Lamentation

Chapter 28

Rudolfo

Rudolfo dismounted and handed his reins to a Gypsy Scout. There at the edge of Caldus Bay was the shack with its boathouse, surrounded by soldiers of the Wandering Army, his scouts and a squad of Pylos Border Rangers.

They’d received dozens of birds with dozens of reported sightings. Rudolfo had divided his force and scattered them to follow up on each lead. It had paid off.

When they’d first found Sethbert here, the Rangers had inquired around the town and learned that the boathouse Sethbert hid in was none other than that of a certain fisherman, Petros, who was away on business.

Sethbert hadn’t put up a fight, but he had insisted that he would only surrender to Rudolfo. The Rangers had quickly sent word to the Gypsy Scouts with Sethbert’s demand.

Rudolfo had left immediately, riding with the wagon that his Physicians of Penitent Torture had driven south. It was a large, enclosed structure with wooden sides that could be dropped to properly display the black iron cage furnished with the various tools of their redemptive work.

Rudolfo approached Aedric, the new first captain of his Gypsy Scouts. He was Gregoric’s oldest boy-nearly twenty. He would teach his friend’s son how to be a strong first captain, and perhaps, if the Gods did not grant him an heir, he would offer his fatherhood to the boy. He wondered how Jin Li Tam would feel about that. He suspected that she would see the value of it, but he realized suddenly that the days of making decisions of such magnitude without speaking with her were gone now. Not because he worried that she would take issue with his decision-he knew she would not. But rather, because he knew her now, knew that she had eyes that could see around corners he never dreamed of. She was a valuable ally.

“First Captain,” Rudolfo said, inclining his head slightly.

“General Rudolfo,” Aedric said?/fo, bowing. “The fugitive Overseer of the Entrolusian City States awaits you.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Is he armed?”

“I’m certain of it.”

He stroked his mustache. “And do you think he means to harm me?”

Aedric’s eyes narrowed. “He means to try, Lord.”

Rudolfo unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to a waiting aide. “Lend me your knives,” he said to Aedric.

Aedric handed over the belt of scout’s knives, and Rudolfo buckled it around his narrow hips.

Rudolfo waited for Aedric to insist he not go in alone, to tell him it was too dangerous. He smiled inwardly when the young first captain did not. “I will whistle for you when I need you.” Then, he looked to the two physicians that had driven down in the wagon. “Salt your knives and ready your chains.”

Rudolfo went to the door. “Sethbert,” he called out.

He heard scrambling and the sound of things being knocked over. He pulled open the door, and his eyes followed the ray of sunlight as it slanted into the filthy room. The smell overtook him first. Rotten fish and human feces. Rudolfo drew a silk kerchief from his sleeve and held it to his mouth and nose, inhaling the perfumes from it.

“Rudolfo?” The voice was hoarse and far away, laced with something he thought must be madness. More scrambling, and Rudolfo saw a filthy form crawl into the light. Sethbert had already started losing his fat, his clothes hanging off him. He was covered in filth from head to toe, his hair and beard matted with mud, his clothing ripped and gray with grime. His eyes were wide.

“Yes,” Rudolfo said. “I am here. This is over now. Come out.”

Sethbert smiled, relief washing his face. “I will come out. Soon.” He offered an exaggerated wink. “But first, did they not tell you that I intend to hurt you?”

Rudolfo’s hands clenched the knife hilt, his eyes on Sethbert’s hands, both splayed out on the muddy boathouse floor. “With what do you intend to hurt me?” he asked.

“With knowledge,” he said.

Rudolfo waited.

Sethbert continued. “I had the evidence.?€the evidI saw it. I saw the charts and the maps. They intended to use the spell to enslave us.”

Rudolfo laughed. “I thought you were going to hurt me, not amuse me,” he said. “What would the Androfrancines gain from enslaving us?”

“I’m a patriot of the light,” Sethbert said. The madness crept into his eyes now, too, and his face twitched in the shaft of morning sunlight.

Rudolfo scowled. “Enough of this. You’ve run out of time, Sethbert.”

He stepped back and almost missed the next words because Sethbert whispered them, low and with a sharp clarity. “Ask the whore who shares your bed who paid for the coups that killed your parents.”

Rudolfo spun, the knives coming out. “What did you say?”

Sethbert’s eyes met his, but the Overseer did not utter another word.

