Lamentation (11 page)

When they finished Petronus took Neb to the inn, and they stuffed themselves on catfish stew and fried bread.

As Neb wiped the last of the stew from the bowl with his last crust of bread, he smiled at the old man.

Petronus smiled. “We’ve done a good day’s work.”

Neb nodded. They had. And though he really hadn’t done much himself, he’d learned in a way that he’d never learned in the Orphan’s School. Watching this man work, building trust here and suspicion there—grabbing a grin from this one and a nod from that one. He’d never seen anything like it, and it stirred a part of him. He was suddenly pushed back into his past.

“But I don’t know what I want to be,” he’d told his father during one visit.

Brother Hebda smiled. “Do not be what you do,” he said. He’d been trained in the Francine Disciplines and Neb had always enjoyed seeing them lived out in real life. “Doing and being aren’t the same.”

“But isn’t who I am determined by what I do?”

His father’s face broke into an even wider smile. “Sometimes. But what you do can change from situation to situation. Can a good man kill?”

Neb shook his head.

“But the Gray Guard kill . . . are they good?”

Neb thought about this. “I think they are. Because they are doing their job to protect the light.”

Brother Hebda nodded. “They are. But say they were ordered to kill a man because he was a heretic, but really he was an enemy of a spiteful cuckold? Are the Gray Guard then defined by what they do?”

Neb laughed. “I only said I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

Brother Hebda laughed, too. “Oh. That’s easy, then.”

“Really?”

His father nodded and leaned in. “Watch for the ones who leave your mouth hanging open. Study them, find out what they love and what they fear. Dig the treasure out of their soul and hold it to the light.” He leaned in even closer now, so that Neb could smell the wine on his breath. “Then
be
like them.”

He remembered thinking in that moment that Brother Hebda was a man he wanted to be like. That very winter, Neb turned in his first grant request to study in the care of an expedition to the Wastes, preferably assigned to Hebda Garl as a student apprentice.

Now, after a day of watching Petronus—or Petros—at work, he’d found someone else he could want to be like.

After dinner, they went out to the gathering crowd. It wasn’t a large crowd. Not everyone had come. But enough had. And they stood in the square among the tents and carts, near the open doors of the inn. They stood around an overturned tub that the old man climbed onto, holding a shovel over his shoulders.

Neb watched from the side. The mayor, all agreement earlier, now seemed agitated and anxious to speak. Neb wondered what had changed.

“I’ll be brief,” Petronus said before the mayor could try to introduce him. He dropped the shovel from his shoulder and pointed north with it. “You all know what happened to Windwir. It’s a field of ash and bones for as far you can see.” There were muted gasps in the crowd. “We are all the Children of the New World, and at some place in our lineage, we are each kin-clave unto one another. We know this to be true.” He waited for heads to nod, a few voices to speak out. “I’m not a man to leave my kin unburied,” Petronus said.

Then the old man went on for another fifteen minutes, laying out a plan of action that astounded Neb with its simplicity.

“Those who can,” Petronus said, “will come and help as they can.” Shifts of a week on and a week off by thirds—two men at home looking after their neighbor’s farm as well as their own while that good citizen was away. Women working in similar shifts. And those who had nowhere else to go—they would leave with Petronus and Neb in the morning and go set up their camp.

“What about pay?” someone asked.

And Neb’s mouth fell open at Petronus’s words. “Those who need it will get it. Those who don’t will work for love.”

Petronus hopped down from the washtub and winked at Neb. “How did I do?”

Neb nodded, wishing he could say something. Then he heard another loud voice and looked. The mayor had climbed onto the washtub now and was holding a scrap of paper up in the air. “I have a word to share as well,” he said. “Though I hate to contradict our well-spoken guest.”

