by Ken Scholes
She blushed, then went redder when she realized it. She shifted uncomfortably in the seat, her poise lost for just a moment. But she recaptured it, and her blue eyes narrowed. “You flatter me, Lord Rudolfo. And yet you do not need to. I can assure you that I will-”
He raised his hand and she went quiet. “It is not required,” he said in a quiet voice. Her eyes narrowed even further. “I recognize,” he said, “that you are well versed in the rites of kin-clave and the highest machinations of statecraft. But these are dark days upon us, and your father’s strategy is sound. We do not need to invoke our flesh in these matters.”
Her mouth opened but he continued. “I am fully aware of the expectations upon you as a daughter of House Li Tam. I am fully aware of the Articles of Consummation in the Fourteenth Overture of Kin-Clave by Betrothal. You do not need to bring those to bear in this conversation. It is the two of us,” he gestured to Isaak, “and a metal man. If you wish it, we can go into the bedchambers, close the door to Isaak and let the world believe what it will. We need do nothing but sleep, yet we can both claim it to be the most rewarding and exhausting night of passion either of us have ever known.”
He did not think it was admiration on her face. It might have been surprise or perhaps even uncertainty. But for the slightest moment, he thought he saw relief there. Then it became amusement, and she smiled. “You are a kind man to ask after my feelings on the matter.”
He inclined his head. “I believe some journeys are best taken slow. The Desolation of Windwir has changed us all. It has changed the world and we do not know what will come of it. It is enough; I would not add more change to it, strategy or no.” He paused. “Though, I must tell you that I am pleased with your father’s work so far.”
Jin Li Tam stood and walked to him. “Change,” she said, quoting the Whymer Bible, “is the path life takes.”
Rudolfo stood, and when he did, she bent down and kissed him softly by the side of his mouth. He placed his hands on her hips, feeling the solid warmth of her, and stretched up on his tiptoes to return her kiss. “A fortuitous undertaking,” he said quietly. Pressing his fingers into her hip, he sent her another message, and she blushed again.
You will ever be my sunrise, he told her.
Then, because he knew that it was important to her that it be her own idea and that she lead in this particular dance, he let her take him by the hand and guide him into the waiting bedchamber.
Closing the door, they left Isaak to his work and he left them to theirs.
Neb
Brother Hebda haunted Neb’s dreams that night.
They were in the Androfrancine Cemetery, near the high, ornate gates that led to the Papal Tombs. His father met him there and they walked. Overhead, the sky looked like a bruise-green, purple, blue, shifting and sliding like oil on water.
“It’s going to get worse, son,” Brother Hebda said, putting his arm around him.
“What do you mean, Father?” Neb asked. Somehow, in his dreams he was able to take that leap, to give that title to this once large, once jovial man who visited him occasionally.
Death was unkind to Brother Hebda. He’d lost weight and his features had sagged with the weight of despair. He pointed to the south and then the west. “A Lamentation for Windwir has been heard across the Named Lands… and beyond, even. Armies converge here to grieve and rage with their eyes upon our bones. They ride east from here to avenge us upon the wrong house.”
Neb scanned that direction, but in his dream, the Great Library and the Office of Expeditionary Unction blocked his view. Of course, this part of his dream made sense-just before bed, Petronus had told them all the Gypsy Scout’s news. He felt a bony hand on his shoulder, felt the steel in Hebda’s arm as he steered Neb and pointed to the north.
“Curiosity is stirred in the north; the Marsh King brings his army into play, honoring a kin-clave older than our sojourn in this land.”
This piqued Neb’s curiosity. Petronus had not mentioned this. He realized suddenly that they had stopped walking, and he looked around. Now they stood at the foot of Petronus’s tomb. His name stood out from the rest, being the only Pope in the last millennium or better to take his given name as his holy name.
Hebda ran his hand beneath the name. “He will bring justice to this Desolator of Windwir and will kill the light that it might be reborn.”
