Rudolfo thought of these things, and he thought of the old man making his way towards the coast, tears wetting his white beard. He thought of his friend Isaak limping about on his mangled leg and wearing his Androfrancine robes. He thought of the boy, Neb, who had stood when Petronus bid someone kill for the light. He thought of Vlad Li Tam at his bonfire, burning the record of his family’s work.

The Desolation of Windwir has reached us all, he thought.

It no longer mattered why. It mattered that it never happen again. And Rudolfo saw clearly his part in that, and he saw how a lamentation could become a hymn.

The less familiar paths fell away, spilling him onto the road. He crossed it, still leading his horse, and stayed to the forest, though he could see the lights of his sleeping city now. He continued on, approaching the library hill from the southern side.

He would stable his horse. He would let himself into the manor. He would approach Jin Li Tam in her bedchamber, and he would whisper quietly with her into the morning about a forward dream th?€rward drat they could share between them. In the morning he would give the order to dismantle Tormentor’s Row, and let go of that backward dream so that his son, Jakob, and his metal friend, Isaak, could build something better. But first, he had to see the small part that he had started for them.

Ahead, he heard soft voices, a low humming, and a whispering sound he could not quite place. Leaving the horse, he stepped forward, silent as one of his own Gypsy Scouts, to pull aside the foliage that blocked his view.

The bookmakers’ tent lay open before him, its silk walls rolled up to let in the night. The soft voices were those few of the remnant who had stayed behind to help, moving from table to table, laying out parchment and fresh quills. The metal men worked at those tables, their gears and bellows humming and their jeweled eyes throwing back the lamplight.

Rudolfo stayed for an hour, sitting in grass that grew damp with dew, soothed by the sound he couldn’t place before.

It was the sound of their pens whispering across the pages.

It is a bird, and it has been dead for a month but does not know it. Its snapped neck leaves the head hanging limp as its wings pound the sky.

It flies over a hillside beneath a blue green moon and perches for a moment on a fresh-hewn cornerstone.

It flies over a field of ash beside a river, and it opens its beak to taste the memory of war and bones upon the wind.

It flies over an ocean, an armada of ships gathering at its edge, steam from their engines fogging the bird’s dead eyes.

It flies homeward, this dead messenger, at the Watcher’s bidding.

The bird enters a small window. It lands upon a scarlet sleeve, and when it opens its beak, a metallic whisper leaks out.

“Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,” the kin-raven tells its master.