Rudolfo looked to Lysias and saw the storm brewing on his face. He wants to speak but is choosing not to, he realized.
In the past months, the man had proven invaluable to the Ninefold Forest. Initially, Rudolfo had felt skeptical about the man’s loyalties, having fought against him in the war that followed Windwir’s fall. But the general’s daughter, Lynnae, had served as Jakob’s nursemaid during his illness, and from the time Lysias first sought asylum with the Gypsies, he’d given himself fully to whatever task fell to him. Most recently, he’d organized the Refugee Quarter and had devised a system of employing and housing the sudden influx of residents in the various towns of the Ninefold Forest and had created a constabulary among them. “What are your thoughts on these matters, Lysias?”
Lysias looked around the room. Rudolfo watched the older man make eye contact with Aedric before speaking.
When he looked back to the Gypsy King, his eyes were hard. “I intend no disrespect, Lord Rudolfo, but your world has suddenly changed, and you have not changed quickly enough to keep up with it.”
Rudolfo raised a glass of chilled pear wine and paused midway to his lips. “Explain.”
Lysias glanced around the room and put down his own glass. “The days of riding your forest circuit of houses have passed. Your seventh manor is now your capital, home of the new library and the center of the Named Lands. The days of being overlooked and unnoticed are behind your people. Refugees roll in from neighboring lands in disarray and you do not turn them back. Laborers and students and wayward scholars follow them, hoping to build a better life near this new light you cast-you do not turn them back, either.”
Rudolfo swallowed his mouthful of wine. “We will not turn them back,” he said, feeling his earlier frustration build toward anger. “The Ninefold Forest has ever been a haven for those who’ve sought it.”
Lysias locked eyes with him now. “You could not turn them back even if you wished to, Lord. You have no real control of your borders. Scouts on broad patrol, scattered watch posts poorly manned. These evangelists slip in through the gaps. These metal men”-here he looked to Isaak-“they will come and go as they please as well. As will anyone else who wishes.” He lowered his voice. “You have enemies, Lord, who can place their so-called Blood Scouts any place at any time, and as good as your men are. they are not good enough. More than that, you’ve heard it from Tam himself and that fox Petronus-there’s more trouble on the rise, and I fear it’s looking for us. We’re being hemmed, Rudolfo, with wolves on the prowl beyond our ken.” Lysias reached for the bread and tore off a piece, holding it up. “And already, your resources are stretched like a thimble of butter over a mountain of rye.”
Aedric’s face was red with anger, and he started to stand. “You can’t-”
Rudolfo raised his hand. “It’s fine, Aedric.”
He knew the words were true. Certainly, his Wandering Army was the fiercest group of fighters in all the Named Lands, but these were men with homes and farms and families to tend. They were never intended to maintain borders or operate in a constant climate of vigilance and conflict. He looked at Lysias now with narrowing eyes. “You would not say this if you did not also have a solution.”
The old general nodded. “It is time,” he said, “for the Ninefold Forest to join the rest of the Named Lands.” And Rudolfo knew the words that were coming; he dreaded them and winced as Lysias spoke them. “It is time for you to outfit a standing army and establish a firm and permanent presence both within the forest around your assets and along your borders.”
Rudolfo glanced to Jin Li Tam where she sat. She looked away, but not before he saw agreement in her eyes. She’d suggested the same to him not long after they’d returned from the Council of Kin-Clave, and it had led to the first strong argument in their marriage. Her mouth was tight now.
He looked from her to the child in the built-up pine chair beside her. He, too, wore his green turban of office and his rainbow-colored scarves of rank.
Change, he remembered, is the path life takes. But at what point did that change rob life of its value? A standing army in the Ninefold Forest? A kept and guarded border? It was far beyond the life he’d inherited from his father and his father’s father before him. It smacked of everything they’d disdained about their joyless neighbors, everything they’d vowed they would leave in the Old World when they’d left its ashes and madness behind them.
What are you inheriting, my little late-coming prince?
Rudolfo sighed and finally spoke. “I do not wish it-and I do not accept that it is the only answer.” He paused, stared at the food on his plate that he knew he would not eat. When he looked up again, he glanced first to Aedric. In the young captain’s fuming, Rudolfo saw the boy’s father, Gregoric, in the tightly clenched jaw and the narrow eyes. Then, he turned to Lysias. “Draw up the plans for it. But it is to be kept secret at all costs. Our kin-claves are tenuous at best, and this is not the Gypsy way.” Even as he spoke, his hands moved in the sign language of House Y’Zir. Work with him, Aedric.
Aedric did not answer at first. Then, his hand moved, though with reluctance. Yes, General.
Now Jin Li Tam’s face was troubled. Do not ask me, Rudolfo willed, but she did it anyway, her fingers moving along the side of her wineglass. Are you certain, love?
Rudolfo stood and looked to her, hoping his eyes would not betray his answer. “I beg your forgiveness,” he said. “Please excuse me.”
Then, turning, he left the dining room. He stepped quickly past the Gypsy Scouts assigned to guard him, ducked around a corner and slipped into one of dozens of passages kept hidden for just these reasons. He walked at a brisk pace along the narrow corridors and slipped through a hidden door into the garden.
His Whymer Maze towered in the moonlight, and the frogs raised their voice to the blue-green moon. Looking over his shoulder to be sure none followed him, he moved past the maze and into a copse of trees he rarely visited these days.
There, near a white stone marked simply with three names, he sat upon a marble meditation bench that none had sat upon for decades. After a long silence, he finally spoke, and it was the voice of a frightened boy.
“Father,” he said to the stone, “I do not know this path.”
Then, in silence, Rudolfo sat still and begged answer from the ground of Jakob’s Rest.
Chapter 4
Petronus
Petronus raised his eyebrows and looked at the man who rocked to and fro before him. “So what you’re proposing”-he glanced to the report from Grymlis in his hands, looking for the name once more-“Geoffrus, is it?” At the man’s hurried nod, Petronus continued. “What you’re proposing is that you and your company of men supply our entire outpost with hunting, trapping and scouting services for-” He scanned the report again, but the numbers ran together into a blur. “Well,” he finally said, “for significant barter, primarily in metal goods and fabrics from the other side of the gate.”
Geoffrus nodded. “Yes, Luxpadre. I-or I should say we-are prepared to execute on a time-is-of-the-essence basis, immediately, that is, to give you and your Ash-Men the best our Madding Lands can offer.”
Petronus sat back in the wooden chair and rubbed his eyes. Here in the shade, the afternoon sun still kept the day warmer than comfortable for his tastes, accustomed more to the cool seaborne breezes on Caldus Bay than the hot wind of the Churning Wastes. Already, his robe was damp from sweat, though the man across the table from him looked dry and comfortable.