by Ken Scholes
If not Tam, then another Androfrancine lap-slut. But who it was-and how they broke into the ancient lockbox-mattered little. What counted now was survival. Because with the documents now gone, it was clear to Sethbert that there was no place for him left in the Named Lands. They would hunt him down wherever he fled. The weight of that realization caught in his throat.
The Gulf would be at the mercy of the iron armada, cutting off any escape south to the Isles or west to the Emerald Coasts. But east, Sethbert thought, there was a line of small fishing towns along the forested shores of Caldus Bay. Perhaps from there he could steal a boat far frul aButom Li Tam’s blockade and follow the ragged edge of the Keeper’s Wall south, around the Fargoer’s horn and into the Churning Wastes.
Sethbert went to the barn door and looked out. He saw nothing between the field and the river’s edge. The sun was bright, and the few rain clouds left in the sky were drifting slowly east.
Stomach gurgling with hunger and fear, Sethbert followed the weather.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo rode south alone over the protests of his men. Had Gregoric been alive, he would have never gotten away with it. He’d have disobeyed directly, or at the very least followed from a distance under magicks. Even Aedric might have intervened in some way, but he was already south. The new first captain was working with the Rangers of Pylos to shore up Meirov’s eastern and western borders and keep her neighbors’ problems in their own backyards.
So he rode alone, his horse magicked for speed and stamina, and he leaned into the slanting rain. He’d sent word before he’d left, carefully coding notes to Jin Li Tam, his head physician, and Aedric. And Petronus had informed Vlad Li Tam on Rudolfo’s behalf, asking him to keep watchful eye on the Delta’s waterways for the renegade Overseer, and letting his future father-in-law know that he rode to rendezvous with Aedric. He meant his Wandering Army to hunt Sethbert, and he meant to parade that murderous pig-bugger through the towns of the Named Lands on the long route back to the Ninefold Forest.
He smiled at the thought of it, and whistled his horse faster. If he pushed, he’d only need four days. With the magicks his horse could take that abuse, but no more. Once he reached Aedric and his men, he’d have to trade out for a season. He patted the horse’s side. With all he’d been through since Windwir’s pyre, this one had earned a break.
We all have.
Hours behind him, the last of the gravediggers’ camp was down by now, and the caravan no doubt wound its way northeast. He could have brought some of his men, but he’d not wanted to leave the Pope any more exposed than he already was. Even if the war was all but over, he couldn’t afford to take any risks with Petronus’s safety.
But deeper than that, something else prompted Rudolfo to solitude. He’d felt a darkness gnawing away inside of him, stirred to life that night he ran with Gregoric on his shoulder. And when that that cloud came over him he found that he couldn’t abide anyone’s presence.
He was certain it had something to do with the Francine’s Fivefold Path of Grief. And he would walk those paths again and again until he finished. It wasn’t as if he were a stranger to them. He’d been down these routes before with his brother and with his parents.
But Gregoric. It still stabbed at him.
He shook his head, hoping to clear it. He thought about the work ahead, but found it bored him. He turned his mind instead to Jin Li Tam and their time together, but the memories of that couldn’t hold him, either.
But when he thought of Sethbert, he found a white, hot point of light to focus on other than the past.
It was the future. And in it, Sethbert screamed beneath the salted knife.
Chapter 28
Rudolfo
Rudolfo dismounted and handed his reins to a Gypsy Scout. There at the edge of Caldus Bay was the shack with its boathouse, surrounded by soldiers of the Wandering Army, his scouts and a squad of Pylos Border Rangers.
They’d received dozens of birds with dozens of reported sightings. Rudolfo had divided his force and scattered them to follow up on each lead. It had paid off.
When they’d first found Sethbert here, the Rangers had inquired around the town and learned that the boathouse Sethbert hid in was none other than that of a certain fisherman, Petros, who was away on business.
Sethbert hadn’t put up a fight, but he had insisted that he would only surrender to Rudolfo. The Rangers had quickly sent word to the Gypsy Scouts with Sethbert’s demand.
