Lamentation (26 page)

Neb looked up at him. “What is it?”

Brother Hebda shook his head. “I don’t know. And if I did, I couldn’t tell you. But I have a bad feeling.”

His father had been right.

Neb heard a low, familiar voice.

“Nebios ben Hebda.” He could smell the musky earth smell of her, and without warning he felt warm lips brushing across his cheek. “The Marsh King is very pleased with you,” she said.

He jumped at the kiss. At night, the magicks were virtually impenetrable. “Winters?”

But she was already off and running back into the night.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam smiled and sipped at the kallaberry smoke through the long stem of his pipe. He’d replayed the day’s events again and again and could not be more pleased. When he’d finally left, Rudolfo, Meirov and the Marsh King had been discussing strategy for the night’s work.

Now all he needed to do was wait.

“Obviously my fiftieth son did very well with the ring.”

The aide nodded. “He did, Lord.”

“I have fine, strong children.” He closed his eyes, feeling the smoke lift him. But he wondered if the smoke would lift him past what was coming tonight.

“Your children are legendary, Lord,” the aide said. “There is also word from your thirty-seventh son. He rides with Resolute the First.”

Vlad Li exhaled the smoke. “He’ll arrive to a surprise tomorrow.”

“He has a good source on the Guard,” the aide said. “He will feed us what he can on their movement and strategy.”

Vlad Li Tam pondered this. “Oriv’s contingent of Gray Guard is too small to do much beyond protect him. Still, knowing their location will be useful. And perhaps we’ll glean something from his parley with Sethbert.”

But he wondered how long Oriv would hang on to what small foothold he had now that Petronus had proclaimed himself. Certainly there would be some of the Androfrancine Remnant that remembered Petronus, but the fact that he’d faked his own death thirty years ago would turn some away. It was certainly a challenge to Androfrancine Law. No Pope had ever quit before, let alone gone to such lengths to do so.

But bringing one back from the dead had proven to require equal lengths. Petronus had resisted at every turn. Vlad Li Tam’s betrayal had been quietly arranged. A new ring forged with a bit of the Fargoer’s steel he’d kept for such an occasion along with specifications for the ring that he had found in the Androfrancines’ very own library nearly thirty years ago.

He wasn’t sure how the Marshfolk and Sethbert played into it, but Vlad Li Tam sensed a strategy alongside his own—something that even overlapped his own schemes. Scraps of it drifted to the surface from time to time.

His own part was complex. But this other strategy was as elaborate as a Whymer Maze, he knew that much. And he knew that the Androfrancines had been afraid of something. Their quiet, somber tones as they discussed the need for a strong leader, for a new guardian of the light, set apart from the rest of the world.

He took another pull from his pipe, listening to the crackle of the dried berries as they burned beneath the match his servant held. “We will return to the Emerald Coast tomorrow,” Vlad said.

Already, he knew his iron armada had redeployed, blockading the river and seaports throughout the Entrolusian Delta. Sethbert’s reinforcements would come by foot, and his supply chain would come by land now rather than by water. The lines of war had not been clearly drawn, but at the very least he could see the shape and size of what loomed ahead.

If Rudolfo was as strong as Vlad had made him to be, the war would soon be behind him. The library would be underway. The Order would limp to the shadows and simply die of its wound. His daughter would raise a child that mixed the Gypsy King’s strength with the cunning of the Tam. The light would flickeÛht andr but would not go out.

But at what cost?

Vlad Li Tam sighed and sipped his pipe again.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo crouched at the forest line and felt the magicks take him. Twice now the unseemly task fell to him, and as much as he disliked it, it was necessary and practical if he were to accompany his men on the raid.

As if reading his mind, Gregoric shifted uncomfortably beside him, and Rudolfo heard the muffled crunch of pine needles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Rudolfo,” the first captain said, voice muffled with the magicks. He’d dropped the title . . . something he only did when he was speaking more as friend than soldier.

Rudolfo looked at the patch of night where Gregoric crouched. “You’ve known me for how long, Gregoric?”

“All of my life.”

He nodded. “Then you’ve known what I would do since we crafted the strategy for tonight’s work.”

Rudolfo felt a hand on his shoulder. “Aye,” Gregoric said, “I’ve known it. But the world has changed, and so has your role in it.”

Change is the path life takes, Rudolfo thought, remembering the words of P’Andro Whym. “You suggest that for the benefit of the library, I take less risk?”

“Not just the library,” Gregoric said. “All that’s left of the Androfrancines is in your care and in the care of your Ninefold Forest Houses. You’ve also a wife and a people to think of now.” Gregoric paused, and Rudolfo could read the hesitation in his voice. “If you fall,” the first captain said, “this war will be over for us. If you fall, what’s left of the light may go out.”

Rudolfo loosened the twin scout blades in their sheaths at his belt. He preferred his long, narrow sword, but the magicks were better suited for knife-fighting, especially in the close quarters they allowed. “I will not fall, Gregoric,” he said in a low voice.

