Lamentation

Chapter 21

Neb

Neb woke up to a hand on his shoulder and sat up quickly. Winters crouched near him, dressed in a burlap dress that clung to her emerging curves. This close, she smelled of earth and smoke and sweat.

“I brought you breakfast,” she said, pointing to a chipped bowl set at a small table.

Neb rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You’re not eating?”

She shook her head. “I fast today. The world is changing.”

He kicked himself out of the blankets and stood. She stood, too. “Is the Marsh King back?”

“Soon,” she said. “Eat first.”

He went to the table and sat on the rickety wooden stool that waited for him there. The bowl was filled with boiled oats that still steamed, and the smell of buttermilk, honey and dried apples made his stomach growl. Near the bowl was a plate holding an assortment of roasted chestnuts, a chunk of bread and a bit of white, strong-smelling cheese.

Winters sat across from him, watching as he ate the food and washed it down with cold water from a metal cup.

“There was a parley this morning,” she said. “All of the lords attended, including Lord Tam of House Li Tam.”

“Did the Marsh King go?”

She nodded. “Our people were represented.”

He tried the cheese. Its sharpness saturated his mouth, driving out the sweet and sour flavor of the boiled oats. “What do you think will come of it?”

“Nothing but war,” she said. “Though when this hidden Pope declares, I think alliances will shift.” She looked at him. Her large brown eyes hardened. “Of course, the Marshfolk care nothing for Named Land statecraft and even less for Androfrancine politics.”

“Then why has the Marsh King brought his army south?”

Winters scowled. “Curiosity and kin-clave,” she said. “The Marsh King’s dreams have long foretold an end of the Androfrancine light. As have the kings that went before. For many years we even warred with the Androfrancines, thinking perhaps we could bring about that end.”

Neb looked up from his breakfast, surprised. He’d known all his life about the skirmishers, but had never heard a sufficient justification beyond ancient grudges and the residue of madness inEe oed. the Marsher line. “But why?”

She smiled, and in the soft light of the cave it carried a sweetness that he felt tugging at his heart. “Because when the light goes out,” she said, “the dreams of the Marsh Kings will be realized and we will be guided to our new home.”

She reached across the table now and laid her hand on Neb’s cheek. “Dear, dreaming boy,” she said. “If you could see the Marsh King’s dreams, you would weep with joy from the beauty of it. Your father has seen them, and the power of them brought him back from death to parley with you in your sleeping hours.”

Neb wasn’t sure which made him more uncomfortable, the Marsher mysticism or Winters’s hand cupping his cheek. He felt warmth moving through him, and something fluttered in his chest and stomach.

Winters dropped her hand, and he realized from the look on her face that she’d felt the discomfort, too. She looked away and blushed.

“I don’t understand,” Neb finally said. And he meant both the strange feelings this ragamuffin girl stirred up inside of him as well as the Marsh King prophecies.

“We are at the end of our sojourn, Nebios ben Hebda,” she said. “When all that was left of our peoples came to this New World from the lands beyond the Churning Wastes, the first Marsh King wore sackcloth and ashes, bathing himself in the dust of the earth that he came from and calling upon his children to do the same. Strangers in this land, we eschewed the Androfrancines and their light, loving shadow more because we knew the knowledge of the past could not create a safer future-it would merely remake the past. Even P’Andro Whym knew that a day was coming when his sins would be visited upon his children.” Her words tumbled out fast, her eyes alive as she spoke and her sentences rushing together. “A home-seeking is upon us and by the waking and the sleeping dreams, you are the one who leads our pilgrimage homeward.”

Suddenly she was speaking in tongues like the Marsh King, her eyes wide with wonder and fear. Neb saw the muscles tighten in her jaw and neck as she tried to fight the ecstatic utterance, but she couldn’t.

Neb opened his mouth to ask her if she was okay, if there was anything he could do, but his mind wasn’t able to pull the words together into a question. He felt something like panic growing in him, starting in his stomach and spreading throughout his body. He felt arousal and fear and rapture as his body tingled head to toe.