The mayor waited for the crowd to quiet. “I have word today that Bishop Oriv at the Papal Summer Palace has been named the Pope of the Androfrancine Order and King of Windwir. His Excellency has ordered all Androfrancine resources and personnel be gathered there to be inventoried in the light of this great tragedy. He also sends along a Writ of Shunning against the Ninefold Forest Houses and an Exercise of Holiness.”

Neb gasped. A Shunning was an Old World practice that had carried over to the New World through the wisdom of P’Andro Whym. It severed all ties of kin-clave, making its recipient fair game for anyone and an enemy of the light. It had only been used a handful of times, and usually as leverage to manipulate a Pope’s desired outcome. But during the Heresies, it was used as a mask for open war.

And the Exercise had fallen out of fashion for over a thousand years. But there was a time when once in seven years, the Pope declared an Exercise of Holiness, calling for Windwir to be closed to the outside world for an entire year. Twice, it had been used to wait out schisms—a year of separation could quell most arguments. Enforced by the Gray Guard, violators early on were killed . . . but later merely punished and evicted.

If Neb had wondered about its meaning, it would’ve been clear on Petronus’s face.

“There will be Gray Guard at the Summer Palace,” Petronus said in a quiet voice. “Not many. Not enough to enforce this.”

The mayor continued. “And out of kin-clave with Windwir, Lord Sethbert, Overseer of the Entrolusian City States, has agreed to provide guardianship and enforcement of the Exercise. His Excellency, the Pope, compels all townships within the Providence of Windwir to comply and assist as required.”

Neb watched the crowd to see how they would respond. And he watched Petronus, too. The old man’s face was hard and unreadable. The mayor climbed down and no one moved.

Finally someone spoke up, and Neb was surprised at the voice. It was
his
voice, clear and marching forward with every word.

“I am not a man to leave my kin unburied,” Neb said.

And when he said it, he couldn’t help but think of Brother Hebda.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo sat in the shade of a fir tree, alone, and thought. There was dried blood on his sleeve and his boot, but it wasn’t his. He’d killed a magicked sapper the night before when they breached the perimeter. Rudolfo’s men had taken a beating had held their ground. Three of his Gypsy Scouts—
three
—lost in one night.

Gregoric slipped beside him and sat. “General Rudolfo,” he said.

Rudolfo nodded. “Gregoric. What do you think?”

Gregoric shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The bird had arrived two hours earlier bearing news of the new Pope and the Writ of Shunning. Rudolfo had immediately sent word to House Li Tam and the Seventh Forest Manor. Just as he’d finished, his Captain of Intelligence had approached with more bad news. “We’ve word that two more brigades of Delta infantry are northward bound. And Pylos and Tyrn are sending contingents.”

That’s when Rudolfo slipped from the camp into the forest in order to think. Of course he’d known that Gregoric, still magicked from the morning patrol, had followed at a distance. And after sufficient time had past, his first captain had done as he always did and came to sit with his friend.

Rudolfo sighed. “I think we may have to pull back and find new vision. This new Pope has changed the pieces about on the board.”

“Aye,” Gregoric said. “We still have some time. A few days. We can do what we can and then divide the army.”

Rudolfo nodded. “And I will be needed elsewhere.”

Tomorrow, with his own half-squad of Scouts, Rudolfo would ride for the Papal Summer Palace to parley with this Pope. Behind him, his Wandering Army would fall back to their forest islands until their general called them back to war.

For the first time in a week, Rudolfo wondered if he truly would prevail.

Jin Li Tam

The halls of the seventh forest manor were wide and long, with hardwood floors and wood paneling on the vfac walls, dressed up with thick silk carpets and framed portraits. During her brief stay, Jin Li Tam explored what rooms she could, finding few locked doors in the large four-story building. Most of the rooms were spacious, including the servants’ quarters, and even boasted running water, heated in a large metal furnace and gravity-fed through copper pipes. Another gift from the Androfrancines.

She’d walked most of the manor on the first day. But now, she sought out the floor she had avoided. She took the wide sweeping staircase that passed the second and third floors, going directly to the fourth.

