Petronus stared at the boy. Finally, he repeated himself slowly, intending the words for the one young man in the room who had no hesitation. “Whichever of you Androfrancines,” he said, “come and take this knife.” He broke his gaze with the boy and looked to the mechoservitor who sat listening to the session so that it could later be reproduced on paper. “Let the record show that the young man, Nebios ben Hebda, was removed from the Order by a Writ of Excommunication by Papal Discretion.”
Vlad Li Tam smiled. Another of his old laws.
Glaring, Neb sat down.
A voice rang out, and Petronus looked away from the boy. “A Pope would not do such a thing,” one of the bishops said. “The Whymer Bible forbids it.”
Petronus waited. A murmur rose beneath the tent, and a wind outside whipped through the three entrances, carrying the scent of evergreen and lavender.
Vlad Li Tam watched his old friend’s next move and nodded. The brilliance and beauty of his father’s work was something to behold. In that moment, he realized his own part in that work, and it awed him.
“Very well,” Petronus said. He walked to Sethbert and stood before him. “None of you will kill for the light.”
Petronus laid his hand on the side of Sethbert’s face, gently as if he were a father comforting a wayward child.
But when the old man brought the knife up with his other hand, he was fast and sure, with the precision of a fisherman.
Petronus dropped the blade. He raised his bloody hands above his head.
“This backward dream is over,” Petronus said. “I am the last Androfrancine Pope.”
Then he tugged off his ring and dropped it alongside t›€it alonghe red-stained knife.
Vlad Li Tam stood and quickly slipped from the pavilion. He moved fast, his escort beside him.
Soon, he thought, I will return to fishing.
Petronus
Petronus scrubbed the blood from his hands and forearms in the fountain outside the manor. He’d slipped into a plain brown robe in the commotion that ensued just after his last act as Pope, then he’d made his way out the back of the pavilion and cut through the forest to the town.
So far, it had gone exactly as he’d planned, though he despised himself for the pain he’d caused the boy, Neb. He’d already sent out the birds, disposing of the properties and transferring what holdings remained into Rudolfo’s name. All that remained was to pack and go home.
He moved past the Gypsy Scouts that guarded the manor without speaking, and slipped into his office, locking the door.
“I know why Sethbert destroyed Windwir.”
Petronus looked up to see Vlad Li Tam sitting at his small desk. He had expected him, knowing there would be words between them as soon as he saw him sitting in the crowded tent.
Petronus felt the anger rise in him. “I’m not so sure that Sethbert did destroy Windwir. At least not without prompting.” He pointed to the golden bird. “We know your bird was in Windwir. Did it bring word back to you?”
Vlad Li Tam’s eyes narrowed. “You suspect me. But I had nothing to do with Sethbert. Rudolfo was my work. Just as you were my father’s.”
Petronus felt the words hit him like a fist. “What do you mean?”
Vlad Li Tam shrugged. “You were made for this day, Petronus. Just as Rudolfo was made to guard the light.”
“You’re lying.” But Petronus wasn’t sure.
Vlad Li Tam smiled. “Regardless, I have something for you.”
He drew out a leather pouch and handed it to Petronus. “You’ll find evidence here that there was a secret program in the Order to restore the spell.”
Petronus took the pouch and placed it on his desk. “I don’t doubt that. But that is hardly damning.”
“There is more,” he said. “The bird did tell me that Windwir had fallen. But I did not send the bird to Windwir. It had been missing from its cage for nearly a year before that.”
Petronus looked up, surprised. “Where had it gone?”
Vlad Li Tam stood. “I intend to find out. I am leaving the Named Lands. I will not see you again.” When he said it, Petronus heard finality in his former friend’s voice.
They did not embrace or shake hands. Petronus simply nodded, and Tam left.
Petronus looked at the pouch. Finally, he picked it up, sat at his desk and unclasped the buckles. He drew two bundles of paper out and started scanning one. The first several pages were bank receipts in Whymer script acknowledging Petronus’s closure of Androfrancine accounts. These were followed by Documents of Transfer, moving all remaining holdings to the Ninefold Forest Houses. But the last page stopped his eye. It was a Letter of Contribution addressed to the Order and dated three days before the transfer of holdings occurred.
Vlad Li Tam had found a way to pass his vast wealth on to his daughter through the Androfrancine Order and the Ninefold Forest Houses.
Petronus retied the strings and placed the bank letters on the stack of correspondence that waited for Rudolfo, Isaak and Neb to sort through after he was gone.
He opened the second bundle-meticulous reproductions of Order correspondence and reports. He went through page after page, looking at the drawings and seeing it written plainly in some places, veiled in others. He watched it unfold in front of him, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from it. Beyond just the restoration of the spell, they’d made calculations and ciphers on the population impact of the Seven Cacophonic Deaths if used in a limited fashion. They had even developed a delivery system for the spell. A walking, talking and thinking machine brought back from the days of the Younger Gods, resistant to the magicks of such as Xhum Y’Zir.
Petronus felt his heart break for Isaak and the other metal men. These documents had to be forgeries. They simply had to be, because what he read stood in the face of everything he knew about the Order. True, he’d grown to hate it as much as he ever loved it, but he could not believe this. Sethbert’s decision to strike first suddenly made sense, and Petronus felt a pang of hot, sharp grief twist in his stomach as what he’d done settled in.
Then he saw Vlad Li Tam’s note at the bottom. The ink on it was still wet and smudged.
They meant to protect us.
It made sense now. The Androfrancines had ever considered themselves the shepherds of yesterday, guarding the New World from itself and from a past they feared might be repeated.
They meant to protect us.
He felt the tears now, pushing at his eyes, and his thoughts turned suddenly as that greater strategy took form before his very eyes. Someone out there had penetrated Vlad Li Tam’s network of sons and daughters or his closely shielded staff. They had somehow maneuvered the rescripting of the golden bird to implicate Vlad Li Tam in the Desolation of Windwir. A savvy player of queen’s war, when the consort was threatened, would have moved him to a point on the board as far removed from that threat as possible. Vlad Li Tam, dismantling his vast network, had done so.
But who was the other player, that Vlad Li Tam would remove himself utterly from the New World, transferring his wealth to the Androfrancine Order and donating his holdings to the new library, leaving nothing behind but his daughter?
Someone beyond the Named Lands.
Petronus felt his knees go weak.
The Androfrancines had known this, at least some part of them. And they had feared it even to the point of seeking out the terrible song of Xhum Y’Zir to protect the Named Lands from this invisible threat.
In the end, their best intentions for the light had nearly extinguished it.
Perhaps his actions had been justice. Perhaps they had been mercy. Either way, Petronus had done what he had done. Sethbert lay dead and the Order lay dead alongside him. He thought of Grymlis and the Marsher village so long ago.