Lamentation (12 page)

Rudolfo shrugged. “Who can know what to believe?” He watched the other guards as they also approached now. “Still,” he said, “you are short a few blades for the work ahead.”

The look on the guard’s face brought a smile to Rudolfo’s lips. “What work do you speak of?”

Rudolfo stretched high in the saddle and pointed north and east. “That line of scrub there marks the bank of the First River. You’ll pass within two leagues of it, and those are Marsher lands.”

The guard nodded. “Aye. We planned to slip past the Marsh King’s skirmishers in the night.”

Rudolfo sat back down in the saddle. “Perhaps you will succeed,” he said. “Perhaps you will not.” He shrugged. “I’m offering myself and my half-squad of Gypsy Scouts. If the Writ of Shunning is your concern, we’ll ride apart from your charges and watch out from afar.”

An old Androfrancine broke from the group and approached. “What is the concern here, Hamik?” he asked. True, he wore a simple, tattered robe, but Rudolfo saw the ring upon his finger.

“You’re the arch-scholar of this concern,” Rudolfo observed.

The old man nodded. “I’m Cyril. Of the Turam Francine House. You’ve the look of a Forester about you.”

Rudolfo nodded and bowed slightly with a flourish. “I’m sure I must.”

“He’s offered his blades to ours. He claims a half-squad of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts.”

He watched at least three emotions wash over the arch-scholar’s face. At first, surprise. Then anger. Then weariness. These are the only currency our hearts can spend now, Rudolfo thought. He added his own voice to that of the guard’s. “I am also bound for the Papal Summer Palace to parley with Pope Resolute regarding the Desolation of Windwir. I am aware of his Writ of Shunning but remain confident that the matter shall be resolved peaceably in its own time and manner.” He patted the pommel of his sword. “Meanwhile, my blade and the blade of my men for the true children of P’Andro Whym. We will keep our distance if it pleases you.”

A hard look crossed the arch-scholar’s face. “And you want nothing for this?”

He smiled. “Only the chance to restore faith in my questionable name.”

Both the guard and the arch-scholar’s eyes widened a bit, and Rudolfo savored their silence as if it were a fine, chilled wine.

Finally, the arch-scholar nodded and spoke. “Very well, then.” He paused and Rudolfo could see the question he wanted to ask next forming on his face before forming on his tongue. “And what is your name?”

Rudolfo threw back his head and laughed. “But of course, I am Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army.” He inclined his head, doing his best to bow from the saddle. “And I am at your service.”

Neb

Neb stood at the river’s edge and watched the setting sun. They’d made their camp the day before, setting the tents up carefully outside the place where the city’s walls had once stood, near the river. Petronus—Petros, he reminded himself—was a crafty old fox. He’d studied very little Androfrancine Law in the Orphan School but he’d read enough of the codices and Council of Findings volumes to know that it was more complex than a Whymer Maze.

He wasn’t sure it would work, but he hoped it would.

They’d spent the day digging trenches in the charred earth, long shallow trenches.

“We start with those who fell outside the city,” the old man had told them when they gathered up that morning. “We’ll work in the daylight, and should anyone approach, I will deal with them.”

They worked all day digging the trenches, but no one approached. At one point, Neb thought he’d seen a rider at a distance, but the rider turned south and vanished.

Now, he stood by the river and stripped out of his clothes. They were black with soot, along with the rest of him.

Neb could’ve bathed in camp. There were tubs of heated water that a few of the women had put on for the diggers. But the day had worn into him like a wagon wheel on a familiar road and he’d needed to slip away from the others to recollect himself.

He waded into the cold waters, and jumped when his foot moved across something round and slippery. The skull floated to the top, pulled downriver by the slow current. He watched it go and realized suddenly that he felt nothing at all.

“This is my life now,” he said to the skull as it bobbed away.

Wind he could not feel caught at the ashy ground and put up a small cloud of gray. “Hail, boy,” a voice said from the cloud.

Neb looked, seeing nothing, silently cursing himself for not bringing a knife. He crouched in the water, his hand feeling for a rock. But knife or rock, it wouldn’t matter. Even if he could bring himself to wield either, it would do nothing against an enemy he couldn’t see.

“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” the voice said.

Neb’s eyes moved over the shoreline. But the sun was lower now, and any chance of picking up a glimmer of light, even if it could slide somehow over the magick, was rapidly fading. “I’ll not go back to Sethbert,” he said in a low voice.

The scout chuckled. “I don’t blame you for that. I’m not from Sethbert.”

A Gypsy Scout then, he thought. “You’re from the Ninefold Forest Houses, then?”

