by Ken Scholes
Isaak found him at the edge of town, watching the Androfrancines move about in their small city of tents. “Pope Petronus is calling for you.”
“How is he today?” He’d noticed the dark circles, and had even heard Petronus snap at one of the servants the day before. He had an edge about him that Neb hadn’t seen, even during the worst of their work in Windwir.
Isaak shrugged. “He is exhausted. He seems… weighed down.”
Neb nodded. He’d never asked Petronus why he’d left so many years ago, but he couldn’t imagine that coming back was something he’d wanted to do.
I forced him to it. No, he reminded himself, Sethbert’s act of violence had forced Petronus to it. More than that, it was the kind of man that Petronus was.
“We do what we must,” Petronus had told him those times Neb had brought it up. “You did what you had to do and so will I.”
Still, Neb regretted his part in it. He thanked Isaak and made his way back to the seventh “€o the seforest manor.
Petronus’s door was closed when he reached the office. He knocked at it, and a gruff voice answered.
When he saw the look on Petronus’s face, he froze.
He knows about the weapon, he thought. He’d wanted to do what he was told with it. He’d taken it and had gotten halfway to the blacksmith with his fire and hammer, intending to have it broken into pieces and melted down. But he’d ended up in the forest with it, running his hands over it, feeling the history of it. It was probably five hundred years old, rebuilt no doubt from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. It represented something-a part of the light, he supposed-and in the end, he could not bring himself to destroy it. In the end, he’d buried it in its oilcloth beneath the massive, mossy stump, marking the place with a few white rocks.
Neb opened his mouth to explain, but Petronus gestured to a chair and spoke first. “Sit down, Neb.”
Petronus was distracted, shuffling papers on his desk until he found a neatly folded and sealed note. “I wanted to talk with you before I gave you this.”
Neb looked at him, suddenly not so sure it was about the weapon. He saw deep grief on the man’s face, and his eyes were dark. “What is it, Petronus?”
When they were alone, he’d insisted that Neb call him by name, but now Petronus’s eyes hardened. “You will address me now as Excellency or Pope,” he said.
Neb felt his jaw go slack and his stomach lurch. “How may I serve you, Excellency?”
Petronus nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “Would you serve me, then, Nebios?”
Neb swallowed. Suddenly, he felt afraid and alone and uncertain. “You know that I would do anything for you, Father.” He wasn’t sure why he’d slipped into the older, more familiar term. Perhaps because he’d heard Isaak use the same. Or perhaps because over the last nine months, the man had played the role.
Petronus nodded again. “Very well then.” He handed the note over to him. “I am rescinding your status in the Order.”
Stunned, Neb took the note but did not open it. “If this is about-”
Petronus shook his head. “It is not about you.” Their eyes met. “The assignment in Windwir and your work here were only intended to be… temporary.”
Neb wasn’t sure what he felt. On the surface, shock. Below that, anger and despair and confusion. “I don’t understand. There is much work to be done still. I can-”
Petronus’s voice rose. “Enough,” he said. “You named me your Pope.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Would you so easily challenge my authority?”
Neb swallowed and shook his head, fighting back the tears that suddenly threatened to ambush him.
Petronus looked away. “Your work has been exemplary, as my letter indicates.” Neb stared at him, watching the old man’s eyes go everywhere in their avoidance of his own. “You have become a fine young man and a strong leader.” He paused. “You will of course be permitted to attend the council and trial if you wish it.” But his eyes told Neb that he would rather he did not.
Petronus went back to shuffling the papers on his desk, and Neb sat in silence, staring at the folded note in his hands. He wanted to tear it into pieces and throw it back at the old man, shouting at the top of his lungs that he would not be discarded so easily. He wanted to cry and run to the old man’s side and beg him to tell him what this was truly about, because he could see plainly that something dark-something terribly dark-worked at the soul of the man he credited with saving him from the madness of those early days after the Desolation.
No, he realized. Petronus did not save him. Hope did.
