Canticle

Chapter 5

Petronus

The sun had not yet risen when Petronus left his cabin and freed his birds. They scattered, a rainbow of threads decorating their feet and carrying word of the attack and the change in protocol to the network he’d created in the last seven months. Now, this station would simply forward its messages, recoded, to whatever relay points Grymlis had arranged. Petronus watched as the dark winter sky swallowed them and the multicolored messages they carried. Black threads of danger on some, the blue thread of inquiry on others, red for war on yet others. The only absent color was the green of peace.

The sky was shifting from black to gray when he gathered up his kit and satchel to meet the others by the boathouse near the water.

Grymlis and one of the others had allowed their magicks to fade. The remaining two had reapplied the powders. The old captain looked angry and argued in low tones. “What do you mean he’s dead?” He glanced up, noting Petronus’s approach. “How did it happen?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” the Gray Guard answered. “I went in to prep him for movement and he was dead. Cold as snow.”

Grymlis sighed. “Put him in the boat, then. We’ll ship him as well. We need to get a look at him once his magicks have played out.”

Petronus joined them and did not protest when one of the soldiers took his travel kit. He resisted when the other reached for the satchel. “I’ll keep this,” he said. He looked to Grymlis. “Our prisoner is dead?”

Grymlis nodded. “Yes.” The old Gray Guard looked tired, his eyes red and glassy from the magicks. His beard and hair were longer than the last time they’d seen each other. And now, instead of the gray uniform of the Androfrancine Army, he wore the nondescript trousers and shirt of a common laborer. Of course, the scout knives on his belt and the longsword slung over his shoulder said he was anything but common. “Poison perhaps,” he added as an afterthought. “Though we found nothing when we searched him.”

The sleeping village stirred around them. Petronus’s dock, boathouse and cabin were on the edge of town, but already scattered lights announced the new day and a few quiet boats moved into the bay to get a head start on the work. He’d thought of leaving a note but wasn’t sure what he would say in it. In the end, he’d opted to say nothing. If the events of last night were but a beginning, the less his neighbors knew, the better he imagined it would go for them.

And for me.

Grymlis took his arm. “Are you ready, Father?”

Petronus snorted. “I’m too old for all of this. Where exactly are we going?”

“Someplace safer than here.” They moved off together toward the waiting boat. “Balthus and I will be joining you. These two will stay back and reroute the messages.”

Petronus nodded at the strategy. He’d worked hard to build his little network, bringing in what scraps of knowledge he could to puzzle out the truth behind Windwir’s fall.

They climbed into the boat, mindful of the tarp-wrapped bodies at their feet. Another tarp-wrapped body was lowered in after them; then the magicked soldiers cast them off. The slightest whisper of shifting snow betrayed their quick retreat. Petronus looked to his house and dock and imagined he was seeing them now for the last time.

If the assassin hadn’t paused to speak, he would have succeeded. Petronus grabbed that thread and worked it as Grymlis’s young lieutenant worked the oars and rowed them around the edges of the Bay. Caldus Bay was massive-nearly a sea of its own, he knew, from the hours he’d spent poring over the artifacts and writing of the Age of Settlement, that time just after the Age of Laughing Madness when the Order was newly formalized, having grown to the point of requiring a clearer hierarchy and chain of command. He’d nearly pursued history, specializing in that field. But his advisor had seen his potential in Francine School. Franci B’Yot had been the leading scholar of human nature and evolution-and a correspondent with the young P’Andro Whym after the first Scientism Movement failed. The Francine science ultimately won young Petronus’s attention, and it served him well now as he thought about his attacker.

He wished to punish me. And that meant it was likely someone Petronus had wronged, someone who could blame him for something. No villain is evil for evil’s sake, according to the Settlement playwright Sebastian. Because every antagonist wanted to accomplish something that they could at least convince themselves-if not others-was benevolent.

And this villain wished to punish-or perhaps the master he spoke of wished it. Petronus shivered at the memory of that voice, then remembered something.

“He spoke Whymer,” Petronus said.

The old guard grunted and looked up. “He did.”

