by Ken Scholes
The Gypsy camp bustled with activity as word of a bird from home spread like fire in a dry summer thicket. It had arrived while they were at dinner the night before, just as it had no doubt arrived to the other camps, under the white thread of kin-clave and calling Windwir’s former allies to council. Winters had already packed, though she was not yet certain of her place in this new development.
She’d not met Petronus during the last war, and following it he’d vanished back into obscurity. And certainly, the Marshfolk had not held kin-clave with the Order, attacking its protectorates with ruthless frequency until her father’s encounter with Rudolfo’s father in the Ninefold Forest. This was clearly a matter for the Named Land states, and no bird would seek her out for it.
But she’d seen the look of concern upon Jin Li Tam’s face and knew from Tertius’s meticulous history lessons how infrequent a Council of Kin-Clave was. Of course, until recently-until her dreams had pointed the Marshfolk toward the Ninefold Forest-her people had held kin-clave with none. And now, their only ally was the Ninefold Forest. The thought of attending proceedings she was not welcome at went against her nature, though her hostess insisted that her kin-clave with the Gypsies was sufficient. Still, her place was with her people, and it felt wrong to leave them even for this purpose. She already felt negligent being so far south at this time, though the birds and couriers she received daily assured her that matters were well in hand.
“You are a queen,” Jin Li Tam had told her, her voice heavy with weariness from her fight the day before. “It calls for difficult decisions. And often,” she said, “these choices are not between good and bad but good and best.”
Those words still resonated with her the next morning as she wandered the camp. She’d finally relinquished her weapons and armor-there’d been no need for them here. She had no army here to bolster with such accouterments and she knew of a certainty that she could not face down one of these magicked skirmishers in the way that Jin Li Tam had. Instead, she wore the simple breeches, woolen shirt and fur jacket of a Marsh boy and she walked with her hands buried in her pockets and her breath fogging the cold air. Mud sucked at her sturdy boots as she went.
Tents were coming down about the camp, and she suspected the same happened among the armies to the south. They would leave the bulk of their forces behind, still locked in a Queen’s War stalemate, though she wasn’t certain why at this point. The Wandering Army had not yet successfully held the line, and the armies of Pylos and Turam had yet to press farther north, though she suspected it could happen any day. It was an in effective policing, more an image of action than any real staying force. The sheer power of blood magicks combined with the skirmishers’ willingness to fight until they were dead made for an untenable situation for all involved.
Especially me. Something was happening among her people-something that had grown up beneath their noses-and she did not know what to do about it. She simply felt some pressing need to be near them, to offer them some kind of assurance and be the leader that she was intended to be.
“Lady Winters?” The voice rose up above the clamor of the soldiers who bustled about rolling tents and packing saddlebags.
She turned and saw a familiar Gypsy Scout approaching. “Yes?”
“Our scout company from the north is in audience with Lady Tam; they’ve brought one of your men with them.” His face was blank, and there was a secret in his eyes that made her stomach lurch. “She requests your presence.” But his tone did not say request-it said requires.
Turning, Winters let the young scout lead her back to the tent where she’d spent so much time of late. Her time with the women there and little Jakob had been the only light in these dark times. With Neb vanished now from her dreams, they were filled only with blood and blades and pink scars upon pale breasts. But little Jakob, despite his obvious illness, was bright as the full moon in this darkness. And watching Jin Li Tam with him and then with her soldiers was an odd juxtaposition-a quiet canticle buried within a greater song.
She kept up with the scout and followed him to the tent. Then, she slipped inside as he held the flap for her. A somber company awaited her, and seated in the center of the room, Seamus sat trembling, his cheeks white from tears and his face bruised and battered. His clothing hung from him in bloody shreds. When he saw her, he looked away, and she raced to him to kneel and take his hand in hers. “Seamus, what’s happened to you?”
Jin Li Tam sat to the side. Lynnae and the River Woman were nowhere to be seen, but a small group of tattered and dirty scouts huddled near the heating stove.