The old man continued shuffling through his papers, not speaking.
Because there are no other words left between us, Neb realized.
Finally, he stood and left the office, fleeing the manor for the forest. As his feet slapped at the grass and pine needles, Neb suddenly realized that once again his dreams were true.
“You will stand and proclaim him Pope and King in the Gardens of Coronation and Consecration,” Brother Hebda had told him in that first dream of many. “And he will break your heart.”
Brokenhearted, Neb sobbed in the forest of a place that no longer felt like home.
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam could not abide wool during the summer, and he wondered how it was that anyone else did. The archeologist’s robes were rough on his skin, particularly after three days in the saddle.
The iron ship had dropped him with his horse and his small entourage on an isolated portion of the coastline near Caldus Bay. He’d sent the remainder of his armada ahead, intending to catch up to them near the Whispering Isles at the edge of the Named Lands.
He’d intended to be done. He’d planned to send his children for this last bit of the work, but in the end he couldn’t, despite Rudolfo’s threat. Years of personally delivering his most important messages would not be denied, and finally, at the end of things, he’d come to the Ninefold Forest for the first time since that night long ago to meet with his seventh son and hear his final words.
The Gypsy Scouts had questioned them briefly about where they’d come from. An Androfrancine at a small table, shielded from the sun by a small canopy, recorded their names and positions within the Order. After the brief interview, he directed them to the field of tents outside town.
They added their own tents to that small canvass city, and while his sons put them up, he wandered among the dark robed men, watching and listening for any scrap or tidbit that might help him.
Eventually, he left the Androfrancine sector and wandered across the wide, low bridge into the town itself. He joined himself with others dressed like him, moving strategically through the parts of the town he would need to visit. Finally, he came to Tormentor’s Row and the low stone buildings that served as the Ninefold Forest’s prison-the one place he knew he would not be able to reach personally and where his coffers were not deep enough to purchase influence. He paused, listening for screams but hearing none. Of course, by now Sethbert would be in a cell. He expected Petronus would have insisted upon that, not wanting to legitimize that particular Whymer interpretation, with its cutting and peeling in the name of redemption.
Those guards would be above reproach, but the cooks would not be. And the message would be easy enough to send through them. A long strand of hair-Sethbert’s sister’s, in fact-tied to the foot of the game hen he would take for his final meal. The hen would be served whole just as Sethbert preferred. And another strand of hair-this one shorter and taken from his nephew Erlund, tied carefully around the small bird’s bill. More threats at the end of a string of threats.
Of course, Vlad Li Tam had no intentions of killing Sethbert’s family. All of his children but those he’d brought with him for this last northward journey-and the daughter who no longer acknowledged him-waited for him on iron ships loaded with all of House Li Tam that they could carry.
But the threat would be clear, and sometimes a threat was enough to move the river. Vlad Li Tam was
certain he could count on Sethbert taking the cue and keeping silent. And that silence would let his old friend finish the work he’d been made to do.
Smiling to himself, Vlad Li Tam continued his stroll through the town. He paused again at the gates of the seventh forest manor, studying the windows and doors and comparing them to the drawings and specifications he’d memorized so long ago.
There were messages for the manor as well, messages he would deliver personally.
But only after he finished moving the river.
Chapter 31
Rudolfo
Petronus, the King of Windwir and the Holy See of the Androfrancine Patriarchy, reconvened the council with upraised hands.
Throughout the pavilion, voices went silent. Rudolfo sat aside from the others not just as their host but also as someone who wanted to see as much as he could.
The first two days of the council had been simple matters of organization. Petronus had first submitted himself for examination- receiving confirmation from at least a dozen gray-headed Androfrancines that they did indeed know him to be who the announcements and letters claimed he was. With that out of the way, he issued and expounded upon encyclicals on everything from property dispersal to the construction and management of the library.
Before adjourning for lunch on the third day, he had elicited gasps of surprise when he gestured to the metal men in their acolyte robes. “These new brethren that we have made will watch over our library, and the Gypsy Scouts shall guard them.”
