Lamentation poi-1

by Ken Scholes

  It didn’t surprise him. Most kept clear of the Ninefold Forests because of those ancient ties, though on paper they shared kin-clave with many. But it was a kin-clave in the shadow of a past betrayal. The first Rudolfo had fled the Old World with his wives and his children and his band of desert thieves to hide in the far reaches of the north. But he’d fled before that Wizard King had sent his death choirs out into the land. Some legends even said that he betrayed P’Andro Whym and his tribe of scientist scholars for the murder of Xhum Y’zir’s seven sons in the Night of Purging, revealing their location to the old Wizard King. Because of that Y’zir had warned him of the doom to come and had given him ample time to migrate from Old World to New.

  Walnuts fall from walnut trees, he thought.

  He heard a quiet cough behind him and he turned. “Yes?”

  One of the Gray Guard-an old captain who should’ve been put to field years ago but had been retained to recruit new blood-stood in the center of the room. “We’ve more news, Father.”

  It had been a flurry of news. Bird after bird bearing note after note, all flagged by various threads of the rites of kin-clave. Red for war. Green for peace. White for kin-clave. Blue for inquiry. “What now, Grymlis?”

  “The Wandering Army has fallen back.”

  “They’ve retreated?”

  The captain shook his head. “They vanished in the night.”

  He nodded. “What else does Sethbert say?”

  “His consort is in the gypsy’s care. Li Tam has approved of the pairing.”

  Now this was surprising-and disconcerting. With Windwir gone, House Li Tam would now hold the bulk of the Order’s wealth. Perhaps, he thought, Vlad Li Tam had approved of the match before his Writ of Shunning had arrived. “Very well,” he said. “Would you ask the birder to see me?” Normally he’d ask his aide, but they were all busily inventorying the holdings of the Summer Palace and working around the clock to lay in the supplies needed for the Androfrancine Remnant to come home.

  The captain nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

  Pope Resolute sat back down to his desk, pulled a strip of message paper and dabbed a needle in the ink.

  He’d finished the message by the time his birder arrived with the fastest and strongest. Pulling the gray thread of urgency from his scarf of mourning, he handed it and the note over. “House Li Tam,” was all he said.

  After the birder left, Pope Resolute the First walked back onto his balcony and stood waiting. When he saw the hawk lift off, beating its wings against the sky, he felt his jaw tighten.

  I am the Pope, he thought.

  Shaking his head, he went back inside and closed the doors against the afternoon sun.

  Rudolfo

  The Marsh skirmishers struck suddenly and swiftly, their sling stones dropping one of the guards and two of the Androfrancines before Rudolfo’s scouts could converge on their position.

  A stone bullet whizzed past his head, and he drew his sword with a high whistle. Two of his half-squad slipped from their horses, pulling pouches from beneath their shirts. They hit the ground and rolled, the powder rite only taking a moment. Rudolfo saw them lick their hands and they were gone, fading into evening shadows. He heard the murmur of steel against leather and turned his horse in the direction of the skirmishers. He raised his blade and shook it.

  “Mind yourselves,” he shouted at the caravan as he galloped past. Already, they were tending to their wounded, though by the looks of it, at least one of the fallen wouldn’t make it. Rudolfo took it all in with a blink and followed his men into battle.

  Two magicked and three mounted besides Rudolfo… against how many skirmishers?

  It wasn’t quite?_anydark and it surprised him that the Marshers had come out so early. Usually, they preferred the cover of darkness for their work. He heard shouting and the sounds of a struggle ahead and spurred his horse toward it. They were already scattered, a ragged line of ragged men dressed in the stinking rags of the Marsh King’s finest. Whistling three bars from the Fortieth Hymn of the Wandering Army, he moved to the right as his other horsemen moved left. In the dark, beneath the powders his River Woman had ground from the roots of the ground and the herbs of the field, his two magicked scouts moved silently behind them, avoiding contact and conflict until Rudolfo whistled the Hymn’s sweeping chorus.

  Rudolfo had not fought the Marshers in years. From time to time, as kin-clave required, he’d ridden out to exact some price or another upon them. The Marsh King held a violent court, sending his skirmishers out past the edges of his land on a whim. They would bring their war to some small village or some outlying house, bury the dead they made, and then ride back to their swamps at the base of the Dragon’s Spine.

