Mal inclined his head. “I will, Grandfather.”

“Walk me to the railing then, that I might share my last words with them.”

Mal Li Tam’s eyebrows furrowed. “You will have to be quick. We’re leaving.”

I will grow my pain into an army.

Vlad took the young man’s offered arm and walked slowly to the bow of the flagship. He looked out over his sons and daughters and grandchildren, and his eyes found Rae Li Tam’s. “You will be the Lady Tam,” he told her.

And then, using every bit of strength, he threw his arms around his First Grandson and toppled them over the railing. He felt the solid thud as some part of his adversary struck the dock on the way down, and then they were plunged into the warm harbor. The pain of the salt in his wounds built a scream in lungs he dared not empty of air as he clung to his grandson. His hands wandered over the thrashing form he held in search of Mal’s windpipe. He entwined the younger man with his legs, now riding his back and strangling him as they sank.

He let the sea burn his flayed skin, and the burning built his pain. He grew that pain into an army and bent that army toward the destruction of one man.

And suddenly, Vlad Li Tam was not alone beneath the water. A radiant blue-green light engulfed him, shimmering around him in the water, and his ears were suddenly filled with song. The stark power and beauty of it overwhelmed him, and even clutching at his grandson’s throat he felt the urge to weep and cry out. Then suddenly, the light was gone and hands were reaching for him, pulling him back toward the surface. Hands that he could not see.

He resisted, twisting away and retaining his hold on Mal Li Tam with one arm while the other hand groped his loose clothing. Mal Li Tam struggled and kicked in a sudden resurgence of energy.

It must be here.

The hands were back again just as his fingers slipped over the cover of the book, tucked in a hidden pocket. He shook them off one more time, finally expelling the air in his lungs to force him down. Fumbling, he found the slender volume and drew it out just as the invisible hands, one last time, grabbed at him and pulled him toward the surface.

Mal Li Tam thrashed away into the deeper waters, gradually fading from view as Vlad neared the surface.

“Stop fighting me, Father,” Rae Li Tam whispered. He heard sadness in her voice but did not comprehend it. And when had she magicked herself?

“I will,” he said. Behind them, his flagship steamed for the mouth of the harbor under Ria’s control. Five of his iron vessels and the two schooners were awash and rolling listlessly as they burned and sank. On the docks, his family waited as the remaining vessels approached.

Clutching that slender volume of his father’s to his chest, Vlad Li Tam gave himself over to his daughter’s strong hands.

Neb

As the sun rose with terrifying glory, painting the landscape the color of blood, Neb stood upon the last rise with the metal man and gazed down into the bent and scattered bones of a city.

“We have arrived,” the mechoservitor said.

Neb studied the silent, unmoving landscape. “What city was this?”

“Port Charis-it is the birthplace of P’Andro Whym.”

Neb nodded. The exhilaration of the song still pulsed in his temples as he stretched from their long run.

“My brothers will be glad to meet you, Nebios Homeseeker. We have all seen your advent in the dream.” The metal man started out at an easy gait, strolling down the rise and into the ruins. Neb followed.

They walked deep into the city until they reached the base of an enormous tower with a dome that had collapsed into itself. Set into the base of the tower was a massive set of double doors set with a dozen Rufello ciphers. Neb watched the metal man’s fingers move over the locks with fast precision, and he tried to capture the string of numbers and symbols that clicked the locks open and caused the door to swing inward.

The metal man took a step into the wide, inviting room and then stopped. Its shoulders chugged and its metal body shook violently. Its eyes opened and closed. The mechoservitor looked to Neb. “I fear I am not functioning properly.”

Then, the mouth flap opened and closed and the shudders became more violent. Suddenly, the voice blasted out, high and reedy, in the dark and empty space. “My name is Charles,” the metal man said. “I am the Arch-Engineer of Mechanical Science for the Androfrancine Order in Windwir. I bear an urgent message for the Hidden Pope, Petronus. The Library is fallen by treachery. Sanctorum Lux must be protected.”

It stopped, then looked up to Neb. “My operating scrolls have been significantly altered between Father Charles and his apprentice.”

“That is the message you gave at the Keeper’s Gate.”

“It is the message Father Charles etched into me during my time of captivity on the Delta.”

Father Charles? Neb knew that name very well. He was the man who’d brought the mechoservitors back from the obscurity of the past, working with what little remained of Rufello’s Book of Specifications to rebuild the mechanical wonders. “Charles survived Windwir?”

“He altered my operating and memory scrolls under the belief that Pope Petronus still lived. Before him, his apprentice decommissioned my obedience to the dream. The integration of new orders has created a logic conflict in my scripting. Sanctorum Lux must not be protected. It must surely be destroyed in its proper time to save the light, to keep it from those who would bend it toward darkness. The dream is clear on this matter.”

Neb felt an uneasiness growing within him and looked into the dark opening. He heard nothing, smelled nothing, and forced himself to take a step inside. “I don’t see anything.”

The mechoservitor walked into the room’s far wall, and in the dim glow of its amber eyes, Neb watched it opening a panel. “The lights are not functioning.”

Neb slipped outside to fashion a makeshift torch. When he returned, the mechoservitor had vanished. A small door in the far wall stood open, and he entered it, suddenly swept with vertigo when he realized it opened upon a vast open space that descended down beneath him on a narrow metal staircase. Somewhere below, he heard the sound of metal on metal as the mechoservitor descended.

The smell in this place was unmistakable. The smell of smoke and ash and burnt paper. Neb felt a knot growing in his stomach.

Sanctorum Lux must not be protected.

When he reached the bottom, the mechoservitor waited for him. “I was mistaken,” the metal man said. “You are not early after all, Nebios Homeseeker.”

At the bottom of the stairs, a vast underground room stretched out beyond the guttering light from his torch. The reek of old smoke filled the room, and Neb knew that this was merely the first of many rooms. Just as surely, he also knew that each of them would be the same: an urn that held the ashes of the light.

He sat heavily on the soot-covered stone floor and let the weight of it settle down upon him. Was it possible that somehow, the same hidden enemy that had brought down Windwir had brought down this place, too? No, he realized. The mechoservitor’s cryptic words still played out behind his eyes. “Then it was here? The library was here?”

“League upon league of it,” the metal man said. “Reproduced and guarded by my brothers and me.”

Neb sucked in his breath, then slowly exhaled. He felt something squeezing his heart. The weight of it hurt his head and brought back images of fire falling from the sky, a column of dark smoke blotting out the sun. “Destroyed at the bidding of a dream?”

The mechoservitor didn’t answer the question at first. Instead, it went to the center of the room and sat down heavily. When it spoke, its thin and reedy voice was racked with sorrow. “Sacrificed for the dream,” it said, “even as I have now become.”