“Gregoric?” he asked.
“You should rest, Lord,” the chief of his Gypsy Scouts said again. “We can handle this first battle without you.”
“Yes, I should,” Rudolfo said. But he knew there would be time enough for rest-perhaps even a lifetime of rest-after he won the war.
Neb
The Entrolusian camp was as at second alarm when Neb slipped back into his tent. He’d run when the woman attacked the scouts, but he’d seen enough to know she was not the typical noble. The magicks had concealed most of her movement, but it was as if a violent wind had rolle [winow d across the clearing. Over his shoulder, he heard men shouting and falling, and a part of him wanted to go back and make sure the woman truly was okay. But she seemed the sort to take care of herself and that meant he needed to get as far away from her as he could. Now that he knew what must be done, he couldn’t afford to let her take him away from Sethbert, no matter how good her intentions might be.
The genocide of the Androfrancine Order hung upon the Overseer’s head and Neb meant to hold him to justice for it. He hid the pouch of stolen magicks. He’d seen the lady use them-the casting seemed easy enough.
He pretended to wake up when the serving woman entered with fresh clothing and a platter of breakfast. She placed the clothing at the foot of his cot and the food on the table, then curtsied at the door. She looked like she wanted to say something, and Neb watched her. Finally, she spoke. “I’ve just come from the officers’ mess. Word is that Rudolfo’s war-raven arrived this morning. There was a raid last night. An Androfrancine was taken right from his tent as he slept. The Overseer’s Lady, Jin Li Tam, was taken as well. And a half-squad of our scouts were butchered west of camp. These are dangerous days, boy. I’d stay close to the tent if I were you.”
He nodded. After she left, he wondered about the Androfrancine. He’d seen glimpses of him-he wore the robes of an apprentice, colored in the drab brown of the Office for Mechanical Study. He wondered if he’d been taken or if he’d left. And the thought of the dead scouts made his stomach sink. At least he was confident she’d gotten away from them. When he’d run, he’d not looked back but he’d also not had any doubt in her ability to protect herself.
Not only was she one of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen-tall, with copper hair that threw
back the sunlight and piercing blue eyes and alabaster skin, lightly freckled in the waning second summer. But now it seemed she was also the most lethal.
Neb moved to the table and ate a breakfast of eggs and rice, chased with a crisp apple cider and a wedge of cheddar cheese. While he ate, he plotted the assassination of the man who killed his father.
He’d never really thought about killing anyone before. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He had thought about it once about two years ago, but it was a brief thought. He’d been thirteen then and the Gray Guard had come to the school to make their annual round for recruits.
He was a big man, a captain named Grymlis, standing tall and broad in his dress gray cap, cloak, trousers and jacket-offset starkly by the black shirt. The blue thread of inquiry woven together with the white thread of kin-clave formed the jacket and trouser piping. The long, slender sword flashed silver as he whipped it in the air.
The orphans fell back, gasping, and the tip of the sword hung in the air, pointed at one of the larger boys.
“What about you?”
It hadn’t been a hard decision, really. Petronus sent in the Gray Guard scouts, magicked and armed with arrows that burned upon impact with a white heat that not even water could put out. Another ancient bit of science kept back from the world so that the Order could keep its edge and limit just how far humanity could go along its headlong path to self destruction.
Petronus sent them in, led by a captain who was already old for the job. Grymlis was the only Gray Guard that Petronus knew could do what needed doing to push the Marsh King back into minding his own and still be able to sleep at night, he thought. So they burned the village on Petronus’s orders, killing every man, woman and child.
Afterward, he’d insisted that they ride him out there. It had taken him a day and half. Grymlis had gone with him, though it was obvious that he did not want to, and did not think the Pope should go either.
Petronus had done the same thing then that he did now. It wasn’t a large village, but it was larger than he had imagined. And he’d approached it on foot, though an assistant led his horse. Ash crunching beneath his feet, he’d approached the ruined village until he could see it through the haze of smoke that still rose from it. He could make out the charred lumber. The tumbled, steaming stones. The smoldering, black
piles that had been… what? The larger ones were livestock. The smaller ones children, or maybe dogs. And everything else in between.
Petronus had gasped then, and covered his mouth with his hand, and even though he’d known exactly what he was doing when he gave the order nearly three days earlier, the realization of it shifted like the load of a wagon and it rocked him.
“Gods, what have I done?” he asked no one in particular.
“You did what you must to keep the light alive, Excellency,” the captain said. “You’ve seen it now. You know what it looks like. We need to leave.”
He turned around and walked back to his horse. He knew full well that the Marshers would not bury these dead. The Marsher way was simple: You ate or buried what you killed. You did not burn the living or dead-unless it was food.
The Androfrancines had come using fire and they had left those they killed unburied. The message to the Marsh King was clear. And Petronus was smart enough to know that Grymlis had only agreed to escort him back to the village because it added to the message: Behold, I stand at the edge of your field of dead and turn my back. The spies they had pointed out to him in the tree line would bear the last of the message back to their Marsh King, and Petronus’s neighbors and caravans would be safe for another three or four years.
As he rode back to Windwir from that village so long ago, Petronus had realized suddenly that his life was close to becoming such a lie that he could no longer live it. When he retu [. WPetrned, he started plotting against himself with the help of his named successor.
Now it was no longer a village before him. It was the largest, greatest city of the Named Lands. It had been his first lover, this city, and Petronus approached it.
Of course he saw the connection immediately. I’m identifying with past grief and seeking redemption for perceived wrong. He’d wondered if the Market Path would eventually show up along the Fivefold way, and here he was, getting ready to bargain.