Rudolfo had left immediately, riding with the wagon that his Physicians of Penitent Torture had driven south. It was a large, enclosed structure with wooden sides that could be dropped to properly display the black iron cage furnished with the various tools of their redemptive work.
Rudolfo approached Aedric, the new first captain of his Gypsy Scouts. He was Gregoric’s oldest boy-nearly twenty. He would teach his friend’s son how to be a strong first captain, and perhaps, if the Gods did not grant him an heir, he would offer his fatherhood to the boy. He wondered how Jin Li Tam would feel about that. He suspected that she would see the value of it, but he realized suddenly that the days of making decisions of such magnitude without speaking with her were gone now. Not because he worried that she would take issue with his decision-he knew she would not. But rather, because he knew her now, knew that she had eyes that could see around corners he never dreamed of. She was a valuable ally.
“First Captain,” Rudolfo said, inclining his head slightly.
“General Rudolfo,” Aedric said?/fo, bowing. “The fugitive Overseer of the Entrolusian City States awaits you.”
Rudolfo nodded. “Is he armed?”
“I’m certain of it.”
He stroked his mustache. “And do you think he means to harm me?”
Aedric’s eyes narrowed. “He means to try, Lord.”
Rudolfo unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to a waiting aide. “Lend me your knives,” he said to Aedric.
Aedric handed over the belt of scout’s knives, and Rudolfo buckled it around his narrow hips.
Rudolfo waited for Aedric to insist he not go in alone, to tell him it was too dangerous. He smiled inwardly when the young first captain did not. “I will whistle for you when I need you.” Then, he looked to the two physicians that had driven down in the wagon. “Salt your knives and ready your chains.”
Rudolfo went to the door. “Sethbert,” he called out.
He heard scrambling and the sound of things being knocked over. He pulled open the door, and his eyes followed the ray of sunlight as it slanted into the filthy room. The smell overtook him first. Rotten fish and human feces. Rudolfo drew a silk kerchief from his sleeve and held it to his mouth and nose, inhaling the perfumes from it.
“Rudolfo?” The voice was hoarse and far away, laced with something he thought must be madness. More scrambling, and Rudolfo saw a filthy form crawl into the light. Sethbert had already started losing his fat, his clothes hanging off him. He was covered in filth from head to toe, his hair and beard matted with mud, his clothing ripped and gray with grime. His eyes were wide.
“Yes,” Rudolfo said. “I am here. This is over now. Come out.”
Sethbert smiled, relief washing his face. “I will come out. Soon.” He offered an exaggerated wink. “But first, did they not tell you that I intend to hurt you?”
Rudolfo’s hands clenched the knife hilt, his eyes on Sethbert’s hands, both splayed out on the muddy boathouse floor. “With what do you intend to hurt me?” he asked.
“With knowledge,” he said.
Rudolfo waited.
Sethbert continued. “I had the evidence.?€the evidI saw it. I saw the charts and the maps. They intended to use the spell to enslave us.”
Rudolfo laughed. “I thought you were going to hurt me, not amuse me,” he said. “What would the Androfrancines gain from enslaving us?”
“I’m a patriot of the light,” Sethbert said. The madness crept into his eyes now, too, and his face twitched in the shaft of morning s
unlight.
Rudolfo scowled. “Enough of this. You’ve run out of time, Sethbert.”
He stepped back and almost missed the next words because Sethbert whispered them, low and with a sharp clarity. “Ask the whore who shares your bed who paid for the coups that killed your parents.”
Rudolfo spun, the knives coming out. “What did you say?”
Sethbert’s eyes met his, but the Overseer did not utter another word.
Later, after the physicians had chained Sethbert into the wagon, Rudolfo rapped on the outside of it with the pommel of his long, narrow sword and ordered the black-robed driver to make the return trip at a leisurely pace, stopping in what towns they could along the way.
He’d hoped he could follow, but he knew now that he could not. Sethbert’s words had chewed at him despite the Overseer’s obvious madness. He’d actually believed that the Androfrancines meant to harm the people they were sworn to protect. In the end, the paranoia of a madman brought down a city.