Neb felt his stomach lurch. “Father, I don’t understand.”
Brother Hebda leaned down. “You do not have to. But you will play a part in this. When the time is right, you will stand and proclaim him Pope and King in the Gardens of Coronation and Consecration, and he will break your heart.”
Those gardens were a memory now. Of course he’d never seen them. They were opened only during the Succession. But he’d walked by›217ime them and he’d seen their design drawings in the library. They were smaller than he thought they should be.
He didn’t know what else to say. Something grabbed his heart and squeezed it. He felt his throat closing. He was afraid. He stammered but could not find his words.
“Nebios,” his father said, invoking his full name, “you came into this world a child of sorrow, destined to be a man of sorrow.” His father had tears in his eyes. “I am sorry, my son, that I have no hopeful word for you.”
Neb wanted to say that he’d gladly accept sorrow just for the hope of seeing his father again, but before he could open his mouth, he fell awake and realized he was shouting.
Petronus was by his side in an instant. “Dreaming again?”
Neb nodded. Not just shouting, but also sobbing. His hands went to his face and came away wet. His shoulders were still shaking. He caught his breath. There was something he needed to tell Petronus, something that seemed more important and more urgent than anything else from his dream.
Curiosity. Stirred. He remembered.
Looking up at Petronus, he said the words slowly and carefully. “The Marsh King brings his army into play.”
And Petronus winced when Neb said it.
Petronus
Petronus cursed all the way back to the northern edge of camp.
He had no idea why the boy’s words had resonated so true with him, but they had. And Petronus may have been the Pope of the Androfrancine Order, but he was a fisherman at heart, and despite decades of Francine training still gave credence to the dead who spoke in dreams.
He went to the sentry. This one was an Entrolusian infantryman. Sethbert had been sending them down so that the gravediggers weren’t pulling double shifts between digging and guarding. “How goes the watch?”
“Fine enough,” the soldier said, leaning on his spear. “Nothing stirring but the coyotes.”
Petronus looked north. If they were coming, they’d come from the north. But how? If they were skirmishers, they’d come in, kill, bury and then pull back. And if the boy were correct-if it was the Marsh King himself, bringing an army-then it would be something else altogether.
The Marsh King had not left his exile in five hundred years›e ht=". And that time, he’d left to lay siege to Windwir for half of a year until the Gypsy Scouts and the Gray Guard had pried them off the city and sent them back to their marshes and swamps.
Petronus looked at the guard. He was young-maybe twenty-and wide-faced.
“Any news?” Petronus asked.
The soldier studied him, sizing him up. “You’re the old Androfrancine that runs this camp.”
He nodded. “I am he. Though I’m not much of an Androfrancine anymore.”
“There are armies riding in from the west. They will be here tomorrow… maybe the next day. Most of us will ride on for the Ninefold Forests. Some of us will stay here and aid you in your work.”
Petronus nodded. “I’ve heard as much. Which do you hope for?”
The soldier frowned. “The first battles were over before I saw action,” he said. “But after seeing this-” he turned and tipped his spear toward the ruined landscape “-I don’t know.”
Petronus thought about this for a moment. “Why?”
“Part of me wants justice for this. Part of me wants to never cause harm to another.”
Petronus chuckled. “You’d have been a good Androfrancine, lad.”
The soldier laughed. “I suppose,” he said. “When the other boys played at war, I dug in the woods for artifacts beyond my family’s farm.”
“I was like that as a boy, too,” Petronus said. “Now I dig graves.”
The soldier pushed back his leather cap and scratched his short blond hair, returning to the question. “I’ll follow my orders when the time comes,” he said. “Want doesn’t come into it.”
Petronus felt a sudden kinship with the young man and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “Want rarely does,” he told him.
Petronus turned back to the north. The moon was still visible though no longer full. It cast eerie light onto the fields and hills east across the river and on the line of forest to the north.