The Whymer tongue was ancient and guarded, the house language of P’Andro Whym. It was unusual that anyone not affiliated with the Order would speak it. “His accent was heavy. We didn’t train him-but one of our own did.”

“Yes,” Grymlis said, looking around them and cocking his head. His voice lowered. “We’re nearly there,” he said.

Petronus looked around, seeing nothing. “Nearly where?”

Grymlis whistled, low and long. He waited. Then just ahead and to port, an answering whistle. Petronus squinted in that direction. Certainly, with the sky barely gray he couldn’t expect to see anything with much certainty. But the absence of anything at all, not even a shadow on the water, was perplexing. That combined with the proximity of the whistle alarmed him. Grymlis offered a roguish smile. “All these years,” he said, “I wondered how he did it.”

“Who?”

The bow of their boat brushed against something solid, but there was nothing there.

Grymlis chuckled. “That sea jackal you yourself employed on a few delicate matters.”

Even as he heard the voice above him, Petronus made the connection. “Father Petronus,” the pirate Rafe Merrique said, “I’m pleased to see that your demise was overstated.”

Petronus’s laugh was more of a bark. Stretching out his hands, he touched the cold wet sides of an invisible wooden ship. “You spirited me away to the Emerald Coasts the night after my funeral.” He studied the air above him where the voice seemed to be.

“Aye,” the pirate the said. “It appears I did. At the time, I didn’t ask any questions.”

Grymlis stood up. “I’m sure we paid you quite well not to.”

But who is paying you now? Merrique had cost a small fortune each time they hired him once he’d exhausted his need for the technological wonders the Androfrancines were willing to offer for the occasional use of his vessel. Touching the hull of the old magicked sloop, he could appreciate just why Rafe Merrique placed such a high price on his services. There was no way the old pirate was turning a kindly deed. Petronus had always dealt favorably with him during his office, but that was fairness three decades ago and not sufficient to merit uncompensated assistance. No, someone was paying him well to be in this place at this moment.

He caught Grymlis’s eye and willed his hands to move quickly. Who is paying him?

Grymlis’s own hands moved faster. Allies on the Delta.

Petronus blinked and, forgetting his hands, spoke aloud. “The Delta?” He’d killed Sethbert with his own hand in front of a thousand Androfrancines. He’d excluded the Entrolusian delegate from attendance, rejected Sethbert’s own sister’s pleas not out of cruelty but selfishness. He couldn’t bear to have their eyes upon him when he murdered Sethbert at the end of his sham trial.

Allies on the Delta.

Another voice joined in. “Hold fast, old man. I’m putting your hands upon the ladder.” Rough hands grabbed at his arms and tugged them. Petronus found a rope ladder and stepped onto it. The ladder swayed as he climbed, and when he reached the top, firm hands reached out to pull him onto the invisible deck.

“Welcome aboard the Kinshark,” Rafe Merrique said. “I am at your service, Father Petronus.”

Petronus saw nothing and found himself suddenly pulled into the vertigo of the magicked vessel and its invisible crew. He pitched forward, watching the waves far beneath his feet. The hands steadied him, and Merrique chuckled. “You’ll want to close your eyes until you’re belowdecks. You and the others have quarters and breakfast waiting. Your benefactor has ensured that every comfort will be afforded you.” Petronus squeezed his eyes closed and trusted the new set of hands that took him and guided his shaking steps across the deck. Once he was hustled into the hatch, he opened his eyes and found himself staring down the stairs to a plush carpet and the beginnings of an elaborate paneled hall. Not anything like the sleek, spartan vessel he remembered from the night of his escape. They’d colored his hair and shaved his beard, passing him off as a traveling scholar who required his privacy-a common cover for Li Tam agents-and had taken him to the island port closest to House Li Tam’s holdings on the Inner Emerald Coast. He’d not spent that trip in any comfort that suggested rugs and decorative wood trim. Merrique had done well for himself in the years since.