But this other-it touched on a suspicion he had harbored for a long while now. Everyone had said that his parents’ death was a terrible tragedy, an unseen insurrection that exploded in one night of intense violence that left Rudolfo an orphan. They’d shaken their heads when, even at his young age, Rudolfo suggested an investigation. It had seemed too convenient, and in two thousand years of forest life, there had never been insurrection. The night his parents died, he stayed up past dawn drafting his strategy for investigation. Gregoric’s father was supportive, but the pontiff felt the Physicians of Penitent Torture would better serve the occasion. Rudolfo listened to the pontiff. It was the first and last time he did not follow his instincts.
Even now his instincts led him, and he raced his new horse westward.
Ask the whore who shares your bed who paid for the coups that killed your parents.
No, Rudolfo thought, I will not ask her.
Instead, he would ask her father.
Neb
The mechoservitors fascinated Neb.
Certainly, he’d seen them on occasion in the library-though not often. Now, he could walk among them, talk with them and on occasion work with them as they cataloged and inventoried what pieces of the library lived within their memory scrolls.
Today, he worked with Isaak integrating the inventory of the latest caravan from the summer papal palace. After Resolute’s unexpected suicide, the Androfrancines at the Palace had quickly accepted Petronus’s invitation to return to the fold. But when a certain Captain Grymlis showed up at the gates with a small contingent of Gray Guard, Petronus turned them away.
“The Gypsy Scouts guard the Son of P’Andro Whym now,” he told them. “If you would be true to your vows, obey me now. Bury your uniforms and take up new lives far away from here.”
Neb had never seen anything like it. To a man, they stripped naked, buried their uniforms in the forest floor and left.
That had been two weeks ago.
Now, the wagons full of books and artifacts had formed a steady stream, two or three per week. Androfrancine refugees and property from the Emerald Coasts, from the Summer Papal Palace and even a few from the City States on the Delta trickled into the Ninefold Forest. Word of the restoration had spread throughout the Named Lands, and a corps of engineers already worked hard at digging its deep basements.
And Neb worked with Isaak to inventory each wagon so that the information would be recorded on the metal man’s memory scroll.
He watched the metal man work, his eye shutters opening and closing rapidly as he wrote. “Sethbert will arrive day after tomorrow,” Neb said.
Isaak looked up. “What do you think they will do with him?”
Neb shrugged. “Rudolfo means to keep him on Tormentor’s Row, to let his physicians do their redemptive work upon him with their knives.”
He’d studied those darker aspects of the Whymer cult, and shuddered to think of what that meant. The varying cuts had names, and each of them folded into the others until they formed a vast Whymer’s Maze of lacerations.
When Isaak said nothing, Neb continued, “But Petronus wants to try him for the Desolation of…” He saw the mechanical flinch and let the words fall off. “I’m sorry, Isaak.”
Isaak shook his head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Brother Nebios. A part of me thinks he deserves justice for his crimes.”
Neb nodded. “When I met Petronus, I was standing under Sethbert’s canopy, studying the position of his guards.” He paused. Had it really been so many months ago? “I’d stolen scout magicks from Lady Tam, and intended to use them in order to kill Sethbert.”
Isaak’s eyes flashed. “You knew what he had done?”
Neb nodded. “I did. But Petronus saw me and stopped me.”
Isaak pondered this. “You were a boy who survived the spell. Now you’re a hero of the Androfrancine Order. Do you believe your restraint led to these things?”
He chuckled, putting down the book he’d just lifted up from the wagon. “I had no restraint of my own. Petronus restrained me.”
Isaak fixed his eyes on him again. “But are you glad for it?”
Neb thought about this. “I think so. Yes,” he said.
Isaak looked to a point beyond Neb now and stood. “Lady Tam,” he said. “An unexpected delight.”
Neb looked up and blushed. Lady Tam still radiated beauty, though now it was clear that she wasn’t half as pretty as Winters. Still she was beautiful, and when she smiled at him he felt his face grow red. “Hello, Isaak,” she said, inclining her head to each of them. “Nebios.” She smiled. “How is the inventory?”
