Lamentation

Chapter 19

Rudolfo

Rudolfo and his party made their last camp together twenty leagues northwest of Windwir. In the morning, they would split up. He would ride with his escort to meet Gregoric and his company of Gypsy Scouts well beyond sight of the armies encamped around Windwir. While he turned southeast, Jin Li Tam and Isaak would ride northeast with their escort and make for the Prairie Sea with all haste.

A cold rain fell as the sky shifted to twilight, and the sun slipped below.

They huddled beneath canvas tarps hung low, using the pine trees as natural cover as much as possible. Rudolfo looked at Isaak, the rain beading and rolling off his metal surface.

“You’ll not rust, will you?”

“The alloy composite of my chassis is resistant to rust and other forms of erosion, Lord Rudolfo,” the metal man said.

Rudolfo nodded. “Well enough.” He leaned against the tree. A few paces away, he watched Jin Li Tam lay out a tent and pull it together and up with the practiced skill of a soldier. He watched her as she worked, enjoying the places where the water clung to her clothing, accentuating her curves. “I want to speak with you about the work ahead,” he told Isaak, his voice dropping.

“Yes, Lord Rudolfo?”

“I’ve asked Lady Tam to assist you. She will speak to her father on behalf of the library and try to get sanction from this new Pope he spoke of.” Rudolfo turned from watching her and studied Isaak. “I will get you more help as soon as I possibly can. Meanwhile, start planning.”

The metal man’s head swiveled around to face him. “Have you given any thought to the location of the new library?”

Rudolfo thought about this. “There is a hill near the seventh forest manor-on the outskirts of town. I had intended it to be a Whymer Maze. Is it of sufficient size?”

Isaak’s eyes flashed bright and then dim, the shutters working quickly as he calculated. “If we build into the hill and above it.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Once we have secured the patriarchal blessing, I will hire the best architects, engineers and builders in the Named Lands to realize this vision. I will hire the carpenters of Paramo to design and build the furnishings required. Your role will be to tell us what we need to properly house the holdings you think can be restored.”

Steam chugged out of his exhaust grate. “Your faith in me continues to astound, Lord Rudolfo.”

“You are a marvelous wonder, Isaak. You may even be the very best of the Androfrancines’ work among us.”

Certainly the most dangerous and the most innocent at the same time, he thought.»thom"

“I will strive to exceed your expectations.”

Rudolfo smiled. “I have no doubt that you will.”

“I had started my preliminary research before the summons arrived. I will resume that work now, by your leave.”

Rudolfo nodded. “To your work, my metal friend.”

Isaak limped off and Rudolfo watched him as he went. His armorer had done the best he could, certainly, never having worked on a mechanical before. Perhaps he could do better for the metal man with enough time to properly study his musculature and metallic skeleton. Maybe as they cataloged what was left in the memory scrolls of the mechoservitor corps, they would even find the ancient drawings from Rufello and have done with that limp.

Part of him wondered, though, if Isaak would permit that or if he would bear the limp along with his great remorse, a constant reminder of a pain that defined him.

Rudolfo had talked with Jin Li Tam about the metal man’s lie. It was an interesting development in the mechoservitor’s character.

Change is the path life takes. Perhaps that meant Isaak was truly alive. He wondered at the implications of such a thing. A man made by a man.

That night, as the coyotes howled beyond their camp, they ate cold rations and washed them down with colder wine. They talked briefly, voices low, about the next day and the work ahead.

“I’ll see to the Marsh King and plumb this sudden kin-clave he’s declared towards me,” Rudolfo said. “I’ll send word when I know. Until then, the Wandering Army stays at home. We need to see what this new Pope will mean for present loyalties.”

Jin nodded. “I think Queen Meirov is tenuous at best in her alliance with Sethbert. He’s not been a good neighbor to her people.”

Rudolfo stroked his mustache. “She is a strong queen with a weak army.” Pylos, the smallest of the Named Lands, used their army primarily to police the border they shared with the Entrolusian City States. He’d had kin-clave with her in the past. “Perhaps I will call upon her after I’ve parleyed with the Marsh King.”

