Lamentation

Chapter 30

Rudolfo

Rudolfo, Jin Li Tam and Petronus dined together the next night. Rudolfo had arranged it before falling into his bed and sleeping away most of a day. He’d also insisted that Isaak attend, though the metal man did not eat. They started late. Overhead the sky moved from purple to gray, and the moon started its slow, upward crawl.

At Jin’s suggestion, the cooks presented grilled venison and forest mushrooms in a garlic sauce, folded into a bed of rice and served with flat, fried bread and steamed vegetables. They drank crisp, cool lemon-beer and ate creamed berries for dessert.

Isaak sat politely at the table from beginning to end, speaking when spoken to but otherwise just listening. Rudolfo made a point of engaging him in the conversation where appropriate.

Rudolfo looked to him now. “How is the restoration going?”

“It’s going well, Lord. Construction is so far ahead of schedule that we’ll have to start working at night to keep up with them.”

Spring was turning to summer now, and the fourteen mechoservitors worked beneath a large silk tent at the base of the hill. They had tables stacked with parchment and quills and bottles of ink, and they reproduced from memory what they could. The completed stacks were bundled, tied with twine and hauled by wheelbarrow to the bindery across the river. Originally, they thought it would take three years to restore what remained of the world’s largest receptacle of knowledge.

“That’s good news,” Petronus said. “And I’ve received the letter of transfer. More good news.”

Isaak nodded. “It is.”

Petronus smiled. “Neb informs me that other holdings are finding their way home.”

Isaak hummed and clicked. “Two hundred twelve volumes have arrived from various sources, along with diverse Androfrancine artifacts of interest. And we have letters from two universities inviting emissaries to review their holdings for items unaccounted for. We’ve always anticipated a forty percent restoration when we’re finished. More if we reform the Expeditionary Office.”

But when Isaak said those words, Rudolfo saw the look on Petronus’s face, and knew that the Pope had no plans for a return to the Churning Wastes.

And he never speaks of future work beyond this Council. Rudolfo noted this.

They continued talking in low voices, drinking their wine and discussing the council and the work remaining.

Afterward, they reclined on pillows and listened to the beginning of night.

Isaak stood. “Humble apologies,” he said, “but with your leave, I will return to my work.” He clicked and clanked, then bowed before Petronus. “Good evening, Father.”

Petronus chuckled. “Continue your excellent work. I’m sure we’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Isaak nodded, looked at Rudolfo and Jin Li Tam. “Thank you for your graciousness.”

“You are always most welcome,” Rudolfo said.

They listened to his pistons clacking as he exited the garden and took the stairs inside.

Jin’s left hand moved quickly, her fingers shifting against the backdrop of her gown and tablecloth as her right hand reached for her napkin. You should dismiss me and speak with Petronus alone, she signed.

Rudolfo inclined his head slightly. “Perhaps our guest and I should take our plum brandy privately tonight?”

She smiled at them both. “I think you both have much to discuss.” As she stood, her hand moved again, now against her hip and leg. Be mindful; this old fox is crafty.

“Not just crafty,” Petronus said, “but also fluent in seventeen different nonverbal Court languages.” He looked at her, his eyes crinkling with his smile. His own hand moved in the same pattern of language. You have found a strategic and strong and beautiful woman, Rudolfo.

Jin Li Tam blushed. “Thank you, Excellency.”

She leaned over Rudolfo briefly, squeezing his shoulder before she left. Two Gypsy Scouts followed her as she left the garden.

Rudolfo clapped, and a server appeared with a bottle and two small glasses. He filled their glasses and vanished.

Petronus dug an ivory pipe and a weathered leather pouch from his plain brown robe and held it up. “May I?”

Rudolfo nodded. “Please.”

Petronus looked nothing like a king, Rudolfo realized, and certainly acted nothing like any Pope he’d seen. He watched the old man pinch dark, sweet-smelling leaves between his thumb and forefinger, watched him shove the wad down into the pipe’s bowl. He struck a match on the table and drew the pipe to life, a cloud of purple smoke collecting and twisting around his head before drifting out over the garden.

Petronus waited until Rudolfo lifted his brandy cup then raised his own. They held their cups up, saying nothing, and then drank.

Rudolfo tasted the sweet fruit, felt the fire as the brandy burned its way into him.

After a minute passed, Rudolfo cleared his voice. The gardens emptied as his Gypsy Scouts and servers shifted to take up positions nearby but out of earshot. “The time to talk plainly is upon us. Vlad Li Tam flees the Named Lands. Sethbert is silent beneath the physicians’ knives. What are your intentions for the Order?”

