Lamentation

Chapter 17

Rudolfo

Rudolfo picked at his dinner, thinking of the night to come. He’d dressed in his darkest clothing. He’d stretched, listening to his joints pop and his muscles crack as he loosened himself up.

He saved the game hen for last, then ripped into it with his hands. He found the small pouch hidd¦h="en in the carcass and put it beneath his red cloth napkin on the off chance that his dinner was interrupted.

I did not want this, he told himself. He hated that violence was now necessary, but Oriv brought it on himself. Rudolfo preferred stealth-particularly in a sensitive matter of state. Tonight’s antics would not look good for him nor his Ninefold Forest Houses.

Still, he hoped Vlad Li Tam’s revelation of another successor to the Windwir throne would work to his advantage. Perhaps it meant that the world would not stand against him after all.

Rudolfo took the pouch into his bedchambers and finished packing what few belongings he’d brought. Then, he took the pouch and dumped its contents into his hand. He stared at the mixture of powders with open distaste.

It was unseemly for a lord to magick himself, even under the most dire of circumstances. His father had insisted that he learn the way of the scouts-including the proper application of the magicks-but had also insisted that if he did his work well, he would never need to use them. Rudolfo counted it as a personal failing that now, in this moment of need, he had come to this place.

He flung the powder at the five points-forehead, shoulders, feet. Then, bracing himself, he licked the bitter powder from the palm of his left hand, and felt the world shift and bend around him.

The colors around him leapt out in dazzling force, an explosion of light that narrowed until he could pick out a crumb on the carpet in the dining area beyond his open bedroom door. Sound exploded too, as his own heartbeat filled the room. He felt the first wave of nausea and swayed slightly on his feet. His Gypsy Scouts practiced with the magicks, forcing their bodies to adjust to them. They could wear them for months on end with only the slightest discomfort. But he’d been closer to ten the last time he’d used the River Woman’s powders.

He remembered throwing up on his father’s boots that cold morning so far back in his memory.

He steadied his breathing, waiting for the room’s movements to stop. When it did, he moved through the room, dimming the light as best he could.

When he heard the commotion in the hall, he went to the door.

It opened, and a breeze that smelled of lilacs moved over his face. “Are you ready?” Jin Li Tam asked.

He moved in the direction of her voice, leaning in to see the faintest outline of her against the dim light. “I am. Where are my Gypsy Scouts?”

The slightest of stirrings. “We are here, General,” a voice said.

Rudolfo looked into the hallway at the body of the Gray Guard, stretched out on the floor. Already, one of the scouts pulled at it. Under any other circumstances it would be comical, watching the corpse slide-seemingly of its own volition-across the threshold and into the Prisoner’s Quarters. Once it was in the room, he stepped over the body and into the hall.

Invisible hands closed the door and locked it.

A belt was pushed into his hands, and he felt the sheathed scout knives, magicked with the oils that kept them as silent and invisible as the scouts that danced with them. He pulled the belt around his narrow waist and buckled it.

“What of Isaak?”

Jin Li Tam’s voice was near his ear now, her breath warm on the side of his face and smelling like apples. “He is with the archbishop.”

“Excellent.”

Rudolfo let the Gypsy Scouts lead the way, staying to the sides of the long, wide halls, finding the shadows where they could, and quickly dowsing lamps where the light was most likely to betray them.

They slipped past acolytes and scholars, guards and servants. Once, he and Jin Li Tam waited in an alcove while the two scouts found a better route. Once more, when no better route could be found, they waited while another Gray Guard was killed.

The Palace went to Third Alarm just as they reached the middle point of the stairs that swept up to the Papal Offices. Below them, the main doors burst open and a squad of Gray Guard, led by that ancient captain, poured in. They locked the door behind them, posted sentries, and scattered.

Rudolfo grinned at the danger of it. When two guards pounded up the stairs, he crouched and pressed himself against the hand carved railing. Once they passed, he continued up, feeling Jin Li Tam’s hand on the back of his knife belt.