Girls in silk, with dark skin and wide, genuine smiles greeted him at the bottom of the stairs, inclining their heads demurely. They did not speak; they simply led the men down the corridor, stopping in front of an open door for each of them. When they ushered Petronus into his cabin, he saw that his things were already aboard. The cabin itself was comfortable-polished wood paneling with paintings from the Days of the Gathering, at the tail end of the Age of Laughing Madness, when the fledgling Order first opened the New World that the Gypsies and Marshers had inherited from Xhum Y’Zir. The bed was oak and wide enough. The porthole shutters were pulled and locked on the outside. There was an armchair and a desk. A small bookcase with a dozen volumes of varied age stood across from an equally small wardrobe.

Someone wanted him dead for his association with the Order. And now, in his escape from whomever that was, he was sailing for the Entrolusian Delta, toward a collection of city-states that had been embroiled in civil war since Sethbert killed their economy and Petronus killed their deranged but strong leader. There were still those who maintained that the Overseer was a patriot for what he did.

I’ve seen the evidence of it, Petronus realized, knowing that even he suspected the Order after seeing his forged signature.

The ship shuddered to life as the sails caught wind. Petronus smelled frying bacon and hot chai mixed with the aroma of cooking onions and sliced potatoes. Regardless of whether he sailed into more or less danger than the attack on his life, he certainly sailed in comfort.

Petronus followed his nose to the galley, suddenly grateful to be alive. It hadn’t struck him until now: It was the first time he could remember being personally attacked. It was the first time he’d been utterly certain he would die.

Petronus blessed his benefactors and sat himself down to breakfast.

Neb

The Marshers wove their way through the Whymer Maze in Rudolfo’s northern garden, carrying Hanric’s body and singing as they went. When he’d first joined them, Neb thought he would stay to the edges, but from the beginning, Winters kept him by her side and held his hand tightly.

He’d not slept that night, the events of the banquet playing out again and again in his mind. Now, he felt the weariness saturating him as the buzzing in his brain subsided. Neb shivered, feeling the cold despite the winter woolens of his scout uniform.

He and Winters kept the lead, the others following and reciting the Marsher death psalms low and in minor key. They were in a tongue he did not recognize-perhaps simply glossolalia, though the language seemed more structured than that-and their voices blended into harmony. He glanced at the young girl beside him and saw her lips moving, though he heard no sound.

The early morning was dark and still around them, the noise of the manor muffled by the high thorny walls of the maze. Soon enough, he would join Aedric and Isaak at the front of the manor and they would ride for the Keeper’s Gate. All his life, Neb had wanted to see the Gate, wanted to cross the solitary pass and descend into the ruins of the Old World. He’d grown up in the Franci Orphan School, his imagination nourished by legends of the former years and tales of the Order’s exploits to save what light they could in their expeditions. The day his father died with Windwir, Neb had stayed with the wagon he was to escort into the Wastes on his first expedition until Sethbert’s men pulled him away.

But now, looking at the hollow-eyed girl beside him and thinking back to the night they’d passed through, Neb’s interest in the Wastes competed with something else. A part of him wanted desperately to stay with his Marsh Queen, pledge his blade and his mind and heart to whatever cause lay ahead of her, or at the very least, to hold her hand and let her cry as she needed.

Once, back on the plain of Windwir-before he’d known her true rank-she’d teased him about marriage when he’d asked her to come with him. She’d laughed on that day, but he’d known there was no malice in it. “Would you take me as your bride, Nebios ben Hebda, and grant me a Gypsy wedding filled with dancing and music?” she’d asked him. “Is that what you would do?”

Now, as they approached the center of the maze, Neb found himself thinking of it again, only now he saw himself in the Marshlands, moving with her among her people, shoring up Hanric’s loss. Surely it made a kind of sense if he was indeed their Homeseeker. And yet deeper in the center of him, a voice whispered that this was not their time no matter how badly he wished to lend her his strength.

