“There is another Pope,” the Overseer finally said. “What does he say?” Lysias asked.
At Sethbert’s wave, the aide passed the note to Lysias. He scanned it quickly. “This changes the war,” Lysias finally said. “It is now a contest of words and swords. It will shift loyalties but it is impossible to say which. Or how we’ll stand in the end.”
“We need to fix the problem within our ranks. We will punish the men who fled.” “We don’t have the resources to track them down,” Lysias said.
“I have a better idea,” Sethbert said. “I will address it personally.” Lysias nodded. “And what about the gravediggers?”
Sethbert thought. “We’ll continue to subsidize their work in the name of the true Pope, Resolute the
First.”
“Very good, Lord.”
He smiled at the respect he had purchased at some small price. Or at least the form of respect. He
doubted Lysias had ever truly respected him. A man like that wouldn’t appreciate Sethbert’s strength of character.
After the general left, he turned to his aide. “Cross-reference the deserters with their homes of record. Send a bird to the Overseer’s Watchmen. I want a wife, a child, a mother, a sister. But don’t kill them. Blind them. Mute them. Tell them why.”
The aide paled. “Lord?”
Sethbert smiled, thinking about lunch and hoping it was pheasant or pork. “And when it’s done, have word leak to the men of it.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Now, fetch me a mechoservitor and tell the chef I’ll take my lunch outside today.”
The aide bowed and walked quickly away.
Alone, Sethbert righted the chair he had kicked over in his rage. Then he sat on it, and wondered what Rudolfo would do now that he was free. He’d been delighted to hear that the Gypsy King had delivered himself over to Resolute in the first place, and he’d known that he would not stay away from his Wandering Army and his Ninefold Forest for too long. His cousin was barely competent and no match for the wily fop.
But now, with Rudolfo’s alliance with House Li Tam through strategic marriage, his role in this deepened considerably more than just a Gypsy King enraged at the death of a city.
Sethbert took no pleasure in his lunch that day.
Neb
Neb read the proclamation again, his fingers moving over the ring buried in his pocket. He looked at the haphazard sketch of the Androfrancine Papal seal, a great finishing touch on the message, then returned to the beginning of the proclamation.
Oh My People it began, and it continued in perhaps one of the most moving documents he had ever read. It read with the resonance of ancient greatness, something that one could study but never emulate. Within it he felt the death of something beautiful, and the solemn, humble work of saving what could be saved knowing full well that nothing would ever be as good as it had been.
This truly was a man he could want to be like.
Of course, Neb saw Petronus’s mastery even in the way he led the gravediggers. At some point, Brother Hebda said he would proclaim him Pope. Maybe it was figurative, he thought. Maybe he was supposed to give him the ring.
He’d thought about it a dozen times since he’d found the damned thing. And each time, he pushed it back out of his mind for reasons he could not fully conceive.
He looked up again, and realized in his headlong walk out of camp he’d wandered pretty far into the ruins of the city. He looked around, trying to use the hills and the river to determine where he stood within the city. He was close to where the Garden had once been, or at least he thought he was. Not having walls and buildings to navigate by made it a difficult chore. But he picked his way north the equivalent of half a block, then west, then north again.
When he was reasonably sure he’d found it, he sat down in the ash and pulled his knees to himself. They’d already been through this part of the city, raking the ash for bones and artifacts.
Neb pulled the ring from his pocket and studied it for the hundredth time. It was simple and rare-the way that life should be. He’d cleaned it carefully by the light of a guttering candle when Petronus made his rounds around the camp at night. Now, it shone dully in his hand. He looked at it, turning it in the gray daylight of emerging winter.
“My king would speak with you,” a heavy, guttural voice whispered to his left.
Neb jumped, looking around but seeing nothing. Still, this darker light was perfect for scouts. “Who is your king?”
The voice moved now. “My king is the Reluctant Prophet of Xhum Y’Zir, the Unloved Son of P’Andro
Whym, Most Beautiful of the Northern Marshes.”
Neb hesitated as the voice continued away. He looked back toward camp, so distant now that he could barely make out the figures that moved along its edges. He looked north, in the direction that the voice went, and saw the line of dark trees. Behind the trees, smoke drifted into the sky from the Marsh King’s camp fires.
The voice returned. “My king would speak with you,” it said again. “You will not be harmed. You will return bearing his grace to your people.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Neb said. “I think perhaps he wants to parley with Petron-Petros, our leader.”
“No,” the scout said, moving away again. “No mistake. You are Nebios, son of Hebda, who watched the Great Extinguishment of Light, the Desolation of Windwir?”
Neb swallowed the sudden fear in this throat and nodded.
“My king would speak with you.” Now the voice grew more distant, and Neb looked back to camp once again.
Then, turning north, he ran after the Marsh King’s ghostly messenger.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo and his party made their last camp together twenty leagues northwest of Windwir. In the morning, they would split up. He would ride with his escort to meet Gregoric and his company of Gypsy Scouts well beyond sight of the armies encamped around Windwir. While he turned southeast, Jin Li Tam and Isaak would ride northeast with their escort and make for the Prairie Sea with all haste.
A cold rain fell as the sky shifted to twilight, and the sun slipped b¶
They huddled beneath canvas tarps hung low, using the pine trees as natural cover as much as possible. Rudolfo looked at Isaak, the rain beading and rolling off his metal surface.
“You’ll not rust, will you?”
“The alloy composite of my chassis is resistant to rust and other forms of erosion, Lord Rudolfo,” the metal man said.
Rudolfo nodded. “Well enough.” He leaned against the tree. A few paces away, he watched Jin Li Tam lay out a tent and pull it together and up with the practiced skill of a soldier. He watched her as she worked, enjoying the places where the water clung to her clothing, accentuating her curves. “I want to speak with you about the work ahead,” he told Isaak, his voice dropping.