Later, after the physicians had chained Sethbert into the wagon, Rudolfo rapped on the outside of it with the pommel of his long, narrow sword and ordered the black-robed driver to make the return trip at a leisurely pace, stopping in what towns they could along the way.

He’d hoped he could follow, but he knew now that he could not. Sethbert’s words had chewed at him despite the Overseer’s obvious madness. He’d actually believed that the Androfrancines meant to harm the people they were sworn to protect. In the end, the paranoia of a madman brought down a city.

But this other-it touched on a suspicion he had harbored for a long while now. Everyone had said that his parents’ death was a terrible tragedy, an unseen insurrection that exploded in one night of intense violence that left Rudolfo an orphan. They’d shaken their heads when, even at his young age, Rudolfo suggested an investigation. It had seemed too convenient, and in two thousand years of forest life, there had never been insurrection. The night his parents died, he stayed up past dawn drafting his strategy for investigation. Gregoric’s father was supportive, but the pontiff felt the Physicians of Penitent Torture would better serve the occasion. Rudolfo listened to the pontiff. It was the first and last time he did not follow his instincts.

Even now his instincts led him, and he raced his new horse westward.

Ask the whore who shares your bed who paid for the coups that killed your parents.

No, Rudolfo thought, I will not ask her.

Instead, he would ask her father.

Neb

The mechoservitors fascinated Neb.

Certainly, he’d seen them on occasion in the library-though not often. Now, he could walk among them, talk with them and on occasion work with them as they cataloged and inventoried what pieces of the library lived within their memory scrolls.

Today, he worked with Isaak integrating the inventory of the latest caravan from the summer papal palace. After Resolute’s unexpected suicide, the Androfrancines at the Palace had quickly accepted Petronus’s invitation to return to the fold. But when a certain Captain Grymlis showed up at the gates with a small contingent of Gray Guard, Petronus turned them away.

“The Gypsy Scouts guard the Son of P’Andro Whym now,” he told them. “If you would be true to your vows, obey me now. Bury your uniforms and take up new lives far away from here.”

Neb had never seen anything like it. To a man, they stripped naked, buried their uniforms in the forest floor and left.

That had been two weeks ago.

Now, the wagons full of books and artifacts had formed a steady stream, two or three per week. Androfrancine refugees and property from the Emerald Coasts, from the Summer Papal Palace and even a few from the City States on the Delta trickled into the Ninefold Forest. Word of the restoration had spread throughout the Named Lands, and a corps of engineers already worked hard at digging its deep basements.

And Neb worked with Isaak to inventory each wagon so that the information would be recorded on the metal man’s memory scroll.

He watched the metal man work, his eye shutters opening and closing rapidly as he wrote. “Sethbert will arrive day after tomorrow,” Neb said.

Isaak looked up. “What do you think they will do with him?”

Neb shrugged. “Rudolfo means to keep him on Tormentor’s Row, to let his physicians do their redemptive work upon him with their knives.”

He’d studied those darker aspects of the Whymer cult, and shuddered to think of what that meant. The varying cuts had names, and each of them folded into the others until they formed a vast Whymer’s Maze of lacerations.

When Isaak said nothing, Neb continued, “But Petronus wants to try him for the Desolation of…” He saw the mechanical flinch and let the words fall off. “I’m sorry, Isaak.”

Isaak shook his head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Brother Nebios. A part of me thinks he deserves justice for his crimes.”

Neb nodded. “When I met Petronus, I was standing under Sethbert’s canopy, studying the position of his guards.” He paused. Had it really been so many months ago? “I’d stolen scout magicks from Lady Tam, and intended to use them in order to kill Sethbert.”

Isaak’s eyes flashed. “You knew what he had done?”

Neb nodded. “I did. But Petronus saw me and stopped me.”

Isaak pondered this. “You were a boy who survived the spell. Now you’re a hero of the Androfrancine Order. Do you believe your restraint led to these things?”

He chuckled, putting down the book he’d just lifted up from the wagon. “I had no restraint of my own. Petronus restrained me.”

Isaak fixed his eyes on him again. “But are you glad for it?”

Neb thought about this. “I think so. Yes,” he said.

Isaak looked to a point beyond Neb now and stood. “Lady Tam,” he said. “An unexpected delight.”

