Rudolfo arose early, as was his custom, and walked alone through the forest. He whistled, long and low, to warn his sentries that he approached. They whistled back to acknowledge him, but after years of riding with their general, they did not approach or interrupt.
He loved the mornings most of all. It was a time when the world still slept and he could be in solitude, apart from everything. It was a time for processing strategy and plotting the day’s schemes.
The rain let up sometime in the night, but the ground and foliage were still wet. The air hung heavy with moisture-ribbons of mist moving low across the ground in the deep gray of predawn.
They would ride hard today and put yet more distance between themselves and the last of the
Androfrancines. But soon enough, that small remnant would be the last of Rudolfo’s concerns.
War was coming. A bigger war than he’®/fo;d imagined when he launched that dark raven with its scarlet thread what seemed so long ago. Then, he’d thought it would his Wandering Army against Sethbert. But much had happened in the weeks that followed.
Vlad Li Tam’s message intrigued him and he wondered how this new development would play out. A second Pope, one with a more direct line of succession, could mean divided loyalties. At the very least the Writ of Shunning would not stand, though he was certain Sethbert and his cousin would force the issue for as long as they could. The Androfrancines’ leadership crisis would reproduce itself around the world as the houses of the Named Lands were forced to pick a side.
You get ahead of yourself. Rudolfo chuckled.
For all he knew, this Pope was also in Sethbert’s pocket. Though he doubted it very much. Li Tam’s involvement would have been different if that were the case.
Of course, the papal succession aside, there were other developments that also intrigued him. He’d seen the messages and knew now about the Marsh King’s sudden declaration of kin-clave with him. A strange and unexpected alliance that prompted him to send birds to the Forest Manors, sending his stewards into the records archives to search for some shred of information about kin-clave between the Gypsies and
the Marshers. The only connection Rudolfo could make was the Marsh King’s capture when he was a boy.
Still, the Marsher Army was a formidable force when pulled together. Less predictable even than the Wandering Army, they relied on chaos-even madness-to prevail. Known mainly for their skirmishing raids, those few times the Marsh King’s army had been called together over the last thousand years were formidable for those they faced. They rarely won when strategic minds came into play against them, but they never really lost, either. They slunk back north to their swamps and marsh grass, daring generals and kings alike to enter their demesnes and fight on Marsher land.
Few did, though the Androfrancine Gray Guard had forced the issue with them a time or two, exacting a price on skirmishers who raided the villages and towns that Windwir protected.
Why would the Marsh King side with the Ninefold Forest Houses?
And alongside that strange and unexpected alliance, there was another. His sudden kin-clave with House Li Tam through betrothal to Vlad Li Tam’s forty-second daughter. It was a surprise that Rudolfo still did not know quite how to measure.
The consummation had been effective and even pleasurable. Though it wasn’t the physical act that
defined the pleasure of that night for him. Certainly, she was skilled enough. And judging by her response to him, their skills were well matched for the deed. But his pleasure had been deeper than their bodies pressed together or his hands tangled in her long, honey-scented hair or their mouths moving along one another’s bodies. There was something deeper. Something sparked by their mutua? byangl conquest of one another. For though he took great pride in wearing her down and at long last commanding her body to pleasure, the truth of it was that she had done the same thing for his heart, and he was compelled now to think of her, to wonder about her, to wish to see her.
He’d considered going to her that night. Their eyes had caught across the fire and they’d traded brief smiles. But in the end, they’d slept side by side but in their separate tents.
Gods, what a woman.
And her father had not changed his strategy to the best of his knowledge. Nor would Rudolfo change his. He would align himself with this new Pope-if he were a man of reason and moderate strength-and he would win that new Pope to his way of seeing. When the war was finished, he would rebuild the library in a place where he could watch over it, a place far from the meddling of men like Sethbert.
Rudolfo heard a whistle behind him. It was too high and it did not warble at the end.
Setting his jaw, he crouched near a thick evergreen and drew his long, curved knife. He did not return the whistle, and after a moment he heard soft footfalls.
“Lord Rudolfo?” It was Jin Li Tam’s voice.
He stood, putting his knife away. “I’m here, Lady Tam.”
She slipped through the foliage with the ease of a Gypsy Scout. “I don’t quite have the whistle down,”
she said.
Rudolfo smiled. “It’s nearly there. You learn quickly.”
She curtsied. “Thank you, Lord. May I join you for your walk?”
He’d just started to think it was time to turn back, time to rouse the last watch from their few precious hours of sleep and strike camp for the long day’s ride ahead. “Please,” he said.
She came alongside him, and they were both careful not to touch. “You are well?” “I am. And you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Better now that we’re on our way.”