Seamus bit his lip. “The Twelve are no more,” he said. “I’m all that’s left.”
Winters exhaled, her stomach suddenly clenching. “How is that possible? Just this morning, I received word from you that you were moving on to Kinsmen’s Rest to search for the mark there.”
Jin Li Tam’s voice behind her was gentle but firm. “Tell Queen Winteria what you told me, Captain.”
“He could not have sent word,” the officer said. “We found an encampment and took him from a cage within it. I lost six men getting him out, but I recognized him from the Summer Palace and couldn’t leave him.” Winters looked to him and saw the hardness in his eyes. “Things are awry in the Marshlands.”
Winters felt heat in her face as her eyebrows furrowed. “But what of the army, Seamus? You rode with the army. what happened?”
“Broken,” he said. “Scattered or dead by now, those that didn’t surrender and take the mark.”
She blinked at the news. The Marsher army was feared throughout the Named Lands. They did not surrender, certainly not to their own. How was this possible? Suddenly, his words sank in. She asked the question, but she knew what he meant and it chilled her. “Take the mark?”
Sobbing, he pushed aside his shirt and showed her the fresh cutting. “Oh my queen,” Seamus said, “I have failed you and the memory of your father.”
The sight of the broken old man and his tears crushed her, and she felt the water in her own eyes. She willed her lower lip not to quiver. “How did this happen, Seamus?”
He hung his head, and when he spoke, his voice was garbled. “We divided the army to search the villages. Each of the Twelve took a contingent. I took my men east to Valkry’s Rest to search the villages there. We found a hidden mountain shrine. Gaerrik and his contingent found another near Aensil’s Hope. We started searching our people for the mark.” He looked up, his eyes red. “Not everyone takes it by the knife. Some merely paint it on. Particularly those in positions that might require a more secret discipleship.”
She released her held breath. “How many?”
“Too many. There has been betrayal within the Council of Twelve. My men and I were ambushed in the night, both from within and without. Several of the council members were captured and given the option of taking the mark or laying down our lives. I do not know which were working against us, but I know our birds were intercepted and tampered with.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where are the others, Seamus?”
Seamus hung his head again and said nothing. She watched the mucous and tears trail down into his beard.
Finally, the Scout Captain spoke up. “The others refused the mark and were executed.” There was bitterness in his voice, Winters realized, but it was not the bitterness of judgment.
I’m losing my people. She felt the weight of that truth and wrestled with tears that threatened to shame her. She looked to Jin Li Tam. “I am needed at home. I cannot go with you to Windwir.”
“Certainly you must do what you feel is best,” the Gypsy Queen said carefully, but Jin Li Tam’s hands moved even as her mouth did. Reconsider this choice; you could petition for kin-clave. The Marshlands are in other hands than yours, and you will need help to take them back.
Winters nodded, but a part of her wondered if her lands could be taken back. “I will consider it.” She looked to the captain herself now. “What else can you tell me?”
“There is an old man who fancies himself a prophet. He is preaching a new gospel openly now, and people are listening.” She saw distaste on the officer’s face. “He points to scriptures that predicted the fall of Windwir-to the very day-and claims it heralds the establishment of an empress.”
Yes, she remembered Ezra’s words from her bathing cavern. The Crimson Empress. A new gospel. The memory of it ran cold fingers over her skin. The Marshfolk had no gospel but the Book of Dreaming Kings with its promise of Home and restitution for the wrongs done them in the land of sojourn, but he’d told her a new one arose. “What scriptures did he reference?”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t know what they were called. The old man recited from memory, but it’s nothing I’ve heard before. Judging from your people’s response, they’d not heard it before, either.” His brow furrowed as he pulled words from memory. “ ‘And it shall come to pass at the end of days that a wind of blood shall rise for cleansing and cold iron blades shall rise for pruning.. ’ ”
As his words trailed off, Winters was surprised by the voice that picked up the recitation. “ ‘Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,’ ” Jin Li Tam said quietly.
