Lamentation (19 page)

He’s forcing something and I am a part of it, he thought. It was a game of queen’s war they played, each moving based on the other’s previous movement. Petronus did not doubt at all that Vlad had hoped for a full declaration followed by a quick succession. He’d given him something less—a guarded proclamation issued under the Fourth Article of Preservation, citing the safety of King and Pope as critical for the well-being of the Order, and allowing for a measure of secrecy.

But what Pope had ever used that secrecy to hide himself entirely? To remain hidden from view? This game of queen’s war was not a game Petronus could win. He could only hope to move fast enough to stay ahead of his opponent—and the world that watched them play. And move well enough to stay in the game until the stone rolled down the hill so fast that he could slip out the back and find someplace to wait out the rest of the storm.

Unless.

Petronus looked around again. Overhead the sky was charcoal on steel, but it hadn’t rained all day. It was quiet. The occasional skirmishes between the Marshers and the other armies had toned down considerably after the first few days. So far they’d avoided any kind of pitched battle, and Petronus suspected that the generals were all trying to decide what to do about this new arrival. Uniting their forces against the Marsh King would certainly be sufficient to drive him back, but it would leave them weakened for the long march east.

Time that allowed the Wandering Army to strengthen its position, though how effective they’d be without their leader remained to be seen.

It was as if the Named Lands themselves were the board upon which they played.

Unless
. The thought nibbled at him and his eyes widened at the strategy unfolding in his mind.

He wondered how much of this Vlad Li Tam had planned from the start, and he wondered how much Rudolfo knew of it.

Most of all, he wondered if Sethbert realized that he’d been used.

Sethbert

Sethbert’s hands shook with rage as he fought to suppress the violence inside of him that demanded release. He forced his eyes back to the report.

“This,” he said slowly, “is entirely unacceptable.” He looked up to lock eyes with Lysias. “How many?”

“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 ³hanghtrobed 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.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo and his party made their last camp together twenty leagues northwest of Windwir. In the morning, they would split up. He would ride with his escort to meet Gregoric and his company of Gypsy Scouts well beyond sight of the armies encamped around Windwir. While he turned southeast, Jin Li Tam and Isaak would ride northeast with their escort and make for the Prairie Sea with all haste.

A cold rain fell as the sky shifted to twilight, and the sun slipped by.

They huddled beneath canvas tarps hung low, using the pine trees as natural cover as much as possible. Rudolfo looked at Isaak, the rain beading and rolling off his metal surface.

“You’ll not rust, will you?”

“The alloy composite of my chassis is resistant to rust and other forms of erosion, Lord Rudolfo,” the metal man said.

Rudolfo nodded. “Well enough.” He leaned against the tree. A few paces away, he watched Jin Li Tam lay out a tent and pull it together and up with the practiced skill of a soldier. He watched her as she worked, enjoying the places where the water clung to her clothing, accentuating her curves. “I want to speak with you about the work ahead,” he told Isaak, his voice dropping.

“Yes, Lord Rudolfo?”

“I’ve asked Lady Tam to assist you. She will speak to her father on behalf of the library and try to get sanction from this new Pope he spoke of.” Rudolfo turned from watching her and studied Isaak. “I will get you more help as soon as I possibly can. Meanwhile, start planning.”

The metal man’s head swiveled around to face him. “Have you given any thought to the location of the new library?”

Rudolfo thought about this. “There is a hill near the seventh forest manor—on the outskirts of town. I had intended it to be a Whymer Maze. Is it of sufficient size?”

Isaak’s eyes flashed bright and then dim, the shutters working quickly as he calculated. “If we build into the hill and above it.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Once we have secured the patriarchal blessing, I will hire the best architects, engineers and builders in the Named Lands to realize this vision. I will hire the carpenters of Paramo to design and build the furnishings required. Your role will be to tell us what we need to properly house the holdings you think can be restored.”

Steam chugged out of his exhaust grate. “Your faith in me continues to astound, Lord Rudolfo.”

“You are a marvelous wonder, Isaak. You may even be the very best of the Androfrancines’ work among us.”

Certainly the most dangerous and the most innocent at the same time, he thought.

“I will strive to exceed your expectations.”

Rudolfo smiled. “I have no doubt that you will.”

“I had started my preliminary research before the summons arrived. I will resume that work now, by your leave.”

Rudolfo nodded. “To your work, my metal friend.”