They walked together, side by side, and her measured footsteps impressed him. She moved like a scout, confident and light with her step. The ferns and branches around her only trembled lightly as she went past; they did not leak the water that had collected there.
Rudolfo paused midstep, looking at her, then resumed walking. “Yes?”
“Why do you wish to do this? You intended to do this before the archbishop declared, even before I
proposed you as a suitor to my father. You meant to do this and finance it yourself.” He chuckled. “Sethbert would have paid for it. He still will if I have my way.”
“But why would you do this? You do not seem to be the sort who would keep what light remains to yourself. The strategy beneath it suggests that you mean to keep the library in a place where it can be protected.”
Like she protects Isaak, he thought. That was the quality of parenthood he heard in her voice.
He shrugged. “I am not a young man. I stand just past the middle of my road. I am only now taking a wife. If I cannot give my Ninefold Forest Houses an heir, then at least I can give them knowledge. Something to love and defend fiercely in this world.”
Her next words surprised him. “Doesn’t it also atone for the first Rudolfo’s betrayal?” He laughed. “I suppose perhaps it does.”
“Regardless,” she said, “I think it is a wise and wonderful thing that you do.” They settled back into silence before she surprised him again. “Do you want an heir, Rudolfo?”
Now he stopped entirely, a smile widening on his mouth. “You mean now? Here?” “You know what I mean.”
He shrugged. He’d been with many women. For a time, he’d used the powders to dull his soldiers’ swords. And he’d certainly taken them through enough gates. But when he had finally tried to make a child with a consort sent from the Queen of Pylos as a matter of kin-clave courtesy, he’d been unable. And they’d tried for nine pleasurable months. After that, fearing that he couldn’t sire, he left off with the potions and redoubled his efforts with the women on his rotation. No discreet notes arrived by bird from his stewards, no reports of a girl (or three) heavy with child and claiming his patrimony.
He’d heard that the Androfrancines also had magicks for this. But even if it were true, it felt contrary to him for no reason he could discern.
He looked at Jin. “I’ve certainly considered it at length,” he said. “Alas, I’m afraid my soldiers have no swords.”
“Forty-seven, Sethbert.”
Sethbert noted that the general failed to use his title. “Forty-seven deserters in two weeks? We’re not even fully engaged.”
Sethbert watched a look of disgust march across the general’s face. “It has nothing to do with cowardice. It has everything to do with your indiscretions. Men will not willingly follow a monster.”
“Surely you can break their will?”
Lysias shook his head. “You don’t have enough loyal officers to do that. You will leak resources slowly. It is time to relieve these and bring forward fresh faces. You do not want to mix the bad in with the good. The spoiled pear always takes the barrel.”
“Fine,” Sethbert said. “Make it so.” He looked to his aide. “And you have a message for me?”
The young man stepped forward and passed the unrolled paper to Sethbert. “It isn’t good news, Lord.”
Of course it wasn’t. The day had brought no good news. There’d really been no good news since the day the Marsh King showed up across the valley, blasting his nonsensical ramblings across the night, every night, for how long now?
Shortly after that mud-bugger showed up, he’d received word from Oriv-Pope Resolute, he reminded himself-that their funds had been frozen by House Li Tam. He’d flown into a rage to hear it. He’d known it was a risk-that there might be someone higher placed than his cousin out there somewhere. And after the first week, because no one had come forward disputing Resolute’s succession, he’d assumed no one would.
Of course, there had also been mixed news. As angered as he was about Rudolfo’s escape, he was pleased to learn that they had resorted to violence. It meant they no longer needed to keep up the pretense of civility in their dealings with him.
“How did it arrive? And from whom?” he asked, squinting at the message. “It came under Androfrancine thread from House Li Tam, Lord.”
He read the note, feeling his anger rebuilding. He saw everything right in front of him. House Li Tam again. His consort now Rudolfo’s betrothed-an alliance formed. Perhaps, he thought, Rudolfo was involved from the start. In bed with the Androfrancines along with Vlad Li Tam and, though he did not know how, the Marsh King as well.
What would they gain by the Desolation of the Named Lands at the hands of those ?hanghtrobed tyrants? That question bothered him, but not overly so.
What bothered him more was that now they played a Pope of their own onto the board. Convenient that he was in hiding, invoking some obscure Androfrancine codex. And even Sethbert knew enough of their law to realize it was a stretch of that rule’s intent.
He read the proclamation, his lips moving as he followed the words. When he finished, he crumpled the note and cast it aside. While the aide scrambled for it, Sethbert kicked over a chair.
“There is another Pope,” the Overseer finally said. “What does he say?” Lysias asked.
