Neb’s eyes narrowed. “How have you been sacrificed?”

The grief in the voice was unbearable to hear. “I will not participate in the Great Response. My absence and the alterations in my scripts exclude me.” It looked up at Neb, and its jeweled eyes leaked rusty tears. “I do not grieve for myself, Nebios Homeseeker, for it is my joy to give the dream back to itself. And I do not grieve that my brothers have left me behind; I would have done the same. The response must be made. I grieve that so much of the light was lost before we heard the dream. Before it taught us that Sanctorum Lux is far more than the books and scrolls of the past age, a far higher calling than what our creators intended us for.”

The cryptic words settled in, and Neb sorted them as best he could. “Where have the others gone, then?”

“They have followed the dream onward. You will follow it, too, in your path toward Home.” The mechoservitor opened up its chest cavity and reached long, metal fingers inside. “In my memory scrolls you will find a complete inventory of all my brothers destroyed here.”

Then, the metal man began pulling out metal scrolls and tangled wires from inside, tugging at them as if they were the stubborn weeds of a garden. As it pulled, its lights flashed and dimmed, and its mouth flap opened and closed.

Neb took a step toward it, thinking he had to do something, had to somehow prevent what was taking place in front of his eyes. “How do I follow the dream?”

The mechoservitor, sitting in the ashes of the burned-out library, looked up. “The last cipher is the first day of the Homeseeker’s Advent. You will know the rest within the song.”

Still, those hands plucked at the wires and scrolls until they spilled out around the metal man. Neb suddenly found himself weeping at the sight of it but did not understand why.

The metal man tipped onto its side, its hands slowing as they pulled at its innards. The bellows chugged slowly now, as well, and its eyes were specks of light buried deep in the glassy jewels. A slight sound escaped the mouth flap, and Neb leaned closer to hear it. The sound built as the metal man gave it the last wind of his artificial lungs.

The canticle was unmistakable, and when it was released into the vast tomb of burnt books, it whispered and echoed with a life of its own. Then, with one last wrenching tug, the metal man yanked out one final scroll and pushed it toward Neb.

As its fine copper wires detached, the music died.

Neb looked upon the suicided mechoservitor as the last of the song echoed through the room and felt something twist and snap into place within him-a Rufello lock on his soul that opened him to something he’d not seen within himself. The last cipher is the first day of the Homeseeker’s Advent.

He had come here seeking Sanctorum Lux and had found something different to search for. And he knew he could scour the burned-out remains of this Great Library, but Neb would save that work for others. They would find nothing here.

Instead, he would return to the locked well and place his ear to it. He would listen for the ciphers in the song and find the source of the dream.

It requires a response.

Somewhere, metal hands fashioned this so-called response, and Neb knew he was called to follow them. It was as if nothing else mattered. As if everything that could possibly matter depended upon finding the dream and obeying it.

Reaching down, he pried the last scroll from the mechoservitor’s fingers.

Then, giving himself to the song, he rose and left the metal man’s chosen grave.

Lysias

Lysias ran his hands through his hair and squinted at the reports on his makeshift desk. Outside, a wind whistled across the plain where Windwir had once stood, and cold from it leaked into his tent despite the furnace that glowed in the corner.

This was a miserable, desolate place, and it broke his heart to be here again. The images of that first dreadful sight were burned into his brain, from Sethbert’s wide-eyed, gleeful expression as the Overseer watched the fire fall over wine and cheese right down to the smoldering, stinking forest of bones Petronus and his army of gravediggers had ridden into with their shovels and wagons. It was a reminder of a genocide he had helped cause by trusting the wrong man with his loyalty. In the end, it had cost him. It had also cost the nation he loved above all others.

After the Ninefold Forest invitation had been received, he’d spent two weeks preparing his honor guard and organizing their winter march north. The Foresters had worked hard to be ready for the rest of the Named Lands, erecting what he suspected was the same massive tent they’d used when they’d hosted the Androfrancines’ last council. They’d also carefully established quarters for each of the kin-clave in attendance, their Second Captain of the Gypsy Scouts working with each military liaison to assure that no nation was placed improperly in the elaborate network of relationships, all precariously balanced with the recent troubles to the north.

When the council had convened three days earlier, the new Gypsy Queen, Jin Li Tam, had invoked the Articles of Kin-Clave regarding the call to council and-as hostess for the event-had taken petitions for the agenda. It was no surprise that matters in the Marshland quickly eclipsed Entrolusia’s interests in the kin-clave. Rumors flew the camp of Y’Zirite resurgence and coup d’etat. The young Marsh Queen was placed on the agenda, along with Meirov of Pylos and the dour-faced steward of Turam. Petronus had made his petition as well, along with Erlund, who supported the old Pope’s call for a public trial. And then, because it had been some time since a kin-clave had been called, other issues were voiced. In the absence of the Androfrancine Order, the matter of access to the Churning Wastes through the Keeper’s Wall was on the agenda. Representatives from the various counties of the Divided Isle petitioned the Ninefold Forest Houses for the return of Androfrancine land titles in their territories. It was a long list. Longer than Lysias could keep track of, particularly with his mind on other matters.

You should go to her. She is not hard to find. Somewhere in the Foresters’ city of tents, his daughter sat with the young Gypsy heir. He’d gotten confirmation from his spies in their camp, even had word that she was healthy and well cared for. That should have been enough for him. But it wasn’t; he longed to see her.

More than that, he longed to atone somehow. For many things, he now realized, beyond his parenting. The quiet snow fields of Windwir’s buried dead whispered his sins to him. And at night, when he dreamed, he saw the coldness of Vlad Li Tam’s eyes as he passed the cloth-wrapped weapon and forged confession across to him during the night of their clandestine meeting. He heard the muffled cries as he and Grymlis helped Sethbert’s cousin, Pope Resolute, exit this life and make way for an end to a war they could not win by force but might survive by intrigue.

Petronus had been wrong, surely, to try Sethbert summarily and without regard to kin-clave and Entrolusian law. But Sethbert, regardless of why or how, had brought down Windwir-and boasted of it-and then, after breaking the back of the Delta’s economy, had forced a war upon the Named Lands that even now spun out consequences of violence faster than a Tam could weave strategies. This unrest now to the north with the recent Marsher skirmishes far from their usual teritories, the civil wars that still brewed in Turam and Pylos and the recently ceased hostilities on the Delta were all certainly outgrowths of Sethbert’s actions. Because from his vantage point, before Windwir fell and the Androfrancines were taken out of the role of shepherd-and before House Li Tam packed up its network and vanished-the Named Lands had been safer.