by Ken Scholes
He heard Gregoric sputtering on the tent floor, and realized in an instant that his first captain was trying to give the whistle to pull back. He feinted with one knife, thrust with the other, and gave the whistle for his men to fall back.
The shouting grew nearer and Rudolfo pressed his opponent, bringing his dominant, left-handed knife to bear after setting him up to follow the right. The Entrolusian lieutenant adjusted fast, and Rudolfo felt the skill and strength in his opponent’s two hands.
He is better than me, Rudolfo thought, the realization hitting him as solidly as any fist. And he’s trying hard not to show me?"3" that.
The tent flaps rustled, and two soldiers entered. They were down before Rudolfo could blink, their throats cut with expert precision. He smiled at the work of his Gypsy Scouts even as he cursed their disobedience.
We must flee.
And as if the Entrolusian heard him, he suddenly opened himself. It was not much of an opening-and one that someone less skilled than Rudolfo or his Gypsy Scouts might not have noticed. But it was an opening, and Rudolfo took it even as he wondered why it was offered.
He put the first knife in through the man’s kidney, and because it was Gregoric at his feet, he twisted it until the man cried out and dropped his blades. Then he put his other knife into the man’s heart, and as he fell, brought the first up and swept it quickly across his throat.
Before the man fell, Rudolfo clicked his tongue and heard three tongues click in reply. He followed the sounds of Gregoric’s labored breathing, and sheathed his knives. “Guard me,” he hissed to his men.
More soldiers entered the tent, and his Gypsy Scouts dispatched them with quick brutality.
His hands scrambled for Gregoric, found him and lifted him. He couldn’t tell if his first captain was conscious, but he found his arm, wet and slippery with blood, and pressed words into it.
Hang on, friend. I’ll see you safely home.
Slinging him over his shoulder, bent beneath the weight of him, Rudolfo left through the back of the tent.
He ran as fast as he could, his tongue clacking lightly against the roof of his mouth. The three scouts who’d stayed behind with him spread out so that two were ahead to clear their path and one was behind to guard their flank. They weaved a shifting line, moving to the left, circling back, then moving to the right. It was a chaotic pattern of movement following a path that few could predict.
When they left the camp and slipped into the forest, they were on the southern side of the camp. When they breached the perimeter, outward bound, they were on the western side. Along the way, the forward scouts had killed six and the rear guard just two.
They stopped at the edge of the forest to bandage Gregoric’s wounds as best they could.
When they laid him out on the pine-needled floor, the First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts stirred, clutched the front of Rudolfo’s scout tunic, and pressed a message into the Gypsy King’s neck.
Leaveeoma th me. I’m finished.
Rudolfo found his shoulder. Nonsense. You’ve a war to win for me.
Gregoric lapsed back into unconsciousness. When the other scouts tried to lift him, Rudolfo’s voice was harsher than he intended. “I have him,” he said.
His legs and back ached from the run. Even with the magicks, his strength was not sufficiently enhanced to compensate for this. Still, he crouched, rolled Gregoric up and over his shoulder, and lurched to his feet. They ran west along the edge of the forest, cut north and ran along the base of the foothills, then broke cover and ran the open, snow-crusted plain.
They did not stop running again until they reached what had once been the center of Windwir. The Rangers of Pylos stood watching the south, bows drawn, not expecting them from the west. Rudolfo whistled, high and shrill, and other whistles greeted him.
“I’ve a wounded man,” he said as he crested the edge of crater. He shrugged off the rangers when they tried to lift Gregoric from his back, laying him down himself. “Do we have a medico?”
But Rudolfo didn’t need a medico to tell him that somewhere along the way another part of the light had been lost from his world.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam read the note a dozen times before she finally burned it. And even after she burned it, it stayed before her eyes.
It had arrived early that morning on the bird her father knew could always find her, and she was not certain what it meant until she saw the long faces of her escort.
He will need you now, the coded note read. Comfort him and you will be his right hand. Then, buried in a deeper code: Grieve your brother’s sacrifice for the light.
When she asked the Gypsy Scouts about their downcast countenance, they told her of Gregoric’s death, and suddenly the meaning of her father’s note struck home. She’d gone to her tent then, and for the first time she could remember, she cried silently in the manner becoming of a daughter of Vlad Li Tam.
She had no grief for her brother. Instead, she felt a rage that spilled over to flood her entire family, her father most of all. The strategy was clear to her, certainly. A man is shaped by the events of his life. The Francines taught this and it made sense, just as they also taught that a man or a group or even a nation could be moved by stimulating their lives in the moments that they needed it. A bit of grief to build their compassion, a bit of loss to instill a value of gratitude, an opportunity for vengeance to temper wrath.
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.
“Excellency,” the group’s leader said with a brisk bow. “We beg audience with you.”
Petronus chuckled. “You need not start begging now, Garver. Regardless of recent events, I am still myself.”
Garver looked around at his companions, twisting his knit cap in his hands. “Yes, Excellency.”
Petronus sighed. Everything had changed, and part of him resented the boy, Neb, for his place in that, though he knew it was a road he would’ve walked with or without the boy. And the Marsh King’s role in this was also something he couldn’t afford to forget. Why were the Marshers suddenly supporting the Order? Or were they simply supportive of Rudolfo?
