The words struck Rudolfo, and he understood now at least part of Petronus’s strategy. “You do not feel the Androfrancines need a Pope. It is why you left.”
Petronus waved his hand. “It was many things. It was also about knowing my own soul. If I had continued, whatever I did would be a lie.”
Rudolfo leaned forward. “How did you know? What brought you to that place of knowledge?”
Petronus shrugged, and laughed loudly. “My whole life brought me to that place of knowledge. There was no one thing. I woke up one morning and simply knew.” He tapped out his pipe. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
Rudolfo raised his eyebrows. “What makes you say that?”
The old man smiled. “Your life has changed, Rudolfo. Your Wandering Army will soon wander no more and your Gypsy Scouts will run the forests without their Gypsy King. You will live in one house with one woman. And soon, your library will be the center of the world. This little town will grow beyond its past just as you have grown beyond yours. Add a few children-an heir to nurture, perhaps…” Petronus let the words die. “I know you know these things. I know you think about them.”
Rudolfo’s guard slipped and his thought slipped with it, coming out in a quiet voice. “What if my life becomes a lie?”
“Or what if it’s becoming true?” Petronus stood.
Rudolfo shook the sudden doubt away, and stood as well.
“Will you take Sethbert off Tormentor’s Row and place him in a simple cell?”
Rudolfo felt a twinge. “I will order it so.”
“I will see him tomorrow.” Petronus walked to the stairs, then turned back to Rudolfo. “We will hold the trial at the conclusion of the Council of Bishops.”
Rudolfo nodded. “I concur.”
Petronus paused at the top of the stairs. “Do you remember what you said of Neb? That he would make a fine captain?”
Rudolfo nodded. The boy was intelligent and capable, a strong leader who influenced others without knowing it. That was a blade that could be sharpened into the fine edge of an intentional strategist. “I do. The Order is fortunate to have him.”
A dark look crossed Petronus’s face and Rudolfo saw loss there. “Remember those words, Rudolfo.”
Rudolfo said nothing. He felt a another twinge, something restless moving beneath the surface of this all. He felt his eyes narrowing, but if Petronus noticed, he did not show it.
“Sleep well,” the Pope said as he started his descent back into the manor.
“I will,” Rudolfo replied. But he knew that he wouldn’t. A gnawing feeling of dread grew in his stomach about the coming council, and at the center of it stood a man with a strategy Rudolfo did not yet fully grasp.
Neb
More and more, Neb found himself feeling at home in the Ninefold Forest. The work satisfied him, and the forest Gypsies fascinated him. And the Northern Marshes were just across the Prairie Sea from him.
As the days slipped past, Neb watched the small town fill to overflowing. The last large caravan arrived from the Summer Papal Palace that morning, and yet more tents went up in the large open meadow where the council pavilion stood.
This is all that is left, he thought as he watched the men in their dark robes walking among the rainbow-clad forest Gypsies. It staggered him, remembering a time when this many black robes would have been a relatively small gathering. He_“€thering.217;d brought the matter of recruitment up to Petronus several times in the last two months, but the Pope had deflected it. At first, Neb thought it was coincidence combined with the distractions of Petronus’s office and the exhaustion he must surely feel. After all, the old man rarely slept these days, poring over page after page of parchment in his office late into the night, arriving early in the morning to do the same all over again.
But now, these deflections recurred enough that Neb realized Petronus was avoiding the subject. Still, in itself that may have been no more than a desire to take care of the more pressing issues. The mechoservitors worked day and night now to reproduce the library from their memories, their hands blurring as they moved pen across paper. Rudolfo had recruited a half dozen bookbinders and outfitted them in nearby tents while proper facilities could be built. Already, the manor was filling with stacked volumes, its halls and rooms smelling of new paper and fresh ink.
If that weren’t enough to keep Petronus’s attention on the here and now, there were vast Androfrancine properties that required difficult decisions. A group of one thousand did not have the same needs as a group one hundred times that size, but which holdings should be kept and which should be abandoned or bartered or sold off? Even if the Order planned for recruitment, it had taken two thousand years to build its power, and Neb doubted it could ever come back in the same strength it had before, even bound to the Ninefold Forest Houses.
And then there was the matter of Sethbert and the trial. The thought of the former Overseer rekindled a rage buried deep in Neb. Since the screaming wagon arrived, Neb had stopped dreaming about Winters and the reunion he longed for. Instead, he dreamed of killing Sethbert.
Isaak found him at the edge of town, watching the Androfrancines move about in their small city of tents. “Pope Petronus is calling for you.”
“How is he today?” He’d noticed the dark circles, and had even heard Petronus snap at one of the servants the day before. He had an edge about him that Neb hadn’t seen, even during the worst of their work in Windwir.
Isaak shrugged. “He is exhausted. He seems… weighed down.”
Neb nodded. He’d never asked Petronus why he’d left so many years ago, but he couldn’t imagine that coming back was something he’d wanted to do.
I forced him to it. No, he reminded himself, Sethbert’s act of violence had forced Petronus to it. More than that, it was the kind of man that Petronus was.
“We do what we must,” Petronus had told him those times Neb had brought it up. “You did what you had to do and so will I.”
Still, Neb regretted his part in it. He thanked Isaak and made his way back to the seventh “€o the seforest manor.
Petronus’s door was closed when he reached the office. He knocked at it, and a gruff voice answered.
When he saw the look on Petronus’s face, he froze.
He knows about the weapon, he thought. He’d wanted to do what he was told with it. He’d taken it and had gotten halfway to the blacksmith with his fire and hammer, intending to have it broken into pieces and melted down. But he’d ended up in the forest with it, running his hands over it, feeling the history of it. It was probably five hundred years old, rebuilt no doubt from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. It represented something-a part of the light, he supposed-and in the end, he could not bring himself to destroy it. In the end, he’d buried it in its oilcloth beneath the massive, mossy stump, marking the place with a few white rocks.
Neb opened his mouth to explain, but Petronus gestured to a chair and spoke first. “Sit down, Neb.”
Petronus was distracted, shuffling papers on his desk until he found a neatly folded and sealed note. “I wanted to talk with you before I gave you this.”
Neb looked at him, suddenly not so sure it was about the weapon. He saw deep grief on the man’s face, and his eyes were dark. “What is it, Petronus?”
When they were alone, he’d insisted that Neb call him by name, but now Petronus’s eyes hardened. “You will address me now as Excellency or Pope,” he said.
Neb felt his jaw go slack and his stomach lurch. “How may I serve you, Excellency?”
Petronus nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “Would you serve me, then, Nebios?”