He opened his mouth to ask what was happening to him, and when he did he found himself suddenly speaking in tongues with the Marsh girl, their voices weaving in and out of one another as they finished one another’s sentences in a language that was no language but longing and terror and terrible sadness.

Her eyes Eoma tehad rolled back into her head now, and she fell away from the table to twitch on the floor. Neb felt his own muscles pulling him down as well, but he forced himself to his feet and went to Winters before falling to his knees before her.

Her arms snaked out around him, her strong fingers digging into his skin and pulling him down to the dirt. Holding her close to himself, Neb let his words wash through him and out of him, dancing with her own words as they held one another on the floor. Finally, the fit of language ceased and they lay still, eyes closed, their ragged breath the only sound in the room.

When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him. He felt the ache in his jaw and the rawness in his throat, ragged from words he was unaccustomed to speaking. “I don’t understand what happened,” he said, his voice rough and quiet. “I don’t understand how I could have any part in this.”

She stretched her neck toward him and kissed him on the cheek. “Dear, sweet, Dreaming Boy,” she said with a voice that seemed far away. “Understanding is not always necessary.”

Neb’s muscles were sore now, and he realized suddenly that he was still entwined with the girl. The tingling had become something different. The warmth of her body and the firmness of her hands as she held him were building toward something in him that was frightening and exhilarating all at once.

He disentangled himself quickly, scrambling to his feet. She did the same, and he realized that her face was as red as his. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She laughed. “There is nothing to be sorry for. The spirit moves as it will, so also the body.”

He looked at his half-eaten breakfast at the table, but knew already he wouldn’t be able to finish it. “I think I should go back to Windwir soon. They will be worried for me.”

A sad looked passed over her face. “I understand. I will see if the Marsh King has returned from the parley.”

She walked close to him, near enough for him to feel her warmth. Then the Marsh girl Winters quickly touched his cheek once more, and left through the back entrance of the cave.

After she’d gone, he sat and thought about her and her people.

A home-seeking is upon us.

Neb hid all of her words in his heart and wondered about the world that had changed.

Petronus

Vlad Li Tam’s wagons of donated supplies Enat3›‹ glaring="glaring" edge="edge" down="down" camp,="camp," as="as"›

“I would talk with the captain of this company,” Vlad Li Tam said to the sentries who stopped him.

“That would be Petros,” one of the guards said, turning to look for him.

Petronus stepped forward. “I’m here.”

“I come bearing the grace of House Li Tam and the Pope of the Androfrancine Order,” Vlad Li Tam said. “I would speak with you about your work here.”

Petronus gritted his teeth. “I’d gladly speak with you about our work, Lord Tam.”

The slight, older man dropped from his saddle, heavy in the armor he wore beneath his canary colored robes. “Let us walk together.”

They moved away from the camp and toward yesterday’s work. Petronus guided them toward a recently filled trench, feeling the anger build in him with every step. When they were out of earshot, he rounded on Tam.

“What game do you play at?” he asked, not even trying to mask the rage.

Vlad Li Tam smiled. “I play at the game of survival, Petronus. I play at the game of keeping the light alive.” He paused, his eyes narrowing as his smile faded. “I should ask what game you play at, Petronus. You could have stayed dead. You could have stayed in Caldus Bay. But here you are.”

Petronus knew Tam was right, and he knew that at least part of his anger was directed inward, toward himself. “I had to see it,” he said, his voice thick with loss. “I had to see what they’d done to themselves.”

“And then you had to bury them?” Vlad Li Tam’s voice wasn’t chiding, it was matter-of-fact, as if he were stating some obvious truth about Petronus’s soul.

He nodded. “I did.” He waved his arms around, taking in the four points of the compass. “These others weren’t prepared to do it. They’re too busy posturing and pointing fingers.” He stared at Vlad Li Tam. “We both know who really brought down Windwir.”

Vlad Li Tam’s eyes flashed. “They’ve done this to themselves. We both knew they would when they started playing with words that should not be played with. It was only a matter of time.”