The procession stopped in the center, and two of the larger men moved the marble meditation bench aside, while two of the others set in with pickaxes to loosen the frozen ground ahead of the shovels. The songs continued, quietly, as they dug, and Neb felt Winters’s grip tighten on his hand. He looked down at her and saw the firmness in the line of her jaw despite the tears that traced their pathways down her cheeks. Her tears threatened his own, now carefully held back as he steeled himself to face his First Captain, and he looked away. Back to the rectangle of ground they cut and dug. Memory tugged him backward, to a vast field of graves on a shattered plain.

When Petronus had first suggested that they bury Windwir’s dead, he’d thought it an impossible task. Nearly two hundred thousand souls strong-each skeleton left intact by Xhum Y’Zir’s blood magick rite, each bone a message of violence. But they’d gathered their ragged army of gravediggers there at the end of second summer, and had worked through autumn, into winter, wrapping up in the spring. And somewhere along the way, the scruffy old fisherman had pronounced himself the Pope and left the gravedigging in Neb’s hands. Naturally, he’d done his best. How could he not?

His father had been among Windwir’s dead.

And at the end of that work, on the night before Rudolfo and Petronus arrived to escort him to his new home in the Ninefold Forest, Neb had presided over the quiet funeral of the world’s greatest city. The band of diggers that still remained had gathered up on the hill above the east bank of the Second River, and after a song about the light, they had called upon their young captain for a few words.

Here, at this grave today, Neb could not remember a single one of those words. But he’d given them; he’d seen the nods of assent and the tears of grief satisfied. He’d heard every cough and every creak of every boot heel. He could not recall that eulogy, but at the same time, he felt better for having given it. Still, it felt easier then than now though he was not called upon for any role in this present grave-digging. Maybe the vast number of Windwir’s graves made the grief and loss then so much harder to lay hold of.

Maybe it just now settles in, he thought. Or maybe it would settle in slowly, like a large man to a bath, gradually becoming more real with each loss that followed.

Or maybe it is because deep down we know that whatever laid Windwir low has now taken Hanric from this world as well.

The sudden thought ambushed him and he blinked at it. The world had changed on the day of the spell. And it had not recovered. The nations that weren’t locked in civil war were at odds with their neighbors. And now that violence had spilled over into assassinations. The only thriving place in the Named Lands seemed to be the Ninefold Forest, with the construction of its new library and rapid expansion of the town around it. Before Windwir, Rudolfo ruled a resource-rich corner of the New World and led a simple, pleasurable life. Now, the path of change took them in a new direction as the Ninefold Forest Houses emerged as perhaps the strongest nation in the Named Lands.

Another thought struck him: Three of the most prominent leaders from the War of Windwir were in that Great Hall last night. Two were dead. One had not even been scratched.

He looked up as Winters released his hand and stepped forward. As the men continued working their shovels, the others gathered around her and Neb stepped back. She raised her hands and broke into tongues, her eyes fixed upon Hanric’s corpse. The Marshers swayed at her words, and suddenly Neb felt misplaced.

He felt a light touch at his elbow and glanced to his right.

Rudolfo and Aedric had joined them. The Gypsy King and his First Captain looked haggard and worn, though they now wore fresh clothing. Rudolfo held a rolled-up quilt in his hands and handed it somberly to Neb.

This is for Hanric, he signed slowly. Present it on my behalf, Lieutenant. It belonged to my father.

Neb nodded, hesitant to speak and unable to sign. Finally, he risked a whisper. “Yes, General.”

Rudolfo’s brown eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles beneath them, offsetting the deep lines of worry on his face. Behind his short beard, his mouth was tight and grim. Rudolfo returned Neb’s nod, cast Aedric a sidelong glance, and the two slipped back into the maze.

As they vanished, Neb looked back to Winters. As she continued speaking, the men continued digging and some of the women began stripping Hanric down, putting his bloodstained clothing to the side in a pile. A bucket of steaming water appeared, and Neb watched as they scrubbed the hairy corpse clean of both the blood and the telltale filth that set Marshers apart from the other residents of the New World. After, they scooped dirt into the bucket and mixed it into mud with their hands. Keening beneath a sky that now shifted into deep, star-specked gray, they smeared the mud over Hanric’s naked form as Winters’s voice rose in pitch.