The four Gray Guard at Oriv’s door did not have time to shout. Blades whispered and two of them fell, their shouts muffled by the scarves shoved quickly into their mouths. Rudolfo felt Jin Li Tam move past him quickly, and watched as the third guard’s throat opened to her knife in a red line that moved with a quick, careful stroke. Blood spilled onto his gray uniform.

When the fourth guard hesitated, his mouth opening, Rudolfo danced forward with his own blades, pushing one into the soft tissue beneath his chin and the other through the left side, into the heart.

He heard scrambling behind the door, and pushed it open quickly. Oriv was on his feet behind the wide desk, fumbling with a drawer, his eyes wide with terror. The archbishop raised a strange cylindrical device_ «ricqui212;a metal tube bound to an ornately carved pearl handle-and worked a small lever on it with his free hand.

Rudolfo saw the spark and ducked, feeling the heat from it as it singed the left side of his head. Behind him a heavy form fell, and he heard the sound of bubbling blood and the drumming of soft boot heels on the floor.

Roaring, Rudolfo pounced across the desk, pulling the archbishop to the floor. The weapon fell to the carpet, and the archbishop resorted to his feet, his nails and his teeth. Rudolfo fought back, keeping his grip on the archbishop as well as his knife. Finally, he worked the tip of the knife into the would-be Pope’s ear. He shifted so that his mouth was close to the other ear. “We’ve done this your way,” Rudolfo whispered. “Now we do it mine.”

The others moved into the room, leaving the bodies where they fell and quickly working the locks of the door. “We’ve lost Rylk,” the remaining scout said. “Whatever it was, it put a hole through his torso the size of a child’s head.”

Rudolfo resisted the urge to push his knife farther into Oriv’s ear. “Is anyone else hurt? Lady Tam?”

“Singed but otherwise fine,” she said.

Rudolfo looked around the room. He saw Isaak in the corner. “Isaak, are you well?”

“I am functional, Lord Rudolfo.”

“Good. Ready yourself for travel. We’re leaving.”

“But Lord Rudolfo, I am the property of-”

Rudolfo ignored him. He twisted the knife just a bit. “Release the mechoservitor into my care until this unpleasantness is past.” He felt Oriv’s muscles, tense and he pushed the knife. “You’ll realize soon enough,” Rudolfo said, “that my restraint has limits.”

“Killing me only reinforces your own guilt.” Panic laced the archbishop’s voice, and it pleased Rudolfo greatly.

“And yet,” he said through his smile, “you’d still be dead. Now do as you’re told.”

They stayed long enough to scoop the papers from the cluttered desk into a carrying pouch along with the strange weapon. Two minutes later, with Isaak bringing up the rear and Oriv under knifepoint at the front, they made their way down the stairs.

Soldiers waited at the bottom, swords drawn.

Rudolfo smiled and twisted the blade again, savoring the melody it made. Sweeter than any choir, the archbishop screamed for the Gray Guard to stand down, and they obeyed their so-called Pope.

Neb

It was Neb’s turn to inventory the artifact wagon. Petronus did it himself most of the time, but over the past several days, the old man had become further withdrawn. He’d started trusting Neb with more of his responsibilities, and Neb didn’t mind that at all.

He approached the wagon now, keeping the rolled parchment and pen hidden beneath his robe and out of the rain. They’d rigged a canvas covering with a system of ropes and poles. The wagon waited beneath it, guarded by an uninterested merchant who muttered and moved about to avoid the water that flowed in channels off the makeshift roof.

The merchant looked up as he approached. “How long?”

Neb looked over the side of the wagon at the muddy items stacked inside. He poked at it with his walking stick. “Two hours, I’d say.”

He nodded. “I’ll be back then,” he said, and shambled off to find some hot soup.

Neb pulled himself up into the back of the wagon and picked his way to the front. He spread the parchment out on a dry patch on the seat. Then, sitting amid the day’s collection, he started inventorying each item.

The workers gave a cursory look at anything they found. Initially Sethbert’s man had insisted they bring everything, but they quickly saw that the sheer volume exceeded the capacity of several wagons. Now they left the more mundane scraps they found, and saved only the most important pieces for the daily wagon.

Neb-or Petronus on the days when he did it-was the second pass through the items, giving them one more opportunity to pull out a cup or a blade or some other implement that had found its way in amid the mechanical birds or the copper globes.