Petronus felt his fists clenching and unclenching. “You claim House Li Tam had no part in Ehad"1ethis?”

Vlad Li Tam shrugged. “We monitored increased intelligence gathering in the City States coinciding with the discovery of the final fragment. My forty-second daughter, Jin Li Tam, was Sethbert’s consort until recently. She’d known something was under way but not exactly what. I knew an event of some kind was likely.” He stepped closer to Petronus and put a hand on his shoulder. “When or who-these facts eluded the best work of my sons and daughters.” He leaned forward. “But I do know this much-word of the final fragment was not initially leaked by the Androfrancines. They were most cautious.”

“And you did not leak it yourself?”

Vlad Li Tam shook his head. “I did not.”

“But you knew of it?”

He nodded. “I did. I had been approached years ago about storing something of great value and great danger in the Li Tam vaults. There was talk of scattering the fragments under Pope Introspect, but it was quickly abandoned.”

Petronus studied the man, then studied the line of his face, and tried to gauge the truth of his words. But Vlad Li Tam was a master of queen’s war and a master of himself. There were no telling movements, no revealing posture, no hints whatsoever to catch him in a lie. And not even the best Francine training could see through that perfect mask. “Then we need to know how Sethbert discovered the spell and what compelled him to take action.”

Vlad Li Tam shook his head and chuckled. “An Androfrancine to the end.”

Petronus felt his blood rise. He pointed to the filled-in trench, then pointed to a line of diggers closer to the center of the city. “A city lies dead, Vlad. A way of life is ended. What little remains of the light is guttering. If it weren’t for the mechoservitors, it would be all but extinguished now. I want to know why.”

“We all do, Petronus. But strategy would dictate that first, we shore up what remains.” Vlad Li Tam sighed, looking away for a moment before meeting Petronus’s eyes. “I’m afraid I have not been completely truthful with you.”

Petronus felt his eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean?”

Vlad reached into his belt pouch and drew out a yellowed scroll, rolled carefully and tied with Androfrancine purple. He passed it to Petronus.

Petronus read the note and paled. He read it again, this time more slowly, and the words finally came together. He looked up. “These are plans for the relocation of the Order, away from Windwir.”

He nodded. “Under Introspect’s seal.”

Petronus’s mind spun. “Why would they do this?”

“Defensive posturing,” Vlad Li Tam said. “It seems they had a sense of what was coming, too.”

Petronus racked his brain, trying to find some scrap of memory that might make sense of this. For two thousand years, the Great Library and the Order had occupied Windwir. They were the backbone of the Entrolusian economy, centrally located yet distant enough for a modicum of safety and privacy.

Suddenly, he saw Vlad Li Tam’s strategy more clearly and understood it. “The Ninefold Forests,” he said quietly.

Vlad Li Tam nodded. “I have been under Holy Unction by the Order for nearly thirty years-really, since just after you left-to groom Rudolfo for this.” Petronus studied him, surprised when the line of Vlad Li Tam’s face betrayed him in such a small lie.

Longer than that, he realized, but he didn’t say anything. The one person other than Vlad Li Tam that could truly say when this started had died in the Desolation of Windwir. But Petronus suspected that the work-both the study of the spell and the plans to relocate Windwir-had started well before he’d stepped down from the Papacy and returned to fishing.

Another reason you should have stayed, old man.

Petronus forced his mind back to matter. “You mean to continue Introspect’s plan, then?”

Vlad Li Tam’s eyes were hard, blue glass. “That depends on the word of my Pope.”

Petronus nodded. “Does Rudolfo understand exactly what this means?”

Vlad Li Tam shrugged. “He may or he may not. I’ll not tell him-I’m bound by Holy Unction. And there have been certain-” he paused to find the right word “-complexities in implementing the Androfrancine strategy. You studied the Francine way. Men can be shaped for a role, but it often involves sacrifice.”

Petronus’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

Vlad Li Tam climbed into his saddle. “These are matters best left in the past.” He settled himself and looked down.