Her glossolalia passed and she looked out at the small group, her eyes wet. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in shadow is past,” she said, “and he shall walk the Beneath Places in search of Home. How shall he find his way?”

A woman stepped forward with the discarded stub of a candle, bowing deeply, and placing it at Winters’s feet.

Winters returned the bow and continued. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in hunger is past,” she said, “and he shall hunt the Beneath Places in search of food. How shall he strike his prey?”

An older man stepped forward with a handful of smooth stones and an old leather sling, laying it beside the candle with a bow.

Her voice became sorrowful now. “Hanric ben Tornus’s sojourn in the sunlight is past and he shall rest in the cold of the Beneath Places. How shall he warm his soul?” Her eyes found Neb and met them. They were wide and there were worlds of grief within them.

On shaking legs, Neb forced himself forward. He took the quilt and laid it at her feet, his eyes never leaving hers. He bowed, sadness pulling again at his heart and eyes.

She nodded to him and he stepped back. As the ritual continued, he tried to pay attention. Other gifts were brought forward; and then, as the diggers finished the grave and the women finished the mudding, songs and stories of Hanric ben Tornus and his shadow-reign upon the Wicker Throne were lifted up to the winter morning. As if paying obeisance of their own, the swollen stars winked out and the sliver of blue-green moon slid from the sky and into the ground.

When it was time, they wrapped Hanric in Lord Jakob’s quilt with the candle in one hand and the sling in the other, and lowered him into the ground with his other gifts. Then, each in turn cast a shovel of dirt upon his sleeping form and let the Beneath Places swallow their friend.

When they were finished, one by one the Marshers drifted off, leaving Neb and Winters beside the new-turned earth. They sat, side by side, on the meditation bench, and finally Winters sighed.

“I know you need to go,” she told him.

He slipped his arm up around her narrow shoulders. “I do. But I do not wish it.”

She chuckled and it almost sounded bitter. “What we wish does not often enter into matters, Nebios ben Hebda. Your lord bids you go.”

He looked over to her. There beside him, she seemed much smaller than when she stood before her people. “But what does my lady bid?”

She smiled. “I bid you take the path you are called to. I bid you find our Home as the dreams have told us you will.”

But what if the dreams are wrong? He did not ask it. He would not ask it. Instead, he made a statement that he willed into a promise. “I will be back within a week,” he said.

She moved closer to him, leaning in, and he felt her shiver. “I will be gone by then.” She paused, shifting uncomfortably. “I fear something dark becomes of my people, though I do not know what it is. My own kind have brought this about. I must know why.”

Word that the assassins were Marshers had spread quietly through the ranks of the scouts, and certainly it was a darkness she needed to plumb. She was the Marsh Queen, with her work awaiting. He was an officer of the Gypsy Scouts-of the Forest Library-with his own.

Neb wanted to protest it. He wanted to strip off the scarf of his rank, take up the bucket of now-cold mud and smear himself with it. He wanted to pledge his knives to her service and follow her back to the Marshlands to hunt down whoever was responsible for last night’s attack.

But I am pledged to the library. Not the library, he thought, but the light of knowledge it represented and the man who would shepherd that light here in the Ninefold Forest, away from the political turmoil of the Named Lands. And if the dreams of her people were true, the Ninefold Forest Houses also guarded the way to the Home he was meant to find them. He sighed and pulled her close again, taking in the earthy scent of her.

After a minute or two of silence, Neb stood and Winters stood with him. When she turned to face him, he matched her movements and they put their arms around one another.

“I will see you in our dreams,” she whispered. “Be well and safe, Nebios ben Hebda.”

There at Hanric’s Rest, at the heart of the Whymer Maze, they kissed again. When they finished, Neb pushed a strand of dirty, unkempt hair from her narrow face. “Be well and safe, my queen,” he said. His voice caught on the words as he said them. Some part of him, deeply buried, knew they now moved through a time that was anything but safe. Still, he said it again, using her formal name: “Be safe, Winteria.”