Rudolfo heard the thunder now, building in the north, and waited. When the Marsh King’s army appeared, moving fast and low across the plains and bathed in the blue green light of the moon, it looked like a black ocean rolling across the land. They rode silently, even Hanric, bearing down Þtheon the Entrolusian advance camps. Rudolfo stood and stretched. He could feel the magicks in his blood now, itching beneath his skin. He could smell the sweat of the horses behind him, mingled with the scent of ash and snow.

The Entrolusians had expected the attack. They’d leaked word to one of the spies they’d turned and had given him time to get that word to Lysias.

The first Entrolusian advance camp moved to third alarm and launched their birds long before the Marsh King’s army poured over them.

Farther west, another camp went into alarm, and Rudolfo smiled. That would be Meirov’s rangers.

“It’s time,” Rudolfo said, drawing his knives and tucking them underneath his arms, blades pointing behind him.

Gregoric whistled, and the squad moved out.

They ran south and east, the magicks muffling their boots as they whispered across the snow. Rudolfo felt his heart pumping, and the darkness melted back to a gray light as his eyes adjusted to the powders. He could hear the fighting now in the front lines and he picked up his pace, watching the open ground vanish between him and the far side of the meadow.

They hit the forest and spread out, adjusting their course to avoid the pockets of infantry racing toward the front lines.

As they ran, they clicked their tongues lightly against the roofs of their mouths from time to time—the slightest of sound, but with the amplification of their hearing, it was enough to get a sense of their loose formation. Rudolfo stayed in the center and made no sound at all.

Two leagues slipped past in the span of minutes, and they widened their circle in order to flank Sethbert’s camp. If Vlad Li Tam’s source in that camp spoke true, the mechanicals were stored in the center, near the tents of the Delta Scouts and not far from Sethbert’s massive canvas palace.

Behind them, the sounds of fighting grew. It was a simple bit of misdirection, Rudolfo realized, that he hoped Lysias would fall for. They had counted on the mechanicals being guarded, but expected the Entrolusian general to shift resources to Sethbert when the bird arrived.

They rallied at the pile of moss-covered boulders Gregoric had picked for them during his reconnaissance. Rudolfo watched the small bird materialize seemingly out of air. It fluttered in invisible hands before Gregoric released it.

They’d captured one of Lysias’s small messengers earlier in the week, and Vlad Li Tam had helped forge the coded message. The urgency of the message, delivered in the midst of an attack on the Entrolusian front lines, should be enough to give them the opening they needed.

Unless, Rudolfo thought, Sethbert had so eroded Lysias’s loyalty that the general refused to intervene. But he counted on Lysias’s academy training for this. No general from that austere school needed loyalty to do his job, and Rudolfo’s strategy relied upon that.

They waited while the bird shot up, then found its mark. The camp was already in the third alarm, bustling with activity as fresh squads of magicked scouts raced north to the fighting and took up positions to reinforce the camp’s perimeter. But Rudolfo’s squad was already inside that perimeter, slipping in through the temporary hole Lord Tam’s man had arranged.

Huddled near the boulders, they waited.

Finally, Gregoric’s hand pressed the small of Rudolfo’s back.
He’s taken the bait,
his fingers tapped.

Rudolfo twisted and touched Gregoric’s shoulder.
Excellent,
he answered.
Give the whistle when you will
.

He could hear Lysias shouting now, and knew that the Overseer’s tent would now be their defensive center. More reinforcements rushed past them into the night, some plain and some with the acrid odor of fresh magicks upon them.

Rudolfo held his breath until they passed.

After they’d gone, Gregoric whistled the first three bars of the First Hymn of the Wandering Army. He whistled it at a pitch Rudolfo’s heightened senses could barely perceive. Then, they were off and running again for the center of camp. Spread out, they rushed in, dodging and weaving in and out of people.

“Scouts in the camp,” a voice cried out. Other voices joined in and Rudolfo heard the snicker of steel through cloth and skin, the rasp of metal on metal as blades slid past blades and into flesh.

They did not stop, they did not even slow. They pressed, and when an obstacle presented itself they cut through it or went over it. As they ran, Gregoric’s sappers spread out into the camp to light their fires.

Gregoric and Rudolfo cut through the back of the mechoservitor tent while the others moved around it and dispatched the distracted guards. Already the shouts spread, and it would only be moments before they realized that the threat against Sethbert had been a Gypsy ruse.

“Mechoservitors arise,” Rudolfo said in a low voice. Scattered throughout the tent, amber eyes fluttered open and gears purred as the room rustled.

“We are the property of the Androfrancine Order,” one of the mechoservitors said, steam hissing from its exhaust grate.

“I am Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army. I am the duly appointed guardian of Windwir, established in accordance with Article Fifteen of the Precepts of Order,” Rudolfo said slowly, reciting the words Petronus had given him. By all the Gods, he hoped they worked. “Section three, item six grants me the authority to redirect Androfrancine personnel and property as needed for the protection of the light.” Outside the tent, the sounds of fighting erupted. It lent urgency to his voice. “You are ordered to return to what remains of the Great Library at top running speed. You are not to stop. You are to disregard further orders until these orders are carried out completely. Do you understand?”