There, at the end of a short wide hallway, stood the double doors and stained glass windows leading to the Family Quarters.

She looked in on the rooms for children. There were many, all empty now but for one—the room of a small boy, she gathered, complete with scattered toys and a small silver sword hung over the bed. An unwrapped turban lay draped over the back of a chair, and a small boot jutted haphazardly from beneath the bed.

It had been carefully cleaned, but she could tell that the room had been this way for a long while.

A dark, unlocked door marked Rudolfo’s quarters—a suite of rooms that included a den and connected to another suite through a large bathing room. The bathing room was impressive. It smelled of fresh lavender, and at its center was a large, round marble tub. An elaborate golden nozzle was set into the ceiling, along with long cords tipped with golden tassels for bathers to pull and bring down the hot rain.

Jin walked through the room, her hand moving over the edge of the tub. The marble was cold to the touch.

Beyond the bathing room a similar suite waited, and the softer colors told her that someday soon, if her father’s will held despite the recent Papal Writ, she would be moving from the guest quarters into this space as Rudolfo’s bride.

She’d known that someday, when her father willed it, she would either be released to seek a mate for reasons of her own, whether love or convenience, or she would be wed for strategic purposes to advance House Li Tam’s interests in the world. Of course, some of her sisters had chosen to stay home instead. She’d always thought that if she were left to her own heart, she’d neither wed nor stay home. Instead, she’d go to the places she wished to instead of the places her father sent her.

She reached out a hand and touched the thick quilt folded at the foot of the large canopied bed. Certainly, this place would have been one that she would’ve wanted to see. The ancient forest islands in an ocean of prairie, and their ruthless Gypsy kings—tied by their past to the legacy of Xhum Y’Zir, evidenced by their Physicians of Penitent Torture and their redemptive work. Yet Rudolfo’s forebears had blended that dark blood magick rite with the mystic teachings of T’Erys Whym, the younger brother of P’Andro Whym who for a time succeeded his {sucitebrother and led the leftovers of the world until the Francine Movement, of all things, brought them back to reason as the principal tenet.

Yes, she would’ve wanted to visit this place. But would she have chosen to stay here?

Probably not, she realized. Instead, if she had her way, she’d spend some time in the Great Library, possibly tour the edges of the Churning Waste, and then move south and sail the channel islands.

Instead, she thought, I am to be here in the shadow of a new library.

Of course, all of that hinged on the Writ of Shunning and its resolution . . . and on her father’s wishes. She was certain he’d shift his strategy and she’d been certain that a bird would come. But instead, a note from Rudolfo had arrived that morning.

Pay no mind to this emerging Pope’s Writ,
it read.
I ride to deal with him. Stay with Isaak.
Only the word “with” had been tilted just ever so slightly to give it the subtext of “near,” lending it the weight of great importance.

She’d smiled. Another code was buried in it, too. It was simple and unexpected, woven into the note with the jots and tittles of the Bank Cipher script.
I’ll dance with the sunrise yet again,
the equation said.

Jin Li Tam heard limping footfalls in the hall and went to the door.

“Lady Tam?” she heard a metallic voice call.

She poked her head out. “In here, Isaak.”

The metal man stopped and turned. He still the wore robes—dark and long. “I’ve come to wish you well,” he said.

The words hit her. “What do you mean?”

He blinked. “I’m leaving for the Papal Summer Palace.”

Stay with Isaak. Near him, she thought, because of his great importance. “I don’t think Lord Rudolfo would permit this.”

Steam left the exhaust grate. “I know. I received his message this morning as well. But regardless of Lord Rudolfo’s instructions, I am compelled to obey my Pope. I am the property of the Androfrancines—it is written into my behavior scrolls.”

She watched his eyes, looking for an awareness she knew she couldn’t see. But she knew from the tears that leaked out from them that he understood at least part of the equation. If this mechanical wonder had indeed brought down the City of Windwir with his very words, what risk could he be to the last of the Androfrancines?