At her nod, he left the young queen alone with her shadow and made his way back out, mindful of the thorny walls that squeezed him, body and soul. He walked briskly to the courtyard, where the horses and wagon awaited him. Isaak sat astride a great stallion, holding the reins of Neb’s mount. A cold morning breeze whipped the edges of his dark Androfrancine robes.

Neb took the reins and quickly checked the travel kit one of the men had fixed to the back of the saddle. Satisfied, he swung up onto the horse. When Aedric looked at him, Neb nodded and the First Captain whistled the men forward.

Without a word, and without looking back, Neb rode eastward with his company into the red light of the stirring sun.

Rudolfo

Late-morning sun slanted through the windows of a room that smelled of incense and sweat. Rudolfo sat in an armchair near the bed, holding Jin Li Tam’s hand, feeling his knuckles threaten to pop with each contraction as she groaned in her labor and squeezed his hand. He looked up, glancing first to the River Woman, who watched and waited near the foot of the bed, then to his betrothed, the formidable daughter of House Li Tam.

She lay in sweat-soaked sheets, her red hair wet and matting her forehead and cheeks. Her cotton shift clung to her body, the pink of her skin showing through where the damp cotton stuck to it. Her muscles were taut, her eyes squeezed shut and her jaw set.

“You’re doing fine, dear,” the River Woman said, but Rudolfo heard trouble in her tone. A platter of assorted cheeses and a carafe of lukewarm pear wine sat untouched on a small table within easy reach. There was a light knock at the door, and he looked up to see the River Woman frown at yet another interruption in a night and a day of interruptions.

One of the River Woman’s girls opened the door a crack and hushed words were exchanged. She glanced to Rudolfo. “Your Second Captain, Lord.”

Rudolfo started to stand, but Jin Li Tam’s grip prevented him. “No,” she said. “You’ll not leave again.” Her blue eyes were narrow and the firmness in her tone brooked no dissent. “Send him in,” she said.

The River Woman’s voice was also firm. “Lady, I do not think-”

Rudolfo glanced from woman to woman. The outcome of this moment’s match of wills was not difficult to surmise.

“These are not the best of circumstances for an argument,” Jin Li Tam said, anger and pain giving her voice an edge. “Send him in.”

The River Woman relented, and Philemus, the Second Captain of the Gypsy Scouts entered, discomfort obvious in his stance and stammer. “General,” he said with a nod, then paled as he glanced to Jin Li Tam. “L-lady, I apologize for-”

“You owe no apology, Captain,” she said. Her body spasmed again and she growled. “Bear your message quickly.”

He swallowed and nodded. “Our scouts have overtaken the assailants. There were four. They are all dead.”

Rudolfo raised an eyebrow. “Dead?” Unbidden, his mind flashed back to the scrambling fight of the night before, to the strength in their attackers that so completely overran them, so casually lifted and tossed them aside as if Rudolfo and his best and brightest were made of paper instead of flesh and bone. His men could not have taken them, not as they were. Unless. “Had their magicks burned off?”

Philemus shook his head. “No, General. But they were easy enough to track. They seem to have died suddenly and in midflight, near the edge of the Prairie Sea. I’ve ordered the men to bring back the bodies.” He hesitated. “The Physician Benoit is also here now. He will start his examination once the magicks have worn off.” He looked to the River Woman. “And once your. work. is finished here, certainly,” he added.

Jin Li Tam jerked again, arching her back. This time, she cried out even louder, and Rudolfo glanced to her again. He’d watched a hundred skirmishes from the hillside, eventually cursing and riding down into the thick of it when the waiting proved too much for him. But this was a battle he could not ride into, and he found frustration in that powerlessness. And until now, he’d heard his men speak of these moments. But as he’d grown older and accepted that an heir was unlikely though not for lack of practice, he’d brushed aside what little he’d heard from the new fathers in his household or his army. Though he suspected that even if he had listened intently, even taken notes upon the subject, it could not have prepared him for this.

He looked to the River Woman and saw the strain on her face, the cloud in her eyes, in that brief unguarded moment. When she saw he was watching, she smiled, but it failed to convince him.

