam,” she said.
Jin Li Tam offered a forced smile. “You are welcome, Lady Winteria.”
Then, their scouts were in the open, hands ready at their knife hilts as they took up their positions. Winters turned her attention to the cluster of horses ahead and felt the firmness settle into her jawline. The weight that had lifted earlier from her returned, and she breathed deeply as it settled upon her neck and shoulders.
Meirov was easy to pick out though Winters had never seen the woman up close. Hanric had handled her parleys during the War of Windwir. Still, those times she’d seen her from a distance, she’d not imagined she’d be so haggard and hollow-eyed.
She is consumed by grief. But more than that, she realized, the grief had become a bitter rage that sharpened the angles of her face and paled her already fair skin. The long braid of her blond hair spilled out from beneath her helmet, and she rested her hand upon the pommel of her sword. Around her, her rangers stood near and ready, their eyes watchful upon the Gypsy Scouts that stood in a loose circle.
Turam’s general sat beside her. He wore a steel breastplate and a deep purple cloak, holding his helmet under his arm as he leaned over to whisper something to Meirov. The queen nodded, and her eyes met Winters’s. Hatred blazed out from them, and the stark honesty of it made Winters flinch and look away. Her stomach ached, and a sudden urge to flee rose up in her. She risked a glance back, but those eyes bore into her and the firmness of Meirov’s jawline, the white knuckles upon her sword and reins, were clear messages.
She would cut me down if she could.
Winters blinked and looked away again.
As they drew nearer, Jin Li Tam spoke. “Hail, Pylos and Turam.”
Meirov’s voice was cold. “Lady Tam, our parley and kin-clave is with the Ninefold Forest Houses.”