The first hour always went fast and the last hour always went the slowest. Some days merited a third or fourth hour, but today the wagon was only a third of the way full. Neb typically went through everything all at once, tossing the unwanted items over the side and into the mud. After that initial pass, he then inventoried what was left.

But then, an hour into his inventory, he saw it in the corner of the wagon.

He was not surprised that he missed this particular artifact on the first pass; it wasn’t very large at all. The fact that anyone had found it was probably a small miracle. Perhaps the light had caught it just right there on the skeletal finger of the man who had worn it.

It was a simple affair-a plain ring made of a strange metal, dark as iron but light as steel. The signet itself was clogged with ash and mud, but Neb knew it before he spit on the corner of his robe and used it to clean the dirt out of it.

He’d seen pictures of this ring all of his life. And he’d seen the stamp of its signet on thousands of documents throughout the Great Library. He’d seen it on the finger of every man whose portrait hung in the Hall of Kings.

It was the signet ring of the Androfrancine Pope.

He looked around, unsure what to do. He knew Petronus wouldn’t want the ring to fall into Sethbert’s hands. It was just a ring, certainly. It had no magicks about it. But it was one of the oldest symbols of the office, something that could not be reproduced. And news was all over the camp that some other Androfrancine-someone keeping quiet but at least known to a few-had a more direct line of succession to the Windwir throne. Of course, Neb was the only one around who knew the truth about Petronus. He certainly hadn’t shared that information, which meant someone else knew. Or perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t Petronus at all that they were referring to. Perhaps it was another archbishop vying for the crippled Order’s highest office.

Still, during the time they’d worked together, Neb had quickly come to think of the kind, strong old man as the true Pope. Though it wasn’t anything he could conceive of proclaiming-regardless of what Brother Hebda told him in his dreams.

In the end, he slipped the ring in his pocket. At the very least, he could keep it from some pretender’s finger. At the very best, if Petronus took back his rightful place the ring would be nearby.

Neb resumed his inventory, feeling the weight of millennia in his pocket and not knowing quite what to do with it.

Jin Li Tam

They rode for a night and a day, only stopping for minutes at a time. Jin Li Tam and Rudolfo galloped their stallions side by side, riding without words.

By morning, she’d felt her senses falling back into their normal place. By early afternoon the last of the magicks had burned out, and she felt the weariness of withdrawal aching in her limbs. Scouts spent years practicing the magicks, learning the rhythms of their bodies and picking up the tricks of the trade that made withdrawal less of an issue. The fact that magicks were only used during time of war-and by only the most elite of soldiers-also made a difference.

Though not officially a scout, she’d spent enough time with the scouts. Still, these she rode with now could stay magicked for days at a time-even weeks-without undue effect. She could barely handle a day of it.

‹«heh n/div›

They were a full squad now, between Rudolfo’s escort and her own, less the man who’d been killed by the archbishop. They kept her and Rudolfo in the middle with Isaak as they rode, and they kept their blades tucked back beneath their arms, ready to bring them forward with a moment’s notice.

When it was well past dark, they stopped to make camp. They rode their horses into a forest of old growth pine a league or better from the muddy track that served as the solitary road this far north.

Rudolfo pulled away with his lead scout while the others set up camp. Jin Li Tam tried to make herself useful, but in the end she was only in the way. The Gypsy Scouts moved with precision, quickly putting up tents and laying in a small fire.

Of course, Oriv would be a fool to have them followed. His already limited Gray Guard had been thinned by a handful of men. He’d not risk losing more or leaving his Palace unguarded. If he went looking for vengeance-and Jin was not sure he was the sort to do so-he would hire it out. Or turn to his cousin. She had no doubt that birds were already winging their way rapidly south and east, carrying news of Rudolfo’s escape.

Isaak had not spoken since leaving Oriv’s office, and for the first time since they’d left she realized he no longer wore his Androfrancine robe. How had she missed that? He sat against a tree, staring out through the woods at nothing. His bellows shook from time to time, as if he heaved sighs that his chassis was not designed for. She could see the intricacies now of his metal frame and musculature. His long, slender arms and legs and his helmetlike head with his jeweled eyes all glistened dully as the Gypsy Scout struck the sparks for their fire. His mouth opened and closed periodically.

