“And in early days of the Laughing Madness,” the guard said, quoting the Whymer Bible, “there were soldiers that came to P’Andro Whym in his shattered crystal garden dome and inquired of him-”
– What must we do? We do not read, nor do we cipher, and yet we are compelled to protect knowledge that light might remain in the minds of men. The words unrolled in Neb’s mind, words from the Eighteenth Gospel. And P’Andro Whym looked upon them and wept at their devotion to truth and said unto them-
“-Walk with my seekers, clothed in the ash of yesterday’s world, and guard ye what is found. Guard ye the founders. Raise up men who would do the same.”
The sword whipped again. This time it pointed to Neb. “What of you, boy? Would you kill for the truth? Would you kill to keep the light alive?”
Neb didn’t hesitate. “I’d die for it, sir.”
The old captain leaned in, and Neb saw the hardness in his eyes. He leaned in close enough that his bushy white beard brushed Neb’s chin. “I’ve done one but not the other,” the old guard said. “But I’d daresay the killing is harder than the dying.”
That night, Neb lay awake and thought about the old soldier. He wondered how many men that captain had killed, whether or not Neb could do it if he ever had to. He’d fallen asleep unsure and hadn’t thought about it again until now-two years later.
There were practical considerations. So far, he’d only thought about the magicks. Under the magicks, he could steal a knife or maybe even a sword. Then it was simply a matter of getting past Sethbert’s honor guard.
But then there w [t tthat he might die for justice. Until a few days ago, he’d not been able to personally claim any real injustice. Certainly, he’d spent many quieter moments wondering what his life would be like if he’d had a mother and a father-or at least, a father that he didn’t address as Brother Hebda. But it was hardly unjust-he was well cared for, educated, clothed and challenged by the best of the Androfrancine Order-a life that was only available to the Orphans of P’Andro Whym. The sons and daughters of nobility attended University in most instances, sometimes even Academy, but they never got past the first corner of the Great Library. Neb and his friends had even walked past the mechoservitor cells, heard them buzzing and clicking in the third basement.
The murder of his father, of Windwir-and, he realized, the murder of the Androfrancine Order-were injustices so massive that his heart could not contain them. It staggered his mind.
Neb didn’t know if he would kill to keep the light alive, as the guard had put it. With the city in ruins and the library nothing but charred stone and ash, he doubted if there would be much light to protect.
Neb wondered what that old guard would’ve said about killing to avenge the light snuffed out.
Petronus
Petronus walked his horse to the edge of the city. He’d told himself that he would turn back, that he just needed a closer look. Something he couldn’t name compelled him. Wrath and despair twisted back and forth inside of him, chasing one another around a hollow space at his core.
He walked his horse so that he could feel the crunching of ash and charcoal beneath his feet and know that it was real. He paused every few steps to inhale a lung full of the smell of sulfur, ozone and smoke. And his eyes moved across the blasted landscape, looking for something but he didn’t know what.
Petronus certainly knew the Fivefold Path of Grief. He’d started his long road to the Papacy in the Office of Francine Practice, analyzing and manipulating the pathways of thought and behavior. He was moving between the Sword and the Empty Purse for the most part-but found himself back on the Blinded Eye from time to time.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen death and destruction. A few days before he started plotting his own assassination, Petronus had ordered the sacking of a Marsher village in retribution for a raid on one of the free towns upriver. The Marshers had killed half the men and a quarter of the children. They’d also destroyed a small, guarded caravan returning from the Churning Wastes carrying relics and parchment rolls deemed critical for immediate transport for either security or preservation reasons. After burying the dead, the Marshers had returned to their village across the river.
It hadn’t been a hard decision, really. Petronus sent in the Gray Guard scouts, magicked and armed with arrows that burned upon impact with a white heat that not even water could put out. Another ancient bit of science kept back from the world so that the Order could keep its edge and limit just how far humanity could go along its headlong path to self destruction.
Petronus sent them in, led by a captain who was already old for the job. Grymlis was the only Gray Guard that Petronus knew could do what needed doing to push the Marsh King back into minding his own and still be able to sleep at night, he thought. So they burned the village on Petronus’s orders, killing every man, woman and child.
Afterward, he’d insisted that they ride him out there. It had taken him a day and half. Grymlis had gone with him, though it was obvious that he did not want to, and did not think the Pope should go either.
Petronus had done the same thing then that he did now. It wasn’t a large village, but it was larger than he had imagined. And he’d approached it on foot, though an assistant led his horse. Ash crunching beneath his feet, he’d approached the ruined village until he could see it through the haze of smoke that still rose from it. He could make out the charred lumber. The tumbled, steaming stones. The smoldering, black piles that had been… what? The larger ones were livestock. The smaller ones children, or maybe dogs. And everything else in between.
Petronus had gasped then, and covered his mouth with his hand, and even though he’d known exactly what he was doing when he gave the order nearly three days earlier, the realization of it shifted like the load of a wagon and it rocked him.
“Gods, what have I done?” he asked no one in particular.
“You did what you must to keep the light alive, Excellency,” the captain said. “You’ve seen it now. You know what it looks like. We need to leave.”
He turned around and walked back to his horse. He knew full well that the Marshers would not bury these dead. The Marsher way was simple: You ate or buried what you killed. You did not burn the living or dead-unless it was food.
The Androfrancines had come using fire and they had left those they killed unburied. The message to the Marsh King was clear. And Petronus was smart enough to know that Grymlis had only agreed to escort him back to the village because it added to the message: Behold, I stand at the edge of your field of dead and turn my back. The spies they had pointed out to him in the tree line would bear the last of the message back to their Marsh King, and Petronus’s neighbors and caravans would be safe for another three or four years.
As he rode back to Windwir from that village so long ago, Petronus had realized suddenly that his life was close to becoming such a lie that he could no longer live it. When he retu [. WPetrned, he started plotting against himself with the help of his named successor.
Now it was no longer a village before him. It was the largest, greatest city of the Named Lands. It had been his first lover, this city, and Petronus approached it.