Something in this does not bode well, he thought.

Rudolfo turned to Philemus. “In Aedric’s absence, you bear my grace in all matters pertaining to this investigation. Work with House Steward Kember on all other matters, and from here forward, do not disturb us unless it is absolutely essential for the well-being of the Houses.”

The man came to attention. “Yes, General.”

Now, to offset the sternness of his tone and the darkness of the night’s events, Rudolfo winked at the soldier. “The next time I see you, I will introduce you to my heir.” He glanced again toward the River Woman and saw her bite her lip at his words. His stomach lurched and he found himself hoping that Jin Li Tam was sufficiently distracted by the pain.

His hands moved quickly and subtly once the door closed. What are you not telling us, Earth Mother?

She blinked but recovered quickly. “You’re doing fine, dear. It’s nearly time to push.” Her own hands moved beneath Jin’s line of sight. There is something wrong with the baby. I do not know what. “Are you thirsty? Can we get you anything?” Even as the words came out, her hands moved again. But I would not have the mother of my lord’s child alarmed at this point.

Rudolfo took in a deep breath, feeling his stomach lurch again, a thousand times more pronounced than the impulse that led him charging down the hill to join his Gypsy Scouts in war. How is it, he wondered, that I could care so much so soon for someone I’ve not yet seen?

Jin Li Tam squeezed his hand and cried out again. Turning toward her, he put his other hand over the top of hers. “You are a fine, formidable woman,” he told her in a quiet voice. “And I am proud to have you at my side.” When her eyes met his and he saw the tears in them, he leaned in closer. “When this has passed,” he said, “I will take you as my bride and you will be the Forest Queen.” As he spoke, he pressed his free hand into the back of hers and into the soft places of her wrist. You will ever be my sunrise and our son shall be my rising moon.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had said the words. A fog had taken him at the end of the confrontation with her father, when he’d learned that his life had been a river moved to relocate a library and create a safe haven for the light away from the Androfrancine shepherds. Even the woman, Tam’s forty-second daughter, had been a part of that work. He’d loved her in the days before learning that, had drawn strength from her when his closest friend, Gregoric, had died in Sethbert’s camp. But those feelings had faltered and become something closer to resolve than love, though he did not doubt she loved him fiercely. That love had brought her to a choice, and she had left off her father’s work for it.

But now, in this place, so fresh from the death of Hanric and so far from that bonfire on the Inner Emerald Coast and the confrontation with Vlad Li Tam, he felt something stirring within him and did not know what to name it. He found himself recalling the nights and days they’d sweated together, exploring one another sometimes in silence, sometimes amid sighs and cries of delight, in a hundred different pairings. One of those pairings had borne fruit, though later she’d told him of the powders she’d used to give his soldiers back their swords.

And now, she travailed at birth, and there was something wrong with the baby.

Our baby.

He’d thought perhaps the new library would be the greatest thing he ever built, but now he knew that it could not be so. Indeed, this child was.

For hours, he sat and held her hand, pressing messages into her skin and whispering to her as she raged and roared against the pain like the tigers that wandered the garden jungles of her home. He watched as the pain grew and as the contractions increased, and when the time came, he urged her with the River Woman to push, to breathe, to push more and harder.

And when little Lord Jakob was pulled from her, limp and gray, he leaped to his feet to see his blood-mottled son, feeling the room spin away as powerlessness and rage washed him.

And when the River Woman shouted in alarm for her powders and swabbed out the small blue-lipped mouth with her little finger, he turned back to his betrothed and blocked her view and whispered yet more assurances as the Earth Mother gently blew life back into his son and reinforced that life with whatever magicks her alchemist’s pouch could yield.

When that first weak and retching cough came and that first mewling cry of Lord Jakob, Shepherd of the Light, met its first winter midnight, Rudolfo leaped forward to study the tiny face and hands that he had helped to make.

So this, Rudolfo thought as the River Woman cleaned and wrapped their child for the new mother’s waiting arms, is love.

Laughing, the Gypsy King collapsed back into the chair and wept for the terror and joy that had seized him.