Neb looked up and blushed. Lady Tam still radiated beauty, though now it was clear that she wasn’t half as pretty as Winters. Still she was beautiful, and when she smiled at him he felt his face grow red. “Hello, Isaak,” she said, inclining her head to each of them. “Nebios.” She smiled. “How is the inventory?”

Now Neb stood as well. “We’ve found three mechanicals. Small ones, to be sure, but two of them are still in good repair.”

“I should be able to restore the third,” Isaak said. “It appears to have slipped a gear.”

Jin Li Tam looked to the wagon, and Neb thought for a second that her face registered surprise. He followed her eyes and saw the golden bird in its golden cage, its wings hanging broken and its neck twitching. “Where did this wagon come from?” she asked.

Neb stared at it. Something about the golden bird nagged at him. He suddenly smelled the sulfur and ozone of Windwir’s firestorm, and he flinched.

Isaak looked at the registry. “This one is from the Emerald Coasts,” he said. “A private collection.”

He saw the bird flying low to the ground, its golden fe?€ its golathers steaming. It was at Windwir, he realized. Neb opened his mouth and a stream of unintelligible words tumbled out, fragments of scripture jumbled together with glossolalia. He closed his mouth quickly and looked at Jin Li Tam.

She stared at him. “Neb?”

He waited for the tension to leave his throat. Finally, he spoke. “I saw this bird at Windwir.”

Neb watched her eyes narrow and her jawline tighten. “Really?”

He nodded. “I did.”

She nodded, her eyes suddenly far away. “I hope you can fix it,” she said. Then, her eyes returned to the present. “Petronus is calling for you both,” she said. She paused. “Take him that bird. Tell him I said I will speak to him about it later.”

Neb grabbed up his stack of papers. He probably wanted to talk about the council.

The Council of Bishops was just a few weeks away. Many of the gravediggers who had come north with Neb had been put to work building bleachers and crafting the massive tents to contain it. The last birds of invitation were to go out tomorrow.

Neb started toward the manor and the suite of offices they had grown into, then realized he was being rude, and turned to wait for Lady Tam and Isaak.

Isaak held the birdcage in his hands.

Jin Li Tam was staring at it, he realized, and Neb had never seen a more profound look of sadness upon her face.

Petronus

Petronus’s office adjoined the converted guest room that Neb and Isaak worked from. The steward had insisted that he have privacy and wouldn’t hear of him using his living quarters as his work space. Instead, they moved a small desk, some bookshelves and three chairs into a large walk-in closet. The closet even had a small window that opened out on one of the manor’s many gardens. As spring hurried on, Petronus could smell the flowers blooming, though of course he had to stand on his desk to see them.

He looked up the knock on his door. “Come in,” he said.

Neb came in first, and Petronus swore that every time he saw the boy he was taller. His shoulders had broadened and he even had the beginnings of a beard, trimmed.as neatly as a boy could manage. He wore the robes smartly, though he still walked in them as if they weren’t really his, as if he weren’t really a member of the Order. “You called for us, Excellency?”

“Come in and sit down,” Petronus said.

Isaak limped in behind Neb. He carried a small metal bird in a dented cage. The bird twitched and clicked. They both sat in the waiting chairs.

“What do you have there?” Petronus asked.

Isaak put the cage on the desk. “It is a mechanical. Jin Li Tam said she would speak with you about it later.”

Neb spoke up. “I think it was in Windwir when the city fell.”

Petronus studied the bird. It looked familiar. Like something he had seen in someone’s home. “I’ll look forward to Lady Tam’s explanation. Meanwhile…” Petronus reached beneath his desk and pulled out the cloth-wrapped object that had arrived by rider earlier this morning. He’d recognized it immediately, of course. It was from the Papal Offices in the Summer Palace, one of a few hand cannons that had been restored before the Order decided it dishonored kin-clave to make them. He laid it on his desk. “This arrived from the new Overseer, Erlund. It’s what Oriv employed to… well, to end his life.” He unwrapped it and watched Neb’s eyes go wide. “It was used during the days of the Younger Gods, long before the Old World and P’Andro Whym.” He looked from Neb to Isaak. “This is familiar to you?”

Isaak nodded. “It is, Father.” Petronus wasn’t sure why the metal man insisted on the ancient title, but it pleased him. It seemed more humble.

“You recognize it from your time in the library?”