“Aye,” the voice said. “And you’re with the gravediggers.” It was a statement, not a question.

Neb nodded. “I am. I . . .” He didn’t know how to finish his thought. “I used to live here.”

Now the voice moved downriver a bit. “I’m sorry for your loss, then. Sethbert has wronged the world with his treachery.” A pause. “But don’t worry, boy. He’ll pay for it.”

Neb hoped the Gypsy Scout was right. He hoped it with everything inside of him. “How goes the war?”

Now, the Gypsy Scout sighed. “Not good, I’m afraid. The Pope has issued a Writ of Shunning against us. He’s been somewhat
misinformed
about matters.”

“He’s no Pope,” Neb said, and regretted it as soon as he said it.

Fortunately, the scout did nothing with it and continued. “General Rudolfo rides even now to parley with him. We’re dividing the Wandering Army, and most are falling back to the Ninefold Forest.”

Most.
The thought lingered before he asked. “Most?”

The voice was upriver from him now. “Some of us are staying behind. We will be keeping watch over you from the shadows while you do your work. Tell the old man we would speak with him here at the river when the sun rises tomorrow.”

Neb nodded. “I will tell him.” He paused, thinking about it for a moment. “There was a woman with red hair. From House Li Tam. She fled Sethbert’s camp a week past for yours.”

“She is safe,” the Gypsy Scout said. “Rudolfo spirited her away along with the metal man before the first battle.”

A mechoservitor, Neb thought. Another survivor of Windwir. He wondered if there were others. It seemed odd to him that the mechanicals would survive the destruction, but he welcomed what little of the Androfrancines’ light remained in the world, though he wondered what a mechoservitor’s role in this different world would be.

And the woman—her blazing green eyes and her copper hair filled his memory. She’d towered above him, standing a full head over Sethbert even. “I’m glad she’s safe,” he said.

A low whistle carried across the charred landscape. “I’m needed elsewhere,” the Gypsy Scout said. “Pass word to the old man. Tomorrow at dawn. Tell him it’s Gregoric, First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts.”

Neb nodded. “I will.”

Silence, then the faintest whispering of wind along the ground.

The sky was purple now and the light was leaking out of it quickly, turning the water as dark as the field of ashen bones that stretched west from the river as far as he could see.

With so many of the dead watching, Neb scrubbed himself clean as quickly as he could, then ran back to the camp to find his Pope.

Resolute

Pope Resolute the First had chosen his name quickly. Until ten days ago he’d simply been Archbishop Oriv, and that really hadn’t been much as far as he—or anyone else for that matter—was concerned. He’d climbed the ranks of the Order, starting out as a digging acolyte and working his way into a paralegal role researching and scripting matters of Androfrancine Law for the Office of Land Acquisitions. Somehow, in his later years, he’d earned the favor of Pope Introspect III and had found himself suddenly a bishop. The leap from that role into archbishop—assigned to oversee the Order’s vast property holdings throughout the Named Lands—had been a relatively short one.

But this leap, he thought. Gods.

He stood up from his desk and turned his back on the mountain of papers that cascaded there. He walked across the carpet, his slippered feet whispering as he went, and paused at the large open doors that led out to the small balcony attached to the Papal Offices of the Summer Palace. Second Summer had arrived, and the mountain air hung thick with heat. He walked out into it and looked out.

The balcony faced south, giving him an expansive view of the small village with its stone buildings and wood-shingled, high-pitched roofs. Beyond the village, the foothills of the Dragon’s Spine rolled down to forest and the forest stretched on for league upon league. The day ~, twas clear, and a hundred leagues distant he could see the sunlight thrown back from the surface of the Marsh Sea, spillover from the headwaters of the First of the Three Rivers.

Ten days ago, he’d been downstairs in the quarters reserved for the higher ranking members of the Order. The Summer Palace was first and foremost for the Pope, but it was also for the Pope’s friends, and the Archbishop Oriv had certainly been a friend through the years, using his knowledge of Androfrancine Law to bend around the various corners of kin-clave and protect the Order’s best interests at home and abroad.

And when the Pope’s own nephew had come up implicated in a scandal that involved Order holdings being sold for a pittance, Oriv had done his part to protect the light by keeping that particular corner utterly in the dark.

And now, I am Pope
. Of course, he wasn’t. He may have specialized in the laws of property and holding, but you couldn’t touch those laws without understanding the other laws that held them up. Especially the Laws of Succession.

He’d been drinking hot brandy in the later part of the day that seemed now so long ago. It was a day, he realized, that people would someday ask about.

“Where were you,” they would ask, “when you saw the pyre of Windwir?”