Rudolfo smiled at this.
One of the bishops stood, angry. “They have no souls and you give them the light?”
Petronus had stared at the man and raised one of the new books into the air. “I give them nothing; they earn this. They work night and day to give back what was taken from you.” The Pope smiled. “And you who have souls-how many of you have helped them?”
The bishop reseated himself while Rudolfo smiled.
After lunch, after Petronus reconvened them with his silent blessing, he looked at Rudolfo and gave a grim smile. “Soon,” he said, “I will close this last council of mine. But first, we have unfortunate business together.” He nodded toward the main entrance, and six Gypsy Scouts escorted Sethbert into the tent. They walked slowly to accommodate his shackles.
Rudolfo looked at the man who had once commanded a nation. Despite being fed well under his care, Sethbert had shed most of his fat. His hair had been shorn for the physician’s work. His flesh had been cut, forming the holy lattice of a Whymer Maze upon his skin.
Scars of the Whymer knife, Rudolfo thought.
Rudolfo felt a stab of shame, and turned his eyes away.
Petronus
The crowd went to their feet; the thousand indrawn breaths were audible. But Petronus noted that Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam remained seated.
Petronus looked at the broken man before him. “Sethbert, former Overseer of the Entrolusian City States, once kin-clave of the Androfrancine Order, do you understand why you are here today?”
Sethbert’s lower lip quivered. “I do.”
The work of those damnable physicians. Petronus felt a stab of anger, but suppressed it. But in the truest sense this trial was not for Sethbert’s benefit, it was for his own and for tomorrow. No more backward dreaming
Petronus looked at Isaak and nodded. The metal man stood as Petronus continued. “Did you, of your own free will and with forethought of malice, order this mechoservitor’s script altered in secret?”
Sethbert hung his head. “I did, Father.”
“And what was the nature of this alteration?”
Sethbert looked up briefly, his eyes red and hollow. He opened his mouth and closed it. “I… I had it altered, yes.”
Petronus’s jaw went firm. “How did you alter it?”
Rudolfo looked at Isaak, and found himself squeezing Jin’s hand harder than he realized. The metal man stood alone among his kind, his eye-shutters flickering and his bellows pumping. A low whine came from his exhaust grate.
Petronus studied the man. Sethbert looked around the room, first glancing at the metal man, then taking in the others. He saw Rudolfo, and their eyes met. He saw Jin Li Tam, and she looked away. Finally Sethbert saw Neb, and Petronus heard him gasp at the look of controlled rage upon the young man’s face.
Sethbert’s voice shook and for a moment, Petronus thought his eyes offered an imploring look, not for release but for forgiveness. “I altered it so that he would recite Xhum Y’zir’s Seven Cacophonic Deaths in the central square of Windwir.”
Petronus leaned on his podium. “You did this thing?”
“I paid someone to do it,?›€to do it1; Sethbert said. “I did it. Yes.” And suddenly an odd thing happened. Sethbert’s eyes became bright and hard.
“Why?”
Sethbert said nothing.
Petronus scowled. “Surely you had a reason.”
Sethbert looked around the room again, possibly for a sympathetic face. There were none. And he had no way of knowing that his own family had been excluded from the proceedings at Petronus’s command. The Gypsy King had actually protested this the night before, but had left the matter alone when Petronus raised his voice and reminded Rudolfo that though the trial was held on his soil, it was entirely an Androfrancine affair.
Sethbert drew himself up, broken no more. “My reasons were my own.”
Petronus saw the line of his jaw, and realized that Sethbert would never tell. Not even the physicians had broken that part of him. It made him wonder what-other than a profound sense of rightness-could create that kind of resolve. Regardless, this matter was not about Sethbert. It was about a perception of justice and about a better future. He continued. “But you acknowledge guilt?”
“I do.”
