Lamentation (22 page)

Vlad Li Tam shrugged. “He may or he may not. I’ll not tell him—I’m bound by Holy Unction. And there have been certain—” he paused to find the right word “—
complexities
in implementing the Androfrancine strategy. You studied the Francine way. Men can be shaped for a role, but it often involves sacrifice.”

Petronus’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

Vlad Li Tam climbed into his saddle. “These are matters best left in the past.” He settled himself and looked down.

“I am your Pope, Lord Tam,” he said, his voice taking on a tone that he’d not used in decades. “I would know of these matters.”

Vlad Li Tam laughed and turned his horse. “You are a fisherman, Petros, digging graves in the rain. When you openly declare yourself to be more than that, ask me again. Demand it of me, even, and under Holy Unction I will tell you everything.” He walked the horse in a wide circle around Petronus. “Rudolfo is taking back the mechoservitors tonight. The spell-caster is already in the Ninefold Forest, planning the library in the care of my forty-second daughter. They will want your input soon so that work can begin with the spring.”

Petronus nodded but said nothing.

“Declare soon, Petronus,” Vlad Li Tam said. “We’ve light to guard.”

As he rode away, Petronus realized two things. First, that once he declared he probably would not want to know exactly what Vlad Li Tam had done to prepare the Ninefold Forest for this time. Not just for the sake of being able to face Rudolfo, but also because of what it meant for the boy who had once been his friend, who had once shared his home and hearth and boat.

The second thing he realized was the more surprising of the two. The thought stayed with him long after Vlad Li Tam’s horse crossed the blackened landscape and galloped up the western hills to be swallowed by the forest.

As he played it out in his mind, following that river of reason with its many branching streams, Petronus realized that he would do whatever he had to do to protect the light.

Even if it meant letting the Androfrancine Order die where it lay, ending its backward-watching dream of two thousand years.

Resolute

Pope Resolute the First looked out at the blanket of white that covered the rooftops and courtyards of the Summer Papal Palace. The first snows of winter had fallen, and judging by the looks of it more would come soon. In the courtyards, staging areas had been hastily erected during second summer to catalog and inventory Androfrancine property returning by his order. From there, the goods were stored in barns, papers and books hauled into the Papal Palace itself. The migration north had grown to a trickle despite the invisible pretender’s support of the notion.

Now, another bird from the pretender called for the cessation of the migration as winter set in, deeming the northern routes too treacherous to risk what little remained of Androfrancine resources—human and otherwise. This new word called for Androfrancines to wait out the winter wherever they were, bidding them to remain patient and assuring them that new instructions would follow soon.

The order made sense. He’d sat down to write a similar proclamation, but Sethbert’s last message was insistent that he wait as long as possible to make sure the Order’s holdings were safe in his keeping, far north and ouËar hbet of the way of the brewing war.

But now, the pretender had given instruction of his own—countermanding Oriv’s—in this second proclamation from his so-called exile. Initially, Oriv felt confident of his cousin’s sense of statecraft and strategy, but keeping silent no longer felt appropriate.

He heard a quiet cough, and turned away from the wide window in his office. Grymlis, the newly promoted General of the Gray Guard, stood waiting.

Resolute studied the man. Grymlis was short and broad and powerful, especially for his seventy or more years. His short gray hair and beard bristled, and he wore his dress grays creased, the various bits of silver that decorated him shining brightly in the lamplight. He’d been in the service of the light probably longer than Oriv had been alive, retiring into recruitment activities and escorting high-ranking officials. He’d actually led Oriv’s caravan to the Palace, seemingly so long ago.

“We’ve another bird from Sethbert,” Grymlis said, extending the small rolled message.

Oriv took it, unrolled it and read it quickly. “Rudolfo is at Windwir without his Wandering Army.” He smiled. “Perhaps that bodes well for us.”

Grymlis said nothing, and Oriv could feel the hardness of his eyes as the general stared. “What?” the Pope finally demanded.

“I would worry less about where Rudolfo is and more about where the weapon is,” Grymlis said.

