Lamentation

Chapter 20

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam rose early on her first morning back in the seventh forest manor. She slipped into plain cotton trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, pulling a light cloak over both to keep her dry in the cold autumn drizzle. In her absence, they had moved her into the room adjoining Rudolfo’s, outfitting it with everything she could p? keossibly need. She left her hair down and shoved her foot into the low doeskin boots the steward had provided.

In the hall, she paused at the door. Once more her eyes went to the children’s quarters, and she thought again about the one furnished room. Despite the early hour a servant passed, and Jin Li Tam reached out to touch the girl’s arm.

“What is that room?” she asked, pointing.

The servant shifted uncomfortably. “It’s Lord Isaak’s room, Lady Tam.”

She felt herself frown. “I don’t understand. Why would Isaak need a child’s room?”

The girl blushed and stammered. “Not for the-” She struggled, looking for the right word. “Not for the mechanical,” she finally said. Her eyes wandered the hall, only pausing to meet Jin Li Tam’s eyes for the briefest of moments. “I’m not sure it is proper for me to speak of it. You should ask Steward Kember or perhaps Mistress Ilyna.”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Very well.”

Looking to that closed door one more time, she turned and moved down the hall, her soft boots whispering across the carpet. She took the stairs two at a time, springing lightly, and nodded to the Gypsy Scouts that waited for her at the main doors. They fell in behind her, and she smiled beneath her hood. She’d grown familiar with the half-squad Rudolfo had assigned to her, and most of her life she’d had guards of one kind or another. Sethbert was the first to not assign an escort to her, and she knew it had more to do with the message he sent to her father-like his insistence that she be considered a consort and nothing more.

They were very different men, Sethbert and Rudolfo. Rudolfo carried a certain ruthlessness about him, but it was the carefully chosen path that blended menace with charm in order to achieve a goal. Sethbert’s had been more the meanness of a large bully accustomed to imposing his will for the pleasure it brought him more than to any purpose.

Rudolfo, as she had observed before, was more like her father. Prepared and cautious, but with an aloof and light touch.

Even the men he’d chosen for her escort showcased this. They followed, often just one or two, but they stayed far enough back to not invade her privacy.

As she passed through the gate, a movement on the hill outside of town caught her eye. A lone figure moved along the top of that cleared surface and she knew it was Isaak, pacing out the space there. The structure would be massive and for a moment, she stood still and took it in. How would this sleeping town respond in the shadow of this undertaking? Certainly, Rudolfo had considered this. She was too new to the Ninefold Forest to know what it would mean when the libraA wh inry opened its doors and became the centerpoint of the Named Lands, so far from the centers of commerce and statecraft.

Of course, that was the first vision of the Androfrancines. And though Windwir was easily the most powerful city in the world, it had never been the largest. The children of P’Andro Whym, with help from their Gray Guard, had kept it to a size that they could manage, turning away the universities that sought to locate near that vast receptacle of knowledge. Instead, they’d allowed small groups of students to visit in shifts throughout the year, mostly the children of nobles. And Androfrancine scholars traveled out to the schools, carrying what knowledge the Order deemed appropriate.

She found herself wondering how this new library would work. The Order’s back had been broken and it would not soon come back. Two thousand years of careful growth had made them insular as it was. But now, with possibly only a thousand Androfrancines left in the world-one percent or less of their former numbers-she did not see the Order coming back into its strength any time soon.

She resumed her walk, glancing over her shoulder to be sure the scouts were following.

The town stirred to life, a few women out to the bakery and a few hunters gathering outside the locked tavern, waiting for the owner to throw open the doors and feed them before they went after their game.

A carpenter worked beneath a canvas canopy, planing a length of wood in long, slow strokes.

Jin Li Tam moved through the streets until she reached the narrow river that ran through the center of town. She followed the river north until the rest of the town fell away to a scattering of houses and huts. The steward’s wife, Ilyna, had told her where to go. There were never any signs but most towns had at least one apothecary.

She’d sent a bird to her oldest sister on the outer shores of the Emerald Coasts, now the wife of a Free City Warpriest, and the finest apothecary House Li Tam had ever produced. She’d studied at the Francine School disguised as a young man and fooled those old monks for three years. Much older than Jin Li Tam, Rae Li Tam had lived a lifetime making potions and powders for their father’s work, and her medicines, magicks and poisons were legendary.