He looked up at the men, and lowered his spoon back into the bowl of cooked oats. They’d tried to give him a bigger tent and better meals to go with his fancy robe, but he’d refused those, insisting that he be treated as every other worker. He’d continued to make his rounds, though now under escort, and even stopped to help dig the bones from the frozen ground.
“What can I do for you, Garver?” he finally asked.
The man was clearly uncomfortable now. Before the proclamation he’d had no difficulty speaking his mind to Petronus, and the sudden shift reminded Petronus that this role he now played honored a lie he did not believe in. That somehow his station in the Order set him apart in some way.
Petronus looked across to Neb. The boy sat quietly, looking from Petronus to the group.
Petronus sighed again. “You had no trouble speaking plainly when the latrines needed redigging or when the supply wagon came up short on flour and salt.” He offered the best smile he could. “Nothing has changed.”
Everything has changed.
Finally, Garver spoke up. “Excellency, we know how important this work is to you, and we’ve come up with a plan to finish by early spring if the winter is as mild as the past three. We can rotate men and women into the camp just as we’ve been doing. The new supplies are coming in well, and the workers are overwhelmed by the Order’s generous wage.”
Petronus nodded. “Excellent.” But the look on Garver’s face told him that he’d not gotten to a point he was afraid of raising. “And the problem is…?” He let the words trail off.
“I don’t know how to say this, Excellency,” Garver said, looking around to his companions for moral support. Petronus followed his gaze. He’d brought the best of the lot with him, the smartest and most able.
“Say it plainly, Garver, like you did four nights past in the council tents when we talked about curtailing the hunting because of the armies.”
Garver nodded. “Very well, Excellency. We don’t need you here anymore.” He flushed. “Not to say we don’t want you. You’ve done right by us and by your kin. But we don’t think it proper for our Pope and King to dig graves in the snow.”
“And I think it’s quite proper,” Petronus said, feeling the anger rise quickly in him.
Garver swallowed, eyes shifting to the left and right again. “You mistake my meaning, Lord, but it’s from my poor choice of words. Any of us here can work a shovel or wheelbarrow. But only one of us can be the Pope.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “The world just lost a Pope and does not need to lose another. The fighting has stepped up. You will be safer elsewhere and able to focus on your work.”
Petronus studied the faces of each man around him, including the rangers. None of them looked surprised or uncertain. None of them looked as if they were ready to disagree. And if he were honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he could disagree with that wisdom either.
“What would you propose?”
Garver released his held breath. “Appoint someone to lead this effort in your stead. Work with them by the bird if you must, but don’t overlook your other responsibilities. The Named Lands need their Pope.”
Petronus sighed. “Very well. I’ll think on it and we’ll discuss it at council tomorrow. Is that reasonable?”
Garver nodded. “Thank you, Excellency.”
“Thank you.”
After they left, he looked across to Neb. “What do you think?”
Neb chewed a piece of bread, a thoughtful look on his face. “I think they’re right, Excellency.”
Petronus rolled his eyes. “Not you, too.”
Neb grinned but the grin faded quickly. “I think Sethbert’s men will come for you here at some point. Or try to. There is no dispute for the ring and the scepter if you are not alive. But more than that, I’m certain you’re going to need to convene a Council of Bishops under Holy Unction. There is much work to do beyond digging these graves.”
Petronus leaned back, realizing for the first time how much the boy had grown these past few months. Well-spoken and wise, firmly rooted in a classical Androfrancine education and yet so young. “And who do you think I should put in charge of this operation?”
He shrugged. “Rudolfo is in charge, by proxy, as the Guardian. He or one his officers can provide the military support and council
we need. You could appoint Garver or one of the others to oversee the gravedigging and the day-to-day logistics of running the camp.”
Petronus shook his head. “I’d want someone from the Order for that.”
Neb shrugged. “I don’t know then. Most of the Androfrancines went to the Summer Papal Palace. There are a few left, but I don’t know them.”
Petronus smiled. “How strongly do you concur with Garver’s recommendation?”
Neb scowled, his brow creasing. “I think you can do more away from here, in a safer place. Regardless of what we believe, there is another Pope competing for authority and attention, and the only way to prevail is to be a better, stronger Pope than he.” He paused, and his face softened as he shrugged again. “I concur strongly, I guess.”
Petronus stood. “Then you’d best find new robes, Neb.”
Neb looked at him, confusion clouding his face.
“I’ve just made you my aide. Your first assignment is the completion of the work here. Afterwards, you will join me in the Ninefold Forest to assist with the restoration of the Great Library.”
The boy was still sputtering and red-faced when Petronus left the galley, chuckling. He hoped he was making a good decision. He’d always been impeccably good at picking out the shephereouted-ds from the sheep, but this shepherd was terribly young and these sheep were a motley herd.
Still, the boy had seen the work of Xhum Y’Zir and lived to tell it. He’d been the guest of the Marsh King and the subject of his War Sermons. He’d proclaimed a Pope and buried his own dead.
But more than that, he’d known when to keep Petronus’s secret, and had known even better than Petronus when it was time to break that secret onto the world.
That alone was enough for Petronus to trust him with the graves of Windwir.
Neb
Petronus rode out three days later. Neb watched him and his escort leave the plains of Windwir and slip into the northern forests. There had really been no time for him to adjust to this new responsibility. But whenever he felt the panic rise in his chest, Neb remembered what Petronus had said to him.