“We lock the inside door when we close. You come and go, you come and go through there.” She pointed to the door set in the back wall. Her voice was cold and firm.
We’re only welcome here for our coin, Rudolfo thought. But he’d seen the weather change on their faces. Until he’d mentioned Petronus, the people here were warm and inviting. But now.
After days in the saddle and on the cold ground, the small bunk would be a welcome change. Rudolfo watched as his men quietly set about checking the room.
He looked to Jaryk. “Set your guard,” he said quietly, “but don’t guard too well. If he’s here, he’ll know we’re looking for him soon enough-if he doesn’t know already.” Rudolfo thought of the wet-clothed boys and imagined them running the rain-slicked streets to bear the innkeeper’s message of Gypsies at the door. Would the old fox come himself?
Their last parting had been strained. Rudolfo, in his rage, had nearly run the codger through for killing Sethbert and for ending two thousand years of Papal Succession by blooding his hands. Later, when he learned that Petronus had deeded the Order’s accounts and holdings to his trust, he’d also found a quickly scribbled note: What I’ve done will serve the light-and you-better than any Pope. P.
Now, months later, he could see Petronus’s reasoning, though it still chewed at him. The world had changed, and the Androfrancines had played a part in that by unearthing Xhum Y’Zir’s spell. And the world continued to change.
More importantly, his world had changed.
I am a father. Pulling off his boots, he stretched out in the narrow bed and folded his arms behind his head. Closing his eyes, he called up the image of his infant son, gray and wheezing in the arms of his flame-haired wife. And here, he sought the whereabouts of Jin’s father, fled the Named Lands now these seven months. Perhaps Petronus could point him toward his quarry. But if he could not, Rudolfo knew that someone could. A dozen iron-clad vessels, tall as temples on the sea, were not easily hidden. He would find Vlad Li Tam and his daughter, Rae Li Tam. He would elicit a cure from them and return to see his boy hale and hearty. He would sing him the “Hymnal of the Wandering Army” as his own father had done, rocking him in his cradle.
Soon, the sounds of his snoring men gentled Rudolfo off to sleep, and he let that restless noise carry him. When the hand came from nowhere to cover his mouth, he started.
Another hand pressed words into the soft flesh of his forearm. You are a long way from your forest, Gypsy Scout. He opened one eye and tried to let it stay unfocused on the dim-lit room. The faintest outline of a hunched figure crouched by him. The fingers pressed again, tapping their words. Why do you seek Pope Petronus?
“There is no need for stealth or silence,” Rudolfo said. “My men know you’re here.”
The room, dim-lit by the light of a full, blue-green moon, lay still. Then, a low whistle rose behind the crouched figure as the First Lieutenant called the men to Second Alarm. They slid from their bunks, and two of them took up positions at the room’s only exits, hands upon their knives and pouches.
“Why do you seek Pope Petronus?” the voice asked again.
Rudolfo smiled. Pope Petronus. The use of the title betrayed this midnight visitor. “I would speak to him personally of this matter. Since when did the Gray Guard go magicked and ghosting? We are not at war.”
The voice was hoarse but impassioned. “Perhaps not with each other, Gypsy, but we are indeed at war. We have been at war since Windwir fell. The events of the past week should make that clear enough.” The magicked Gray Guard coughed, and Rudolfo heard wet rattling deep in his chest.
He sat up. “How long have you been under the magicks?”
Four Gypsy Scouts surrounded the voice now. “It’s unimportant.”
“It clouds your judgment and your lungs. Are you fevered?” No answer. Rudolfo narrowed his eyes, squinting at where the man must have stood. “You need rest. You need time out from under the powders.”
“I need,” the voice said in nearly a growl, “to know why you’ve left your forest and your library to seek Pope Petronus.”
Rudolfo rose from the bed. “You protect him. I respect that.” He stood. “My men protect me. Tell Petronus that Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses and General of the Wandering Army seeks audience with him. Beyond that, you’ll have no further explanation of me. It is a private matter for Petronus and me alone.” He whistled and his men fell back; then he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You will be mad and infirm soon enough if you do not leave off the powders and give your body time to rest.”
“Then I will be mad and infirm. There is no rest in these dark times.” The Gray Guard coughed again. “Are you truly Lord Rudolfo?”
Rudolfo held up the hand that bore his father’s signet. “I am.” Then, he waited. He is uncertain of what to tell me.
“Father Petronus was attacked on the night of your Firstborn Feast, along with the others. He is no longer in Caldus Bay.”
“Where has he gone?”
At first, the Gray Guard said nothing. When he finally found his voice, it was faint. “He is safe. I will send word that you seek him and let him and Grymlis decide how best to deal with your interest. It will take time.”