She had replied to Jin’s note immediately, and the coded recipe waited for her when she and Isaak and their half-squad arrived at the seventh manor the night before. Jin had translated the recipe into a common script late that night, working by candlelight and feeling the knots in her stomach as she did so.

Smoke trickled from the small ramshackle hut, and an older, plump woman squatted at the river, her head inclined toward the water. “Aye,” she said without looking up. “Dark times indeed.” Then, as if finishing her conversation, her head rose and her eyes met with Jin Li Tam’s. She blushed. “Lady Tam, an unexpected grace.” She bowed.

Jin returned the bow, inclining her head and offering a smile. “I have need of your services, River Woman.”

The River Woman smiled. “Magicks for the Lord’s new Lady? Or will it be powders of another sort? Whatever my Lady needs, I’m sure we can find it in the elements given.”

The Gypsy Scouts lingered at the edge of the clearing, waiting. Jin Li Tam bit her lip. There was still time, even after this, for minds to change. But her father’s strategy seemed clear to her. “I doubt you’ll have seen this particular powder,” she said quietly.

“That will be quite unlikely,” the River Woman said. “But let’s discuss it over tea.”

She led Jin into the small hut and put water onto the stove. The River Woman’s home was crowded with cats and books and jar upon jar of herbs and powders, dried mushrooms and berries, crushed leaves and lengths of root. The house smelled sweet and bitter at the same time.

Once the tea was poured, Jin Li Tam slipped the recipe from her belt purse and palmed three square House Li Tam coins. She passed the recipe across the table, and the River Woman studied it, her eyes narrowing and widening intermittently. When she finished, she pushed it back to the center of the table. “You are correct. I’ve never seen such a thing. How did you come by it?”

Jin Li Tam shrugged. “The Androfrancines guard their light.” She waited, willing herself to ask the question. “Do you have the ingredients to make it?”

The River Woman nodded. “Aye. Or at least, I can. I may need to send away for some. Caldus Bay may have what I lack.”

Jin Li Tam brought the three coins out and placed them on the recipe. “I will require your utmost discretion in this matter.”

“You shall have it. A woman’s body is a temple of life, and she must open or close that gate as she pleases.” The River Woman glanced at the recipe again, clucking at it. “And you think this will work?”

She smiled. “We will see for ourselves soon enough.”

“Finally, an heir,” she said. The old woman chuckled. “You know,” she said, “I delivered both of Lord Jakob’s boys to him.”

Jin Li Tam leaned in. “Both?” The room, again, with its small boots and its small sword hanging on its wall.

“Lord Isaak and Lord Rudolfo,” the River WomA; tighan said. “Both strong, beautiful boys.” She must have seen the realization dawning on Jin Li Tam’s face. She blushed. “No one’s mentioned Lord Isaak to you?”

Jin Li Tam shook her head. “I did not know Rudolfo had a brother.”

“A twin brother,” she said. “Just two hours older. He died rather… unexpectedly… in his fifth year.”

Jin Li Tam felt something she could not name. It pulled at her, and she felt the knots in her stomach tighten. “How?”

The River Woman looked around as if there might be other ears within hearing. Her voice lowered to nearly a whisper. “They said it was the red pox that took him. They cremated him immediately.”

It wasn’t uncommon, though it was unnecessary. They’d had the red pox powders for over a thousand years now. Still, some children did not respond to the powders and, of course, they weren’t available to all children. Just to children of privilege. But the River Woman’s tone suggested doubt. “You do not believe it was the red pox?”

“I do not. I gave him and Rudolfo both the powders. I do not think it likely that it would work on one but not the other.” She paused, looking around again. “I think he was poisoned. Though I know of no poisons that hide behind a mask of the pox.”

Her stomach clenched again, and she wrestled to keep her composure. She looked at the recipe again and thought of her elder sister.

She felt a shadow stirring in her heart, and wondered how deep the layers of her father’s strategy might go.

Petronus

Petronus’s bellowing nearly drowned out that of the Marsh King and his War Sermon. “I will not,” he roared, shaking his fists at the west.

He could tell by the bird’s markings that it was a Tam courier. And by the fact that it came straight at him to drop lightly onto his shoulder with a chirrup, in the dark of night, as he patrolled the outskirts of the city for the boy.