“My father will also send word to her,” Jin said. “She relies on House Li Tam for her small fleet of river ships, and no small amount of her treasury is held with him as well.”

Rudolfo smiled. “What do you think your father will do about the City State» thht=s?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I’m sure he’ll follow this new Pope’s lead. He can put the blockade back in place in a matter of days.”

And in two weeks, Rudolfo knew, those iron ships-powered in some similar way to the Androfrancines’ metal men but on a much larger scale-could cripple the supplies and replacements that Sethbert relied on his wooden riverboats to deliver.

Gradually, as the clouds broke overhead and the stars shined out, swollen with wet light, they fell into silence. The scouts moved about the camp, some restringing bows and preparing to go on watch, others crawling into tents for a few hours of sleep. Beneath his own tarp across from them, Isaak sat with his eyes flashing and his bellows wheezing slightly as he ciphered.

They sat in silence for an hour, listening to the forest as it moved about them. A wind carried the faintest sound-a bellowing voice carried across long distances-and it stirred the fine hairs on Rudolfo’s neck and arms. Everyone knew of the War Sermons of the Marsh King-they sprung from the pages of that people’s violent history in the Named Lands, though they’d not been heard for more than five hundred years.

Rudolfo turned and tried to pick out the words, but it was in the ancient Whymer tongue-a language he was largely unfamiliar with.

Jin leaned closer to him. “He’s prophesying now. It’s fascinating.”

Rudolfo’s eyebrows shot up. “You understand him?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s faint. Something about the dreaming boy and a Last Testament of P’Andro Whym. A coming judgment on the Named Lands for the Androfrancine Sin.” She paused, and Rudolfo admired the line of her neck and the strength of her jaw as she cocked her head and listened. “The Gypsy King will…” She shook her head. “No, it’s gone. The wind carried it off.”

They fell back into silence again and another hour passed. Finally, Rudolfo stood, bid his company good night and crawled into the low battle tent they had set up for him.

He lay still, listening to the low voices outside and to the sounds of the wind as it played the evergreen ceiling. Was it so long ago that he dreaded the idea of staying still? When one bed or one house was not enough for him? He’d spent his life moving between nine manors. From the age of twelve, when he stepped into his father’s turban, he’d spent more of his life in the saddle and tent than he had manor or bed. And he’d loved that life. But that pillar in the sky created a longing for something else within him. Perhaps it was a temporary fixation. The Francines would say to follow the thread of his feelings backward. It was grief connecting to grief-today’s sadness reaching back i» reaixanto yesterday’s and gathering strength.

You’ve lost your light young, he remembered his father telling him when he lay dying in the amber field. First his brother at five, then his father and mother at twelve. Windwir’s destruction found that grief and worried it, creating inside of him a longing for home and rest that he could not remember ever knowing before.

He jumped when she slid alongside of him into the narrow bedrolls. She moved as silently as a Gypsy Scout, perhaps more so. And when she had entwined her arms and legs with his, she pinned him down and kissed him on the mouth. “For a great and mighty general,” she whispered, “you are not so very bold.”

Rudolfo returned her kiss, amazed at how in the moment he finally longed for home, home appeared and welcomed him.

Petronus

Petronus was rounding the corner, approaching the galley tent, when the muddy bird flapped into camp. It squawked and hopped about until he scooped it up and slipped the unthreaded message from its foot. He opened it and saw Whymer runes.

Your grandson is our honored guest, it read.

Petronus checked the tent first. Then the wagon and the galley and the bathing tent. When Neb didn’t turn up at any of those places, he went next to the sentries. But the sentries were pulled in closer now that defense was warranted, and at sundown, the guard had changed.

After he’d done that much, Petronus returned to the camp and organized a search party. The War Sermon started up as they moved into the city.

But midway through the search, Petronus called them together and sent them back to the camp. The Marsh King’s note was specific enough that he knew they wouldn’t find the boy. While the others drifted back, Petronus stayed on the northern edge of the city and watched the line of forests. Tonight, the War Sermon was particularly cryptic-a string of prophetic utterances about a boy, obscure references to texts Petronus had heard of but never seen. Texts that not even the Androfrancines had seen these two thousand years. Only the memory of these texts survived as references in newer works.

