Canticle

Chapter 1

Rudolfo

Late-afternoon sun washed the expansive forest in red, and Rudolfo watched it from the highest point of Library Hill. It had been a long day of paperwork amid the pandemonium that gripped his Seventh Forest Manor’s staff, and finally Rudolfo had fled under the pretext of an unscheduled inspection of the library construction. He had quietly strolled the basements and subbasements, grateful for the break in routine.

Of course, he couldn’t blame the staff for the chaos. It was, after all, his Firstborn Feast they were preparing. In mere weeks, Rudolfo would see his first child into the world, and it was the custom of the Forest Gypsies to celebrate that event with great vigor. That it was Rudolfo’s firstborn and an heir transformed the event into a minor affair of state, with dignitaries expected from a dozen or morehouses. Even the Marsh King was attending. Rudolfo smiled at this, knowing that the large hairy man who posed as the Marsh King did so at the command of a fifteen-year-old girl who was the true heir to that Wicker Throne. But tonight, Hanric would play the part of king alongside Rudolfo and the other lords in attendance. Those aspects of tonight’s festivities bored Rudolfo. Instead, he thought about the men who were the true hosts of tonight’s event-the men who rose to their captain’s challenge to honor their Gypsy King and the Gypsy King to Come.

The Gypsy Scouts could be proud of their work. They’d hunted and fished for six weeks to stockpile the game required for the festivities; they’d sent birds and riders all over the Named Lands to gather the finest sampling of wines and spirits. They’d even hired in cooks from the Emerald Coasts to study the best of the Forest recipes and reproduce them with southern augmentations to draw out the flavor.

Rudolfo chuckled. tonight, the Marsh King would sit to his left and the Entrolusian ambassador would sit to his right. The Entrolusians had sent their ambassador because Erlund was beset by the fires of rebellion on the Delta. When Erlund’s uncle, Sethbert, had destroyed Windwir, he’d hoped to shore up the Entrolusian economy by annexing the Ninefold Forest Houses with the help of his puppet Pope. Rudolfo and his kin-clave had pressed them back, and eventually Sethbert’s plans were unraveled and the Overseer himself tried and summarily executed for the genocide of the Androfrancine Order and their city.

How long ago had that been? Six months? Seven? It had crawled like years. League upon league of paperwork. Hour upon hour of meetings. Entire days that slipped past him without seeing the sky or feeling the wind on the back of his neck. The last time he’d stood here, the bookmakers’ tent was still below in the heat of Second Summer as metal man and Androfrancine and Forester worked together to reproduce what they could of Windwir’s Great Library.

Now winter wrapped the forest, and the bookmakers’ tent was packed away. Their tables now crowded the basements of Rudolfo’s Seventh Forest Manor, and the books they produced filled the hallways and spare rooms to overflowing. Until now, of course, when those spaces were suddenly required.

Rudolfo paused and wondered where they had managed to store all of the books. And how long ago had it happened?

What it pointed to disturbed him. I didn’t even notice. There was a time when he would have picked up on the slightest difference in the length of any one of his scout’s beards. But now mountains of books vanished beneath his very feet and it took him days to realize it.

He heard the clicking and clacking, the slightest wheeze of bellows, and turned to watch his metal friend approach.

“Lord Rudolfo?” a metallic voice asked.

“Isaak,” Rudolfo said. “You’ve found me.”

Isaak stepped into view. “Yes, Lord.” He paused, smoothing his Androfrancine robes with his metal hands. “I trust you found your inspection satisfactory?”

Rudolfo chuckled. He should’ve known the metal man would worry. “You are doing wonderful work here, Isaak.”

Isaak blinked. “Actually, Lord, there are many more besides myself performing this work. The list is rather extensive, but I have a file of names in my office for your review. Or I could recite them-”

Rudolfo raised a hand. “A compliment to all involved,” he said.

Isaak nodded. “Thank you, Lord. We serve the light.”

“We do indeed,” Rudolfo said. “But truly, Isaak, you are a fine foreman for this work.”

Isaak inclined his head slightly. “Thank you, Lord. Might I add that Lieutenant Nebios has been extremely helpful in that respect.”

Rudolfo had seen Neb’s leadership throughout the grave-digging of Windwir. That was when he’d first recognized that there was a fine captain buried in the lad. And some of Isaak’s methods looked surprisingly similar to Neb’s. “So he’s been advising you?”