Isaak limped off and Rudolfo watched him as he went. His armorer had done the best he could, certainly, never having worked on a mechanical before. Perhaps he could do better for the metal man with enough time to properly study his musculature and metallic skeleton. Maybe as they cataloged what was left in the memory scrolls of the mechoservitor corps, they would even find the ancient drawings from Rufello and have done with that limp.

Part of him wondered, though, if Isaak would permit that or if he would bear the limp along with his great remorse, a constant reminder of a pain that defined him.

Rudolfo had talked with Jin Li Tam about the metal man’s lie. It was an interesting development in the mechoservitor’s character.

Change is the path life takes.
Perhaps that meant Isaak was truly alive. He wondered at the implications of such a thing. A man made by a man.

That night, as the coyotes howled beyond their camp, they ate cold rations and washed them down with colder wine. They talked briefly, voices low, about the next day and the work ahead.

“I’ll see to the Marsh King and plumb this sudden kin-clave he’s declared towards me,” Rudolfo said. “I’ll send word when I know. Until then, the Wandering Army stays at home. We need to see what this new Pope will mean for present loyalties.”

Jin nodded. “I think Queen Meirov is tenuous at best in her alliance with Sethbert. He’s not been a good neighbor to her people.”

Rudolfo stroked his mustache. “She is a strong queen with a weak army.” Pylos, the smallest of the Named Lands, used their army primarily to police the border they shared with the Entrolusian City States. He’d had kin-clave with her in the past. “Perhaps I will call upon her after I’ve parleyed with the Marsh King.”

“My father will also send word to her,” Jin said. “She relies on House Li Tam for her small fleet of river ships, and no small amount of her treasury is held with him as well.”

Rudolfo smiled. “What do you think your father will do about the City State» thht=s?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I’m sure he’ll follow this new Pope’s lead. He can put the blockade back in place in a matter of days.”

And in two weeks, Rudolfo knew, those iron ships—powered in some similar way to the Androfrancines’ metal men but on a much larger scale—could cripple the supplies and replacements that Sethbert relied on his wooden riverboats to deliver.

Gradually, as the clouds broke overhead and the stars shined out, swollen with wet light, they fell into silence. The scouts moved about the camp, some restringing bows and preparing to go on watch, others crawling into tents for a few hours of sleep. Beneath his own tarp across from them, Isaak sat with his eyes flashing and his bellows wheezing slightly as he ciphered.

They sat in silence for an hour, listening to the forest as it moved about them. A wind carried the faintest sound—a bellowing voice carried across long distances—and it stirred the fine hairs on Rudolfo’s neck and arms. Everyone knew of the War Sermons of the Marsh King—they sprung from the pages of that people’s violent history in the Named Lands, though they’d not been heard for more than five hundred years.

Rudolfo turned and tried to pick out the words, but it was in the ancient Whymer tongue—a language he was largely unfamiliar with.

Jin leaned closer to him. “He’s prophesying now. It’s fascinating.”

Rudolfo’s eyebrows shot up. “You understand him?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s faint. Something about the dreaming boy and a Last Testament of P’Andro Whym. A coming judgment on the Named Lands for the Androfrancine Sin.” She paused, and Rudolfo admired the line of her neck and the strength of her jaw as she cocked her head and listened. “The Gypsy King will . . .” She shook her head. “No, it’s gone. The wind carried it off.”

They fell back into silence again and another hour passed. Finally, Rudolfo stood, bid his company good night and crawled into the low battle tent they had set up for him.

He lay still, listening to the low voices outside and to the sounds of the wind as it played the evergreen ceiling. Was it so long ago that he dreaded the idea of staying still? When one bed or one house was not enough for him? He’d spent his life moving between nine manors. From the age of twelve, when he stepped into his father’s turban, he’d spent more of his life in the saddle and tent than he had manor or bed. And he’d loved that life. But that pillar in the sky created a longing for something else within him. Perhaps it was a temporary fixation. The Francines would say to follow the thread of his feelings backward. It was grief connecting to grief—today’s sadness reaching back i»reaixanto yesterday’s and gathering strength.

You’ve lost your light young, he remembered his father telling him when he lay dying in the amber field. First his brother at five, then his father and mother at twelve. Windwir’s destruction found that grief and worried it, creating inside of him a longing for home and rest that he could not remember ever knowing before.

He jumped when she slid alongside of him into the narrow bedrolls. She moved as silently as a Gypsy Scout, perhaps more so. And when she had entwined her arms and legs with his, she pinned him down and kissed him on the mouth. “For a great and mighty general,” she whispered, “you are not so very bold.”