“I am your Pope, Lord Tam,” he said, his voice taking on a tone that he’d not used in decades. “I would know of these matters.”

Vlad Li Tam laughed and turned his horse. “You are a fisherman, Petros, digging graves in the rain. When you openly declare yourself to be more than that, ask me again. Demand it of me, even, and under Holy Unction I will tell you everything.” He walked the horse in a wide circle around Petronus. “Rudolfo is taking back the mechoservitors tonight. The spell-caster is already in the Ninefold Forest, planning the library in the care of my forty-second daughter. They will want your input soon so that work can begin with the spring.”

Petronus nodded but said nothing.

“Declare soon, Petronus,” Vlad Li Tam said. “We’ve light to guard.”

As he rode away, Petronus realized two things. First, that once he declared he probably would not want to know exactly what Vlad Li Tam had done to prepare the Ninefold Forest for this time. Not just for the sake of being able to face Rudolfo, but also because of what it meant for the boy who had once been his friend, who had once shared his home and hearth and boat.

The second thing he realized was the more surprising of the two. The thought stayed with him long after Vlad Li Tam’s horse crossed the blackened landscape and galloped up the western hills to be swallowed by the forest.

As he played it out in his mind, following that river of reason with its many branching streams, Petronus realized that he would do whatever he had to do to protect the light.

Even if it meant letting the Androfrancine Order die where it lay, ending its backward-watching dream of two thousand years.

Resolute

Pope Resolute the First looked out at the blanket of white that covered the rooftops and courtyards of the Summer Papal Palace. The first snows of winter had fallen, and judging by the looks of it more would come soon. In the courtyards, staging areas had been hastily erected during second summer to catalog and inventory Androfrancine property returning by his order. From there, the goods were stored in barns, papers and books hauled into the Papal Palace itself. The migration north had grown to a trickle despite the invisible pretender’s support of the notion.

Now, another bird from the pretender called for the cessation of the migration as winter set in, deeming the northern routes too treacherous to risk what little remained of Androfrancine resources-human and otherwise. This new word called for Androfrancines to wait out the winter wherever they were, bidding them to remain patient and assuring them that new instructions would follow soon.

The order made sense. He’d sat down to write a similar proclamation, but Sethbert’s last message was insistent that he wait as long as possible to make sure the Order’s holdings were safe in his keeping, far north and ouEar hbet of the way of the brewing war.

But now, the pretender had given instruction of his own-countermanding Oriv’s-in this second proclamation from his so-called exile. Initially, Oriv felt confident of his cousin’s sense of statecraft and strategy, but keeping silent no longer felt appropriate.

He heard a quiet cough, and turned away from the wide window in his office. Grymlis, the newly promoted General of the Gray Guard, stood waiting.

Resolute studied the man. Grymlis was short and broad and powerful, especially for his seventy or more years. His short gray hair and beard bristled, and he wore his dress grays creased, the various bits of silver that decorated him shining brightly in the lamplight. He’d been in the service of the light probably longer than Oriv had been alive, retiring into recruitment activities and escorting high-ranking officials. He’d actually led Oriv’s caravan to the Palace, seemingly so long ago.

“We’ve another bird from Sethbert,” Grymlis said, extending the small rolled message.

Oriv took it, unrolled it and read it quickly. “Rudolfo is at Windwir without his Wandering Army.” He smiled. “Perhaps that bodes well for us.”

Grymlis said nothing, and Oriv could feel the hardness of his eyes as the general stared. “What?” the Pope finally demanded.

“I would worry less about where Rudolfo is and more about where the weapon is,” Grymlis said.

“It’s a mechanical,” Resolute said. “I’ve told you-the mechoservitor is harmless now. They can’t lie, you know. They’re machines. What they do, what they know, even what they can and cannot say is written onto tiny metal scrolls that they play out in their metal heads.”