But the other side of the equation would not bother him at all, she knew. He’d welcome it, even ask for it, in the hopes that it would help him shed the weight of guilt she saw him bear with every step. She doubted even the hope of rebuilding the library could be strong enough to lift something so heavy from him.

Stay with Isaak,
Rudolfo had written.

But it wasn’t Rudolfo’s words that moved her. No. It was the other side of that equation that sent Jin Li Tam down the stairs to pack what little she had in preparation for her journey with the metal man who had been Sethbert’s sword at the throat of a city.

She didn’t worry that Isaak could ever be used in such a way again. She was certain he would not permit it. But then there was the other side.

What risk would the last of the Androfrancines be to him?

Petronus

Petronus led the small group of men over the last rise, and those who hadn’t already seen it fell back, gasping, at what they saw there.

They pushed wheelbarrows full of tools, and those with mules or horses pulled small carts along behind them. Petronus looked them over and shook his head.

Damn Pope Resolute and his Exercise of Holiness. It had cost him two thirds of the crowd. No one wanted to tangle on the wrong side of Sethbert’s army. They were all smart enough to know that the Exercise was to keep people from digging, and gravediggers were diggers nonetheless.

He looked down at the boy. He hadn’t spoken again for two days now, but Petronus was fairly certain that he could if he wanted to. “But you don’t have to,” he’d told Neb when he realized that he hadn’t spoken since, “if you don’t want to.”

As they crested the rise, Petronus saw birds fly out of the forest, moving north of them, their wings beating furiously. He read their colors and smiled. A horse pulled out from a copse of trees not far from the edge of the blasted area. It rode toward them, and Petronus saw ripples of wind in the grass to the left and right of the rider.

He waited until the young lieutenant pulled up and hailed him. “Windwir is closed,” he said.

The wind rippled out as the magicked scouts took up positions around them.

Petronus pointed. “Windwir is a field of bones. We aim to bury them.”

The faintest hint of surprise registered on the young man’s face. “I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.”

Petronus stepped closer. “What is your name, Lieutenant?”

“Brint,” the young man said. He studied Petronus and the motley band of travelers.

“Have you not faced a loved one’s passing?”

Petronus watched the young man’s face. He saw the stab of loss rise to the surface and then quickly vanish as the officer forced his emotions aside. It was just slight enough that the untrained eye might miss it, and Petronus suddenly realized he wasn’t dealing with the spoiled son of an Entrolusian noble.

Petronus’s hands moved close to his body so that others could not see.
Whose are you?
he signed, first in the intelligence subverbal of the Forest Houses and then in the hand dialect of House Li Tam.

The lieutenant blinked but kept his own hands still. “I have seen several loved ones pass,” he said in a quiet voice.

Petronus leaned forward, his voice also low. “Did you bury them or let them lie where they fell?”

The first look was anger, but it was followed by a look of deep weariness. The lieutenant said nothing for a full minute, then stared down at Petronus. He whistled, and the wind blew back from around them as the Delta Scouts retreated. When they were out of earshot, he leaned down from his saddle and spoke in a quiet voice.

“Be watchful. I can let you pass but I cannot keep you safe.”

“The light will keep us safe,” Petronus said, quoting the Whymer Bible’s opening admonition.

The young lieutenant shook his head. “There is no light now.” He looked around again, scanning for any sign that his men were nearby. “And the one now asked to guard it is the same who snuffed it out. You will not be safe here.”

Then, he turned his horse and rode off in the direction of the wind.

By nightfall, Petronus and his ragged band of gravediggers had set up their camp by the river, just outside what had once been the river dock gate and clearly in compliance with the Exercise of Holiness. That area had been granted special Dispensation to keep the supply chain moving through the duration of the Exercise in years past.