“It’s a mechanical,” Resolute said. “I’ve told you—the mechoservitor is harmless now. They can’t lie, you know. They’re machines. What they do, what they know, even what they can and cannot say is written onto tiny metal scrolls that they play out in their metal heads.”

Grymlis snorted. “Forgive me, Excellency, if I don’t share your trust of its word. It brought down a city. Genocide on a massive scale; over two hundred thousand souls lost along with the greatest repository of knowledge and artifacts this New World has ever known. I somehow doubt that lying poses any kind of obstacle in the course of its work.” The general’s tone softened. “If its script could be modified to recite the spell, then it certainly could be modified to lie.”

Oriv sighed. He knew the general was right. But the notion that things could go so very wrong in so many ways disturbed him.

Why
? It was the question of the year and it applied to nearly everything these days. Why had Windwir fallen? Why had Oriv been spared? Why had this hidden pretender issued proclamations without having been pronounced and without having even submitted himself for investigation by what remained of the Order? Why had the Gypsy King come all tËKin wihis way under his own free will to turn himself in, only to escape as soon as the pretender emerged?

Questions. Nothing but questions. “I am the Pope of questions,” he said quietly. At Grymlis’s raised eyebrows he waved the old general off. “It’s nothing.”

“There may not be answers, Excellency,” Grymlis said. “If I may be so bold?”

Pope Resolute nodded. “Yes. Go on.”

“Your silence will be your undoing. People crave answers, but in the absence of answers, they will follow the loudest, clearest voice.”

“You believe I should answer the pretender’s challenge?”

Grymlis nodded. “More than that. If you are the Pope,
be
the Pope. If you are the King of Windwir in exile, then for light’s sake,
be
the King of Windwir.” His voice rose, taking on a sharpness that stirred Oriv.

“I am these things,” Oriv said. “I am.”

Grymlis’s next words marched out clear and slow. “You are a clerk hiding in the mountains, tallying up your leftovers while beggars and refugees bury your dead.” His voice became a growl. “While your cousin and his alliance play at army and tell you what they wish for you to know. While your banker diverts your Order’s funds into the pocket of a pretender you know nothing about. While the greatest weapon this world has ever seen walks and talks and serves Lord Rudolfo his chilled peach wine.”

The words stung him, and his first thought was to slap the general. His second thought was to demand his arrest. In the end, he did neither. He felt his shoulders slump. “What would you do?”

“Nothing . . . from
here.
” Grymlis strode forward, throwing open the doors to the balcony, letting the cold wind blow snow onto the thick Emerald Coast carpets that lined the office floor. “If you stay a week longer, you’ll have stayed too late. Leave the steward in charge. Leave a company of the Guard if you must. Set those who’ve come home to whatever work you will.” His eyes were sharper and harder now than a thousand angry dreams. “But for light’s sake, man, go out and be King and Pope. You’ll not sway the tide of loyalty up here in hiding.”

The words resonated. It was completely contrary to his cousin’s direction. But after the week with Rudolfo and the mechoservitor, he’d started doubting how truthful his cousin had been. And he still could not move past the fact that his cousin had known somehow that he was away from Windwir on the day if fell. He suspected strongly that Sethbert might even have had some hand in arranging that. Coupled with that, Oriv knew that his mother’s sister’s son had no love toward him and no loyalty to blood.

He’d even found himself wondering from time to time if Sethbert
had
somehow arranged the Desolation of Windwir as Rudolfo had maintained. Some of the refugees spoke of rumors, words passed from soldier to merchant to farmer and so on.

He looked outside again, then looked back to Grymlis. The old guard waited patiently.

“We have a reserve treasury here?”

Grymlis nodded. “Certainly.”

Be your name, something deep inside of Oriv whispered. Resolute.

“Very well, General. Ready half of the contingent. They ride with me under your command in three days’ time. Am I clear?”

“Perfectly, Excellency,” Grymlis said with a smile.

Now, thought Resolute, to be the clearest and loudest voice.