Now Neb stood as well. “We’ve found three mechanicals. Small ones, to be sure, but two of them are still in good repair.”
“I should be able to restore the third,” Isaak said. “It appears to have slipped a gear.”
Jin Li Tam looked to the wagon, and Neb thought for a second that her face registered surprise. He followed her eyes and saw the golden bird in its golden cage, its wings hanging broken and its neck twitching. “Where did this wagon come from?” she asked.
Neb stared at it. Something about the golden bird nagged at him. He suddenly smelled the sulfur and ozone of Windwir’s firestorm, and he flinched.
Isaak looked at the registry. “This one is from the Emerald Coasts,” he said. “A private collection.”
He saw the bird flying low to the ground, its golden fe?€ its golathers steaming. It was at Windwir, he realized. Neb opened his mouth and a stream of unintelligible words tumbled out, fragments of scripture jumbled together with glossolalia. He closed his mouth quickly and looked at Jin Li Tam.
She stared at him. “Neb?”
He waited for the tension to leave his throat. Finally, he spoke. “I saw this bird at Windwir.”
Neb watched her eyes narrow and her jawline tighten. “Really?”
He nodded. “I did.”
She nodded, her eyes suddenly far away. “I hope you can fix it,” she said. Then, her eyes returned to the present. “Petronus is calling for you both,” she said. She paused. “Take him that bird. Tell him I said I will speak to him about it later.”
Neb grabbed up his stack of papers. He probably wanted to talk about the council.
The Council of Bishops was just a few weeks away. Many of the gravediggers who had come north with Neb had been put to work building bleachers and crafting the massive tents to contain it. The last birds of invitation were to go out tomorrow.
Neb started toward the manor and the suite of offices they had grown into, then realized he was being rude, and turned to wait for Lady Tam and Isaak.
Isaak held the birdcage in his hands.
Jin Li Tam was staring at it, he realized, and Neb had never seen a more profound look of sadness upon her face.
Petronus
Petronus’s office adjoined the converted guest room that Neb and Isaak worked from. The steward had insisted that he have privacy and wouldn’t hear of him using his living quarters as his
work space. Instead, they moved a small desk, some bookshelves and three chairs into a large walk-in closet. The closet even had a small window that opened out on one of the manor’s many gardens. As spring hurried on, Petronus could smell the flowers blooming, though of course he had to stand on his desk to see them.
He looked up the knock on his door. “Come in,” he said.
Neb came in first, and Petronus swore that every time he saw the boy he was taller. His shoulders had broadened and he even had the beginnings of a beard, trimmed.as neatly as a boy could manage. He wore the robes smartly, though he still walked in them as if they weren’t really his, as if he weren’t really a member of the Order. “You called for us, Excellency?”
“Come in and sit down,” Petronus said.
Isaak limped in behind Neb. He carried a small metal bird in a dented cage. The bird twitched and clicked. They both sat in the waiting chairs.
“What do you have there?” Petronus asked.
Isaak put the cage on the desk. “It is a mechanical. Jin Li Tam said she would speak with you about it later.”
Neb spoke up. “I think it was in Windwir when the city fell.”
Petronus studied the bird. It looked familiar. Like something he had seen in someone’s home. “I’ll look forward to Lady Tam’s explanation. Meanwhile…” Petronus reached beneath his desk and pulled out the cloth-wrapped object that had arrived by rider earlier this morning. He’d recognized it immediately, of course. It was from the Papal Offices in the Summer Palace, one of a few hand cannons that had been restored before the Order decided it dishonored kin-clave to make them. He laid it on his desk. “This arrived from the new Overseer, Erlund. It’s what Oriv employed to… well, to end his life.” He unwrapped it and watched Neb’s eyes go wide. “It was used during the days of the Younger Gods, long before the Old World and P’Andro Whym.” He looked from Neb to Isaak. “This is familiar to you?”
Isaak nodded. “It is, Father.” Petronus wasn’t sure why the metal man insisted on the ancient title, but it pleased him. It seemed more humble.