Grymlis snorted. “Forgive me, Excellency, if I don’t share your trust of its word. It brought down a city. Genocide on a massive scale; over two hundred thousand souls lost along with the greatest repository of knowledge and artifacts this New World has ever known. I somehow doubt that lying poses any kind of obstacle in the course of its work.” The general’s tone softened. “If its script could be modified to recite the spell, then it certainly could be modified to lie.”

Oriv sighed. He knew the general was right. But the notion that things could go so very wrong in so many ways disturbed him.

Why? It was the question of the year and it applied to nearly everything these days. Why had Windwir fallen? Why had Oriv been spared? Why had this hidden pretender issued proclamations without having been pronounced and without having even submitted himself for investigation by what remained of the Order? Why had the Gypsy King come all tEKin wihis way under his own free will to turn himself in, only to escape as soon as the pretender emerged?

Questions. Nothing but questions. “I am the Pope of questions,” he said quietly. At Grymlis’s raised eyebrows he waved the old general off. “It’s nothing.”

“There may not be answers, Excellency,” Grymlis said. “If I may be so bold?”

Pope Resolute nodded. “Yes. Go on.”

“Your silence will be your undoing. People crave answers, but in the absence of answers, they will follow the loudest, clearest voice.”

“You believe I should answer the pretender’s challenge?”

Grymlis nodded. “More than that. If you are the Pope, be the Pope. If you are the King of Windwir in exile, then for light’s sake, be the King of Windwir.” His voice rose, taking on a sharpness that stirred Oriv.

“I am these things,” Oriv said. “I am.”

Grymlis’s next words marched out clear and slow. “You are a clerk hiding in the mountains, tallying up your leftovers while beggars and refugees bury your dead.” His voice became a growl. “While your cousin and his alliance play at army and tell you what they wish for you to know. While your banker diverts your Order’s funds into the pocket of a pretender you know nothing about. While the greatest weapon this world has ever seen walks and talks and serves Lord Rudolfo his chilled peach wine.”

The words stung him, and his first thought was to slap the general. His second thought was to demand his arrest. In the end, he did neither. He felt his shoulders slump. “What would you do?”

“Nothing… from here.” Grymlis strode forward, throwing open the doors to the balcony, letting the cold wind blow snow onto the thick Emerald Coast carpets that lined the office floor. “If you stay a week longer, you’ll have stayed too late. Leave the steward in charge. Leave a company of the Guard if you must. Set those who’ve come home to whatever work you will.” His eyes were sharper and harder now than a thousand angry dreams. “But for light’s sake, man, go out and be King and Pope. You’ll not sway the tide of loyalty up here in hiding.”

The words resonated. It was completely contrary to his cousin’s direction. But after the week with Rudolfo and the mechoservitor, he’d started doubting how truthful his cousin had been. And he still could not move past the fact that his cousin had known somehow that he was away from Windwir on the day if fell. He suspected strongly that Sethbert might even have had some hand in arranging that. Coupled with that, Oriv knew that hisEv k fr mother’s sister’s son had no love toward him and no loyalty to blood.

He’d even found himself wondering from time to time if Sethbert had somehow arranged the Desolation of Windwir as Rudolfo had maintained. Some of the refugees spoke of rumors, words passed from soldier to merchant to farmer and so on.

He looked outside again, then looked back to Grymlis. The old guard waited patiently.

“We have a reserve treasury here?”

Grymlis nodded. “Certainly.”

Be your name, something deep inside of Oriv whispered. Resolute.

“Very well, General. Ready half of the contingent. They ride with me under your command in three days’ time. Am I clear?”

“Perfectly, Excellency,” Grymlis said with a smile.

Now, thought Resolute, to be the clearest and loudest voice.

Calling for his birder, he crafted his reply to the pretender’s proclamations in as loud and clear a tone he could muster. Next, he wrote to Sethbert in the same tone, instructing his cousin that he would meet him on the plains of Windwir in one week’s time.

When he finished, he turned his chair so that he could look out of his window and watch the falling snow.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam sat at the desk in the makeshift office the steward and house staff had created for her and Isaak, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the work.

