Petronus watched as the room began to right itself. The unbroken pieces of furniture were tipped back into their proper places, and the broom on his wall, seemingly of its own volition, went to work on the floors. He stood and joined in, gathering up the scattered pages of his work.
Another question. “You’ve had two men watching me for more than half of a year,” he said. “But you knew to have more here tonight.”
Six men, he thought. And that had been barely enough for the task at hand.
His attacker came under a new kind of magick or-here, his stomach sank-a very old kind. But not even the Androfrancines had dabbled much in blood magick, not until Xhum Y’Zir’s spell. He’d read stories, of course, from the Year of the Falling Moon and the early days of the War of the Weeping Czar. Blood magicks fivefold more potent than the powders they made from the earth, making one man a squad in and of himself. If he hadn’t hesitated, if he hadn’t taken the time to speak, I would be dead now.
Grymlis spoke. “Trouble brews in the Named Lands and beyond. We had a bird four nights back. Someone means to finish the work Sethbert started.”
Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children. The words penetrated him like a knife, and his eyes went involuntarily to the satchel. Someone meant to exterminate the last of the Androfrancine remnant. “But who?”
“It smells of Tam,” Grymlis said. “But the note was unclear. It bid us watch over you. It arrived coded and in Whymer script.”
Petronus shook his head. “I don’t think Tam is behind it. I believe what he told me; Vlad Li Tam dismantled his network and left the Named Lands with his sons and daughters.” He thought about it for a moment. “And the warning was anonymous?”
“Yes.”
A Whymer Maze, Petronus thought. And with the Named Lands sliding further and further into political and economic collapse it would be hard to know what nations had working intelligence operatives. Pylos, Turam and the Entrolusian Delta had their hands full with insurrection and revolution. And based on the birds he’d received over the last fortnight, the unrest was spreading into the Emerald Coasts and spilling over to the Divided Isles and their frontier counties.
Perhaps it was the Gypsy? Rudolfo’s Ninefold Forest Houses were the only houses thriving-and how could they not? Petronus had passed to him all the wealth and holdings of the Androfrancine Order, including House Li Tam’s sizable wealth.
Certainly, their last meeting on the Prairie Sea just hours after Petronus had executed Sethbert had been tense.
The Gypsy King had drawn his sword upon approach, and Petronus thought for a moment that the enraged Rudolfo might actually kill him for ending the line of papal succession. But Rudolfo was a clever man-at some point he would understand that Petronus had granted him a favor by snapping the Order’s neck, leaving him unshackled by two thousand years of Androfrancine tradition and backward dreaming.
“Could it have been Rudolfo?” he asked. “Could he have warned us?”
“It’s possible, Father. He has the assets for intelligence, certainly. But why the cover of anonymity? You gave him Guardianship during the war.” Now Grymlis’s voice choked with anger. Petronus could hear leagues spent on the Fivefold Path of Grief in the old captain’s voice. “And who would punish us beyond Windwir?”
It is all related.
“Perhaps,” Petronus said, “we’ll know more once our guest wakes up.”
“Meanwhile,” Grymlis said, “you should pack. We’ve scouted a new location for your work.”
He knows about my work. Of course he does, Petronus realized, if he’s been watching all this time. He opened his mouth to protest and then closed it. Grymlis and his men had saved his life tonight. At the very best, he’d be dead now but for them. At the very worst, his attacker would have been most effectively meting out his promise of pain.
He reached out a shaking hand, found Grymlis’s shoulder and squeezed it. “I’m glad you didn’t listen to me when I sent you and your men away.”
He could hear Grymlis’s forced smile. “I did listen to you, Father. I listened until you laid down your ring and robe. Beyond that, I listened to myself.”
Petronus blessed his own fallibility and, without protest, set himself to packing his belongings for another journey he was too old to make.
Neb
Neb took the stairs two at a time as the gathering crowd parted before him and the half-squad he led. The events of the night had left him shaken, and he still felt the fear in his belly. He’d seen nothing like it, though he’d watched squads of magicked scouts-had even run with them-in the days since Windwir’s fall. But this was another kind of magick, something dangerous and old. Something that took men far beyond what the River Woman’s powders, ground from the earth, could do.
Blood magick. He’d read stories about the Wizard Kings and the deals they brokered in dark places, boons purchased with blood. Twice now he’d seen it. His first experience still haunted his nightmares, carrying him back to the ridgeline above Windwir where he witnessed the last spell of the world’s last wizard consume Windwir before his eyes. Carefully crafted in seclusion by Xhum Y’Zir to avenge the murder of his seven sons, the Seven Cacophonic Deaths had leveled the city, leaving it-and Neb’s soul-utterly desolated.
Now, he’d seen blood magick at work for a second time.
Certainly, it was on a much smaller scale, but he had seen the Marshers at war alongside Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts. Both were formidable forces, and yet a small group of blood-magicked assassins had penetrated the heart of the Ninefold Forest and murdered Hanric and the Crown Prince of Turam in a hall full of armed men. And those forces had barely repelled them-but not before the assassins had done their work.
He ran the halls until he reached the servants’ quarters near the suite of rooms where Rudolfo’s house steward-Kember-had housed Hanric as a guest of honor. Two Gypsy Scouts guarded the door. “Are the Marsh King’s servants within?” Neb asked.
One of the guards nodded. “They are. We’ve told them nothing.”
Neb swallowed. “Good.” I don’t want to do this, he realized as he stared at the heavy, closed door. How did he tell the girl he loved that the man she considered a father and a friend was dead?
Hanric’s face flashed behind his eyes, and Neb suddenly remembered the off-key, bellowed song the giant Marsher had been singing when the attackers burst into the room. He felt a lump in his throat and knew that his eyes would leak water if he didn’t rein himself in. You are an officer of the Ninefold Forest Houses, he chided himself. You are a man.
He put his hand on the doorknob and looked to the half-squad of men accompanying him. “Wait here.”
Opening the door, Neb slipped in and closed it behind him. The room smelled of damp dirt, and he saw the Marshers gathered in the sitting room with Winters at the center as they talked silently with their hands using a nonverbal language Neb could not read. They were in various states of dishevelment, as was their custom. The ash and dirt they rubbed into their skin and hair gave them a fierce and wild look that caused most to keep their distance. Their willowy queen looked perplexed and curious, but her eyes came alive when she saw him. Their hands dropped as she stood.
“Nebios,” she asked, “what is happening? There are guards at the door who won’t let us leave.”
Neb swallowed again and nodded slowly. “We need to talk,” he said, his eyes shifting to the small group of servants that surrounded her. “And after, Rudolfo bids you join him in his study.” The words felt awkward. “I’ve a half-squad outside to escort you.”