Of course it had just been a dream, he thought. And his Francine sensibilities told him, regardless o›m, alf his upbringing, that dreams were the working of the deeper places inside. Bits of truth and lies we told ourselves, all fruit to be sorted as our bodies slept.
But why would Neb dream of the Marsh King?
He stood with the sentry until he was relieved and a new guard-this time one of his own men-took over. He chatted with the sleep muddled trader for a few minutes, then turned back to try and get an hour of sleep before the sun rose and they went back to their work.
When Second Summer passed, the rain would be on its heels. And after the rain, snow. They didn’t need any further complications than what the changing seasons could provide.
He was halfway back to the camp when he heard the shout behind him. Petronus stopped and turned. He moved quickly across the shattered ground, feet crunching in the ash.
By the time he reached the line again word had been passed, and the camp moved into Third Alarm. The lieutenant that Sethbert had attached to the camp-the same one that had let them pass what seemed forever ago-met them at the line.
The three men stood, facing north, staring.
At first, Petronus thought, it seemed the forest moved in on them. The moving branches rippled in the dim light of the blue green moon as it set over the hills.
An island broke away from the larger body and moved closer to them. A cluster of horses, Petronus realized, in formation around a larger horse at the center. A voice, amplified by magicks to carry across the river valley, bellowed out from it.
“I am the Marsh King,” the voice said in an archaic Whymer Tongue that few would recognize in this present age. But Petronus recognized it immediately. “Those who war against the Gypsy King war also against me.”
The guard and the lieutenant both looked to Petronus, their eyes wide with either fear or surprise. Petronus glanced at them, then stared back at the small island of mounted men and the contingent of foot soldiers behind them.
Petronus wondered what else Neb had dreamed. And he wondered, at the same time, if he really wanted to know.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam crept out of the darkened room holding her clothing against her naked skin. Rudolfo had pretended to sleep, she knew, sparing her the awkwardness of the morning after.
She pulled the bedroom door closed behind her and glanced around the room. Isaak now sat near the furnace, burning page after page of Rudolfo’s notes, jus›17;pult as the Gypsy King had instructed him over dinner. “You’ve finished then?” she asked.
He nodded, looking up at her. “And your betrothal is consummated?”
She chuckled at his directness. “It is indeed.”
“May your firstborn be strong and wily and inhabit the New Land with grace and awareness,” Isaak said, quoting one of P’Andro Whym’s lesser admonitions.
His words surprised her. Of course, she took powders for that. Betrothal was one thing; motherhood was another. Still, she imagined at some point, if her father’s designs held true through present events, she would walk that road.
“Thank you, Isaak,” she said.
She dressed quickly, putting herself back together but not nearly as well as she could have. It was important that they see they had indeed cemented the new arrangement. She was certain that the Pope would have the captain of his Gray Guard watching.
Rudolfo had surprised her yet again. Initially, she wondered if Sethbert’s assessment of him were true, but midway through dinner she’d known of a certainty that Sethbert was quite wrong. And in that time between the table and the bed, she’d even reached the conclusion that the Gypsy King was probably quite skillful in many matters, both private and public.
He’d confirmed this when they moved into the bedchambers. He’d confirmed it three times that night.
She’d approached the work with the same resolve and aloofness she had with the others before, giving only the parts of herself to him that her father-and custom-required. But he had worn her down with passion and gentleness, his hands moving over her body, pressing messages into her skin that disarmed her at the time and alarmed her now.
No, she corrected herself, the messages weren’t alarming. How she rose to them was.
And that final time, just an hour earlier, all of those words, spoken with his tongue and his hands across the landscape of her body, reached an unexpected and powerful crescendo.
Jin Li Tam prided herself on control in all things. And in the bedroom, she came (and went) as she pleased, keeping vigilant guard over her body’s responses to those who visited it. Of course, the visitors knew what she wished them to know. In some instances, they needed to know they had failed and that she had fabricated her end result. In others, she did not even bother to fabricate. And with a few, she had relieved the guards and given herself to the pleasure.