The metal man shook his head. “No, Father. I was not permitted to work with any weaponry apart from the spell.” Exhaust leaked out from his back and his gears whirred. “Oriv used it when Lord Rudolfo and Lady Tam took me from the Summer Papal Palace. He killed one of the Gypsy Scouts with it. But I thought Lord Rudolfo brought it with us.”

“Perhaps this is a different device,” Petronus said. But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t likely. There had been less than a half dozen of these in the world, and none of them should have ever left the care of the highest officials of the Order or officers of the Gray Guard. When he was Pope, they kept one in his bedchambers, and one in each of his offices. The others had been locked away in vaults deep beneath the library.

Neb looked at it, and Petronus wondered if he noticed the bloodstains in the stock. They’d wiped it down, but it had sat in the blood long enough for it to stain the light wood stock. “It’s fairly simple mechanics,” Petronus said. “A spark ignites a wax-paper envelope of powders. The explosion of these powders propels a projectile-or in this case, a handful of iron slivers. It’s wildly inaccurate beyon?€accurated a handful of sword-lengths.”

But close enough for Oriv’s purpose. If it really had been his purpose. Petronus was suspicious, especially now, with Isaak’s recollection that the weapon had come into Rudolfo’s care once before. He would ask him about it upon his return.

Because if the weapon had been in Rudolfo’s care, it had somehow managed to leave it again. And if that were the case, it was possible that Oriv’s suicide might not have been exactly that. Not that it mattered at this point.

It was clearly an instance of Oriv’s tragic end being in everyone’s best interests. Especially Oriv’s best interests if the note he left behind spoke any the truth at all, that he had collaborated with his cousin for the Desolation of Windwir. His quick exit, mouth on the muzzle of this restored artifact, saved Oriv facing Androfrancine justice.

Petronus would never let him suffer beneath the knives of Rudolfo’s physicians in the way that Sethbert now did on his long journey north. But he’d have still enforced what strong punishment he could, and Oriv’s life would have been forfeit.

He looked at the weapon, then looked to Isaak and Neb. “I want this destroyed,” he said. “It is a secret we can no longer guard properly.”

He watched Neb’s eyes widen. “But Excellency,” he said, “it could be-”

Petronus did not let him finish. “Brother Nebios,” he said in his sternest tone, “it is not to be studied. It is to be destroyed.” He leaned in, feeling the anger rise in his cheeks. “I’ll not let another weapon fall into the wrong hands.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. He saw the look of confusion on Neb’s face, then saw understanding dawn as the boy went pale. “Another weapon?”

Petronus said nothing, even when Neb repeated his question. Finally, he covered the weapon back up. “Destroy it,” he said.

Neb nodded. “Yes, Excellency.”

Now Petronus looked to Isaak. “I want you to go over the inventories again. I want to see what war-making magicks and mechanicals still live within the mechoservitor memory scrolls. We will have hard decisions to make in the days ahead about which parts of the light we keep and which we allow to remain aptly extinguished.”

Isaak nodded. “Yes, Father.”

They stood and left. Neb cast another curious glance at Petronus, but he pretended not to notice. He knew the boy would be?€ boy woucurious now. He might even hate him for this.

If not this, Petronus thought, he certainly would hate him for what was coming.

And Petronus would not blame him for that. He hated himself as well.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam waited until dusk before approaching Petronus’s small office. Neb and Isaak had left for the evening, and the suite of rooms that housed the Androfrancine Order’s operations was quiet and dark except for the light coming from beneath the Pope’s door. The Gypsy Scouts who guarded him announced her arrival and ushered her in.

The old man looked up from a stack of paper and laid down his pen. “Lady Tam,” he said, inclining his head slightly.

“Excellency,” she answered, returning his nod. Her eyes found the caged bird on the corner of his desk. When she was a girl, she spent hours listening to the bird, teaching it simple phrases, in the moist heat of her father’s seaside garden. It seemed smaller now.

And battered, she realized. Its metallic gold feathers were streaked with black burn marks, and the bird’s head hung askew along with its entire right side. Bits of copper wire protruded from a charred eye socket. It couldn’t even stand properly-it crouched in the corner of the cage and twitched, its one good eye blinking rapidly.

She sat on one of the plain wooden chairs in front of his desk, her eyes never leaving the bird.

Petronus must have followed her gaze. “You recognize this mechanical?” he finally asked.