Jin Li Tam walked to him and crouched. “Isaak?”

He did not respond. She reached out a hand, hesitated, and then lowered it onto his cold, metal shoulder. He spun, eyelids flashing to life as his hand came up. He paused. “Apologies, Lady Tam.”

“Where are your robes?”

His eye-shutters flitted and steam released from his back. “Pope Resolute ordered me to remove them. He said it was unseemly for a mechanical to wear the habit of P’Andro Whym.”

“I suspect,” Jin Li Tam said, “that P’Andro Whym would have been glad for you to wear it.” She waited, wondering if she should continue. “Is that what troubles you?”

Isaak looked up, his eyes full of a sorrow of such magnitude that she had only seen once before. “No, Lady Tam. I am troubled by another matter.”

She felt her eyebrows knit together. amp;«nit

“I fear,” Isaak said, “that I am malfunctioning. I do not believe I will serve well to assist with restoration of the library.” He paused, and his mouth clacked open and closed in a metallic stammer. “I am no longer… reliable.”

“In what way?” Around them, the scouts put the last finishing touches on the camp. She could smell the onions that the cook sliced as he prepared dinner.

Isaak looked back out at the forest. “Pope Resolute asked me many questions. Difficult questions. About my role in the Desolation of Windwir.” He paused. “Then he asked me if I could reproduce the spell from recall, in writing.”

Jin Li Tam felt her stomach clench. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask it.

Isaak continued, still staring off into the forest. “When he asked me to, I told him I could not. I told him that part of my memory scroll had been damaged in the execution of the spell.”

Jin Li Tam sighed. “And he believed you?”

“Of course he believed me. Mechanicals cannot lie.”

She nodded. “You are worried that you are malfunctioning because you lied to the archbishop?”

“Yes,” Isaak said, turning back to look at her. “How can a mechanical lie? I think-” He sobbed, and the violence of it cause Jin Li Tam to jump back. “I think perhaps the spell altered me.”

It changed all of us, she thought. “If it did, Isaak, then it was for good. You are carrying the most dangerous weapon the world has ever known. A spell that killed a world to satisfy a father’s wrath. A death for each of the seven sons P’Andro Whym executed in his Restoration Scientifika pogrom. Those Deaths must be kept hidden in you, Isaak. The Androfrancines were the best and noblest of us-with infinite patience, studying their matrices and working their ciphers, only releasing to the world what secrets and wonders it was ready for. If they couldn’t safeguard this secret, no others of us could. You are the safest tomb for it until it can be removed and destroyed.” She paused, charting her course of words carefully. “If you must lie to keep this secret, then lie.” Her eyes narrowed. “There is no price too high, Isaak.”

She waited to see if he would respond. When he didn’t, she put her hand on his chest, her fingers splayed out. Where his shoulder had been cool, his chest was warm. “Change is the path life takes,” she told him. “Maybe the death you have seen has brought you life.”

“It is an odd sensation,” he said in agreement.

She opened her mouth to speak again but Rudolfo interrupted her as he swaggered in from the forest. “Hail, Isaak,” he shouted, and tossed a bundle toward the metal man.

Isaak caught it and stared down at it.

“I thought perhaps you could use it. I picked it up on our way out.”

Jin Li Tam looked at the bundle now too, and felt the smile pulling at her mouth.

In that moment, she suddenly knew that love was planted in her heart toward the laughing Gypsy King, Rudolfo.

She smiled at Rudolfo while Isaak stood and dressed himself in Androfrancine robes.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam was not even halfway to the Emerald Coasts when the bird found him. This bird always found him. He was riding when it settled upon his shoulder and nibbled playfully at his beard. He’d petted it and raised his fist to signify a halt. They helped him down from the saddle, and he pulled the message.

While he read it, his servants hastily erected a tent and chair for him to sit in. He summoned his master sergeant and his aide. “There has been a significant change in the course of events,” he finally said after leaving them in silence for a time. “I have in my hands a decree from our invisible Pope. Of course, he doesn’t name himself. But he has the tone of authority, the confident positioning of his words.”