But Rudolfo had laid his ›o hthesiege, bribed her sentries and, eventually, taken the city. Some part of her could not-or would not-stop him, and that alarmed her.
A fortuitous undertaking, he had said again after she had cried out that final time. Then they had fallen asleep for another hour, tangled in silk sheets and one another.
She pulled on her shoes and checked herself in the small wall mirror.
“Are you ready, Isaak?” she asked.
The metal man stood. “I am ready, Lady.”
They walked to the door and she knocked on it. When it opened, the Gray Guard’s face was unreadable. “Thank you,” she told him, inclining her head toward him.
Returning to her chambers with Isaak in tow, she selected a few pieces of fruit from the bowl in her sitting room. She drew a stack of parchment from the desk and placed it near a pen and a small bottle of ink.
While Isaak went to work, she took the fruit into the bathing room. She drew a bath and climbed into the large granite tub of steaming water.
Biting into a pear, she found her mind wandering back to the night before, then leaping into an imagined future.
There was a strength beneath Rudolfo’s foppish exterior, a steel that reminded her very much of her father. And considering that Vlad Li Tam was the greatest-and most formidable-man alive, this could not be a bad thing. But she wondered at the same time how the Gypsy King would deal with his changing world.
She knew enough of him. A life spent on the move between nine manors and a hundred small forest towns. A deep passion for good food, chilled wine and… She found herself blushing and settled deeper into the tub.
But if-or perhaps now it was simply when-they solved the present dilemma of the Papal Writ, and if Rudolfo did somehow manage to rebuild some portion of the Great Library far away in his northern woods, how well would the General of the Wandering Army take to being rooted in one place?
And how well would she?
But moving the center of the world came with consequences and sacrifice. So did shifting history, that wide and strong river, in a new and unexpected direction.
Chapter 16
Ru
dolfo
Pope Resolute spent most of a week interrogating Rudolfo at his leisure. Most of those meetings occurred in the sitting area of Rudolfo’s quarters, but at least twice the Gray Guard had escorted him-shackled, of course-to the Pope’s office on the top floor. Apart from that first night, Rudolfo had not seen Jin Li Tam.
Resolute, he thought, was learning his job.
But this time, when the Gray Guard came for him, they did not shackle him. And he was surprised to find Isaak and Jin Li Tam both sitting in the office with Resolute.
“Lord Rudolfo,” the Pope said, looking up from his desk. “Please sit.”
Rudolfo nodded to Jin Li Tam and she returned the nod.
“It is good to see you, Lady Tam,” Rudolfo said.
“And you, Lord Rudolfo.”
Rudolfo sat. “And, Isaak, what of you? Are you well?”
The metal man opened his mouth to speak, but Pope Resolute spoke for him. “The mechoservitor is in working order. I am grateful to your betrothed for its safe escort.”
Rudolfo’s eyes quickly searched the room. There was more paper on the desk than there had been two days ago. The Pope himself looked less well rested, and the door behind his desk was closed against an overcast sky. The weather was cooling-he’d felt it in the last several days. Soon, rain would drum his thin, high windows. And this far north, the snow was just behind it. It was a conservative and predictable strategy. Something right out of an Academy textbook. They’ll hide here, Rudolfo thought, and assess what they have. In the spring they’ll know what to do, what to become. He suspected it wasn’t this Pope’s doing. Someone had to be advising him. Someone from the military.
Rudolfo couldn’t be here that long. He couldn’t be here even close to that long.
Pope Resolute leaned forward on his desk. “I’ve brought you here, Lord Rudolfo, to outline the next steps of this investigation.”
“You do not intend to recall the Writ of Shunning?” Rudolfo asked.
“I have no evidence indicating I should do so,” Pope Resolute said, moving papers across his desk.