If you do not declare publicly, I will declare you myself in three days’ time.

It was code within code buried in the text of a message regarding a House Li Tam donation of foodstuffs for the gravedigging effort.

Buried alongside the coded threat, there was another message. A generous petition from Lord Rudolfo to assist in the establishment of a new liAentes brary using the memory scripts of the mechoservitors in Sethbert’s camp to rescribe as much of it as was stored within their scrolls.

But not even that was enough to hold his anger at bay.

If you do not declare publicly, I will declare you myself.

He bellowed again, his fists clenched, kicking at the ground. “Damn you, Tam,” he shouted.

Of course, he’d known he would have to. There would be no getting around it. Nothing would be left if he stood back. And if his suspicions about Vlad Li Tam’s strategy were true-and he did not doubt them-he did not know if he could be a part of that game of queen’s war. But he had no choice now, and he’d known that it would come to it when he’d written the proclamation.

You’ve done this to yourself, old man.

Yes, he thought. Yes, I have. And he would pay the price for that and come back from the dead because it was the only honest thing he could do. But he would name the time and place.

He drew his needle and ink and wrote his reply on the back. I will do it myself in my own time and if you do not honor this, you do not honor me or my house.

He tied the message to the bird and threw it at the sky.

As he walked back to the city, he heard the War Sermon and listened to the Marsh King prophesy about the dreaming boy. He finally calmed enough to think about the other aspects of the message. Rudolfo’s petition intrigued him. The idea of the Great Library-or what could be saved from it-sparked a hope within him that he had not expected. He’d remembered that first mechoservitor, and wondered if it was possible that they had come so far as to remember an entire library? It might be possible. But it didn’t seem likely. There would be the vaulted knowledge-everything that had already been cataloged, translated and cross-referenced against other fragments.

But how much of the library could they bring back?

Anything that they could build would be a miracle more than he had expected. And positioning it in the far north put it out of reach of the masses, kept it safe. Its only nearby threat would be the Marshers, and recent events suggested an unexpected alliance there. And it was not too far from the upper gates of the Keeper’s Wall, beyond which lay the Churning Wastes. It made far more sense than the Papal Summer Palace, where the first Popes had thought to build their library, huddling against the Dragon’s Spine as far from the Named Lands as possible. It had not worked then and it would be the same now. The bitterly cold winters precluded any commerce whatsoever for a large portion of the year, and they were quickly realizing that a waterway would be necessary if they were to trulyAy w pr shepherd the Named Lands through its sojourn in the New World.

He had no difficulty agreeing to the petition and issuing an order for Sethbert to surrender the mechoservitors in his care. But he could not do this without proclaiming himself, and he was not ready to go back to honoring that lie on behalf of a backward dream.

Ready or not, Petronus knew he did not have much time.

Neb

After they ate their stew, the Marsh girl led Neb back to the Marsh King’s cave. She passed him a pile of tattered blankets and pointed to a corner in the damp, earthen room. He rolled himself up into the corner and watched her do the same thing across from him. The idol glowed dully in the dark, offering light and heat. From where he lay, he saw that the idol clutched at a mirror, the face of P’Andro Whym contemplative as he modeled self-examination.

Once she was beneath her blankets, she propped her head up on one hand and looked across to him. “I can’t imagine what it was like,” she said in a quiet voice.

He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he had an idea, and he swallowed back the sudden terror that gripped him. He felt a lurch in his groin, a squeezing ache that made him want to throw up.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry, Nebios ben Hebda. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Nebios ben Hebda. A Marsher name. “It’s fine. I just can’t talk about it yet.” His stomach lurched again. “You don’t think the Marsh King will make me talk about it, do you?” Suddenly, he wanted to run as far from this camp as he could.

She shook her head slowly. “The Marsh King would not force such a thing. There is grace in the Marshlands.”

So far, the Marshers had been nothing like he had expected. Very little was shared about them in the parts of the Great Library that he was permitted to study from. They weren’t the half-crazed savages that legend painted them. Oddly customed, to be sure, but not-to his eye, anyway-the lunatic children left over from the Age of Laughing Madness. Children who perpetuated their violent insanity from generation to generation according to the lecturers and texts of the Orphan School. And whose king heard the future from a bust of P’Andro Whym and roared out that word beneath the Moon Wizard’s tower.