He understood the words but did not understand their meaning.

“He’s in the Marsh King’s camp,” Gregoric said.

Petronus turned in the direction of the voice. “You’ve seen him then?”

“Aye,” the scout said. “We saw him running with one of their scouts.”

Petronus felt anger, sharp and focused. “And yet you did not stop him?”

“No. For many reasons I’m sure you can cipher out.”

Yes. It would have meant giving away the Ninefold Forest House’s continued presence at Windwir. Petronus did not like the mathematics of it, but it was what it was. He would hope he’d choose differently, but knew that he had been in that position before. Sacrifices for the greater good. Memories of that burning village chewed at him. “Have you seen their camp?”

Gregoric’s voice moved again. “I have not. They’re better woodsmen than Sethbert’s men. And they seem to have kin-clave with us.”

“I found that surprising,” Petronus said.

“We did as well. But we’ll have some better idea of it in the next few days.”

Petronus raised his eyebrows, waiting for Gregoric to finish, but he didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was far away and he was running fast. “We will also inquire about your boy.”

Those words settled him somewhat. He still felt the strain pulling at his neck and back, and he swung his arms as he turned back toward camp.

There’s nothing more that you can do here, old man.

As he walked, he thought about the Gypsy Scout’s words. Most likely, it meant that Rudolfo was near and intending to parley with the Marsh King. It would be a first, and to Petronus’s recollection, there had been a rather brief and nasty war between the Ninefold Forest and the Marshers. Four, maybe five years before his assassination. Jakob had captured the Marsh King and showed him his Physicians of Penitent Torture. Then he released him, and the Marshers never bothered the Forest Houses again.

Now they were Rudolfo’s only kin-clave remaining in the world apart from his alliance with Vlad Li Tam.

And they had Neb.

Petronus stopped and looked behind him at the dark line of trees against the sky. Remnants of his upbringing as a Gods-fearing boy momentarily usurped his Androfrancine sensibilities. It happened infrequently, but when it did it reminded Petronus of how fragile the human heart and mind can be when faced with potential loss.

All the way back to camp, Petronus prayed.

Neb

Th» s Nizee Marshers defied Neb’s imagination.

He’d run as fast as he could to keep up with the scout, tearing through the underbrush, ducking and weaving to avoid the branches that slapped him. The scout was fast and big, making no attempt now for stealth.

Neb ran for what felt like leagues before he realized the forest had changed. Fishing nets interwoven with branches concealed mud-smeared, tattered tents. Unkempt men and women, many slack-jawed and empty-eyed, wandered the camp. They wore unmatched bits of weaponry and armor scavenged from two thousand years of skirmishing, and they moved to and fro in silence.

Neb’s guide vanished, leaving him at the edge of camp. A young girl approached him. She was covered in filth, just like the others, her hair shot through with mud and ash, and Neb suddenly realized that it wasn’t simply different values around hygiene. They did this to themselves, painting themselves with earth and ash, for reasons that were sacred to them.

The girl smiled at him, and beneath the caked dirt, he could see that she possessed a coltish kind of prettiness. She was nearly as tall as he was, and he thought perhaps her hair was a mouse brown beneath the mud. Despite the dirt, she had it pulled back from her face and wrapped with a bit of red ribbon.

“The Marsh King summoned you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Y-yes,” he said.

She took a step closer to him and he smelled her. It was a distinct scent-the musk of sweat, the smoky smell of the ash, the traces of sulfur and clay in the mud. And apples, he realized. She extended her hand to him. “I will take you.”

He took her hand and felt her gently tugging him along, walking at a quick gait. He studied her as they went. She wore mismatched boots and a long man’s tunic cut down to fit her. Beneath it, a long-sleeved shirt that had once been white. Her calves were bare and gray with dirt. She wore no weapons that he could see.

The Marsh girl led him through a maze of trees and tents, dodging in and out of the Marsh King’s silent soldiers. “Why are they so quiet?” he asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

“It is our faith. We have one voice in war-the voice of our king. So we only speak when necessary.”