  Back in his father’s day, Lord Jakob had faced down the Marsh King himself when the tattered monarch decided to test the western borders of the Ninefold Forest. He’d taken him prisoner, brought him in chains to Tormentor’s Row and shown him the work of his Physicians of Penitent Torture. Rudolfo had been a young boy-younger even than when he’d ridden with his father to Windwir for the poisoned Pope’s funeral-but his father had let him walk with them. As they walked, his father had been careful to stay between Rudolfo and the filth-covered king, despite the proximity of the Gypsy Scouts. After an hour on the observation deck, Jakob had ordered his scouts to take the Marsh King back to the edge of the Second River and release him.

  Jakob crouched down so that his eyes were level with Rudolfo’s. “Never underestimate the power of mercy,” he told him. He thought for a moment. “But neither rely upon mercy overmuch.”

  Now Rudolfo nodded, remembering his father’s words so long ago. He held his sword arm down, blade pointed out to the side, as he lined up on a skirmisher.

  He whistled the chorus and charged forward. The Marshers rarely used magicks-raised up from the insanity of those first years in the Named Lands, they kept themselves apart from such things. Descendants who had never quite shaken the mantle of madness Xhum Y’Zir had placed upon their forebears. Even as Rudolfo’s stallion reared and brought its iron shod hooves down on a Marsher skull, his sword darted out like a serpent’s tongue, tearing through cloth and rotting hide to pierce a shoulder.

  The magicked scouts launched their own work now, and Rudolfo listened for them as they danced the line with their long curved knives. A blade glanced off Rudolfo’s thigh as he twisted in the saddle. His horse bellowed and he spurred him forward, over the top of the Marsher he had wounded. Then he spun, brought his sword down again and made another pass.

  Around him, he saw that the rest of his men fared just as well, coming silent to the task?nt widat hand. The Marsh skirmishers howled and growled and spoke in their ecstatic tongues as they rallied. They outnumbered Rudolfo’s half-squad three to one but they were on foot and hadn’t expected to face the Gypsy Scouts.

  It took less than five minutes to bring them down. When it was over, the two magicked scouts held their headman by his arms and let him watch as the rest of the half-squad killed off his wounded men.

  When the sounds of the battle faded, the Androfrancine guard approached. Behind him, Arch-Scholar Cyril followed at a distance. Rudolfo broke away from the others and rode to them.

  “How are the wounded?” he asked. “We’ll need to move quickly when we’re finished here.”

  Cyril spoke up. “We lost Brother Simeon. The bullet took him in the throat. The others will be fine.”

  Rudolfo nodded. “We need shovels.”

  The arch-scholar looked puzzled.

  “You’re Androfrancines,” Rudolfo said. “Surely you have shovels?”

  Cyril nodded. “I’ll send them over. Do you need men, too?”

  Rudolfo shook his head. “We’ll bury them ourselves.”

  Even Rudolfo climbed down from the saddle and took up a shovel. They worked quickly, digging out a large square hole in the soft ground. The two magicked scouts held the headman, and he watched them work with narrow eyes.

  They
pulled the bodies into the open grave, and then as they shoveled earth onto them, Rudolfo approached the sole surviving skirmisher. When he stood before him, he remained quiet for a minute, taking him in.

  He was much taller than Rudolfo, his hair and beard the tangled, matted mess befitting his rank in the Marsher tribe. He wore stained and tattered cotton trousers, a hide shirt-buckskin, though it was caked with mud and cracking-and low boots that seemed newer than the rest of his effects. Probably taken recently, Rudolfo thought.

  He stood before the man and nodded to his magicked scouts to release him. “Do you know this tongue?” he asked, and when the man stared blankly at him, he shifted easily into one of the nonverbal languages.

  But you know this one, don’t you? he signed, in the ancient hand language of Xhum Y’zir’s dark house.

  The skirmisher’s eyes widen?17;oused. Rudolfo needed no further prompting.

  Tell your Marsh King that Jakob’s boy has buried his own dead. He waited and the man nodded. Tell him the Androfrancines are under Rudolfo’s protection by Rite of Kin-Clave regardless of what he may hear. The man nodded again.