They were a complex and spiritual people.

He studied the girl for a moment longer, then realized he had no idea what her name was. He asked and she laughed at him.

“I do not haA220ughve a name like yours,” she said. “You would laugh to hear it.”

He smiled at her and shook his head. “I would not laugh.”

She lay on her side, facing him, her hair spilling around her gray-streaked face. “My name is Winters.”

“Winters?”

She nodded. “Winteria, actually. I did not name myself.”

Neb changed the subject, his mind wandering quickly back to the morning. “What do you think he will want to talk to me about?” he asked.

She frowned and thought about this. “I suspect he will ask what you know of the gravediggers’ camp, of Sethbert’s camp, whether or not you’ve seen Lord Rudolfo yet or caught sign of his scouts.” She shifted in her blankets, and Neb was surprised to see a bare shoulder peeking out from beneath them. He felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “He’ll also want to know what you know of the metal man and the Lady Jin Li Tam.” She paused and her voice softened. “But I’m sure he will not ask you about the other,” she said.

He sighed. “And afterwards, he’ll let me go?”

She laughed again and rolled over, her back to him now. “You can go now if you want to, Nebios.” She looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Or did you think perhaps I was assigned to you as your jailer?”

He laughed, too. “I didn’t know what to think.”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to know what to think when your dreams become entangled with another’s.”

Neb lay still and watched her back. Her shoulders slowly started rising and falling, and when he was certain she was asleep, he drew the ring from his pocket and held it up to the idol’s light. They were cast of the same metal, he realized.

Slipping the ring back into his pocket, he pulled the blankets over his head and ciphered himself to sleep.

When his dreams swallowed him into that hopeless burning vision of Windwir’s fall, he looked around to see who might be watching, but saw no one whatsoever.

Rudolfo

Rudolfo kept the others waiting for a fashionably appropriate time, taking longer than needed to prepare himself. For the parley, he selected his best turban and matching sash in the brightest green he had, trimmed with the pAmmeongurple. He wore these along with a shirt the color of burnt cream, all over the top of the mesh armor he had received from Pope Introspect for a small heresy he helped suppress.

He selected his best sword-a long slender affair with a hard steel basket and a light blade that could shave a man. He strapped it on, climbed into the saddle and rode with his Gypsy Scouts for the appointed place.

A cluster of scouts from all sides gathered at the bottom of the hill. The only one who came alone was the one Rudolfo assumed to be the Marsh King. He was a giant of a man, maybe the biggest man he had ever seen. Beneath his stinking, filth-matted furs he wore silver armor, and in his hands he held a massive silver axe. He rode a giant stallion that danced beneath him as he listened to the people around him.

Nearby, Rudolfo saw a petite woman sitting sidesaddle on a roan, her golden hair piled high upon her head and tucked beneath her shining crown. She wore a gold breastplate and greaves, but her arms were draped in red silk that matched her battle-skirt. She was still beautiful, though the years were catching up to her. He’d bedded her a handful of times, both for business and for pleasure. She was adequate but took few risks.

It explained the Queen of Pylos in many regards besides just the bedroom.

Rudolfo nodded to her and smiled. She did not return the gesture, but instead stared at him with open contempt.

He looked further but saw nothing of Sethbert. The fat goat had sent his General Lysias on his behalf, making his feelings clear on this matter without speaking or even appearing. Rudolfo was not surprised.

He was also not surprised to see Ansylus-the Crown Prince of Turam-next to Lysias. His family had married into Sethbert’s to the point that the resemblance between them all was uncanny. It was obvious that he viewed those gathered here with disdain, and Rudolfo doubted he’d even speak.

Vlad Li Tam looked up as Rudolfo sidled in closer. “Lord Rudolfo,” he said. “It is agreeable to see you again.”

He tipped his head. “Likewise, Lord Tam.”

Then Vlad Li Tam looked to the Entrolusian general. “It is best that your master did not attend. I would be frank with you.”

General Lysias glared. “I’ll not ask you to be.”

Vlad Li Tam smiled. “Regardless, I shall be. But in just a moment.” He turned to the Queen of Pylos. “Queen Meirov, you are radiant as summer.” She took her eyes off Rudolfo long enough to smile demurely at Lord Tam. Vlad then looked to the Marsh King. “You grace us, Lord.”