Isaak blinked again. “I have been making inquiries and cross-referencing them against library holdings on Francine observations of human leadership dynamics.” He paused, releasing steam through the exhaust grate in his back. “Neb is a natural leader.”

Rudolfo nodded and stroked his beard. “Yes,” he said. “I see that, too.” But beyond what Rudolfo saw, the Marshfolk saw Neb as the one who would someday find-and take them to-the new home as promised in their Book of Dreaming Kings.

Rudolfo turned his eyes back to the forest and his home in it.

The sun was nearly down now, and the lights of the manor and the town called to Rudolfo. High above, as the sky went from purple to charcoal, swollen stars pulsed to life and a blue-green sliver of moon danced behind a hazy veil of cloud. Rudolfo drew in a lungful of night air and smelled the roasting meat from the kitchens far below.

“I suppose we should get ready for the feast,” he said, clapping Isaak on the shoulder and feeling the cool metal beneath the rough wool robe.

Isaak nodded. “Lady Tam sent a scout for you. I told him I would pass her message along.”

Rudolfo chuckled. A few weeks earlier and she’d have come herself, but the River Woman insisted she rest now. She’d balked initially but at the last accepted the midwife’s instruction and forced herself to bed. Rudolfo knew better than to taunt the tiger in her cage. “I was finished here,” he said, turning to Isaak. “Walk with me.”

They walked in silence among the massive, scattered stones that were slowly taking shape. The air was cold on Rudolfo’s face and his breath showed. Picking his way carefully through last week’s snow, he and Isaak descended the hill that was gradually transforming the Ninefold Forest, turning it into the center of the Named Lands.

It had already started, of course, not long after Petronus had executed Sethbert and transferred the wealth of the Androfrancine Order into Rudolfo’s name for the reestablishment of the library. And just yesterday, another university-this one a larger bookhouse out of Turam-brought their petition to establish a presence near the Great Library. Rudolfo had listened to their request, told them he was honored by their interest in the Ninefold Forest, and that he would take the matter under consideration. It was the fourth university to ask in as many months, and he wasn’t sure how long he could keep them at bay.

Rudolfo’s boot slipped on a patch of snow-crusted ice and he stumbled. He felt a strong metal hand grip him before he could fall. He glanced over at Isaak. “Thank you.”

Isaak nodded and waited until Rudolfo was steady before releasing him. They reached the bottom of the hill and followed the road back into town. Already, the forest between the hill and the town was thinning for new construction. Soon, Rudolfo’s Seventh Forest Manor and the small town that surrounded it would grow into a city.

What would my father think of this? Rudolfo paused. Orphaned at twelve, he rarely thought about his father. But he thought about him more now that he stood on the edge of fatherhood.

A handful of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts fell in around them as they walked. They hadn’t yet changed into their dress uniforms, and their rainbow-colored woolen trousers and shirts were damp from the forest. Uncharacteristically, they grinned at their general.

He smiled back at them. “I hear you’ve pulled together a Firstborn Feast like no other before it,” he said to them.

Their grins widened and then vanished as First Captain Aedric approached from town. His face looked worried and he gripped a note in his hand. For a moment, he seemed to study Isaak and then fixed his eyes on Rudolfo. “I’ve just had two birds from the Wall.”

Rudolfo stopped. They had inherited the watch on the Keeper’s Wall when they took on rebuilding the library. The mountain range separated the Named Lands from the Churning Wastes, the ruins of the Old World. The Androfrancines had controlled access to the one pass until Sethbert broke their back and Petronus dissolved the Order, passing its role on to Rudolfo and his Ninefold Forest Houses.

Shepherd of the light, he thought.

“What is happening at the Wall?” He took the notes and read them quickly. Coded into the message was an emphatic urgency. A metal man, clothed in robes, claiming to be an Arch-Engineer of the Order’s Office of Mechanical Science in a city that was now desolated. I bear an urgent message for the hidden Pope, Petronus, Rudolfo read. Sanctorum Lux must be protected.

He looked up from the note and turned to Isaak. “What is the name of the engineer who created you?”

Isaak blinked, his eyes flashing golden in the crisp twilight. “Brother Charles, Lord.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Yes. Brother Charles. Arch-Engineer of the Androfrancine Office of Mechanical Science?”

Isaak nodded. “Yes, Lord.”

He stroked his beard. “When was the last time you saw him?”

Gears whirred to life inside the metal man and he shuddered, venting steam into the cold night. “I. ” The mechoservitor paused. “The evening before the city fell. He had given me my assignment and sent me with the Gray Guard escort into the spell vaults.”