Thirteen voices echoed in the tent, thirteen forms clicked and clacked to life as they sped into that chaotic night.

In that moment, Rudolfo heard Gregoric cry out.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam did not sleep that night. He rarely did during key moments of strategy. He sat in his tent without the kallaberry pipe and huddled in his blanket, waiting for his aide to bring word.

He’d given his fiftieth son the work he’d trained him for. Of course, when he’d first adopted this particular strategy, his fiftieth son had not been born yet. He’d had no idea which arrow he would fire at this particular target. Ordinarily, a Tam would use others as his arrows, manipulating their environment until they became the right weapon at the right time. But in this regard, he could not afford to let an unknown quantity in the vicinity of Rudolfo after so much work over so many years. So it fell to the only resource a Tam could trust: Family.

He’d sent his son away to earn the knotted cord of a lieutenant in Sethbert’s army, setting him apart for the task. And in the fullness of time, Vlad Li Tam raised that hammer in his fist.

So it was that he drove one more nail into Rudolfo’s soul—the last one that he would drive, he thought. The rest of it would ripple out now as repercussions, and what he built into his forty-second daughter would be enough to carry things forward.

Their unborn child would inherit the center of the world, and would protect it better than the Androfrancines could.

The tent flap rustled and his aide spoke, thrusting his head into its warm confines. “Your fiftieth son’s last words have arrived, Lord Tam.”

Last words.
Vlad Li Tam reached out and took the rolled parchment. He unrolled it, read it slowly, and then tucked it into his shirt, nestled against his hairless chest. “It is a poem,” he said, his voice heavy, “about a son’s great love for his father.”

ãligis The aide bowed his head. “I am sorry for your loss, Lord Tam.”

Lord Tam nodded. “Thank you, Aetris.”

The tent flap rustled closed and he stretched himself out on his back, staring at the ceiling of his tent as it shifted beneath the snow. It would be at least another hour before he received any confirmation from another source. But his fiftieth son would not have released the bird bearing his last words unless he was certain of the implementation of his own strategy.

He reached up and pressed the note to his chest. His son was certainly dead by now, and he felt the grief licking at him. When others could see, Vlad Li Tam wore a face of stone, unreadable and unyielding. But here, alone in his tent and without the kallaberry smoke to cut the edge of his pain, Vlad Li Tam wept silently for the son he had killed.

He knew the outcome was worthy of the sacrifice, and he knew his son would have agreed as well, if he’d known what he died to save. But still, Vlad Li Tam felt the ache of that loss, and he hated the powerlessness it visited upon him. It reminded him of another loss that still lay ahead of him on this road.

When the next bird arrived, it bore the news that Vlad Li Tam had expected. He’d gone outside for that one, his breath steaming out into the cold night air as he stamped in the snow. He pressed that message into his aide’s hands. “Reply to Petronus with condolences for Rudolfo’s loss,” he said. “And send the bird to my forty-second daughter.”

His aide nodded. “Yes, Lord Tam.”

“And spread the word. We strike camp at first light and ride for home.”

Vlad Li Tam turned south and east, staring out in the night. The War Sermon had started up at long last, and far away he could see the fires in the Entrolusian camp.

“It is finished,” Vlad Li Tam said to the night.

Petronus

Petronus stood with Meirov’s rangers and the half-squad of Gypsy Scouts near the crater where the Great Library once stood. They heard them before they saw them, like a wave of sound across the night, a sound like nothing Petronus had heard before. Bellows chugged, gears hummed and oiled legs pumped. It was as if a room of farmers all worked their shears in perfect time together, low and steady amid the chaotic sounds of combat.

He squinted in the direction of the sound, and saw what could have been the dancing of ghost-lights or fireflies if he hadn’t known better of this part of the world and time of the year. And if they hadn’t flown in thirteen perfect pairs, moving in formation at the same speed.

Petronus watched as they drew near, moving twice the speed of a horse . . . possibly faster. The moonlight washed them in tones of blue and green, casting an eerie light around them as they moved sure-footed across the snow.

They spilled into the crater before halting, and Petronus raised his hands as the rangers counted them. “Behold,” he said, “I am called Petronus, King of Windwir and Holy See of the Androfrancine Order.”

“Petronus,” one of the mechoservitors started, “sixty-third in succession, was the eighth Pope to be assassinated in the Enlightened History of the Androfrancine Order.”

“A deception,” he said. He held up the ring. “I bear the ring of P’Andro Whym.”

The mechoservitors bowed their heads. Petronus had never seen anything like them. Tall and slender, they stood just half a head higher than a man. Their long arms ended in equally long fingers, and the metal plating that lay over the top of their metallic skeleton shifted and moved with the working bellows underneath. A small grate in the center of their backs emitted gouts of steam.