He put papers in the pouch and put the pouch with the small pile of things he intended to take back with him to Caldus Bay.
By the time he’d finished packing, the tears had already begun.
Jin Li Tam
In the pandemonium that followed Sethbert’s execution, Jin Li Tam slipped from the pavilion. She’d seen something unexpected there-one of the younger Androfrancines looked surprisingly like one of her many siblings, and when their eyes met, he had looked away, and then vanished through one of the three wide entrances.
She followed.
She felt no anger over Sethbert’s death. He would’ve died regardless, she realized. A?€he realind despite the years she spent with him, at no time had she forged any kind of bond with the man. She had no more doubt that he had brought down Windwir than that her father’s hand was intricately tied to all of these events, right down to the execution that for all practical purposes ended the Androfrancine Order’s legitimacy. Certainly, those few who remained-the Remnant-could try to come back from this, but it would never be successful. And what could they come back to? She had no doubt that Petronus had wrapped the Order’s loose strings before disqualifying himself from the Papacy by wetting his hands with Sethbert’s blood.
She wondered if that were her father’s work as well.
The thought of her father brought her back to the moment, and she pressed her way through the gathering crowd. She caught sight of the young Androfrancine moving quickly ahead of her and she quickened her pace. But when she caught up to him, it wasn’t her brother after all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, slipping back into the crowd and looking around.
You want to see someone from House Li Tam, she realized. She thought about this. Why? Over the past few months, her anger had ebbed and flowed like the tidewaters of Tam Bay in her home city. When the anger rolled out from her, the sand in her heart filled in with grief to the point that she longed for the anger’s return. Inevitably, the wave crashed back to enrage her all over again.
But suddenly, now, at the end of it all, it was as if both her anger and her grief toward her father had vanished beneath the tip of Petronus’s knife. Rudolfo had told her once that people spent their lives living with a thousand insignificant injustices, and that sometimes seeing justice served on one great evil could move them forward from the path where they’d been stuck. That sudden death, both of Sethbert and the Androfrancine Order, left her hollow and spent, thinking only of the better world she hoped to give her baby.
She took her time returning to the manor. She knew she should wait for Rudolfo, but she felt a sudden craving for solitude, and knew that his work for the night was just beginning. There would be uproar to quell, fears to assuage and assurances to offer to what little remained of P’Andro Whym’s lineage.
It was near dark when she approached the hidden doorway near the rear garden, and she stopped. The door was open, and a figure stood in the shadows of the concealed passage. She drew closer and stopped again, suddenly afraid and uncertain and alone.
Her father broke from the shadows, dressed in a deep gray archeologist’s robe. He said nothing, his face unreadable and hard though his eyes were soft. She said nothing, certain that her own face matched his own and equally certain that her eyes did not. She thought she would feel the anger again at the sight of him, but absolutely nothing stirred inside of her.
Their eyes met, and he nodded once, slowly. Then he moved ?€Then he past her, his shoulder brushing hers as he went. She turned around to watch him go, and she thought he walked more slowly and with less confidence.
She considered calling after him, but she did not know what to say. Instead, she watched him walk away, and after he’d gone, she went into her new home and closed the door. She had a life to build with Rudolfo and their unborn son.
She did not find her father’s note until much later. She had not thought to look for it, though she could not remember a time when he’d ever failed to leave word for her. It was simple, scrawled quickly and without code.
For my forty-second daughter, the title read, upon the celebration of her nuptials and the birth of her son, Jakob.
It was a poem about a father’s love for his daughter. At the end of it, the father sailed into the waiting night and the daughter learned a new way of life.
Neb
The crowd caught Neb up and moved him. By the time he disentangled himself from it, most had left the pavilion to gather in the field outside. Voices buzzed, rising in an ever-growing noise. He stayed by the entrance watching Rudolfo speak with a handful of the Androfrancine bishops, even while his Gypsy Scouts loaded Sethbert’s body onto a stretcher to carry it off.
I would have done it for you, he thought. But he knew that Petronus buried his own dead in his own way and that he’d intended better things for Neb. Just as he also knew that the old man had no more wanted to kill Sethbert than he had wanted to take back the ring.
We do what must be done.
Isaak limped out of the pavilion. “Brother Nebios,” he said. “Have you seen Father Petronus?”
Petronus no longer wore the title, but Neb didn’t have the heart to remind Isaak of that. Instead, he shook his head. “He left quickly.”
Isaak’s eyes fluttered and flashed. “I am alarmed by the events of this day.”
Neb nodded. “I am too, Isaak.”
Isaak continued. “I know that what I have seen is wrong. I know that it goes against the teachings of P’Andro Whym. I also know that it must surely mean an end to the Order that brought me into this world. And yet I feel an unexpected satisfaction.”
Neb studied him, unsure of what to say. His own satisfaction came from knowing that the man who killed his father would never harm anyone again. But another man-P?€er man amp;#etronus-had made him an orphan all over again, bringing down what little remained of the only family he had ever known.
You were always an orphan, some voice deep inside of him said. He looked at Isaak again. He was an orphan, too, Neb supposed.
“I will look for him in his office,” Isaak said. “I must speak with him about what has transpired here today.”
Neb walked with him in silence, certain that they would not find Petronus in his office. He doubted they would find him at all, at least not around here. The old man’s work was done now, for better or for ill, and the world must now move forward from it.
They passed the canopy with its long trestle tables and benches, stacks of paper and bottles of ink. Even now, a few of the mechoservitors sat, gears humming and eyes flashing, as they wrote down the events of the council so that it might be preserved in the Great Library.
At Neb’s questioning look, Isaak paused. “I sent them out right away to record it all. I thought it could be important someday.”
Neb said nothing, and they continued without further words.
The office was dark and the door closed when they approached. The lamp was still warm when Neb relit, it and most of the papers had been neatly arranged on the desk for the next day’s filing. He saw an envelope with his name on it, and he took it, breaking the seal.
I’m sorry, it read. You were made for more than backward dreaming.
Isaak’s eyes dimmed, and his bellows pumped. “What does it mean?”
Neb lay the note back on the desk and leaned over the other pages. Notes and receipts of transfer, letters of credit, disposal of excess properties. All signed and sealed with the papal signet, and waiting for whoever would find them first. “It means the work goes on,” he said in a quiet voice. “It means we lament what light is lost and honor what remains.”