Petronus looked out over the crowd, scanning the room. Now his own eyes went to Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam, then to Isaak and finally to Neb, though the young man looked away quickly. It broke his heart to see it, but he’d known he had to protect the boy.
Then he saw another familiar face far up and to the right, partially hidden behind the hood of a low-level archeologist’s robes.
Vlad Li Tam nodded to Petronus, a grim smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Petronus forced his eyes away and looked back to Sethbert. “Then as Patriarch and King, I find you guilty.” Petronus moved around the platform. “Does any here dispute my finding?”
No one spoke. No one moved.
Petronus continued his slow walk, his eyes narrow and studying the faces around him. He stopped in front of the new bishop who had challenged him on the matter of the mechoservitors. He stared at him and the bishop stared back. “What sentence does this crime merit?”
At first, the bishop didn’t answer. Slowly, he worked his mouth open. “He should be put to death, Father.”
Petronus nodded. “I agree that he should._›€ he shou221; He walked slowly to another bishop, one Rudolfo knew to have been an archeologist working in the Churning Waste until recently. “Do you agree?”
The archeologist nodded. “I do, Father.”
Petronus whipped a fishing knife from his robes. He held the short blade aloft, watching as Rudolfo signed and gestured his rushing Gypsy Scouts to stand down.
Alarm spread over Rudolfo’s face, and his hands moved quickly. What do you play at, old man?
Petronus ignored him. “Sethbert dies today. Who will carry out his sentence?”
Someone nodded to the band of Gypsy Scouts. “Have them do it.”
Petronus chuckled. “Too long we’ve invited others to our unpleasant tasks. This one we will do ourselves.”
Sethbert now was shaking. His bladder cut loose, wetting the front of his tunic and breeches. But he did not speak.
Now Petronus turned to Isaak. “You. What of you?” Isaak took a tentative step forward. “Of all of us here, he wronged you the most. He bent you against your will and turned you into a weapon beyond our wildest imaginings. He gave you the word
s to level a city and kill every man, woman, child and beast within.”
The metal man took another step forward. “I want to,” Isaak said now. “I truly do.” He hung his head. “I cannot.” When he looked up, his eyes went dark and his voice took on a tone of profound sadness. “Life is sacred.”
Petronus nodded. “And that makes taking it so much harder. Any time we do so, we take something from the light.” He turned away from the metal man, facing the crowd. “A wise Gray Guard once told me that being willing to die for the light was easy, that being willing to kill for it was a harder matter. Not everyone’s shoulders were meant to bear such a burden.” He looked at Rudolfo. “It is no secret that I do not wish to be Pope. I made that statement plain enough thirty years ago. You have asked me for a new Pope. I will give you one.” He waited, letting the words settle in. “Whichever of you Androfrancines gathered here will come, take this knife and execute this condemned man, may have my Patriarchal blessing and bear the signet of the Gospel of P’andro Whym. Kill this man and be our Pope.”
No one moved. The room became silent.
Then, slowly, Neb stood up.
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam wat›€lad Li Tched the fisherman move the pieces on his board and saw his father’s handiwork. He had not expected Sethbert’s sudden resolve. His threat had been unnecessary. Now he saw the young man standing, and he saw the look of grief flash for just a moment across Petronus’s face.
But Petronus would have anticipated this. Because they had taught each other as boys during that summer long ago, he knew how to read him. Petronus had taught him to fish, how to cast the net and pull it and how to cast the rod and drop the hook where trout were rising. In turn, Vlad Li Tam had taught him to play queen’s war, and he had been adequate but awkward.
Now, he played this game as a master.
Petronus stared at the boy. Finally, he repeated himself slowly, intending the words for the one young man in the room who had no hesitation. “Whichever of you Androfrancines,” he said, “come and take this knife.” He broke his gaze with the boy and looked to the mechoservitor who sat listening to the session so that it could later be reproduced on paper. “Let the record show that the young man, Nebios ben Hebda, was removed from the Order by a Writ of Excommunication by Papal Discretion.”