Yes. She met Jin’s eyes and saw something there that disturbed her. Swallowing, she took a breath and finished the recitation. “ ‘Thus shall the throne of the Crimson Empress be established.’ ”
There was silence in the room, and Winters saw how pale Jin Li Tam had become. The Gypsy Queen regarded her with concerned eyes. I must be pale as well. It would not surprise her-these recent events staggered her. Somehow this weed had grown up in her own garden, beneath her very gaze. Beneath Hanric’s gaze, too, and perhaps even that of her father. She could imagine it now though it boggled her: Secret meetings in the forest and in the caves. Quietly recited gospels by candle. Cuttings for those who could take them, painted marks that could be easily washed away for those whose faith must remain hidden. All the while, building a secret army of blood skirmishers to bring terror and bloodshed into the Named Lands on a winter’s night, and to prune the last of the Androfrancines from the New World.
A thought struck her, but she put it aside. It simply could not be possible. Still, it remained: Could this resurgence within her people have anything to do with Windwir’s fall?
“I will go to Windwir,” she finally said in a low voice. “I will ask the Council of Kin-clave there to hear my petition and help my people.”
Jin Li Tam nodded. “A prudent decision.” Her hands moved. I know these words from a dream; and old Ezra quoted them to me when we arrived. He said more. Stay after the others have gone and we will speak of these things.
Winters inclined her head. “Yes, Lady.”
The old man snuffled, and she turned her attention back to him. “You will accompany me, Seamus, and tell what you have seen.”
When he did not answer, she put a hand on his shoulder. She felt it shake beneath her touch. “Look to me,” she said.
He shook his head. “I cannot bear to, Queen.”
She knelt then, and using her hands, she gently raised his face to hers. Bending forward, she kissed his filthy forehead. “Sometimes there is no good path, Seamus, and we make the best of the one we choose. Sometimes others make the choice for us but let us believe we’ve done the choosing.”
His sobs shook him, and she encircled the wiry old man with her arms, pulling his face to her chest as if he were a wounded child. Perhaps we’re all wounded children, she thought before continuing. “This mark is only in your flesh; it is not in your soul. And I need you alive for what is coming-so I will choose to be grateful for the choice you made.”
She did not look around the room for anyone’s reaction and did not need to. The silence that filled that moment spoke more volumes than the Book of Dreaming Kings ever could.
All eyes were upon her; she felt them boring into her, but she did not care. She gathered the old man unto herself and held him as he wept, whispering comfort to his ear. And he clung to her as if she were his mother, begging her forgiveness and sobbing his guilt into her breast.
Already, her mind spun the words she would bring before the leaders of the Named Lands to plea for her people. Already, she cast strategies and questions at this newest turn in the Whymer Maze and categorized each by order of priority, all the while whispering comfort to the man in her arms.
In that moment, Winters found an unexplainable calm settling over her and realized then that she no longer felt the urge to weep. Instead, her full attention went to soothing and gentling Seamus in his shame as her own sorrow waited quietly for a later, private time.
Perhaps, she thought, mothers and queens were not so very different after all.
Petronus
The air grew warmer on the Delta, and Petronus took to strolling Erlund’s meditation garden by afternoon. Though nothing bloomed now, he could paint it in his mind’s eye and it calmed him. The Entrolusians had, at one time, followed the teachings of T’Erys Whym when they were in fashion, and some forgotten Overseer had even commissioned a Whymer Maze to be grown and set with the various markers of that darker meditation.
After hours in his room poring over volumes of kin-clave law with Esarov, it was good to be under the sky again, and it made him homesick for his shack and his fishing boat in Caldus Bay.
He’d led a peaceful life there for thirty years, until the day of Windwir’s pyre. I should’ve stayed home. But even as he thought it, he knew that second guesses and self-doubt were a trick of the mind. Each past road, the Francis taught, shapes our present. Change one bit of that long and twisting walk and you change all of it.