And those who had been close enough to see it—surely most of the Named Lands, if the reports were true—would say where they had been, and the room they were in would grow quiet with loss and grief remembered.

That day, he’d looked up at a word from one of the acolytes who made up the staff of servants in the Summer Palace and he’d seen the pillar of smoke far south and east, rising into the sky. He’d disbelieved it, of course. There were certainly other explanations, other places along that line of sight; but when the birds arrived a day and a half later, he’d finally believed enough to call an Assembly of the Knowledgeable to determine the senior Order member. By the time that handful had gathered, more birds had come in—all with questions rather than answers.

They put forth the questions to identify the ranking brother. He’d known by looking around the room that it would be him.

And after, he’d gone alone into the Papal office and pulled the heavy iron key down from the wall. He’d taken one scholar, one scientist and two members of the Gray Guard contingent with him then, down into the cellars far below, walking the winding stone stairs until he stood before the vault.

He’d opened it, found the Letters of Succession from his friend, Introspect III, and carried them back up to the Assembly.

They named him Steward of the Throne and Ring first. When reports of theƒ reigh devastation arrived, he named himself Pope provisionally. It was understood—but not said—that he would lay down the office should someone from Introspect’s named list of successors turn up alive.

When Sethbert’s bird arrived, Oriv took his final step, and no one argued though all of them knew it was not the proper form. He burned the Letters of Succession for all of them to see and took his new name.

“I am resolved,” he said to the gathered Assembly, “to right this wrong and avenge the light extinguished.”

No one argued, even though it went against the teachings of P’Andro Whym. He named himself Pope Resolute the First and immediately issued the Writ of Shunning against the Ninefold Forest Houses and the man who his cousin, Lord Sethbert of the Entrolusian City States, had identified as the Desolator of Windwir.

He used your own light against you, Dear Cousin,
the coded note read.
It was a metal man who spoke the words of Xhum Y’zir and finished the Wizard King’s work of long ago.

It didn’t surprise him. Most kept clear of the Ninefold Forests because of those ancient ties, though on paper they shared kin-clave with many. But it was a kin-clave in the shadow of a past betrayal. The first Rudolfo had fled the Old World with his wives and his children and his band of desert thieves to hide in the far reaches of the north. But he’d fled before that Wizard King had sent his death choirs out into the land. Some legends even said that he betrayed P’Andro Whym and his tribe of scientist scholars for the murder of Xhum Y’zir’s seven sons in the Night of Purging, revealing their location to the old Wizard King. Because of that Y’zir had warned him of the doom to come and had given him ample time to migrate from Old World to New.

Walnuts fall from walnut trees, he thought.

He heard a quiet cough behind him and he turned. “Yes?”

One of the Gray Guard—an old captain who should’ve been put to field years ago but had been retained to recruit new blood—stood in the center of the room. “We’ve more news, Father.”

It had been a flurry of news. Bird after bird bearing note after note, all flagged by various threads of the rites of kin-clave. Red for war. Green for peace. White for kin-clave. Blue for inquiry. “What now, Grymlis?”

“The Wandering Army has fallen back.”

“They’ve retreated?”

The captain shook his head. “They vanished in the night.”

He nodded. “What else does Sethbert say?”

“His consort is in the gypsy’s care. Li Tam has approved of the pairing.”

Now this was surprising—and disconcerting. With Windwir gone, House Li Tam would now hold the bulk of the Order’s wealth. Perhaps, he thought, Vlad Li Tam had approved of the match before his Writ of Shunning had arrived. “Very well,” he said. “Would you ask the birder to see me?” Normally he’d ask his aide, but they were all busily inventorying the holdings of the Summer Palace and working around the clock to lay in the supplies needed for the Androfrancine Remnant to come home.

The captain nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

Pope Resolute sat back down to his desk, pulled a strip of message paper and dabbed a needle in the ink.

He’d finished the message by the time his birder arrived with the fastest and strongest. Pulling the gray thread of urgency from his scarf of mourning, he handed it and the note over. “House Li Tam,” was all he said.

After the birder left, Pope Resolute the First walked back onto his balcony and stood waiting. When he saw the hawk lift off, beating its wings against the sky, he felt his jaw tighten.

I am the Pope, he thought.

Shaking his head, he went back inside and closed the doors against the afternoon sun.

Rudolfo

The Marsh skirmishers struck suddenly and swiftly, their sling stones dropping one of the guards and two of the Androfrancines before Rudolfo’s scouts could converge on their position.

A stone bullet whizzed past his head, and he drew his sword with a high whistle. Two of his half-squad slipped from their horses, pulling pouches from beneath their shirts. They hit the ground and rolled, the powder rite only taking a moment. Rudolfo saw them lick their hands and they were gone, fading into evening shadows. He heard the murmur of steel against leather and turned his horse in the direction of the skirmishers. He raised his blade and shook it.