Tomorrow, she’d return to the River Woman and pick up her powders. There was no guarantee that they would work. These measures were only taken on rare occasions, when other strategies failed. And regardless of the efficacy of the powders, there was still the matter of Rudolfo ingesting them and rising to the challenge of copulation. The former concerned her, but not overmuch-she’d been trained by the best of poisoners, though she smiled at the irony of this particular situation-lacing his food or drink with a substance that would bring life rather than death. As to the latter-she had no worries. The Gypsy King’s soldiers might be swordless, but they needed no marching instructions.

She stood and stretched, looking across the room to Isaak. He sat at his own desk, his robes neatly pressed and cleaned, both of his hands blurring as they simultaneously filled two sheets of parchment. The pentips scratched lightly at the papers in a kind of harmony with one another, and his eyes flashed as he wrote. It took less thanE to sh a minute for him to fill both pages and move them aside with practiced efficiency, letting them dry on the stack as he started new pages.

She walked toward him, glancing down. Lists of books and authors and shelf locations from a library that was now a crater of ash and bones. “I’m going to walk,” she said.

He looked up, nodded slightly to acknowledge her, then continued.

She let herself out of the manor, and her Gypsy Scouts fell in behind her. She recognized Edrys, a young sergeant that had been with them at the Summer Papal Palace, and she smiled at him.

She turned to them as they left the manor gates. “Today, I wish for you to walk with me… not behind. I would know more of my new home.”

The two scouts exchanged apprehensive glances. “Lady Tam,” Edrys started, “I’m not sure-”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sergeant Edrys, have you been forbidden to have discourse with me?”

“No, Lady Tam. I just-”

She interrupted again. “Am I in some way odious to you and not worthy of your company or your conversation?”

He turned red. “No, Lady Tam. I-”

“Good,” she said. “Walk with me.”

They both hurried to either side of her, and together they went out into the streets.

A light, cold rain fell, and the air was heavy with the promise of snow. She’d climbed what they were calling the Library Hill the day before and had seen that the Dragon’s Spine was wrapped in white like a Marsh bride on her nuptial day. Within days, the snow would reach them here, whiting the forest and turning the Prairie Sea that surrounded the Ninefold Forest into a vast desert of snow dunes. The intense cold would even freeze the rivers in some places farther north.

It was a vast difference from the sunny climate of the City States on the Entrolusian Delta or the tropics of the Emerald Coasts farther south and west.

And this will be my new home.

They walked together at an easy pace, and Jin savored the cold air even as she shivered against it. The furrier was busily crafting her winter wear-boots, hats, heavy coats and pants-but they wouldn’t be ready for another week. Until then, she wore a parka she found in the back of her closEack2;bet. The Gypsy Scouts had gone from silk to wool with the changing of the seasons, dyed bright as the rainbow houses they served.

“I would know more of my husband-to-be,” she said to Edrys as they walked.

He paled at her statement. “Lady Tam, I-”

She laughed. “Edrys, you worry too much. I’ll not ask anything unseemly. I believe you can know much of a man by the men he keeps near him. Or would you prefer that I know my husband through the prostitutes he keeps on rotation or through the house staff that serves him?”

His face went red when she mentioned the prostitutes, and she smiled inwardly. Those surface details were simple matters to discuss, really. As were at least seven of the hidden passageways within the seventh forest manor. She suspected that each of the nine manors was a world of secrets in itself.

She suspected the same of Rudolfo.

“What would you know, Lady?”

“How long have you served him?”

Edrys did not miss a step. “I’ve served Lord Rudolfo all my life.” She knew this. Many of the Gypsy Scouts were the sons of Gypsy Scouts, raised on the magicks and the blades along with their mothers’ milk.

“And what is the single most true thing about him?”

Edrys thought about this for just a moment. “He always knows the path to take.” He paused. “And he always takes it, no matter what the cost.”

She nodded. This certainly seemed true of him. She’d been trained first and foremost to watch and to listen. She heard the things that were said and unsaid. She made a point of seeing the overlooked and underestimated. “Was Lord Jakob that way as well?”