Rudolfo nodded. “That is fair, but time is short.” He nodded to Jaryk, who whistled the men to stand down. “Be quick,” he said.
Then he listened as the magick-muffled boots whispered their way across the floor to the narrow door leading out into a night that had become clearer and colder since their arrival in Caldus Bay. He waved his lieutenant over and spoke to him in Gypsy hand-sign. How long did he wait beneath my bed before revealing himself?
Two hours, Jaryk replied.
Rudolfo nodded, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Gray Guards were not scouts. They eschewed the magicks as far as Rudolfo knew, preferring instead science and strength to spells and strategy. It would not be hard to follow him, even without the powders. Send two scouts after, he signed. They are to see, not be seen.
The Gypsy Scout nodded. “Yes, Lord. Shall they go magicked?”
He shook his head. “They should not need them.” But before this is over, they will, he thought. He sensed it.
Rudolfo went back to the bed and stretched out in it. From the corner of his eye, he watched two of his best and brightest slip into the night, moving like ghosts even unmagicked.
After they’d gone, he stared at the bottom of the bunk above him, pondering what he had learned. Petronus was attacked, too. He wondered how it was that the old fox had survived. If it was indeed part of the same blood-magicked and iron-bladed storm he had witnessed, that was no small feat. He could not imagine a small band of Gray Guard, unfamiliar and inexperienced with the magicks they now used, standing against a half-squad of the fierce Marshers that had killed Hanric and Ansylus.
The violence of that night returned to him and he shivered. That scene, he realized, had played out across the Named Lands. And at his core, he knew that they had been timed with the perfect coordination of forces converging all at once upon their chosen targets.
No, not him, the voice had said. He’d been intentionally spared, and even that knowledge had not been withheld from him-or from those within earshot-by the attackers. Once more Rudolfo wondered why, and as he turned the wheels of the Rufello lock over and over in his mind, he came no closer to an answer. Instead, more questions emerged from each twist and click of the mechanism.
When sleep finally reclaimed him, those questions infused his dreams with a sense of foreboding that he could not evade.
For the rest of that night, Rudolfo pitched and tossed upon his bed and dreamed he fled a great and bloody rising sun.
Winters
Winters watched the old men shuffling into the cavern throne-room, their faces pale from what they’d just seen. Nearby, the meditation statue of P’Andro Whym held his mirrors and dared them all look inside themselves. Winters was afraid of what they would find when they did. There was disease within their House, and these men had now seen its proof.
Not even an hour had passed since her arrival, and Winters sat beside the empty Wicker Throne. And she could delay no further. She tapped the handle of the Firstfall axe upon the hard stone floor of the Dreaming Cave, and the old men took their seats.
After days in the saddle riding across the frozen northern marshes it was good to be home, though the night’s business ahead filled her with apprehension.
The furnaces spat and hissed throughout the great stone hall, and the hot, moist air tasted earthy in her mouth. Before her, the hall narrowed to a corridor leading out into the village and the night. Behind her, the tunnels spiraled down into deeper chambers that held the Book of Dreaming Kings.
As the old men sat, they looked up to her, their faces lined with care and sadness. Once she made eye contact with each, she convened the Council of Twelve with the words of Shadrus, the first Marsh King. “Home calls to us as we sojourn in this land of many sorrows,” she said as she looked around the cave at the old men who formed the council.
The Twelve replied in unison. “May the Dreaming Kings call forth the Homeseeker that we may find our way.”
She nodded slowly and looked from man to man. “May the Homeseeker guide us true into our Misplaced and Deeded Land.”
“Come soon, Homeseeker, and find our Home,” they said in one voice. They were the oldest and most venerable of her people, chosen by their clans for unmatched wisdom and understanding. Most, in their day, were warriors who had raided in the Named Lands as headmen, leading bands of mud-and ash-painted skirmishers to keep their neighbors fearful and supplement their scarce resources.
No one traded with Marshfolk unless compelled to do so. Until her father first saw the fall of Windwir in his dreams, blade and blood were the Marshers’ first and best means of compulsion. And taking what they needed was easily justified-their very lands had been taken from them by the gray robes and their guard.
But then King Mardic had seen Windwir fall and watched darkness swallow the sun. Then, he’d seen the light suddenly appearing in the sky as it moved from the Androfrancine city east and north to settle upon the Gypsy Forests, and he’d known in that moment that the Gypsy King’s blade would guard their way Home. The next morning, he had personally led a band of skirmishers against Lord Jakob’s woods.
Of course, Winters had not even been born at the time. And her father was all but a stranger to her, dead for most of her fifteen years. But she’d read his words added to the Book of Dreaming Kings, and she’d added her own words to his and those of their forefathers.