He sat down, thinking about what it meant then to be Pope, contrasting it to what it meant now. Tonight, Rudolfo would raid the Entrolusian camp. Petronus had his doubts about the success of the
operation, but rebuilding the library would be a popular cause in light of the Desolation of Windwir. And
it was sound strategy to move the library north. The only unsound part of the strategy was the Androfrancines’ continued care of the light. Given their weakness now-from over a hundred thousand souls to maybe a thousand-there was no way they could keep the secrets of the Old World and even the First World safe from men like Sethbert.
You know what you need to do, old man, he told himself. You’ve known since you learned it was
Sethbert. You’ve known since that clerk proclaimed himself Pope.
Petronus sighed. It was easier then, with the trumpets and the shouting and the crowds. Because on the surface of it, there was nothing to be done. Nothing to be responsible for, not really. Archbishops and Gray Guard and scholars and lawyers shielded him from any silent moment of accountability. The closest he’d come to it was the Marsher village, and only that because he’d commanded that captain to take
him.
And yet, despite the clarity of strategic intent, she found herself suddenly full of doubt. Her father’s work consisted of dozens of living, breathing games of queen’s war, the move in this game connected in some way to the move in another. And she had believed-had been taught to believe-that his work was in service to the light, darker in many ways than the work of the Androfrancine Order, but critical for the
Named Lands to never go the way of the Old World.
But now, for some reason, his work enraged her. And at the heart of it, it was the perception of
Rudolfo’s mistreatment at her father’s hands.
Is this what love is? If so, she struggled to find anything useful in it. Love, she thought, should be whatever strategy best protected the greatest good. And who was she to question her father’s will? For all she knew, he merely added to a work his own father had carried forward. Who was she to question the work of House Li Tam?
This work will keep light in the world. And before she’d seen that pillar of smoke what seemed so long ago, she would’ve said without hesitation that the nobility of that end justified any and all means. Now, though, she hesitated.
When she knew Rudolfo was a few hours away, she cleaned herself and washed the red from her eyes and dressed in simple woolens and boots. Tonight, she would do her work-her part in her father’s work-but she would not dress it up.
Jin Li Tam went to the edge of camp with the others, including Isaak, and watched the line of metal men running in perfect synchronicity across the white ground. Alongside and behind them, as if riding herd, the Gypsy Scouts rode their horses hard. For the first time since meeting him, she could not pick her betrothed out of the group of riders.
Even when they pulled up, she did not recognize him at first. When he slid from the saddle and handed his reins to a waiting aide, she finally spotted him. But she stayed at the edge and watched him, gathering what she could.
He was not himself. He walked more slowly, his shoulders slouched, and his face was hard and tired and unspeakably sad. His eyes were rimmed red with exhaustion, and the line of his jaw was tense. He wore the winter woolens of a Gypsy Scout, and the dark clothes were stained with darker patches that she knew must be blood. She wondered if that blood was Gregoric’s.
She watched him pass instructions to another captain, and finally she could wait no longer. She walked out to him, and when he looked up at her, his expression stopped her in her tracks.
In that moment, something broke inside of her and a realization dawned within her-a certainty took shape-but she pushed it aside. After, she told herself, I will reflect upon this.
He did not express any surprise at seeing her so far afield e so="0from the seventh forest manor, and he only nodded and grunted when she told him she’d brought Isaak to look after the other mechoservitors.
She repeated this to the captain who waved Isaak over, but before the metal man reached his kind, Jin Li
Tam had grabbed Rudolfo’s hand and pulled him after her. He did not resist.
She called for a tub and hot water, for food and drink, and while the servants laid these things out, she sat Rudolfo on the wide cot and pulled at his boots.
The loss was hard upon him, she saw, and soon he’d move along that Fivefold Path of Grief the Francines spoke of. Now, he shook his head and mumbled and kept his eyes cast down and away from her.
Still, he stayed pliant, even lowering himself into the hot bath and suffering her to wash his friend’s blood from him. After, as if he were a child, she dried him with thick, heated towels and wrapped him into a heavy cotton robe.
While he sat at the cot and nibbled halfheartedly at a piece of cheese she’d sliced for him, she turned her back to him and poured his brandy.
Swallowing against the lump in her throat, she stirred in the first of the powders. Then she sat with him, forcing him to eat more and to drink down the warm spiced liquor.
After, she lay him back in the bed, blew out the lamps and crawled in beside him. Holding him close, she stroked his curly hair and ran her hands around the back of his neck until he fell asleep.
She lay awake a long time after, thinking of what was to come. She waited the full three hours, then stripped and pressed herself close to him, stroking him and kissing his neck.
When he responded, she pushed open his robe and crawled onto him, taking him into her and finding a rhythm that could sustain them both.
He clung to her but did not make a sound, even at the end. After, he fell into a deep sleep clutching tightly to her.
But Jin Li Tam did not sleep. Instead, she thought about the new certainty she had found when she first saw Rudolfo in his grief, and she knew that she had transcended her father’s will.
This child is not for you, she told her father deep in the places of her heart where she was afraid to go. This child is never for you.
She rolled over and faced Rudolfo, feeling the heat of his breath against her neck as he moved in his sleep to embrace her.
“For you,” she said. “Only you.”
As if answering, Rudolfo mumbled.
Jin Li Tam pulled him close and kissed his cheek.
And finally, sleep chased her down into her restless dreams.
Petronus
The men gathered around Petronus in the galley tent, and he looked up with raised eyebrows. Everywhere he went now, magicked scouts moved around him. Meirov’s personal Border Rangers formed his private escort. Someone had even dug up a fancy white and blue and purple robe-from the smell of it, a relic from an attic. Petronus had accepted the gift, but knew he’d not wear it. All he’d brought himself to wear so far was the ring.