Vlad Li Tam stopped, took the message and passed it to his aide, who sat quickly and began to study it, making ciphers in the margins. “He’s moved faster than we thought he would,” the aide said.

“But without his name,” Vlad Li Tam, “we have nothing but words.”

The aide went back to reading. “He encourages the continued gathering of resources at the Papal Summer Palace and commends Archbishop Oriv for his strategic effort on behalf of the Order.” Then he shook his head, amazed. “And then exercises his Right of King by way of kin-clave to declare war on Lord Sethbert, Overseer of the Entrolusian City States.”

“Note that,” Vlad Li Tam said, accepting his kallaberry pipe from the servant who was setting luncheon. “He does not declare war on the City States themselves.”

The aide chuckled. “He is allowing them a way out. They can deliver Sethbert or they can support him.”

Vlad Li Tam nodded. “Mark him, Arys. Petronus is the wiliest of men.”

But, he thought, for all of his wiliness, he still hid himself from the world. Vlad Li Tam had spent a year fishing with Petronus when they were both young. Vlad’s father, Ben Li Tam, had insisted that his first son spend a year without privilege. Of course, every Tam father realized that a true first son would think beyond the edges of the light. So they offered the families that took them in a stupendous amount of currency to ensure that the experience truly was without privilege. Because these boys-the first sons-would someday inherit the lucrative and invisible network that the Li Tam shipbuilders had created when they turned to banking both currency and information. And that inheritance demanded a broad range of experience to give a broad range of knowledge.

He’d lived with Petronus and his family, had eaten at the table with him, taken his share of beatings with him, fishing daily the wide waters of Caldus Bay.

Even then, he remembered Petronus’s love affair with the Androfrancines. He showed him the excavations he’d led to his own backyard forest, pointing out the holes he’d dug in search of artifacts that did not exist in the New World.

“Maybe someday,” Vlad Li Tam had said to Petronus as they mended their nets at the end of a day, “you’ll be Pope.”

Petronus had laughed and he had joined in. But he wasn’t surprised at all to read about a young Archbishop Petronus in his intelligence training with Father. By the time Petronus was made Pope, Vlad Li Tam had already seen his twenty-third daughter into the world, fully managing House Li Tam. They rekindled their friendship as if twenty years hadn’t passed.

Though they didn’t see each other often, they met occasionally at affairs of state. Three times, they met in conference at the Summer Papal Palace over Androfrancine accounts. Vlad’s most vivid memory was the summer before Petronus’s so-called assassination. They were sitting in the office on the upper floor, the afternoon sun spilling into the room through glass doors wide open. They’d pored over the papers from morning until night and only had the afternoon left because of Li Tam obligations that called him elsewhere.

After a particularly challenging conversation on asset liquidation, Petronus paused, and a pained look crossed his face. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be if you weren’t Lord Tam of House Li Tam?”

“I can’t,” Vlad remembered saying. “I was made for this. I can’t imagine being anyone other than who I am.”

Petronus had thought about this and nodded. “But do you ever miss fishing?”

Vlad Li Tam laughed. “Every day.”‹«ry /p›/font›

Five minutes later, the staff and servants at the Papal Summer Palace did not know what to do when their Pope came bellowing down the hall for bait and tackle and wine.

Now all these years later, Vlad Li Tam still believed the answer he’d given his boyhood friend. He had thirty-seven sons and fifty-three daughters, all honoring him in some fashion. At no time had he wondered what it might have been like otherwise.

I do not believe in otherwise.

It’s what he was made for. Somehow, he had to make his friend see the same thing for himself.

Vlad Li Tam turned to the Master Sergeant. “We will need the birder to order a flock. You’ll have a day to set up the bird-tents.” He looked over his aide. “You’ll have the same day to rescript the proclamation.” He drew in on the pipe as his servant held a long stick match to it. “The next day, we ride for Windwir.”

He dismissed them with a nod, and they stood to leave.

I’m coming, Petronus, he thought.

I’m coming to remind you what you’re made for.

After they left him, not even the kallaberry smoke could lift his spirits.