The one good thing about having been Pope was understanding the rules one had to play by.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo and his escort rode northwest to the Papal Summer Palace high up and secluded in the Dragon’s Spine. Riding high in his saddle, he could see the purple line of those jagged peaks on the horizon. Once they reached the foothills, they’d turn west and follow them until they found the Waybringer’s Path and followed it up to the palace and the village that had sprung up around it to care for the Androfrancine foothold when it was not in use.

He’d left two mornings ago, slipping out of the camp before the sun rose, dressed in subdued colors and trading his turban for a black hood. His half-squad of scouts rode, too. He would not have it otherwise, and he would not approach this so-called Pope with magicked scouts regardless of the war.

“What will you do?” Gregoric had asked him as he climbed into the saddle.

Rudolfo had settled himself in, whipping his dark cloak over his shoulder. “I will tell the truth,” he said, smiling despite the weariness that pulled at him. “Though I’m not sure they will hear it.”

He’d seen the note declaring the Exercise of Holiness and had crumpled it into a ball when he saw that Sethbert had been deputized by the new King of Windwir.

That pompous cesspool carp had sent him a note three days before the Papal decree. Rudolfo should have expected this sudden setback.

You will pay for what you have done,
the note read, and Rudolfo knew that though on the surface it could be read in many ways, it was about the Lady Jin Li Tam. It had taken some time for the spies to take word back to the Overseer—largely because the one Physician of Penitent Torture Rudolfo had brought along had not yet finished redeeming them, turning them to Rudolfo’s cause. Rudolfo was pleased to send those spies back to Sethbert with news of his betrothal to Jin Li Tam.

Perhaps, he thought, that had been an error in judgment.

The forests and grasslands stretched out before them now and they raced north, stopping only when they had to. The narrow road—more a track really—passed through a few scattered settlements, but the riders stayed low on their horses, their eyes fixed on the line of mountains.

They rounded a corner and a white bird dropped from the sky into Rudolfo’s net. He held up his hand and they halted. They waited, and Lieutenant Alyn, the lead scout, made his way back to them ten or fifteen minutes later.

“There’s an Androfrancine caravan yonder,” he said, pointing to a point where the road disap {thes Npeared around a slight rise. “Mostly on foot. A few with carts or wagons.”

Rudolfo stroked his beard. “Are they armed?”

The scout nodded. “A few guards—none in gray. They look to be up from Pylos or Turam.”

Making their way to the Palace, he realized, compelled to obey their Pope. “Very well,” Rudolfo said. “I will ride forward. You will accompany me.” The others looked uncomfortable but unsurprised. “The rest of you—follow at a distance.”

Rudolfo rode ahead and Lieutenant Alyn fell in just behind. He reached beneath his cloak and loosened his sword in its scabbard as he went.

As he cantered around the bend, Rudolfo raised his hand in greeting. He quickly scanned the collection of carts and old men in tattered robes, sized up the handful of guards, and whistled a tune from the Hymnal of the Wandering Army low enough for Alyn to hear it. The lieutenant nodded once, slowly.

“These are dark days for pilgrimage,” he said to the guard who approached him. “I’ve a half-squad of scouts and would offer you escort if you ride to heed the Pope’s homecoming call.”

The guard, riding a tired old paint, scratched his head, pushing his steel cap back as he did. “You bear the coloring of the Gypsy Scouts,” he said.

Rudolfo nodded. “We do.”

“You’d do best to ride on then. There is no longer any kin-clave for the Foresters.” He waved to the Androfrancines, some of whom were now standing and looking in their direction. “Especially with this lot.”

Rudolfo studied them. “Really?”

The guard lowered his voice. “Me, I’m a Turam Bookhouse guard on half-rations and half-pay to see these oldsters back to their new home. I care little for the politics of kin-clave. The rumor birds say Sethbert brought down Windwir with a spell.”

“It’s true,” Rudolfo said. “I’ve seen it.”

“Yet the Writ of Shunning is to the Foresters and their Gypsy King . . . that damned Rudolfo.”