Her eyes narrowed. She could not see them, but there were scouts surrounding them now. One whistle and a dozen arrows or two dozen blades would bring him down. “What favor do you ask, old man?”

She saw tears coursing down his face from his milky eyes. “That I might hold the Child of Promise within my arms and speak my blessing over him.”

Jin Li Tam’s response surprised her. She felt the hair rising on her arms and neck and felt something cold grip her stomach. “You are already privy to the matters of my household, it appears,” she said. “You know that my son is ill.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “the blessing would do him good.”

Jin Li Tam shook her head slowly. “I do not know you, Ezra. You shall not go near my son.” She felt heat rising in her now-a righteous anger.

He sighed. “I could whistle now and have him brought to me,” he said. “But I will instead hope for another time.”

I could whistle now. She filed the veiled threat away for consideration later. “You are not alone then?”

His laughter was sharp. “I am an old, blind man. It would be foolishness for me to ride alone.”

She scrutinized the ground around his feet. He’d trampled the snow well enough that she could not see the footprints of whatever magicked escort accompanied him. But she did not need to see it to know these Marshers were blood-magicked. She thought of the scouts surrounding them, and the others that minded the carriage with Jakob and Lynnae inside somewhere closer to the middle of the army that stretched behind her. “Apart from my son and your concern for my physical health,” she said in a low, intentional voice, “what matter do you bring by way of parley?”

“Only this,” he said. “We intend to honor our kin-clave with the Gypsy King. Our houses have much work to do, together, in shaping the Named Lands for the new Age that dawns upon us.”

She tried to sort and categorize the data she pulled from his words, but it became lost in a sea of questions she knew she did not have the time to ask. “Our kin-clave,” she said slowly, “is with Queen Winteria. not with you.”

“Kin-clave,” he said, “runs deeper and wider than you can know from this place, Great Mother.”

“And because of it, you wish me to turn my army back homeward?”

He nodded. “I do; though I doubt you shall.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You are correct. I intend to honor my kin-clave with your queen and with her neighbors to the south. I go to bid peace among them.”

Ezra smiled. “And you may attain something akin to it,” he said, “but it cannot last. These are the pains of childbirth, the pains of something made.” He paused to regard her, and in that moment she could have sworn he could see her. His stare penetrated. “You are a part of this great making. As is your husband. And Jakob-he is most highly favored among men.”

She scowled at his words. There was a rhythm to his language that struck a familiar chord deep within, and she suddenly realized what it was.

The dreams. The voice was different, but the cadence remained the same, and she looked up and around her quickly to confirm her sudden suspicion.

Perched high in an evergreen, an enormous black bird-a kin-raven, she suddenly knew-watched them with a solitary black eye.

“Go cautiously, Great Mother,” Ezra was now saying as he turned his horse around. “The kin-clave of House Y’Zir and his servants is no small thing to trifle with.” Here his eyes narrowed, and blind or no, she was convinced he saw her. “Neither is that blessing a thing to spurn so recklessly, for someday it will save your son, and he will, in turn, save us all.”

She sat stunned and blinking. She’d certainly had her suspicions. She’d seen the intelligence reports on the dead scouts; she’d read her history and knew well that the resurgences stubbornly resurrected themselves, particularly during times of great distress and trauma in the Named Lands. Certainly, now was one of those times.

But to hear the words and to know that her family was so centrally woven into whatever belief this old man carried mixed a different kind of fear into the brew that bubbled deep in her stomach. She wanted to shout after him, to demand answers and if need be, to whistle down the Gypsy Scouts upon him and take him back to the interrogator’s wagon and the single Physician of Penitent Torture she’d brought out of forced retirement to assist them if needed.

And at the same time, she wanted to turn her horse, gallop for her son, and hide him within her embrace. Somehow keep him from the madness that seemed to unravel the world he would inherit.

But Jin Li Tam did neither. Instead, she sat upon her horse and watched Ezra the Marsh Prophet disappear into the gathering mist.

When she looked back to the kin-raven, she saw now that it had vanished, too.

If, she realized, it had ever been there at all.

Summoning up courage for her voice, Jin Li Tam called for the Wandering Army to resume its march. And for the rest of that day, she rode in silence and wondered what she would find awaiting her in the Marshlands.

Rae Li Tam

Rae Li Tam stood at the bow and watched the sun rise ahead, casting red and tenuous light over the eastern horizon. Somewhere to the north-her port side-the Divided Isle marked the southernmost territories of the Named Lands. Behind them and farther south lay the island chains they’d so recently fled once she’d received that fateful bird indicating disaster for half their fleet.

She was no closer now, weeks later, to sorting it out. But there had been no further word sent after them, and she had no reason to believe there ever would be.

At this point, how would they find us? At sea, even six iron ships were moths in a forest. The only way to have found them before would’ve been to follow their trail from island to island, and even that would have required a great deal of guesswork. Back then they’d been careful.

But now a different layer of caution applied. They’d made no stops where watching eyes might find them. They’d stopped to replenish the water tanks the one time they’d gotten dangerously low. It had been a remote and midnight isle, with the steampumps pulling the water in through a series of leaking hoses they had no time to repair. They’d dropped nets and pulled fish to supplement their diets and fell back to rationing to see them through to their new destination.

Even so, fever had taken one ship. Quarantined, it limped behind them as the sickness burned its way through its families and crew. Another had dropped to one-third its speed, and the engineers were uncertain why.

Still, considering how much could go wrong, Rae Li Tam was pleased.

Now, a new day dawned and she gave herself to it, closing her eyes and letting the cold wind pull at her robes and her hair, feeling it move over her face.

She felt Baryk’s hands slide around her, and she leaned back into him, sighing. “We’ve made good time,” he said. “Have you thought more about what we’ll do when we get there?”

She leaned her head back into his chest and turned her head slightly so she could see his face. “I don’t know what we’ll do. I’m sure Father knew what he was about, but he didn’t share that strategy with me.” She looked back out over the water and the bloodred sun that rose over it. “I’m disinclined to keep the family at sea at this point until we understand better what is happening.”

“And you still believe your father was lured off to a trap?”

She nodded. “How could I not? Six ships lost in less than a week. And the note. If it was a forgery, it was better than anything I could’ve done.” And at one time, she’d been her father’s best forger.

There was a whistle from the pilot house and she looked up. She saw the pilot pointing south and followed his finger until her eyes settled on a speck just barely visible in the sun’s rising light.