So it was possible that he could’ve escaped, Rudolfo thought. And perhaps he knew of Petronus-it certainly wasn’t impossible, though the old man had surely kept his secret from most. But it did not explain the metal man.

“And we liberated all of your”-he searched for the proper word-“peers from Sethbert’s camp?”

Isaak nodded. “I’ve accounted for my brothers.”

Rudolfo nodded. He looked at Aedric now. “What do you think?”

Aedric’s hands moved quickly into the sign language of the Gypsy Scouts. I don’t like it, he signed. “I think we ride for the Keeper’s Wall and see for ourselves what this is about.”

Rudolfo looked to his men and then to his first captain. They would go with me now, Firstborn Feast or not, if I said we must. The scouts were sons of scouts and had served the General of the Wandering Army and Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses as their fathers before them had, raised on the knives and the powders. And Aedric himself was Rudolfo’s best friend’s firstborn son. Gregoric and Rudolfo had been close since childhood, and when Lord Jakob and his wife were murdered, Rudolfo had taken the turban and passed the First Captaincy to his friend. They’d fought together in many political skirmishes and helped divert resurging heresies at the Order’s behest, equally earning their reputations as fierce leaders and formidable strategists. But Rudolfo knew the truth: A leader is only as capable as the men he commands, and his men were the best in the New World.

Their loyalty is nearly love, he realized. They learn it from their fathers. The reality of that gave him pause, and a thought pushed at his mind. He shoved it aside, forcing his attention to the matter at hand. “I concur with you, Aedric.” Then he used the hand language of the Gypsy Scouts in such a way that none could possibly miss it: But tomorrow morning is soon enough. We feast tonight as these men honor my first fatherhood.

The Gypsy Scouts were silent, but Rudolfo’s eyes darted over to see several of them grinning again. He smiled at them and inclined his head.

As they took to the road, making their way through the bustling streets of his growing tribe, Rudolfo brought back the thought he had pushed away. These men, he realized, were yesterday’s children, and they would pass their knives to tomorrow’s children soon enough. And in that brief time between, the world had changed again-and was still changing-as the Named Lands reeled and floundered from the loss of its Androfrancine shepherds. Still, the Gypsy Scouts would pass their knives onward, sharing what they learned from these precarious times.

And I will pass my knives, now, too, Rudolfo thought. He hoped they would be sharp and balanced for the world they were making.

Neb

Neb stalked his prey through the darkened Whymer Maze. He moved carefully, lifting his feet and placing them in the footprints he’d left earlier in their hunt. She was up ahead now, he was sure of it. He caught the faintest hint of earth and ash on the cold night air. It intoxicated him.

Suddenly, he felt something cold and wet impact the back of his neck. Bits of ice and snow fell into his shirt, and Winters burst into laughter behind him. Spinning, he lunged at her and she danced back and away from him and his flailing arms.

She grinned, pushing her dirty brown hair away from her face. “You’ve become clumsy, Nebios ben Hebda.”

Neb shook his head. “I would’ve heard you if I’d been magicked,” he said. The stealth powders that he trained with made Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts nearly invisible to the naked eye. Only used during time of war, the scout magicks also heightened their senses and enhanced their speed and strength, making them formidable opponents.

She smiled. “That’s the problem. You’ve grown dependent upon the powders-your senses are dulled without them.” She stepped closer and put a dirty hand on his cheek. “It makes you easy prey.”

Neb grinned and stepped closer to Winters, his hands moving up to fold her into his arms. Slender and willowy, she pressed herself to him and raised her mouth to his. She felt warm to his touch despite the cold.

When he’d met her, Neb thought Winters was the Marsh King’s servant or daughter or worse. He’d learned later that she was actually the Marsh Queen herself, hiding behind a more fearsome shadow until she reached her majority and could strike the proper balance of respect in the Named Lands’ elaborate system of kin-clave. They’d shared dreams together there on the edge of the Desolation of Windwir-dreams of a new home-and they’d walked long afternoons while Neb inspected the gravediggers’ progress. They’d even kissed in the shadow of the forest that hemmed in the ruined plains of that great, dead city.

It had been seven months, and he had forgotten how good she tasted. “This is better than the dreams,” he said.

She shuddered beneath his hands, squirmed and pushed at him. “Don’t you need to get dressed for the feast?” she asked, laughing.

He pulled her back and kissed her again. “Yes, Lady Winters, I do.”