At Sethbert’s wave, the aide passed the note to Lysias. He scanned it quickly. “This changes the war,” Lysias finally said. “It is now a contest of words and swords. It will shift loyalties but it is impossible to say which. Or how we’ll stand in the end.”
“We need to fix the problem within our ranks. We will punish the men who fled.” “We don’t have the resources to track them down,” Lysias said.
“I have a better idea,” Sethbert said. “I will address it personally.” Lysias nodded. “And what about the gravediggers?”
Sethbert thought. “We’ll continue to subsidize their work in the name of the true Pope, Resolute the
First.”
“Very good, Lord.”
He smiled at the respect he had purchased at some small price. Or at least the form of respect. He
doubted Lysias had ever truly respected him. A man like that wouldn’t appreciate Sethbert’s strength of character.
After the general left, he turned to his aide. “Cross-reference the deserters with their homes of record. Send a bird to the Overseer’s Watchmen. I want a wife, a child, a mother, a sister. But don’t kill them. Blind them. Mute them. Tell them why.”
The aide paled. “Lord?”
Sethbert smiled, thinking about lunch and hoping it was pheasant or pork. “And when it’s done, have word leak to the men of it.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Now, fetch me a mechoservitor and tell the chef I’ll take my lunch outside today.”
The aide bowed and walked quickly away.
Alone, Sethbert righted the chair he had kicked over in his rage. Then he sat on it, and wondered what Rudolfo would do now that he was free. He’d been delighted to hear that the Gypsy King had delivered himself over to Resolute in the first place, and he’d known that he would not stay away from his Wandering Army and his Ninefold Forest for too long. His cousin was barely competent and no match for the wily fop.
But now, with Rudolfo’s alliance with House Li Tam through strategic marriage, his role in this deepened considerably more than just a Gypsy King enraged at the death of a city.
Sethbert took no pleasure in his lunch that day.
Neb
Neb read the proclamation again, his fingers moving over the ring buried in his pocket. He looked at the haphazard sketch of the Androfrancine Papal seal, a great finishing touch on the message, then returned to the beginning of the proclamation.
Oh My People it began, and it continued in perhaps one of the most moving documents he had ever read. It read with the resonance of ancient greatness, something that one could study but never emulate. Within it he felt the death of something beautiful, and the solemn, humble work of saving what could be saved knowing full well that nothing would ever be as good as it had been.
This truly was a man he could want to be like.
Of course, Neb saw Petronus’s mastery even in the way he led the gravediggers. At some point, Brother Hebda said he would proclaim him Pope. Maybe it was figurative, he thought. Maybe he was supposed to give him the ring.
He’d thought about it a dozen times since he’d found the damned thing. And each time, he pushed it back out of his mind for reasons he could not fully conceive.
He looked up again, and realized in his headlong walk out of camp he’d wandered pretty far into the ruins of the city. He looked around, trying to use the hills and the river to determine where he stood within the city. He was close to where the Garden had once been, or at least he thought he was. Not having walls and buildings to navigate by made it a difficult chore. But he picked his way north the equivalent of half a block, then west, then north again.
When he was reasonably sure he’d found it, he sat down in the ash and pulled his knees to himself. They’d already been through this part of the city, raking the ash for bones and artifacts.
Neb pulled the ring from his pocket and studied it for the hundredth time. It was simple and rare-the way that life should be. He’d cleaned it carefully by the light of a guttering candle when Petronus made his rounds around the camp at night. Now, it shone dully in his hand. He looked at it, turning it in the gray daylight of emerging winter.
“My king would speak with you,” a heavy, guttural voice whispered to his left.
Neb jumped, looking around but seeing nothing. Still, this darker light was perfect for scouts. “Who is your king?”
The voice moved now. “My king is the Reluctant Prophet of Xhum Y’Zir, the Unloved Son of P’Andro
Whym, Most Beautiful of the Northern Marshes.”
Neb hesitated as the voice continued away. He looked back toward camp, so distant now that he could barely make out the figures that moved along its edges. He looked north, in the direction that the voice went, and saw the line of dark trees. Behind the trees, smoke drifted into the sky from the Marsh King’s camp fires.
The voice returned. “My king would speak with you,” it said again. “You will not be harmed. You will return bearing his grace to your people.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Neb said. “I think perhaps he wants to parley with Petron-Petros, our leader.”
“No,” the scout said, moving away again. “No mistake. You are Nebios, son of Hebda, who watched the Great Extinguishment of Light, the Desolation of Windwir?”
Neb swallowed the sudden fear in this throat and nodded.
“My king would speak with you.” Now the voice grew more distant, and Neb looked back to camp once again.
Then, turning north, he ran after the Marsh King’s ghostly messenger.