She broke her stare and looked to Petronus. “I do, Excellency. It was my father’s-a gift from the Androfrancines. It arrived with his library today.”

Petronus’s eyebrows raised. “His library? Why would Vlad Li Tam send his library?”

She had spent the better part of the day wondering the same thing. Her father cherished his books, and she could not imagine what might lead him to relinquish them. “I’ve been asking myself the same question, Excellency,” she said.

“Have you asked him?”

She shook her head and paused to find the right words. “My father and I are not in communication.”

Jin Li Tam watched the surprise register on Petronus’s face. She met his eyes and saw the questions forming in them, then watched as h?€n watchee forced those questions to the side. “So for some unknown reason, Vlad Li Tam has donated his library to our work here. And he’s included this mechanical bird.” He paused. “You seem disturbed by this, Lady Tam.”

She nodded. “There’s more,” she said, swallowing. Part of her was afraid to move forward. Over the past months, she’d gone from questioning her father’s will to despising his work in the Named Lands.

I hate my own part in it even more, she thought, looking back to the bird again. She realized Petronus was waiting for her to continue. “Neb thinks he saw the bird near Windwir on the day the city fell.”

Petronus leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “Did your father ever use the bird for message transport?”

She shook her head. “He did not. He considered it to be too noticeable.”

Petronus nodded slowly, now looking at the bird himself. “I had wondered if he had a hand in this.”

Jin Li Tam’s stomach sank. She’d not yet said it, but she wondered the same. Certainly, Sethbert had brought down the city. There was no question of that. He’d admitted it to her freely. But she knew Sethbert-given to fits of mood and rage, given to as much slothfulness as ruthlessness. She did not doubt he carried out Windwir’s Desolation. But she did not believe for a moment that he wasn’t led in that direction. And there was one man in all of the Named Lands whose sole work was bending people to do his will, using his network of children to gather the intelligence and execute his strategy. Finally, she said the words that she’d dreaded saying since the moment she saw the bird. “I fear my father used Sethbert to bring down Windwir.”

Petronus nodded. “It must be a hard conclusion for you to arrive at,” he said. His voice took on a gentle tone. “It is hard to discover that what we love most is not as it seems.”

She nodded. Suddenly, she found herself fighting tears. She forced them back, and thought about this old Pope. His words carried conviction and she found a question forming in her mind. She hesitated, then asked it. “Is that why you left the Papacy?”

Petronus nodded. “It is part of it.”

“And now, all these years later, you’ve come back to it. Do you ever wish you’d just stayed in the first place?”

Petronus sighed. “I wish that every day.” When he spoke next, his voice was heavy with grief. “I keep thinking that if I had stayed, perhaps I could have averted this tragedy entirely.”

She’d wondered?€17;d wonsimilar things today as she thought about the bird and what it might mean. She’d been with the Overseer for nearly three years, feeding information to her father and leaking information to Sethbert at her father’s direction. I should have seen what was happening, but I was blinded by faith in my father’s will.

Petronus continued. “I wish it every day,” he said, “but I know it’s a net with all manner of holes in it.” He forced a smile to his lips. “The truth of it is that given what I knew then, I made the best decision I could make. If I had stayed, I’d most likely be buried now with the rest of Windwir. And the work I’m now doing is far more important than any other I’ve been called to.”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “I understand.”

Petronus looked at the bird. “I will have Isaak check its memory scrolls and see what can be learned about this matter.” He paused, looking uncomfortable. “Your father and I were good friends once,” he said. “I would like to think that the boy I knew could not cause such darkness in the world.”

Jin Li Tam didn’t answer right away. She thought about Rudolfo-about his family and about his friend Gregoric. And she thought about the countless others her father and his father before him had bent like the course of a river to bring about their strategies in the world. She thought about the children-her brothers and sisters-that had been sacrificed along the way, no doubt in higher numbers than she would ever truly know. “My father,” she said, “is capable of much darkness.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

Finally, she stood. “Thank you for your time, Excellency.”

Later, when she was in her room, she sat on her bed and looked out of the window. Flowers were blossoming as spring took hold. The rains were finally letting up. She thought about Petronus’s words, and then she thought about the baby growing inside of her.

The work I’m now doing is far more important than any other I’ve been called to.

Jin Li Tam rubbed her stomach, and hoped that the light from this present work would outshine the darkness of her past.