“Then I release you to your responsibilities,” she said, slipping away. “I will see you in the morning.”

Winters moved away with a speed and sureness of foot that astounded Neb. Unmagicked, she was easily the best scout he’d seen. He followed at a slower pace, willing his heart to stop racing. He’d forgotten how powerful the draw to her was. Certainly, the dreams reinforced it. Bits of prophecy, strands of glossolalia and, sometimes, a sensuality that caught Neb’s breath in his throat and woke him up sweating and trembling. Even now, he blushed as he thought about it.

He left the maze and took the winding garden path up to the scouts’ back entrance to the Seventh Forest Manor. He could hear the woodwinds and stringed instruments trickling from the Grand Hall’s windows and could hear girls and scouts laughing in the kitchens. Neb slipped inside and found himself in hallways crowded with scouts and soldiers in the dress uniforms of the Ninefold Forest Houses. Servants bustled about, moving from room to room. Neb took the back stairs, and after a few twists and turns of the hall, he let himself into his small room.

Normally, officers in training stayed in the barracks, but because he was considered a member of Rudolfo’s household they had kept him in the same room he’d used since his first arrival in the Ninefold Forest. It was a small room divided roughly into a living area and sleeping area-the sleeping area was separated from the rest by a heavy curtain. A small wooden desk and chair sat near a large window that led out onto a small balcony. A few scattered pieces of art decorated the walls-two, he thought, were original Carpathius oil paintings of the Great Migration west from the ruins of the Old World. Carpathius had been commissioned for a series of paintings during the first millennial celebration of the settling of the Named Lands. These were from that series, showing the Gypsy folk in their tattered rainbow clothing-their leader, that first Rudolfo of legend, standing apart from the others-cresting a hill to look out over the Ninefold Forest. Those ancient green islands of old-growth timber isolated in the yellow grass of the Prairie Sea were to become their new home, and though their faces were tiny, Neb was convinced of the hope on them. Neb wondered what it had been like to be the first setting foot in a New World so long ago.

Unbuckling his knife belt, he hung the twin blades over the back of a chair. He slipped out of his snow-stained woolens and after quickly scrubbing up and shaving in the small bathing chamber adjacent, Neb pulled on his dress uniform. Ordinarily, Rudolfo’s officers came into their training with no rank, but in light of his previous leadership, running the gravediggers’ camp for Pope Petronus during the worst of the war, Neb wore the scarf of a lieutenant wound around his upper left arm. He sat down to pull on his boots and looked up when there was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

The door eased open, and Aedric, First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts, peeked in. “You’re running late,” he said, grinning.

Neb tugged at the boot. “Sorry, Captain.”

Aedric came into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. “Does it have anything to do with a certain Marsh girl who happens to be accompanying her king?”

Neb felt his cheeks grow hot. He opened his mouth to speak, but Aedric’s chuckle cut him off. “She has you quite firmly in hand, I imagine.”

The double meaning wasn’t lost on Neb, and now his ears burned, too. But Aedric clapped a hand on his shoulder, his chuckle now open laughter. “Take heart, Neb,” he said. “It happens to all of us at one time or another. Just be careful-Marshers are a strange lot.”

He doesn’t know, Neb realized. He thinks Hanric is the Marsh King. Rudolfo knew the truth, though Neb wasn’t sure how he’d learned it. And Neb suspected that Aedric’s father, Gregoric, had known as well. But Gregoric had been killed on the night they liberated the mechoservitors from Sethbert’s camp.

The Marshfolk survived because the rest of the Named Lands either feared or discounted them. Legend had them coming to the Named Lands just after that first Rudolfo led his band of desert thieves and their wives and children over the Keeper’s Wall. Carpathius had certainly painted no pictures of that event. At one time, they had been the house servants of Xhum Y’Zir and his wizard king sons. But-as the Androfrancines taught-the Age of Laughing Madness had not bred its way out of the Marshers over a span of several generations. As other settlers came to the New World, the Marshfolk were gradually pushed back along the northern edge of the Dragon’s Spine mountains into the marshes and forests at the headwaters of the First and Second Rivers. Someplace where their madness and mysticism could not taint the remains of humanity.

Of course, the more Neb learned firsthand from his dealings with the Marshers and their leader, the more he questioned the Order’s interpretation of events. The Marshfolk were certainly different, but not necessarily mad.

Neb blinked away the history and stood, grabbing up his knife belt and buckling it on. Aedric looked him over and adjusted the scarf of rank, turning the knot around to the inside of his arm. “You’ve commanded men during a time of war,” he said as he adjusted it. “This is the proper way to show that.”