Petronus shook his head. “You can no longer afford to think like that, Rudolfo. The Order is irrelevant. I am irrelevant. What’s left of the library is all that matters.”

Vlad Li Tam’s words came back to him. A new location for the Great Library. Under a strong caretaker. “You are the Pope. You have a part to play in this.”

Petronus shook his head. “My part in this is nearly finished. I left this behind for a reason. I intend to leave it behind again, Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo blinked. “You can’t mean that. They need you.”

“No,” Petronus said, “they truly don’t.” He sighed. “But you do. And I can give you what you need.”

Rudolfo felt his eyes narrowing. “What is that?”

Petronus exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I can give you the Great Library.”

I could take it. But even as he thought it, Rudolfo knew that he would not. “What do you want?”

“I think you know what I want.”

“Continue,” Rudolfo said. He suddenly knew what was coming.

“I will make it plain.” Petronus looked at him, his eyes suddenly hard and bright. “If your guardianship of Windwir is not sufficient motivation, then by way of the kin-clave between your houses and mine, as King of Windwir and Holy See of the Androfrancine Patriarchy, I require the extradition of Sethbert, former Overseer of the Entrolusian City States. He will be tried for the Desolation of Windwir and for the souls lost in his act of unprovoked warfare.”

Rudolfo thought of Sethbert now, in his cell on Tormentor’s Row. He’d arrived a few days ahead of Rudolfo, and the Gypsy King was surprised at his reluctance to watch the physicians at their work.

Before Windwir, he often took his lunch on the observation deck when they were in session so he could listen to the physicians’ calm exegesis beneath the screams of their patients. But since his trip to the Emerald Coasts, since discovering that he himself-along with the rest of the Named Lands-had languished beneath someone else’s salted knife, he could not bring himself to take comfort in that work any longer. And he’d suspected for a time now that Petronus might invoke the Order’s rights by kin-clave.

“I will extradite him for trial,” Rudolfo said. “But you will give me a Pope if you won’t stay yourself.”

Petronus smiled and shook his head. “I will give you what you need, but I do not guarantee you a Pope.” When Rudolfo opened his mouth to protest, he continued. “The honoring of kin-clave shoul“€in-claved not be confused with someone else’s backward dream.”

Rudolfo tilted his head, not sure if he’d heard properly. “Backward dream?”

“The world of P’andro Whym-like the world of Xhum Y’zir and his Age of Laughing Madness-is not the world of today, Rudolfo, and certainly not the world of tomorrow. In the early days, before the Whymer Bible was compiled, before the Androfrancines named themselves and robed themselves and built their Knowledgeable City at the heart of the world, they met a need because it was there at the moment.” He held up his empty cup, turning it in the candlelight. “The cornerstone of Androfrancine knowledge is that change is the path life takes, yet we all dream backward to what has been rather than dreaming forward to what can be… or better yet, to dream in the now.”

Rudolfo sighed. He could feel the truth of the old man’s words in the dull ache of his muscles and soul from his long, contemplative ride. “We love the past because it is familiar to us,” he said, “whether that past is light or dark.”

“Yes,” Petronus answered. “And sometimes, we try to carve the future into an image of the past. When we do so, we dishonor past, present and future.”

The words struck Rudolfo, and he understood now at least part of Petronus’s strategy. “You do not feel the Androfrancines need a Pope. It is why you left.”

Petronus waved his hand. “It was many things. It was also about knowing my own soul. If I had continued, whatever I did would be a lie.”

Rudolfo leaned forward. “How did you know? What brought you to that place of knowledge?”

Petronus shrugged, and laughed loudly. “My whole life brought me to that place of knowledge. There was no one thing. I woke up one morning and simply knew.” He tapped out his pipe. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

Rudolfo raised his eyebrows. “What makes you say that?”

The old man smiled. “Your life has changed, Rudolfo. Your Wandering Army will soon wander no more and your Gypsy Scouts will run the forests without their Gypsy King. You will live in one house with one woman. And soon, your library will be the center of the world. This little town will grow beyond its past just as you have grown beyond yours. Add a few children-an heir to nurture, perhaps…” Petronus let the words die. “I know you know these things. I know you think about them.”

Rudolfo’s guard slipped and his thought slipped with it, coming out in a quiet voice. “What if my life becomes a lie?”

“Or what if it’s becoming true?” Petronus stood.

Rudolfo shook the sudden doubt away, and stood as well.