The Marsh King grunted but did not speak.

“Now, to business,” Vlad Li Tam said. “The Pope is calling for the cessation of hostilities and the immediate arrest of Sethbert.” He looked at the General. “Here is my frankness, Lysias. Your Overseer brought down Windwir and broke the back of the Androfrancine Order.”

“That is absolutely false,” Lysias said, but Rudolfo saw the lie on his face before he told it. Lysias pointed to Rudolfo. “There is a Writ of Shunning against this man.”

“A worthless writ,” Vlad Li Tam said. “For the man who issued it is, as you no doubt have heard, not the true Pope.”

Lysias spit. “That will be known when he declares himself and the Order has opportunity to investigate his claims.” He looked around at the others. “Until then, Pope Resolute the First is the heir of P’Andro Whym.”

Vlad Li Tam sighed and shook his head. “Even now, word of the new Pope spreads across the Named Lands. Some claim they have seen him, traveling under heavy guard, dressed in the rags of an Androfrancine abbot, never staying in one town for very long. In only a few months’ time loyalties will begin to shift, and you will see the Named Lands descend into war like they have never known. In the end Windwir will lie desolate, and yonder gravediggers will have more unfinished work ahead because of Sethbert’s folly.”

He pointed in the direction of the city, and Rudolfo followed his finger. He could just make out a line of men working with shovels in the rain while others pushed wheelbarrows through the mud.

“I plead with you,” Vlad Li Tam said, “leave men behind to help the gravediggers with their work, but let these be the last graves we dig for a season. War will not mitigate our loss.”

General Lysias spun his stallion. “We’ll not stand down. Resolute is our Pope.”

The Crown Prince looked around at them. Finally, he spoke. “I’ve heard nothing to convince me otherwise.” He turned his horse as well.

They rode off and the Queen of Pylos watched them. When they were out of earshot, she spoke. “I have no love of Sethbert, it is true. But I must concur. I do not need proof as he does of your invisible Pope, but I do need to know that he indeed is Pope, and for that to happen he must declare himself.”

Vlad Li Tam nodded. “And you, Lord Rudolfo?”

Rudolfo nudged his horse forward, giving the queen a hard look. “I had no argument withAo ath= the Androfrancines. I rode here to honor my kin-clave when I saw the pillar of smoke. I found a metal man in the ruins who spoke backward, and I learned over time that Sethbert had paid a mechanical apprentice to rescript the metal man to bring down Windwir.” His eyes narrowed, never leaving hers. “On my honor, I did not do this terrible crime, Meirov.” He turned to Vlad Li Tam. “I am pledged to the light, Lord Tam. I will follow your Pope and will extend my Gypsy Scouts to him should he require their services.”

Vlad Li Tam nodded. “Very well.” He looked to the Marsh King, who said nothing. “I am certain that the Pope will reveal himself soon.”

Queen Meirov turned her horse and moved down the hill toward her waiting men. “I should hope so, Vlad Li Tam. If Sethbert indeed brought down Windwir and your Pope proves true, I will serve the light as well.”

Vlad Li Tam smiled. “Excellent. We will discuss remuneration for your assistance and arrange the appropriate letters of credit when the time comes.”

She gave Lord Tam one final, brusque nod and rode back in the direction of her camp.

Lord Rudolfo watched her go. He quickly signed a message to Vlad Li Tam. Tonight then?

Vlad Li Tam nodded. Run them north to the other.

When darkness settled on the city and when the Marsh King’s next War Sermon bellowed out into the night, Rudolfo and his Gypsy Scouts would liberate the mechoservitors that Sethbert kept hidden in his camp.

He turned his horse and started down the hill. He was surprised when the Marsh King fell in beside him. The large man looked at Rudolfo, sadness etching his face. “I care nothing for Popes or metal men,” he said. “But your success is mine and my people’s. Come to my camp and parley with me as you will.”

The Marsh King spurred his stallion to a gallop, and Rudolfo watched him ride until he was nothing but a speck on the horizon, moving north.

As he watched, he decided that he would indeed go to the Marsh King’s camp and parley, perhaps even bring a bottle of chilled peach wine, made in the orchards of Glimmerglam and shipped by barrel downriver to stock each of his nine manors.

Rudolfo wondered what he would wear for such an occasion.