He could have let Sethbert’s own mete out justice, could have extradited the former Overseer as his nephew and governors had demanded, but he’d needed a visible antagonist while the Androfrancine thirst for vengeance was high. He’d needed them to place their rage upon that solitary figure so that he could then take action to remove himself from office and end the Order. Otherwise, the backward dream would have eventually reasserted itself.
Still, Vlad Li Tam’s words haunted him. Rudolfo was my work even as you were my father’s. The notion that somehow his actions were manipulated from a lifetime of careful stimuli and engineered circumstances hollowed something inside of him. He’d seen the anguish upon Rudolfo’s face after the Gypsy King’s encounter with Tam on the Emerald Coast. He knew what price the Forester had paid at that family’s hands, and the idea that he himself was also a river moved by those careful machinations gave rise to anger and doubt he did not want to face.
A dark bird shrieked far above, and he looked to it. It moved quickly northward. He watched it vanish and turned back to the maze. As he did, a low whistle reached his ears.
Petronus glanced over his shoulder. The guards stood at the garden’s gate talking among themselves. Once he’d made his declaration of circumstances, Erlund’s grip had relaxed upon him. Certainly, they kept him locked in his suites, but they gave the old Pope wide latitude as he wandered the grounds. After all, fleeing now would make him a fugitive not just of Entrolusian law but of kin-clave, now that he had invoked that right as king.
Slowly, he strolled toward the entrance to the Whymer Maze and paused there in the shadow of those tall thorn walls.
He kept his voice low. “Is someone there?”
As he drew nearer, the stench struck him. It was the reek of sewage. “Aye, Father,” a familiar voice whispered, “and I’ve crawled a river of shite to be here.”
Grymlis. Wrinkling his nose, he moved farther into the Maze. He felt a breeze where there was no wind and realized that the Gray Guard had not come alone. He forced himself to walk at a leisurely pace until he was out of eyeshot of the guards. “What are you doing here?”
Grymlis gave a low chuckle, his voice warbling in the grips of the powder. “I’ve come to see if you’re finished with this foolishness yet. I’ve men watching your keepers, and I’ve a fresh pouch of scout magicks. T
hough the escape route may offend your regal sensibilities.”
Petronus continued to stroll the maze. “How did you know to find me here?”
“We’ve been coming for a week now. We’ve been watching and waiting. This is just the first time you’ve gotten close enough to the maze.”
It was Petronus’s turn to chuckle. “Any closer and the reek would do me in far better than Erlund’s axe ever could.” He studied the air where he’d heard Grymlis’s voice, but the magicks held him well and Petronus saw nothing. “So you’ve come to extricate me, then?”
“If you’ll let me.”
Of course, Petronus realized, his Gray Guard had to know the answer. And yet he still tried. Because duty compelled him. All his life, Grymlis had served the light. He’d served four Popes in his time, offering himself and his sword to them. Even when Petronus had sent him away to bury his Androfrancine Gray Guard uniform in the loamy soil of the Ninefold Forest, the old man had come wandering home like a castaway dog. “You know I won’t leave,” Petronus said as gently as he could.
He could imagine the man’s shrug. “You know I had to try. Something dark rises, Petronus, and I have a sense of foreboding like none I’ve ever had.”
Yes. Petronus heard the uneasiness in the man’s voice and it alarmed him. Even the use of Petronus’s proper name betrayed that worry. And Grymlis was unshaken under the most dire of circumstances. If he sat still long enough, Petronus felt the same foreboding. A reckoning approached, and he stood at the center of it. “This game of Queen’s War has been carefully laid out,” he said. “This is a battle I can win now that kin-clave is invoked.”
“I don’t trust it,” Grymlis said. “It’s foolhardy. The Marshers are uprising. An Y’Zirite resurgence is in full swing there, and the Androfrancine remnant is systematically disappearing. You’ve heard about the Summer Palace? And the armies in the north?”
Petronus nodded. “Esarov told me.” He’d lain awake that night ciphering the news. Marshers that burned their dead.