But not even that was enough to hold his anger at bay.
If you do not declare publicly, I will declare you myself.
He bellowed again, his fists clenched, kicking at the ground. “Damn you, Tam,” he shouted.
Of course, he’d known he would have to. There would be no getting around it. Nothing would be left if he stood back. And if his suspicions about Vlad Li Tam’s strategy were true-and he did not doubt them-he did not know if he could be a part of that game of queen’s war. But he had no choice now, and he’d known that it would come to it when he’d written the proclamation.
You’ve done this to yourself, old man.
Yes, he thought. Yes, I have. And he would pay the price for that and come back from the dead because it was the only honest thing he could do. But he would name the time and place.
He drew his needle and ink and wrote his reply on the back. I will do it myself in my own time and if you do not honor this, you do not honor me or my house.
He tied the message to the bird and threw it at the sky.
As he walked back to the city, he heard the War Sermon and listened to the Marsh King prophesy about the dreaming boy. He finally calmed enough to think about the other aspects of the message. Rudolfo’s petition intrigued him. The idea of the Great Library-or what could be saved from it-sparked a hope within him that he had not expected. He’d remembered that first mechoservitor, and wondered if it was possible that they had come so far as to remember an entire library? It might be possible. But it didn’t seem likely. There would be the vaulted knowledge-everything that had already been cataloged, translated and cross-referenced against other fragments.
But how much of the library could they bring back?
Anything that they could build would be a miracle more than he had expected. And positioning it in the far north put it out of reach of the masses, kept it safe. Its only nearby threat would be the Marshers, and recent events suggested an unexpected alliance there. And it was not too far from the upper gates of the Keeper’s Wall, beyond which lay the Churning Wastes. It made far more sense than the Papal Summer Palace, where the first Popes had thought to build their library, huddling against the Dragon’s Spine as far from the Named Lands as possible. It had not worked then and it would be the same now. The bitterly cold winters precluded any commerce whatsoever for a large portion of the year, and they were quickly realizing that a waterway would be necessary if they were to trulyAy w pr shepherd the Named Lands through its sojourn in the New World.
He had no difficulty agreeing to the petition and issuing an order for Sethbert to surrender the mechoservitors in his care. But he could not do this without proclaiming himself, and he was not ready to go back to honoring that lie on behalf of a backward dream.
Ready or not, Petronus knew he did not have much time.
Neb
After they ate their stew, the Marsh girl led Neb back to the Marsh King’s cave. She passed him a pile of tattered blankets and pointed to a corner in the damp, earthen room. He rolled himself up into the corner and watched her do the same thing across from him. The idol glowed dully in the dark, offering light and heat. From where he lay, he saw that the idol clutched at a mirror, the face of P’Andro Whym contemplative as he modeled self-examination.
Once she was beneath her blankets, she propped her head up on one hand and looked across to him. “I can’t imagine what it was like,” she said in a quiet voice.
He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he had an idea, and he swallowed back the sudden terror that gripped him. He felt a lurch in his groin, a squeezing ache that made him want to throw up.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry, Nebios ben Hebda. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Nebios ben Hebda. A Marsher name. “It’s fine. I just can’t talk about it yet.” His stomach lurched again. “You don’t think the Marsh King will make me talk about it, do you?” Suddenly, he wanted to run as far from this camp as he could.
She shook her head slowly. “The Marsh King would not force such a thing. There is grace in the Marshlands.”
So far, the Marshers had been nothing like he had expected. Very little was shared about them in the parts of the Great Library that he was permitted to study from. They weren’t the half-crazed savages that legend painted them. Oddly customed, to be sure, but not-to his eye, anyway-the lunatic children left over from the Age of Laughing Madness. Children who perpetuated their violent insanity from generation to generation according to the lecturers and texts of the Orphan School. And whose king heard the future from a bust of P’Andro Whym and roared out that word beneath the Moon Wizard’s tower.
They were a complex and spiritual people.
He studied the girl for a moment longer, then realized he had no idea what her name was. He asked and she laughed at him.
“I do not haA220ughve a name like yours,” she said. “You would laugh to hear it.”
He smiled at her and shook his head. “I would not laugh.”
She lay on her side, facing him, her hair spilling around her gray-streaked face. “My name is Winters.”
“Winters?”
She nodded. “Winteria, actually. I did not name myself.”
Neb changed the subject, his mind wandering quickly back to the morning. “What do you think he will want to talk to me about?” he asked.
She frowned and thought about this. “I suspect he will ask what you know of the gravediggers’ camp, of Sethbert’s camp, whether or not you’ve seen Lord Rudolfo yet or caught sign of his scouts.” She shifted in her blankets, and Neb was surprised to see a bare shoulder peeking out from beneath them. He felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “He’ll also want to know what you know of the metal man and the Lady Jin Li Tam.” She paused and her voice softened. “But I’m sure he will not ask you about the other,” she said.
He sighed. “And afterwards, he’ll let me go?”
She laughed again and rolled over, her back to him now. “You can go now if you want to, Nebios.” She looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Or did you think perhaps I was assigned to you as your jailer?”
He laughed, too. “I didn’t know what to think.”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to know what to think when your dreams become entangled with another’s.”
Neb lay still and watched her back. Her shoulders slowly started rising and falling, and when he was certain she was asleep, he drew the ring from his pocket and held it up to the idol’s light. They were cast of the same metal, he realized.
Slipping the ring back into his pocket, he pulled the blankets over his head and ciphered himself to sleep.
When his dreams swallowed him into that hopeless burning vision of Windwir’s fall, he looked around to see who might be watching, but saw no one whatsoever.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo kept the others waiting for a fashionably appropriate time, taking longer than needed to prepare himself. For the parley, he selected his best turban and matching sash in the brightest green he had, trimmed with the pAmmeongurple. He wore these along with a shirt the color of burnt cream, all over the top of the mesh armor he had received from Pope Introspect for a small heresy he helped suppress.
He selected his best sword-a long slender affair with a hard steel basket and a light blade that could shave a man. He strapped it on, climbed into the saddle and rode with his Gypsy Scouts for the appointed place.
A cluster of scouts from all sides gathered at the bottom of the hill. The only one who came alone was the one Rudolfo assumed to be the Marsh King. He was a giant of a man, maybe the biggest man he had ever seen. Beneath his stinking, filth-matted furs he wore silver armor, and in his hands he held a massive silver axe. He rode a giant stallion that danced beneath him as he listened to the people around him.