Calling for his birder, he crafted his reply to the pretender’s proclamations in as loud and clear a tone he could muster. Next, he wrote to Sethbert in the same tone, instructing his cousin that he would meet him on the plains of Windwir in one week’s time.

When he finished, he turned his chair so that he could look out of his window and watch the falling snow.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam sat at the desk in the makeshift office the steward and house staff had created for her and Isaak, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the work.

Tomorrow, she’d return to the River Woman and pick up her powders. There was no guarantee that they would work. These measures were only taken on rare occasions, when other strategies failed. And regardless of the efficacy of the powders, there was still the matter of Rudolfo ingesting them and rising to the challenge of copulation. The former concerned her, but not overmuch—she’d been trained by the best of poisoners, though she smiled at the irony of this particular situation—lacing his food or drink with a substance that would bring life rather than death. As to the latter—she had no worries. The Gypsy King’s soldiers might be swordless, but they needed no marching instructions.

She stood and stretched, looking across the room to Isaak. He sat at his own desk, his robes neatly pressed and cleaned, both of his hands blurring as they simultaneously filled two sheets of parchment. The pentips scratched lightly at the papers in a kind of harmony with one another, and his eyes flashed as he wrote. It took less thanË to sh a minute for him to fill both pages and move them aside with practiced efficiency, letting them dry on the stack as he started new pages.

She walked toward him, glancing down. Lists of books and authors and shelf locations from a library that was now a crater of ash and bones. “I’m going to walk,” she said.

He looked up, nodded slightly to acknowledge her, then continued.

She let herself out of the manor, and her Gypsy Scouts fell in behind her. She recognized Edrys, a young sergeant that had been with them at the Summer Papal Palace, and she smiled at him.

She turned to them as they left the manor gates. “Today, I wish for you to walk with me . . . not behind. I would know more of my new home.”

The two scouts exchanged apprehensive glances. “Lady Tam,” Edrys started, “I’m not sure—”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sergeant Edrys, have you been forbidden to have discourse with me?”

“No, Lady Tam. I just—”

She interrupted again. “Am I in some way odious to you and not worthy of your company or your conversation?”

He turned red. “No, Lady Tam. I—”

“Good,” she said. “Walk with me.”

They both hurried to either side of her, and together they went out into the streets.

A light, cold rain fell, and the air was heavy with the promise of snow. She’d climbed what they were calling the Library Hill the day before and had seen that the Dragon’s Spine was wrapped in white like a Marsh bride on her nuptial day. Within days, the snow would reach them here, whiting the forest and turning the Prairie Sea that surrounded the Ninefold Forest into a vast desert of snow dunes. The intense cold would even freeze the rivers in some places farther north.

It was a vast difference from the sunny climate of the City States on the Entrolusian Delta or the tropics of the Emerald Coasts farther south and west.

And this will be my new home
.

They walked together at an easy pace, and Jin savored the cold air even as she shivered against it. The furrier was busily crafting her winter wear—boots, hats, heavy coats and pants—but they wouldn’t be ready for another week. Until then, she wore a parka she found in the back of her closËack2;bet. The Gypsy Scouts had gone from silk to wool with the changing of the seasons, dyed bright as the rainbow houses they served.

“I would know more of my husband-to-be,” she said to Edrys as they walked.

He paled at her statement. “Lady Tam, I—”

She laughed. “Edrys, you worry too much. I’ll not ask anything unseemly. I believe you can know much of a man by the men he keeps near him. Or would you prefer that I know my husband through the prostitutes he keeps on rotation or through the house staff that serves him?”

His face went red when she mentioned the prostitutes, and she smiled inwardly. Those surface details were simple matters to discuss, really. As were at least seven of the hidden passageways within the seventh forest manor. She suspected that each of the nine manors was a world of secrets in itself.

She suspected the same of Rudolfo.

“What would you know, Lady?”

“How long have you served him?”

Edrys did not miss a step. “I’ve served Lord Rudolfo all my life.” She knew this. Many of the Gypsy Scouts were the sons of Gypsy Scouts, raised on the magicks and the blades along with their mothers’ milk.

“And what is the single most true thing about him?”