  Rudolfo looked at the empty patch of twilight and his hands moved again, this time in the language of his Gypsy Scouts. They fell back, and Rudolfo turned his back on the skirmisher, climbing back into the saddle of his horse.

  When he looked back the skirmisher was running eastward, and the moon, blue and green and full, was slowly lifting into a charcoal sky.

  Jin Li Tam

  The half-squad met Jin Li Tam and Isaak at the great arching doorways of the Seventh Manor. Their lead, a slight man with a long mustache and a neatly kept beard, stepped forward.

  “Lady Tam,” the scout said, “I’ve been instructed to request that you stay.”

  One of her eyebrows arched. “And if I do not wish to stay?”

  She’d dressed in loose trousers and an equally loose shirt, complete with a set of high, soft riding boots cut from doeskin. Isaak stood beside her, carrying her pack. She had her knife, tucked away beneath her shirt, but was otherwise unarmed. Though she couldn’t fathom Rudolfo’s men using force to keep her.

  “We will not keep you against your will, but we cannot permit the metal man to leave.”

  Isaak stepped forward. He’d put on clean robes, and because they were outside, his hood was up. His dim eyes lit the dark recesses of it as they flashed and shuttered. “You cannot hold me,” he told the scout. “I am the property of the Androfrancine Order and am compelled to obey the instructions of my Pope. It is not a matter of choice for me.” He turned to her. “You are under no such compulsion. It would be safer for you to remain here.”

  She had no doubt of that. Stay with Isaak, Rudolfo had said.

  He pulled himself up to his full height, towering above the scouts-taller even than Jin Li Tam. He limped forward.

  The scouts moved to block his way and he kept walking. When they put their hands on him, he pushed through and pulled them off their balance. “Please desist,” he said. “I do not wish you to be harmed.”

  And he kept walking, his damaged leg catching as he went. Jin Li Tam watched as he moved?hed" w down the cobblestones toward the manor gates. He was not moving fast, but she hadn’t thought he would. Obedience might be written into him, but at least he could control the pace at which he moved. She had no doubt that he could walk without effort, day and night, following the most likely bird-path to his destination far to the northwest. She looked at the scouts, who stood by watching their lead expectantly.

  “Whatever else he is,” Jin Li Tam said, “he is a machine made for service to the Androfrancines. You’ll not stop him. His script requires obedience to them.”

  The lead nodded. “We’ve been told to expect as much. But we had to try.” He sighed and looked to his men. “And we’ve readied a horse for you as well, Lady Tam.”

  She smiled at him. “I see that Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts are formidable as well as intelligent.”

  He bowed slightly. “We emulate our leader.”

  She returned his bow, careful to bend slightly less as fitting for her station. “Shall we ride then?”

  Ten minutes later, they overtook the metal man easily at the edge of town. He moved slowly, limping down the road, as if every step took him where he did not wish to go. He paused as they approached and looked from Jin to the lead scout.

  “If you don’t mind,” the lead scout said, “we’ll be joining you.”

  The scouts rode out ahead and Jin Li Tam hung back, matching her speed to Isaak’s. The air hung heavy with the smell of evergreen and baking bread. Tonight, she thought, would be the full moon.

  “What do you think awaits you?” she asked Isaak quietly.

  But when he looked at up at her, saying nothing, she knew it couldn’t possibly be good.

  Petronus

  Petronus waited by the river in the last dark gray before night became morning. He was glad the boy had spoken again and he was intrigued by the message. He’d urged Neb to say nothing to the others and then, when his bladder woke him and told him the night was nearly past, he rolled from his blankets and shambled quietly down to the river.

  The moon hung low in the sky, and as he urinated into the river, he watched that blue green globe and wondered at the power of the Younger Gods. Once, in the oldest, oldest times, it had been gray and barren. But according to the legends, the Younger Gods had brought it water and soil and air, turning it to a paradise. He’d even read one surviving fragment from the Hundred Tales of Felip Carnelyin, who claime?yinougd to have traveled there to see many wonders, including the Moon Wizard’s tower-a structure that could be seen with the naked eye on some nights. Of course, the fragmented parchment of Carnelyin’s exploits was now gone forever, reduced to ash in the ruins of the Great Library. He sighed and dropped his robes, turning away from the moon and the river to look back on the field of ash and bone. The moonlight painted it in deep, shadowed tones.