Edrys chuckled. “I’m far too young to have known Lord Jakob. I was born the year he and Lady Marielle were killed.”

Jin Li Tam had certainly heard bits of the story whispered in her father’s house. An unexpected and violent coup in the Ninefold Forest led by a charismatic mystic named Fontayne. Fontayne’s cousin had been the steward at Glimmerglam, the first forest manor. First, they poisoned the Gypsy Scouts assigned to guard the manor and its family. Then, they butchered Lady Marielle in her sleep. They had not realized Lord Jakob and his heir had slipped out through a hidden passage in order to do some night hunting. Lord Jakob had returned at the sound of the alarm bells and was beaten to death in front of his son by Fontayne and his mob of insurgents.

Jin Li Tam had spent much more time watching and listening after her first visit with the River Woman. For the first time in her life she found herself doubting her father’s business, but she could not for the life of her understand why. Whatever must be done to move the world-that’s what her father stood by. And she did, too. Or at least she thought she did. It’s how she pleasured and occasionally took her pleasure from the men her father sent her to. She did her watching and her listening for him, first and foremost, and passed what she saw or heard along to her father for his work.

But now, she found that she questioned it. But why? It was perfect strategy at a level that not even the Francines could fully appreciate. For the price of a poisoned brother then, a formidable leader now walked the Named Lands. One who, according to the youngest of his Gypsy Scouts, always knew the right path to take and always took that path no matter what the cost.

And a part of that strategy, she realized, had always been that this leader be paired with a daughter of House Li Tam so that her father’s good work could be realized.

But why did he need this leader? What does he intend for Rudolfo?

And what did he intend for her? She thought about the powders that the River Woman made for her. She thought about the work ahead of her, quietly going about the business of giving him an heir. More than an heir, she realized. A child who would grow up to protect the light that grew where it had been transplanted.

Her head ached for a split moment as she thought of the very different life he would inherit. Rudolfo had ridden the plains, laughing and racing his Gypsy Scouts, living from manor to manor. That would change with the library. The seventh manor would become the new center of the world.

She shook her head, realizing she’d stopped walking, and she looked at Edrys, who had lapsed into silence. “I’m sorry, Edrys. My mind wandered.”

He nodded. “You were asking about Lord Jakob. My father served with him as well as Rudolfo. He said they were very much alike. According to him, Lord Jakob took the turban early as well, and it made him strong. He raised a strong boy and happenstance brought the same fate to Lord Rudolfo. My father thought he was much like Lord Jakob, only more ruthless because of the circumstances under which he came into his own.”

She stopped, and the words settled in. More ruthless because of the circumstances that brought him into his own. Lord Jakob took the turban early and it made him strong.

Unexpected tears leapt to her eyes and she blinked into the cold, her mouth falling open with surprise, not from the realization but from her reaction to it.

She saw her father’s strategy now, and saw that he hadEsaw="0 skillfully intersected Rudolfo’s life at key points to move the river into the path he deemed best, a path toward a Gypsy King guarding the light of the world instead of a Gray Guarded Pope.

She also understood that she too was a part of his plan for Rudolfo, and she felt both gratitude and despair, a sadness for the price Rudolfo had paid in order to follow a path he had not chosen.

She looked away, wiping her eyes quickly. If Edrys saw, he’d say nothing. She knew this.

“Thank you for the walk, Sergeant,” she said, turning away.

He cleared his voice. “By your leave, Lady Tam?”

She looked up. “Yes?”

“You could not want a better man. There isn’t a member of the Wandering Army that wouldn’t lay his life down for Lord Rudolfo.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Edrys,” she said.

As Jin Li Tam walked back to the manor, she wondered how it was that her mind could see so clearly the brilliance of this strategy and yet her heart could only grieve it.

Then she wondered: How could her father have known so long ago they would need a strong, non-Androfrancine guardian for the remnants of Windwir?

The first snowflakes of winter drifted down, and Jin Li Tam felt a deeper coldness washing through her heart.