Rudolfo returned her kiss, amazed at how in the moment he finally longed for home, home appeared and welcomed him.

Petronus

Petronus was rounding the corner, approaching the galley tent, when the muddy bird flapped into camp. It squawked and hopped about until he scooped it up and slipped the unthreaded message from its foot. He opened it and saw Whymer runes.

Your grandson is our honored guest,
it read.

Petronus checked the tent first. Then the wagon and the galley and the bathing tent. When Neb didn’t turn up at any of those places, he went next to the sentries. But the sentries were pulled in closer now that defense was warranted, and at sundown, the guard had changed.

After he’d done that much, Petronus returned to the camp and organized a search party. The War Sermon started up as they moved into the city.

But midway through the search, Petronus called them together and sent them back to the camp. The Marsh King’s note was specific enough that he knew they wouldn’t find the boy. While the others drifted back, Petronus stayed on the northern edge of the city and watched the line of forests. Tonight, the War Sermon was particularly cryptic—a string of prophetic utterances about a boy, obscure references to texts Petronus had heard of but never seen. Texts that not even the Androfrancines had seen these two thousand years. Only the memory of these texts survived as references in newer works.

He understood the words but did not understand their meaning.

“He’s in the Marsh King’s camp,” Gregoric said.

Petronus turned in the direction of the voice. “You’ve seen him then?”

“Aye,” the scout said. “We saw him running with one of their scouts.”

Petronus felt anger, sharp and focused. “And yet you did not stop him?”

“No. For many reasons I’m sure you can cipher out.”

Yes.
It would have meant giving away the Ninefold Forest House’s continued presence at Windwir. Petronus did not like the mathematics of it, but it was what it was. He would hope he’d choose differently, but knew that he had been in that position before. Sacrifices for the greater good. Memories of that burning village chewed at him. “Have you seen their camp?”

Gregoric’s voice moved again. “I have not. They’re better woodsmen than Sethbert’s men. And they seem to have kin-clave with us.”

“I found that surprising,” Petronus said.

“We did as well. But we’ll have some better idea of it in the next few days.”

Petronus raised his eyebrows, waiting for Gregoric to finish, but he didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was far away and he was running fast. “We will also inquire about your boy.”

Those words settled him somewhat. He still felt the strain pulling at his neck and back, and he swung his arms as he turned back toward camp.

There’s nothing more that you can do here, old man.

As he walked, he thought about the Gypsy Scout’s words. Most likely, it meant that Rudolfo was near and intending to parley with the Marsh King. It would be a first, and to Petronus’s recollection, there had been a rather brief and nasty war between the Ninefold Forest and the Marshers. Four, maybe five years before his assassination. Jakob had captured the Marsh King and showed him his Physicians of Penitent Torture. Then he released him, and the Marshers never bothered the Forest Houses again.

Now they were Rudolfo’s only kin-clave remaining in the world apart from his alliance with Vlad Li Tam.

And they had Neb.

Petronus stopped and looked behind him at the dark line of trees against the sky. Remnants of his upbringing as a Gods-fearing boy momentarily usurped his Androfrancine sensibilities. It happened infrequently, but when it did it reminded Petronus of how fragile the human heart and mind can be when faced with potential loss.

All the way back to camp, Petronus prayed.

Neb

The Nizee Marshers defied Neb’s imagination.

He’d run as fast as he could to keep up with the scout, tearing through the underbrush, ducking and weaving to avoid the branches that slapped him. The scout was fast and big, making no attempt now for stealth.

Neb ran for what felt like leagues before he realized the forest had changed. Fishing nets interwoven with branches concealed mud-smeared, tattered tents. Unkempt men and women, many slack-jawed and empty-eyed, wandered the camp. They wore unmatched bits of weaponry and armor scavenged from two thousand years of skirmishing, and they moved to and fro in silence.

Neb’s guide vanished, leaving him at the edge of camp. A young girl approached him. She was covered in filth, just like the others, her hair shot through with mud and ash, and Neb suddenly realized that it wasn’t simply different values around hygiene. They did this to themselves, painting themselves with earth and ash, for reasons that were sacred to them.

The girl smiled at him, and beneath the caked dirt, he could see that she possessed a coltish kind of prettiness. She was nearly as tall as he was, and he thought perhaps her hair was a mouse brown beneath the mud. Despite the dirt, she had it pulled back from her face and wrapped with a bit of red ribbon.