Neb took her hint and remained quiet until they approached a tent slightly larger than the other, snug against the side of a low hill. “The Marsh King awaits you in there,” the girl said pointing.

Before Neb could thank her, she vanished, running quickly and vanishing around the side of the hill without looking back.

He swallowed and approached the unguarded tent. Dim light danced inside the filthy canvas structure, and as he pushed aside the free-hanging flap, he realized that the tent was just a foyer. A tunnel had been dug into the side of the hill, widening into a cave with tangled roots for its ceiling and mud for its floor. Sitting in the center of that cave at the foot of a large triangular idol was the largest man Neb had ever seen. Bits of twigs and food hung in his large black beard, and on his lap he held a massive axe, the head of which glistened in the lamplight like a mirror, throwing back the light and intensifying it. He wore armor of a similar sort-silver and mirrored like nothing Neb had ever seen before. The giant fixed his dark eyes on Neb, then looked quickly to the left to the idol. It was a meditation bust of P’Andro Whym, from one of the earlier heresies.

“Come forward,” the Marsh King bellowed in the Whymer tongue.

Even without the magicks, the voice was compelling. Neb shuffled forward. He looked around the room as he went. It looked like there was a back entrance-much smaller, certainly too small for the Marsh King, and shrouded with a heavy curtain hastily staked into the ceiling. There were scattered reed mats and piles of ratty blankets.

Neb wasn’t sure what to do next, so he erred on the side of caution and lowered himself to his knees. “I am here, Lord.”

Again, the Marsh King stared down at him and then looked away to the idol. “I will preach about you tonight,” the Marsh King said. “I will call you the dreaming boy because I have seen you in my dreams.” He looked to the idol, nodding slowly. “Now is set into motion the time of judgment, and the unloved children of P’Andro Whym will be the firstborn of the new gods.” Neb looked at the idol himself but saw nothing there but an old metal god. The Marsh King leaned down. “Do you understand any of this?”

Neb shook his head. “I do not.”

Another glance to the idol, head cocked to hear, then the deep voice continued slowly. “Do you understand what it means to be the reluctant prophet of Xhum Y’Zir? Because someday, you will be.”

“I do not understand, Lord,” Neb said. But the words, when they washed through him, left him shaken. He’d studied the fundamentals of the mystic heresies and he understood the straying from Androfrancine truth. His own dream of Hebda, dead and speaking with him as if he weren’t, was powerful regardless of whether or not it was real. Who wouldn’t listen to the ghost of their dead father?

But the Francines were clear: The ghost was just an aspect of himself, working out problems in his sleep.

Except for the part where those dreams came true, the Marsh King and his army perfect proof of that.

“How is it that you invade my sleep, Dreaming Boy? What are the things that you show me?” The Marsh King waited, glancing quickly to the idol. “Who is this resurrected Pope that will avenge the light by killing it?”

The fear worked its way into his stomach and it lurched. He knew about Petronus somehow. His hand wanted to go to the pocket now and check it again, make sure it was still there. But he didn’t. “I do not know, Lord,” he said again.

The Marsh King roared and leaped to his feet, moving past Neb quickly and moving to the tent flaps. “I will speak with you in the morning.” Neb watched him draw a large silver drinking horn and hold it to his lips. When he brought it down his face was covered in what looked like blood, and his satisfied sigh shook the walls of the tent.

The Marsh King strode into the night, his War Sermon booming out, a storm of words that could be heard as far as twenty leagues away.

Neb was still watching him when the girl approached. He jumped when she touched his shoulder and he turned. The curtain still swayed where she came from. “He will be all night,” the Marsh girl said.

“He’s preaching about me,” Neb said.

She nodded. “He is. The dreams were very powerful.”

“What do they mean?”

She laughed. “If I knew what they meant, why would the Marsh King summon you?”

Neb looked at her. She didn’t look as dirty as he’d thought she did. Or maybe it was the light. Her large brown eyes crinkled at the edges, as if she laughed a lot. But there were deep places there that suggested she cried a lot, too. When she smiled, her teeth were straight and white.

“Maybe they don’t mean anything,” Neb said.