Neb didn’t think of it as commanding men during war. He had commanded an army of gravediggers, doing his best to keep them alive and fed while the armies sallied out around them. He’d lost twenty men that winter to stray arrows and miscommunication and cold. Still, in the eyes of the scouts it was what it was. Neb was a veteran commander who felt like an orphaned boy most days. “Thank you, Captain,” he said, moving toward the door.

Aedric paused. “You may want to go easy on the firespice tonight. And if you intend to see more of your girl, you should be ready for an early muster.”

Neb’s puzzlement must’ve shown.

Aedric saw the surprise and continued. “We’ve received word from the Keeper’s Wall. Strange things afoot at the gate. We ride out with Rudolfo and Isaak in the morning.”

Neb felt the disappointment like a knife. Tomorrow was to be a holiday, and he’d planned to spend it with Winters as her schedule allowed. Still, he felt the curiosity as well. “What is happening at the wall?”

Aedric shook his head. “Tomorrow. I’ll brief you when we’re under way.” He grinned. “Meanwhile, make the most of your night, Neb.”

The large hand settled on his shoulder once more, and Neb suddenly remembered his father’s hand there. It seemed so long ago. Brother Hebda had been a fair, kind, large man who did more for his unsanctioned son than most Androfrancines. He’d even gotten Neb a grant to assist with a dig in the far east of the Old World. One morning they were loading the wagons, setting out along that same road-the Whymer Way-that led over the Keeper’s Wall at Fargoer’s Station and into the Churning Wastes beyond it. And by afternoon, Neb was alone in the world, watching the fire and lightning consume the only home and family he’d ever known.

He thought of Rudolfo, of Aedric, and last of Winters. I have a new family now. And somewhere ahead, he thought, a new home if Winters and the Marsh Kings before her dreamed true.

Neb forced a smile. “It will be a fine night,” he said. With a nod, Aedric walked to the door, and Neb followed after him.

He may not get his day with Winters but perhaps, he thought, he could have what remained of the night. The manor was filled with hidden passages-he’d used his knowledge of architecture and strategic building design to find most of them after stumbling across the first by accident. Maybe, when the party wound down, he would slip off to spend a few quiet hours with her before he left for the Keeper’s Gate.

Maybe.

Thoughts of it started him blushing all over again, and Neb found himself hoping that Aedric didn’t notice.

If he did, that First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts said nothing of it. Instead, Aedric laughed and clapped in time to the music from downstairs, improvising a shuffle-booted jig as he danced down the corridor toward the great, sweeping staircase.

Without prompting, Neb joined him in the dance and wondered what the night might bring him.

Petronus

Petronus looked out his cottage window before pushing another log onto the fire and returning to his crowded desk. He couldn’t quite place the feeling that kept him checking his window, but it was an uneasiness in his soul, the sense that a reckoning approached him.

I have earned a reckoning, he thought.

He was a fisherman’s son, but he had felt the call to the Androfrancines, and had joined the order to preserve and protect the light. He’d started out an acolyte like everyone else and had climbed the ranks to become their youngest Pope. Then, after a painfully short papacy, he’d left believing his life was becoming a lie. He faked his own assassination with the help of an eager successor and went back to his nets and his boat in the quiet waters of Caldus Bay. And the longer he was away, the more he was convinced that the Androfrancines’ backward dream no longer served the New World.

But then came the day he saw Windwir’s pyre in the northern skies. They’d brought back the spell of Xhum Y’Zir-despite his warnings-and it had undone them, reducing the world’s greatest city to a Desolation of ash and bone.

I have earned a reckoning.

He looked back to his desk. It was awash with paper. Every flat surface of his one-room shack was, too. Notes and maps and scraps of parchment.

At the center of it all, on his desk, lay the leather satchel Vlad Li Tam had given him on the day Petronus had executed Sethbert. With the same knife he’d used to gut ten thousand salmon, he’d cut Sethbert’s throat in front of them all in one final act that disqualified him as Pope and disbanded the Order. He had already invoked Papal Sanction to transfer the Order’s vast holdings and wealth into the care of the Ninefold Forest Houses. Rudolfo would rebuild the library and take guardianship of the light.

He reached into the open satchel and drew out the papers. He’d read them every day for the last seven months, and in the first weeks he’d read them over and over again, committing them to memory. He could recite them; and on good days, when his hands were steadier, he probably could’ve drawn the maps and illustrations they contained.

