It was Neb’s turn to inventory the artifact wagon. Petronus did it himself most of the time, but over the past several days, the old man had become further withdrawn. He’d started trusting Neb with more of his responsibilities, and Neb didn’t mind that at all.
He approached the wagon now, keeping the rolled parchment and pen hidden beneath his robe and out of the rain. They’d rigged a canvas covering with a system of ropes and poles. The wagon waited beneath it, guarded by an uninterested merchant who muttered and moved about to avoid the water that flowed in channels off the makeshift roof.
The merchant looked up as he approached. “How long?”
Neb looked over the side of the wagon at the muddy items stacked inside. He poked at it with his walking stick. “Two hours, I’d say.”
He nodded. “I’ll be back then,” he said, and shambled off to find some hot soup.
Neb pulled himself up into the back of the wagon and picked his way to the front. He spread the parchment out on a dry patch on the seat. Then, sitting amid the day’s collection, he started inventorying each item.
The workers gave a cursory look at anything they found. Initially Sethbert’s man had insisted they bring everything, but they quickly saw that the sheer volume exceeded the capacity of several wagons. Now they left the more mundane scraps they found, and saved only the most important pieces for the daily wagon.
Neb-or Petronus on the days when he did it-was the second pass through the items, giving them one more opportunity to pull out a cup or a blade or some other implement that had found its way in amid the mechanical birds or the copper globes.
The first hour always went fast and the last hour always went the slowest. Some days merited a third or
fourth hour, but today the wagon was only a third of the way full. Neb typically went through everything all at once, tossing the unwanted items over the side and into the mud. After that initial pass, he then inventoried what was left.
But then, an hour into his inventory, he saw it in the corner of the wagon.
He was not surprised that he missed this particular artifact on the first pass; it wasn’t very large at all. The fact that anyone had found it was probably a small miracle. Perhaps the light had caught it just right there on the skeletal finger of the man who had worn it.
It was a simple affair-a plain ring made of a strange metal, dark as iron but light as steel. The signet itself was clogged with ash and mud, but Neb knew it before he spit on the corner of his robe and used it to clean the dirt out of it.
He’d seen pictures of this ring all of his life. And he’d seen the stamp of its signet on thousands of documents throughout the Great Library. He’d seen it on the finger of every man whose portrait hung in the Hall of Kings.
It was the signet ring of the Androfrancine Pope.
He looked around, unsure what to do. He knew Petronus wouldn’t want the ring to fall into Sethbert’s hands. It was just a ring, certainly. It had no magicks about it. But it was one of the oldest symbols of the office, something that could not be reproduced. And news was all over the camp that some other Androfrancine-someone keeping quiet but at least known to a few-had a more direct line of succession to the Windwir throne. Of course, Neb was the only one around who knew the truth about Petronus. He certainly hadn’t shared that information, which meant someone else knew. Or perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t Petronus at all that they were referring to. Perhaps it was another archbishop vying for the crippled Order’s highest office.
Still, during the time they’d worked together, Neb had quickly come to think of the kind, strong old man as the true Pope. Though it wasn’t anything he could conceive of proclaiming-regardless of what Brother Hebda told him in his dreams.
In the end, he slipped the ring in his pocket. At the very least, he could keep it from some pretender’s finger. At the very best, if Petronus took back his rightful place the ring would be nearby.
Neb resumed his inventory, feeling the weight of millennia in his pocket and not knowing quite what to do with it.