“If you’ll let me.”
Of course, Petronus realized, his Gray Guard had to know the answer. And yet he still tried. Because duty compelled him. All his life, Grymlis had served the light. He’d served four Popes in his time, offering himself and his sword to them. Even when Petronus had sent him away to bury his Androfrancine Gray Guard uniform in the loamy soil of the Ninefold Forest, the old man had come wandering home like a castaway dog. “You know I won’t leave,” Petronus said as gently as he could.
He could imagine the man’s shrug. “You know I had to try. Something dark rises, Petronus, and I have a sense of foreboding like none I’ve ever had.”
Yes. Petronus heard the uneasiness in the man’s voice and it alarmed him. Even the use of Petronus’s proper name betrayed that worry. And Grymlis was unshaken under the most dire of circumstances. If he sat still long enough, Petronus felt the same foreboding. A reckoning approached, and he stood at the center of it. “This game of Queen’s War has been carefully laid out,” he said. “This is a battle I can win now that kin-clave is invoked.”
“I don’t trust it,” Grymlis said. “It’s foolhardy. The Marshers are uprising. An Y’Zirite resurgence is in full swing there, and the Androfrancine remnant is systematically disappearing. You’ve heard about the Summer Palace? And the armies in the north?”
Petronus nodded. “Esarov told me.” He’d lain awake that night ciphering the news. Marshers that burned their dead.
“It’s gotten worse. This resurgence is like nothing we’ve seen before, and its roots have grown deep and in secret. Rumor has it that Winteria’s army is divided. She herself rides to petition for kin-clave.”
Petronus winced. It was deep, then. The Order had kept a tight rein on these things, using its Gray Guard and its kin-clave to stomp out any hint of Y’Zir worship long before it reached the point of building critical mass. But the Marshers were already susceptible to mysticism. And though they were watched, they were a difficult people to infiltrate. With time and patience and care, a foundation of religion could be formed. Add to that an inexplicable access to forbidden blood magicks and men willing to die in service to the cause and it was a powerful weapon.
It could be no coincidence that just after Windwir fell, this new threat arose. Had Windwir stood, she had within her basements the means to counter these magicks, the weapons with which to bring down these foes. Some could say that without the shepherd, wolves savaged the fold. Still, it was not reasonable that a cult in the Marshlands could bring down Windwir. Not without a great deal of help.
Esarov had insisted that the threat that brought down Windwir had come from within. Vlad Li Tam believed his own family had somehow been compromised and used, along with Sethbert, to accomplish this. His golden bird and its presence at Windwir supported that belief. And beyond the fall of Windwir, chaos and violence rocked the Named Lands with both House Li Tam and the Order out of the way.
“It’s all threads of the same tapestry,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Aye,” Grymlis agreed. “And last week, I dreamed your death, Father, beneath an iron blade. Something is happening, and I believe we’re being herded as cattle to the cliff.” He paused, and Petronus felt the discomfort of his next words: “I’m fearful of what comes.”
Petronus nodded but said nothing.
“So again,” Grymlis said, “come with us. We will find a place to hide you. We will continue the work of walking this Whymer Maze.”
Petronus sighed. “What if my work in this is to follow the path I’m on?”
There was anger in Grymlis’s voice now, but the old guard worked hard to conceal it. “Then you should give me whatever orders you wish me to carry out both now and beyond your life here. Because if you do not come with me now, of a certainty I believe you will be dead within the month.”
“Because of your dream?”
“Because of my dream, yes.” He continued, “And don’t give me that Franci tripe about dreams being the secret mazes our souls work out, our hidden fears and forbidden desires. I know all of that. But I also know this: This dream feels true, and I’ll not stand by and watch it come to pass.”
Petronus stopped. He’d reached the center of the maze and saw the marble meditation bench there. He walked to it and sat down. He wasn’t sure that he believed the Francis anymore on that subject. Neb’s dreams during the grave-digging had tested and broken his belief. “I cannot go with you, Grymlis. I need to finish what’s begun with this.”
“You have summoned every leader in the Named Lands that ever held kin-clave with Windwir into one place,” Grymlis said, his voice heavy with anger. “Meanwhile, a foe that we have not the resources to stop flows over the Wandering Army like water over stone to savage the armies of Pylos and Turam on a whim.” He waited, and Petronus felt the weight of the words settling upon him. “Surely, Father, you see this?”
“I do,” he said. “But Rudolfo’s Firstborn Feast and the events of that night prove that if they wished to, they could strike anywhere and anytime. They do not need us gathered in one place for this.”
Grymlis sighed. “Then what are your orders?”
Petronus thought for a moment. “Should your dream prove true-and I do not believe it will, Grymlis-I would have you take what men are left you and petition Rudolfo for protection. They’ve not touched those of the Androfrancine remnant that remained in the Ninefold Forest. Serve him as you serve the light.”
“I will serve him as I’ve served you, Father.”
“And you’ve served me well, Grymlis.”
He offered a bitter laugh. “Not well enough. A better soldier would club you and carry you to safety.”
Petronus chuckled. “A better soldier would trust his superior’s judgment.”
Grymlis snorted. “I know better than that, old man.”
And then, without another word between them, a shadow slipped away and the heavy, rotten odor of human waste gave way to crisp, clear air that smelled like rain.
When the first drops fell, Petronus remained there at the center of the maze, unmoving on the meditation bench. When the downpour that came next soaked him through and the guards came to escort him to his suite, he gave himself over to them.
Closer now, he thought, this reckoning of mine.
No. Not mine.
And Petronus felt the weight of a greater reckoning upon them all as clouds the color of bruises wept for the children of P’Andro Whym.
Rae Li Tam
Rae Li Tam sat in the corner of the crowded cell and listened to the voices through the pipe. It had taken them half of the day to figure out the water was drugged-and she should have known better. She could easily name a half dozen herbs or roots that could induce a similar state: nausea, dizziness, lethargy and disorientation. Still, they’d been debilitated for most of their time here. Now, she was clear-headed, and her mind spun strategy after strategy to find some solution to this cipher. She did not have long. At some point, they would have to go back to drinking the water if she did not solve it. And that meant House Li Tam would join the Androfrancines in desolation.
So she bent her will to the riddle. She set some to tracking guard shifts and others to listening at the pipes in their cells. She established sleep shifts and message routes.
Blood pipes. It turned her stomach and caught her breath in her throat. They were warm to her ear, but she had to listen.
Some of the more seasoned sons and daughters of House Li Tam had coded bits of information into the poems they composed to their father beneath the knife.
So Rae Li Tam sat and untangled the codes, inventoried what she learned, and worried over the children. The guards took them while they were all still too drugged to act, and she was afraid for them.