“Will you take Sethbert off Tormentor’s Row and place him in a simple cell?”

Rudolfo felt a twinge. “I will order it so.”

“I will see him tomorrow.” Petronus walked to the stairs, then turned back to Rudolfo. “We will hold the trial at the conclusion of the Council of Bishops.”

Rudolfo nodded. “I concur.”

Petronus paused at the top of the stairs. “Do you remember what you said of Neb? That he would make a fine captain?”

Rudolfo nodded. The boy was intelligent and capable, a strong leader who influenced others without knowing it. That was a blade that could be sharpened into the fine edge of an intentional strategist. “I do. The Order is fortunate to have him.”

A dark look crossed Petronus’s face and Rudolfo saw loss there. “Remember those words, Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo said nothing. He felt a another twinge, something restless moving beneath the surface of this all. He felt his eyes narrowing, but if Petronus noticed, he did not show it.

“Sleep well,” the Pope said as he started his descent back into the manor.

“I will,” Rudolfo replied. But he knew that he wouldn’t. A gnawing feeling of dread grew in his stomach about the coming council, and at the center of it stood a man with a strategy Rudolfo did not yet fully grasp.

Neb

More and more, Neb found himself feeling at home in the Ninefold Forest. The work satisfied him, and the forest Gypsies fascinated him. And the Northern Marshes were just across the Prairie Sea from him.

As the days slipped past, Neb watched the small town fill to overflowing. The last large caravan arrived from the Summer Papal Palace that morning, and yet more tents went up in the large open meadow where the council pavilion stood.

This is all that is left, he thought as he watched the men in their dark robes walking among the rainbow-clad forest Gypsies. It staggered him, remembering a time when this many black robes would have been a relatively small gathering. He brought the matter of recruitment up to Petronus several times in the last two months, but the Pope had deflected it. At first, Neb thought it was coincidence combined with the distractions of Petronus’s office and the exhaustion he must surely feel. After all, the old man rarely slept these days, poring over page after page of parchment in his office late into the night, arriving early in the morning to do the same all over again.

But now, these deflections recurred enough that Neb realized Petronus was avoiding the subject. Still, in itself that may have been no more than a desire to take care of the more pressing issues. The mechoservitors worked day and night now to reproduce the library from their memories, their hands blurring as they moved pen across paper. Rudolfo had recruited a half dozen bookbinders and outfitted them in nearby tents while proper facilities could be built. Already, the manor was filling with stacked volumes, its halls and rooms smelling of new paper and fresh ink.

If that weren’t enough to keep Petronus’s attention on the here and now, there were vast Androfrancine properties that required difficult decisions. A group of one thousand did not have the same needs as a group one hundred times that size, but which holdings should be kept and which should be abandoned or bartered or sold off? Even if the Order planned for recruitment, it had taken two thousand years to build its power, and Neb doubted it could ever come back in the same strength it had before, even bound to the Ninefold Forest Houses.

And then there was the matter of Sethbert and the trial. The thought of the former Overseer rekindled a rage buried deep in Neb. Since the screaming wagon arrived, Neb had stopped dreaming about Winters and the reunion he longed for. Instead, he dreamed of killing Sethbert.

Isaak found him at the edge of town, watching the Androfrancines move about in their small city of tents. “Pope Petronus is calling for you.”

“How is he today?” He’d noticed the dark circles, and had even heard Petronus snap at one of the servants the day before. He had an edge about him that Neb hadn’t seen, even during the worst of their work in Windwir.

Isaak shrugged. “He is exhausted. He seems… weighed down.”

Neb nodded. He’d never asked Petronus why he’d left so many years ago, but he couldn’t imagine that coming back was something he’d wanted to do.

I forced him to it. No, he reminded himself, Sethbert’s act of violence had forced Petronus to it. More than that, it was the kind of man that Petronus was.

“We do what we must,” Petronus had told him those times Neb had brought it up. “You did what you had to do and so will I.”

Still, Neb regretted his part in it. He thanked Isaak and made his way back to the seventh “€o the seforest manor.

Petronus’s door was closed when he reached the office. He knocked at it, and a gruff voice answered.

When he saw the look on Petronus’s face, he froze.

He knows about the weapon, he thought. He’d wanted to do what he was told with it. He’d taken it and had gotten halfway to the blacksmith with his fire and hammer, intending to have it broken into pieces and melted down. But he’d ended up in the forest with it, running his hands over it, feeling the history of it. It was probably five hundred years old, rebuilt no doubt from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. It represented something-a part of the light, he supposed-and in the end, he could not bring himself to destroy it. In the end, he’d buried it in its oilcloth beneath the massive, mossy stump, marking the place with a few white rocks.

