have had them killed and would have buried them at the border.
The beatings had seemed a reasonable compromise when reason failed.
But still they persist. Rudolfo sighed. “I think a new tack is in order,” he finally said, glancing down at his son. “Have them brought to me.”
Aedric’s face registered surprise. “You want to see them?”
Rudolfo nodded. “I do. I want to speak with them. Question them.”
He glanced to Jin Li Tam. She regarded him with a face he could not read, but her hands moved with subtle grace along the reins. He admired the care she took to be sure none saw but him. Are you certain giving them voice is the answer?
He smiled, though it was brief and felt out of place. He’d just started teaching her the subverbal language of House Y’Zir last month, and she was nearly proficient. Of course, she’d already known eleven other subverbals. Rudolfo’s fingers moved over Jakob’s shoulder and head as he formed his reply. I’m not certain.
Rudolfo felt the power of his words even as his hands made them. He truly wasn’t certain, and it was foreign to him. “I think our old strategies are no longer serving us well,” he said, keeping his gaze steady on her blue eyes.
Then, he looked away from her, toward Aedric. “Be certain they’re well cared for, Aedric. I intend to return them whole to their bloodletting queen.”
He did not wait for Aedric to speak before he pushed his horse forward. He wondered if Jin Li Tam would follow him but secretly hoped she wouldn’t. He needed this time for himself and his son.
Two years ago, he’d ridden these same plains, Gregoric at his side. A shadow had moved over the light of that second summer day, and he’d looked up to a pillar of smoke on the sky. He marked it now as a day when his life—and his world—changed utterly. From that moment, so many other changes had flowed out to him, sweeping him away with the force of their current, including his betrothal to Jin Li Tam and the birth of their son.
He felt the warmth of his son against his chest and thought about the new shadow passing over the light that remained. Six months earlier, at the edge of spring, he’d watched Ria bring Petronus back from the dead with her blood magicks and had watched his betrothed beg for their son’s life as a result of it, the culmination of a grand manipulation. With relations already strained, the events on the Plains of Windwir had driven an even deeper wedge between his houses and the other nations of the Named Lands. Pylos had broken off kin-clave entirely, and Turam was close behind. The Delta remained a loose ally, but it was a paper kin-clave as they wrestled through the upheaval of political reform. And now, adherents to this new Y’Zirite Resurgence brought their sermons into his lands, preaching them to his people and pointing to his son as their so-called Child of Promise.
As he whistled his horse to a gallop, Rudolfo wondered what path he would take. His own words came back to haunt him: I am uncertain. It was a strange sensation, not knowing the best path to take.
He felt the sun on his face and savored the wind that pulled at his silk clothing and his scarf of rank. Silent for a time, Jakob gurgled and laughed again.
When Rudolfo placed his hand over his child’s chest he felt strength there. His fingers moved, and he tapped a message there. Whatever I do, I do for your future.
He could not bring himself to laughter now with the gravity of that thought. Instead, he kept his hand there and urged his stallion faster, finding delight in the voice of his son and purpose in the heart that beat lightly beneath the palm of his hand.
“My best and truest compass,” Rudolfo said in a quiet voice.
Then, he turned his horse toward the line of old-growth forest and raced homeward to his waiting work.
Neb
Holding his thorn rifle loosely, Neb lay still and studied the dust cloud that moved across the shattered landscape of the Churning Wastes. The afternoon sun baked the ground beneath him, and from his vantage point in the hills, he watched heat waves rising from the sand and rock floor of the valley below. There, against the backdrop of that shimmer, a figure ran under cover of magicks.
This was the third time they’d encountered magicked runners in the Deep