Neb shook his head. “I mean-can they tell the future?”
Petronus sat back. “It must be possible sometimes. You dreamed that the Marsh King and his army rode south to Windwir, and he did.”
Neb’s eyes met Petronus’s. “That’s not all I dreamed that night.”
Petronus waited.
Finally, Neb continued. “In my dream, Brother Hebda told me I would proclaim you Pope in the Garden of Coronation and Consecration.”
Petronus felt the color drain from his face. Now the boy reached into his pocket, withdrawing something small that glistened dully in the gray winter sunlight. Petronus squinted at it and gasped.
The Papal signet lay in the palm of Neb’s hand.
The boy stretched his hand out to Petronus, and it shook slightly.
At first, he did not take the ring. He just stared at it, feeling the fear of it course through him. After what seemed hours, he picked it up and weighed it in his hands.
“You are Petronus,” Neb said, “the Missing King of Windwir and the Lost Pope of the Holy See of the Androfrancine Order.” Petronus saw the line of tears cutting tracks of white down Neb’s cheeks. He felt tears building in his own eyes.
“I am Petronus,” he said slowly. Holding his breath, he slipped the ring onto the second finger of his right hand.
Neb stood and drew a vial from his pocket, unstopping the lid. He raised it to his lips, and Petronus shook his head, standing.
“No,” he said, taking the vial away. “You’ve done enough, Nebios. Let me proclaim myself.”
Neb let out his held breath, and Petronus took the vial from his shaking hand.
Raising it to his lips, he felt the power of it course through him. Blood magick from its taste, spiced with powders from things grown in dark places. He drank it down and cleared his voice, feeling the wave of sound rumble out from him like thunder.
Then Petronus drew himself up to his full height and shouted at the sky. “I am Petronus,” he said. “I am the coronate King of Windwir and consecrated Pope of the Holy See of the Androfrancine Order.”
The words blasted out from him, marching for league upon league. Petronus intended to stop with that, but as his eyes took in the blasted city around him, he felt all of the anger he’d kept buried these last few months, and iOw m tot demanded release.
Pacing the holy ground of his consecration and coronation, Petronus spent the rest of that afternoon delivering a War Sermon of his very own.
Sethbert
Sethbert heard the voice outside and stood from his luncheon table. Over the weeks he’d grown accustomed to the Marsh King’s midnight ranting, but they’d been easy to ignore, being in what was for all practical purposes a dead language. He’d had the first few nights translated by an old man he’d kept on for just that sort of thing, but once he’d seen that it least a third of it was unintelligible, another third was disjointed bits of scripture, and the rest a smattering of references from something called the Book of the Dreaming Kings, Sethbert had put the old man onto other work and put the Marsh King’s War Sermons out of his mind.
But this afternoon’s voice was clear, speaking in the formal language reserved for matters of high ceremony. Sethbert exited the tent and saw he wasn’t alone. Soldiers, servants, war-whores, aides and cooks had all stopped, looked up, and went outside to listen.
Sethbert waved over a young lieutenant. “I missed the first part. What did he say?”
“He said he was the King of Windwir and the Pope of the Androfrancine Order,” the young lieutenant answered.
Sethbert snorted. “The King of Windwir and the Pope of the Androfrancine Order is at the Summer Papal Palace.” He opened his mouth to say more, but swallowed his words when he heard his own name mentioned in the angry outpouring. He felt eyes on him, and at the same time he felt his anger rise. The voice was making charges-true charges, Sethbert realized-and spelling out the consequences for Sethbert’s transgressions.
He kept listening, hearing much of the same language he’d read in the written proclamation. Of course, the written proclamation had been kept away from his military at General Lysias’s insistence.
He looked now at the listening faces around him, his eyes measuring them. Lysias had protested his handling of the desertions, but they’d dropped off substantially when word spread through the camp of how Sethbert dealt with those who spurned their oath to the Delta City States. He wondered now what this news would mean for his army.
I could tell them the truth. They would hail me as a hero. But Sethbert would not tell them the truth simply because he knew that he shouldn’t have to. “Some are kings and some are not and there’s a reason for that,” his father had told him. Sethbert believed it.
And the longer he kept knowledge to himself, the better control he had over what that knowledge could do. Something he’d actually learned Otua Nefrom the Androfrancines.
Sethbert listened to the War Sermon, listened to the rallying call of this Pope, and for a moment he thought the voice and words seemed familiar. It sounded like someone he’d known.
He saw Lysias walking quickly toward him, a perplexed look on his face. Like an Androfrancine clock, Sethbert thought, perfectly on time.
“This does not bode well,” Lysias said. “I’ve a bird back from the front lines. It’s coming from the center of the city. Scouts have been dispatched.”
Sethbert nodded. “Do we know who it is?”
Lysias shrugged. “Not with any certainty. But…” He started the sentence, then paused.
Sethbert sighed. “But what, General? Who is it?”
Lysias set his jaw. “He claims to be Petronus,” he said.
Sethbert dropped the wineglass he’d forgotten he still carried. It shattered on the ground. He felt his stomach lurch, and he closed his eyes against it.
The wily old gravedigger and his Androfrancine laws, he thought.
I should have recognized him.
Then Sethbert screamed for his horse and sword.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo reached the old man first, racing low in the saddle across the wasted land. Behind him, his scouts magicked themselves and ran, sending their horses back to camp with a whistle.
The old man looked at Rudolfo, and their eyes met. Rudolfo saw anger and despair in those blue eyes, cold as winter stars and sharp as moonshine blades. The force of the stare was enough that he grunted and pulled up his horse. He whistled, and his men, already fading as the magicks took hold and bent light around them, scattered to take up positions around the old man.
Rudolfo saw a boy standing next to the old man. The grandson, he realized. Gregoric had told him about the boy and even pointed him out when they’d seen him leaving the Marsher camp with the girl he later learned was the true Marsh King.
He slipped from the saddle, landing on his feet with ease. He approached, one hand brushing the hilt of his narrow sword. The old man stopped speaking as Rudolfo slowly knelt before him. “You claim to be Petronus,” Rudolfo said in a whisper. “What proof do you bear?”
When Petronus replied, it was the voice of many waters. “I watched you with your father at my funeral, Rudolfo. You wore a red turban and you did not cry.”
Rudolfo nodded. “It is as you say.”
Petronus inclined his head.
Rudolfo drew his sword and laid it at the old man’s feet. Then, he kissed the old man’s ring.
Petronus nodded, grimly. He looked out across the city, and Rudolfo’s eyes followed. A line of horses approached from the north, the south and the west. Rudolfo picked up his sword and stood, holding it outward and down.