She shook her head. “It is unlikely. Most dreams mean something.” She sighed. “But I hope you’re right.”

Neb saw that the thought of it relieved her. “Why do you hope I’m right?” he asked.

She looked to the idol herself for a moment, then back to Neb. “Because the dreams said that many would go to their second death in the fire for the Androfrancine sin.” She shuddered as she said the words.

“And I had something to do with it?” Neb asked, his voice suddenly small.

“You were in the dreams. If the Marsh King knew why, you would not be here.” She extended her hand to him, and for the second time he took it.

He’d actually never held a girl’s hand before. He’d never really thought much about it. The orphans were discouraged from the opposite sex in the male-dominated Order. Certainly there were some provisions for Androfrancines to marry-but not many, not even when unexpected children were involved. Her hand was gritty and dry and firm-not ever what he would have expected for this first. He let her lead him up through the back door of the cave.

Neb wondered about the girl. She must be the Marsh King’s servant. Perhaps even a daughter, which seemed odd to his sense of the world since the other armies would never think to bring children into the battlefield.

But she wasn’t quite a child. Probably within a year of him. Perhaps even a bit older.

Of course, these were Marshers. Perhaps she was here for darker reasons than he wished to imagine.

Neb followed her as she led him to a lean-to that sheltered a fire and a large steaming kettle of thick stew. She found broken bits of pottery to use as spoons and scooped two wooden bowlfuls out of the sticky mess. It smelled sweetly pungent beneath his nose.

Sitting in the mud beside the Marsh girl, Neb ate his stew and listened to the War Sermon as it bellowed out into the night.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam listened to the voice on the wind and nodded slowly. “He preaches again,” he said. His aide brought a long match to the bowl of the ornate pipe, and Vlad Li Tam inhaled a lungful of the kallaberry smoke.

It cleared his head by slowing down his mind. It bolstered him in a warm sea of euphoria that kept him alive and gave him the edge he needed to do what must be done.

They camped in the open with nothing to hide-a small caravan of wagons ringed around their tents. He fully expected to parley with all parties involved excepting perhaps the Marsh King. House Li Tam had given up that part of the world long before Vlad’s time. He wasn’t sure how many sons or daughters of Tam had been sent north to buy their father’s way into that stunted place. None had been accepted. Some had been killed. At least three hundred years ago, they’d stopped trying. He’d read about it in the archives.

He expelled the purple smoke, watching it disperse into the night air.

“I will wear armor tomorrow,” Vlad Li Tam told his aide and his master sergeant. “And a sword.”

«v h Ro

They both nodded.

“I suspect Petronus will require his hand forced,” he said, looking at them both, his eyes narrow. “I suspect that I will betray my friend.”

“Hail the camp,” a distant voice called out. Vlad Li Tam looked up and nodded as his guards scattered to reinforce their positions.

“Hail, Gypsy Scout. What news do you bring?”

“Lord Rudolfo sends regards and will join your parley on the morrow.”

Vlad Li Tam nodded. “Excellent. Is my daughter with him?”

“She has returned to the Ninefold Forest with the metal man. Your presence here was unexpected. Otherwise, I’m certain she would have delayed her travel.”

Far better for her to stay near the mechoservitor. She could be trusted to watch out for it, to keep it from the wrong hands. It reminded him of another matter. “Tell your general that after the parley we will move quickly against the City States if they do not lay down arms. Our Pope will want the mechoservitors that Sethbert is holding. They are critical for the reestablishment of the library.”

“I will tell him,” the scout said, never staying still yet never entering the camp’s ring of light.

After the scout left, Vlad Li Tam called for a bird and laid his pipe aside to compose a message, coding it in double and triple Whymer loops that only an Androfrancine Pope could read. After he’d finished writing it, he went back over it, layering in yet more code in the slightest brush strokes of his pen, the seemingly hapless smearing of a letter here or there.

He tied it to his strongest, smallest bird and whispered the direction to its tiny head as it fluttered against his hands.

Vlad Li Tam tossed the bird into the sky, watched its wings unfurl as it caught the light breeze and shot east, flying low to the ground.