  “Are you here yet?” Petronus asked in a low voice.

  He heard a chuckle. “I’ve been here. I just didn’t want to interrupt your business with nature.”

  Petronus snorted. “I didn’t splash you, did I?”

  He felt the faintest breeze. “No.”

  And in the light of the setting moon, he saw the shimmer of a man so close he could reach out and touch him if he wished to. “So you’re Rudolfo’s First Captain?”

  “Aye. I am Gregoric.” Petronus watched the ghost move, pacing like a cat. “And who might you be?”

  Petronus found a large stone by the water’s edge and sat on it. “I am Petros.” He thought for a moment. “Of Caldus Bay.”

  “You had the look of a fisherman,” Gregoric said.

  Petronus nodded. “All my life.”

  The Gypsy Scout chuckled again. “For some reason I doubt that. You’ve been somewhat more than a fisherman, I’ll wager, though just what I’m not sure.”

  Now Petronus chuckled. “I think you just expect too little of fishermen.”

  The shadow crouched, leaning forward. “I have a man in Kendrick. He heard you work the crowd over. He watched you win them to this work. And I’ve watched you build your camp and dig your graves. I’ve seen how well you skirt the spirit of the law by following its letter. You’ve worked in statecraft and warcraft, I suspect.”

  Petronus inclined his head. “I think fishing is a bit of both, actually. Regardless.”

  “Regardless,” Gregoric said. “You don’t need me to tell you that Sethbert will not tolerate your toying with the law.”

  Petronus smiled. “They’ve stayed away so far.” But he knew the scout was right. So far, they’d been fortuna?;d " fte. Riders in the distance, coming close enough to see them with their shovels, then racing south. But any day, he expected them to close the gap and approach, to challenge them and perhaps even drive them off. Or try to.

  “I have it on good authority,” Gregoric said, “that you’ve had some help.”

  Th
e lieutenant, Petronus thought. “We’re doing the right thing here. I think there are many who would agree.”

  Petronus could hear the exhaustion in Gregoric’s voice. “Aye. It would be unseemly to leave the bones of Windwir to bleach in the sun.”

  Petronus rubbed his temples. He still wasn’t sleeping well. His dreams were full of fire and screams, but he couldn’t tell if it was Windwir that he imagined burning or if it was that Marsher village so long ago. Either way, he slept less and less each night.

  “Did you call me out to tell me what I already know? That the mad Overseer will come for us soon enough?”

  The shadow rose and stepped back. “No,” Gregoric said. “I came to tell you more than that. I think you are more than you are telling me. I think you are a man who needs to know what has transpired.” He paused and changed position again. “Sethbert used a metal man to bring down Windwir. He bought a man inside the walls of Windwir who wrote the scrolls for these mechanicals and scripted one of the mechanicals to recite the Seven Cacophonic Deaths of Xhum Y’zir in the central square of the city.”

  Petronus shuddered. He felt his heart stop a moment, felt his skin go cold. “I wondered how it went.” He paused, wondering how much he should trust this Gypsy Scout. But then he continued. “I thought at first that the damned fools brought it upon themselves-that somehow they called down the city upon their heads.” He picked up a rock, weighed it in his hand and then tossed it out into the river. “I guess I wasn’t too far from wrong.”

  “No,” Gregoric said. “I guess you weren’t.”

  Petronus stood. “So why have you told me this?”

  “I thought you should know what kind of man you’re up against,” Gregoric said. “You’ve heard the new Pope’s decree-otherwise, you’d not be so careful to remain outside the city’s gates.” He waited a moment. “His accusations against Lord Rudolfo are untrue. Sethbert killed the Order with its own sword.”

  Petronus’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.

  The silence grew uncomfortable, then Gregoric spoke. “We found the metal man that Sethb? math=ert used. Lord Rudolfo sent him back to the Ninefold Forest with Sethbert’s former consort, Jin Li Tam of House Li Tam.”