“Mind yourselves,” he shouted at the caravan as he galloped past. Already, they were tending to their wounded, though by the looks of it, at least one of the fallen wouldn’t make it. Rudolfo took it all in with a blink and followed his men into battle.

Two magicked and three mounted besides Rudolfo . . . against how many skirmishers?

It wasn’t quite ƒanydark and it surprised him that the Marshers had come out so early. Usually, they preferred the cover of darkness for their work. He heard shouting and the sounds of a struggle ahead and spurred his horse toward it. They were already scattered, a ragged line of ragged men dressed in the stinking rags of the Marsh King’s finest. Whistling three bars from the Fortieth Hymn of the Wandering Army, he moved to the right as his other horsemen moved left. In the dark, beneath the powders his River Woman had ground from the roots of the ground and the herbs of the field, his two magicked scouts moved silently behind them, avoiding contact and conflict until Rudolfo whistled the Hymn’s sweeping chorus.

Rudolfo had not fought the Marshers in years. From time to time, as kin-clave required, he’d ridden out to exact some price or another upon them. The Marsh King held a violent court, sending his skirmishers out past the edges of his land on a whim. They would bring their war to some small village or some outlying house, bury the dead they made, and then ride back to their swamps at the base of the Dragon’s Spine.

Back in his father’s day, Lord Jakob had faced down the Marsh King himself when the tattered monarch decided to test the western borders of the Ninefold Forest. He’d taken him prisoner, brought him in chains to Tormentor’s Row and shown him the work of his Physicians of Penitent Torture. Rudolfo had been a young boy—younger even than when he’d ridden with his father to Windwir for the poisoned Pope’s funeral—but his father had let him walk with them. As they walked, his father had been careful to stay between Rudolfo and the filth-covered king, despite the proximity of the Gypsy Scouts. After an hour on the observation deck, Jakob had ordered his scouts to take the Marsh King back to the edge of the Second River and release him.

Jakob crouched down so that his eyes were level with Rudolfo’s. “Never underestimate the power of mercy,” he told him. He thought for a moment. “But neither rely upon mercy overmuch.”

Now Rudolfo nodded, remembering his father’s words so long ago. He held his sword arm down, blade pointed out to the side, as he lined up on a skirmisher.

He whistled the chorus and charged forward. The Marshers rarely used magicks—raised up from the insanity of those first years in the Named Lands, they kept themselves apart from such things. Descendants who had never quite shaken the mantle of madness Xhum Y’Zir had placed upon their forebears. Even as Rudolfo’s stallion reared and brought its iron shod hooves down on a Marsher skull, his sword darted out like a serpent’s tongue, tearing through cloth and rotting hide to pierce a shoulder.

The magicked scouts launched their own work now, and Rudolfo listened for them as they danced the line with their long curved knives. A blade glanced off Rudolfo’s thigh as he twisted in the saddle. His horse bellowed and he spurred him forward, over the top of the Marsher he had wounded. Then he spun, brought his sword down again and made another pass.

Around him, he saw that the rest of his men fared just as well, coming silent to the task ƒnt widat hand. The Marsh skirmishers howled and growled and spoke in their ecstatic tongues as they rallied. They outnumbered Rudolfo’s half-squad three to one but they were on foot and hadn’t expected to face the Gypsy Scouts.

It took less than five minutes to bring them down. When it was over, the two magicked scouts held their headman by his arms and let him watch as the rest of the half-squad killed off his wounded men.

When the sounds of the battle faded, the Androfrancine guard approached. Behind him, Arch-Scholar Cyril followed at a distance. Rudolfo broke away from the others and rode to them.

“How are the wounded?” he asked. “We’ll need to move quickly when we’re finished here.”

Cyril spoke up. “We lost Brother Simeon. The bullet took him in the throat. The others will be fine.”

Rudolfo nodded. “We need shovels.”

The arch-scholar looked puzzled.

“You’re Androfrancines,” Rudolfo said. “Surely you have shovels?”

Cyril nodded. “I’ll send them over. Do you need men, too?”

Rudolfo shook his head. “We’ll bury them ourselves.”

Even Rudolfo climbed down from the saddle and took up a shovel. They worked quickly, digging out a large square hole in the soft ground. The two magicked scouts held the headman, and he watched them work with narrow eyes.

They pulled the bodies into the open grave, and then as they shoveled earth onto them, Rudolfo approached the sole surviving skirmisher. When he stood before him, he remained quiet for a minute, taking him in.