He studied them again now, starting with the first page.

By Order of Petronus, Holy See of the Androfrancine Order and King of Windwir.

His own name on the first form, authorizing research into the reproduction of the mechoservitors from Rufello’s Book of Specifications and the scattered, broken pieces of the Old World. And his own signature marked by the papal signet. This one didn’t bother him as much. He remembered seeing the head and torso and arm of that first model, remembered the sweltering heat of the massive boiler they’d required to power his basic functions. Still, it was the most impressive mechanical feat of the Old World that they’d been able to re-create until that moment. He remembered signing this order. It was the one beneath it that perplexed and enraged him.

It opened the same way.

By Order of Petronus, Holy See of the Androfrancine Order and King of Windwir.

But the unthinkable order that followed baffled him. Though it had nearly blinded him, Petronus had read every scrap of parchment he attached his signature and seal to over the course of his papacy. He had not signed this one. He would never have signed it.

But below, with the signet beside, his signature stared back on the order. It called for expediting the restoration of Xhum Y’Zir’s Seven Cacophonic Deaths in conjunction with the Office of Mechanical Sciences, ordering thirteen expeditions into the Churning Wastes under Gray Guard protection and magicked courier.

He’d not signed that, but someone had. And it had paved the way for all of the papers that followed. For two generations of metal men not intended merely to serve but also to be weapons, somehow immune to Y’Zir’s spell and thus perfect carriers for it. And for studies into the effects of limited recitals of the spell at strategic points in the Named Lands.

No wonder Sethbert acted, Petronus thought. He had thought the Order intended to attack him.

And here was the only note Tam left, the only explanation of his work to secure the light in Rudolfo’s wood and of his father’s work to build and break a Pope that the Order might be ended and the light might pass to safer hands.

They meant to protect us.

Somewhere, beyond the Named Lands, the Androfrancines feared something. Something powerful enough to turn them toward the weapon that Desolated the Old World and ushered in the Age of Laughing Madness. They of all people knew the power of that spell; they held the keys to the Keeper’s Gate and salvaged the Churning Wastes for scraps of light. They saw firsthand that handiwork two thousand years later, a wasteland of scrub and rock and fused glass and the dust of bones.

whatever they feared, it had to be significant to bring that weapon among all others.

And what if that threat somehow turned the Androfrancines’ weapon against them, using Sethbert as their pawn? Or worse, what if the fear of an outside threat was manufactured in a great misdirection ultimately designed to bring about the restoration of the spell and the destruction of the Androfrancines and their library? That pointed to a network of connections, skilled in forgery and espionage, with access to the Order’s archives and the resolve to murder a city. Vlad Li Tam was still the most likely candidate. But they’d known each other as boys, and Petronus believed him when he said that Rudolfo was his work, not the Desolation of Windwir.

Why would he give me the evidence?

The work bore the mark of a Tam. And Vlad had moved quickly to dismantle his network and remove it from the Named Lands. His house was surely involved in some manner. Why else would he flee, taking his vast system of courtesans and spies out of play, closing down the bank they had operated for generation upon generation and passing the House Li Tam holdings over to the Order in the days just prior to the Order’s holdings passing to Rudolfo?

Or perhaps there was indeed an outside threat. Perhaps the document that Petronus hadn’t signed was not a Tam forgery but the product of some hidden group within the Order bent on a secret agenda to defend the light at any and all costs.

Seven months ago, with Sethbert’s blood still under his fingernails, Petronus had given himself to the work of finding out.

He put the papers back into the satchel and went again to the window. A reckoning. The feeling was stronger, but the night was quiet. High above, a sliver of blue-green moon shone in the star-speckled sky. Petronus sighed and pulled the rough fabric curtains closed.

He shrugged out of his robe and pulled on his sleeping shirt before crawling into his narrow bed. He pulled the wool blankets up around his neck and lay on his side, watching the fire across the room. The light dancing there was not much comfort to him, but eventually sleep pulled him down into cold but strong arms. The fire continued in his dreams. A burning village, a smoldering city. Blood beneath his fingernails.

He stirred at a sound and sat up quickly when the door to his shack swung open. His fingers curled around the handle of the fishing knife he kept beneath his pillow.

The magick-muffled voice came to him from across the room, but Petronus saw nothing there. “And thus,” it said, “are the sins of P’Andro Whym visited upon his children.”

Petronus smiled and rose to the reckoning with his knife in hand.