Canticle

My father has killed my son, she thought, but before she could carry it further, the truth of it settled in. She could have refused-she could have left the path she’d been groomed for all her life-but blind obedience to House Li Tam had kept her on the road that brought her to this place. I have done this myself.

Over the course of those days since her father left, Jin Li Tam had spent much time thinking. Every man she’d taken to bed in order to better move the Named Lands along the course her father prescribed. Every man she’d killed for the same reason. Until she met Rudolfo, she realized, her entire life had been in service to this. But something in the Gypsy King’s eyes, in his flamboyant poise and his careful words, had put light on a hollowness she did not know she harbored. And though her father had pla

Love.

Perhaps, she thought, her father had intended that as well. If so, she wondered if he knew now, wherever his iron armada had taken him, how much her love for Rudolfo had birthed her hatred of her father and his dark work in their New World.

She lightly stroked the back of her infant’s head, holding him close, willing her body’s warmth to lift the gray pallor and clamminess of his skin.

What now would this new love birth in her?

She realized with a start that the River Woman had spoken and she looked up. “I’m sorry, Earth Mother?”

The old woman smiled, and her eyes smiled, too. “We will do all that we can. He is a beautiful baby, Lady Tam, and you are a beautiful mother.”

The tears returned and she forced them away, swallowing hard. “Approach this girl on my behalf and arrange for us to meet in the morning,” she said. “Speak to Stewardess Jessa and have her prepare a room for this woman in the Family Wing. If she has any kin in the camp, arrange for their care as well.”

The River Woman inclined her head and stood. She placed the small pouch on a table near the bed. “One day on and one day off,” she said. “No more.” She went to the door and paused. “Shall I speak with Lord Rudolfo?”

Jin Li Tam shook her head. “No. I will do it.” This is my grief to bear him.

“As you wish, Lady.” Bowing slightly again, the River Woman left, and her girl returned.

When the young apprentice came to take the baby, Jin Li Tam bid her wait. He’d finished nursing now, and she held him to her shoulder, rocking him and patting his back lightly. She did so longer than she needed, willing the tears away but failing utterly at it.

My sister Rae, she thought. She will know what to do. Disguised as a young male acolyte and placed by their father, she’d studied the Androfrancine alchemy as a girl and had practiced it for nearly half of a century. But her sister, along with the rest of her siblings, had fled the stage her family had so long set with their careful props and practiced deceptions.

Jin Li Tam gave over her baby to the waiting girl and settled back into her bed, but no sleep came to her when she closed her eyes.

Instead, her mind went unbidden to the dream that seemed so long ago and so real.

“Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,” the kin-raven had told her. “Fortunate are you among women and highly favored is Jakob, Shepherd of the Light.”

Perhaps I misspoke. Perhaps the kin-raven’s message is more welcome than I thought. She played the words out again and again.

Strange that those dark words, with their promise of a future for the frail life she’d made, should now become her truest source of hope.

For the longest while she lay there, listening for the noises her child might make and acutely aware of the gentle rustlings of the young apprentice who tended him. But it was a divided awareness. No matter how hard she tried, she could not erase the blasted plain of Windwir and its crimson sky from that dark space behind her eyes. And when she finally drifted off, the smell of ashes and blood followed her into that restless sleep.

Lysias

General Lysias of the United City-States waited by the door for Erlund’s aide to a

At least, Lysias thought, Erlund was more thoughtful than his late uncle when it came to these matters. Still, he realized it would not be enough. When the former Overseer had learned of soldiers deserting their posts during the War of Androfrancine Aggression, he’d maimed their family members as an example to others. Erlund at least had the sense to let them go.

I should join them, Lysias thought, but shook it away as a reminder of how little sleep he’d had of late. Dereliction of his duty was not an option. He would stay in his uniform, by the side of the Overseer, until the very end, no matter how bitter. Even, he knew, if it meant facing the axe of these so-called revolutionaries. He’d helped install the current Overseer and had helped bring down another to do so.

I will not make that mistake again.

Quietly, he cursed Sethbert’s folly, though he knew he was as much to blame as the other generals who listened to the madman’s ravings and agreed to the war in the first place. In the end, he’d helped the old Androfrancine captain set things right, watching while Grymlis helped the pretending Pope, Resolute, step down by way of suicide. And he had personally led the party of guards to arrest Sethbert for the crime of genocide, based on Resolute’s suicide letter. The very letter he’d received from Vlad Li Tam himself, along with the ancient hand ca

He’d seen that it was the best path for the Delta, and he had taken it in the hopes that it was not too late.

He’d been wrong.

Now civil war swallowed the Entrolusian Delta, with three of its city-states now pitted against six that remained loyal to the old ways and the line of Overseers it had produced in its thousand years of unity. Soon, another would fall to the idealists and their rhetoric.

And two nights ago, they had gone too far.

They had hired Marsher rogues to assassinate the Overseer.

The ornate double doors to Erlund’s private office opened, and the aide stepped out. Like all of the others Lysias had seen, the young man looked haggard. “The Overseer will see you now, General Lysias,” he said, holding the door.

Lysias nodded curtly and entered, his boots whispering across the thick carpet that marked the end of the wide hall and the begi