Neb opened his mouth to explain, but Petronus gestured to a chair and spoke first. “Sit down, Neb.”

Petronus was distracted, shuffling papers on his desk until he found a neatly folded and sealed note. “I wanted to talk with you before I gave you this.”

Neb looked at him, suddenly not so sure it was about the weapon. He saw deep grief on the man’s face, and his eyes were dark. “What is it, Petronus?”

When they were alone, he’d insisted that Neb call him by name, but now Petronus’s eyes hardened. “You will address me now as Excellency or Pope,” he said.

Neb felt his jaw go slack and his stomach lurch. “How may I serve you, Excellency?”

Petronus nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “Would you serve me, then, Nebios?”

Neb swallowed. Suddenly, he felt afraid and alone and uncertain. “You know that I would do anything for you, Father.” He wasn’t sure why he’d slipped into the older, more familiar term. Perhaps because he’d heard Isaak use the same. Or perhaps because over the last nine months, the man had played the role.

Petronus nodded again. “Very well then.” He handed the note over to him. “I am rescinding your status in the Order.”

Stunned, Neb took the note but did not open it. “If this is about-”

Petronus shook his head. “It is not about you.” Their eyes met. “The assignment in Windwir and your work here were only intended to be… temporary.”

Neb wasn’t sure what he felt. On the surface, shock. Below that, anger and despair and confusion. “I don’t understand. There is much work to be done still. I can-”

Petronus’s voice rose. “Enough,” he said. “You named me your Pope.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Would you so easily challenge my authority?”

Neb swallowed and shook his head, fighting back the tears that suddenly threatened to ambush him.

Petronus looked away. “Your work has been exemplary, as my letter indicates.” Neb stared at him, watching the old man’s eyes go everywhere in their avoidance of his own. “You have become a fine young man and a strong leader.” He paused. “You will of course be permitted to attend the council and trial if you wish it.” But his eyes told Neb that he would rather he did not.

Petronus went back to shuffling the papers on his desk, and Neb sat in silence, staring at the folded note in his hands. He wanted to tear it into pieces and throw it back at the old man, shouting at the top of his lungs that he would not be discarded so easily. He wanted to cry and run to the old man’s side and beg him to tell him what this was truly about, because he could see plainly that something dark-something terribly dark-worked at the soul of the man he credited with saving him from the madness of those early days after the Desolation.

No, he realized. Petronus did not save him. Hope did.

The old man continued shuffling through his papers, not speaking.

Because there are no other words left between us, Neb realized.

Finally, he stood and left the office, fleeing the manor for the forest. As his feet slapped at the grass and pine needles, Neb suddenly realized that once again his dreams were true.

“You will stand and proclaim him Pope and King in the Gardens of Coronation and Consecration,” Brother Hebda had told him in that first dream of many. “And he will break your heart.”

Brokenhearted, Neb sobbed in the forest of a place that no longer felt like home.

Vlad Li Tam

Vlad Li Tam could not abide wool during the summer, and he wondered how it was that anyone else did. The archeologist’s robes were rough on his skin, particularly after three days in the saddle.

The iron ship had dropped him with his horse and his small entourage on an isolated portion of the coastline near Caldus Bay. He’d sent the remainder of his armada ahead, intending to catch up to them near the Whispering Isles at the edge of the Named Lands.

He’d intended to be done. He’d planned to send his children for this last bit of the work, but in the end he couldn’t, despite Rudolfo’s threat. Years of personally delivering his most important messages would not be denied, and finally, at the end of things, he’d come to the Ninefold Forest for the first time since that night long ago to meet with his seventh son and hear his final words.

The Gypsy Scouts had questioned them briefly about where they’d come from. An Androfrancine at a small table, shielded from the sun by a small canopy, recorded their names and positions within the Order. After the brief interview, he directed them to the field of tents outside town.

They added their own tents to that small canvass city, and while his sons put them up, he wandered among the dark robed men, watching and listening for any scrap or tidbit that might help him.

Eventually, he left the Androfrancine sector and wandered across the wide, low bridge into the town itself. He joined himself with others dressed like him, moving strategically through the parts of the town he would need to visit. Finally, he came to Tormentor’s Row and the low stone buildings that served as the Ninefold Forest’s prison-the one place he knew he would not be able to reach personally and where his coffers were not deep enough to purchase influence. He paused, listening for screams but hearing none. Of course, by now Sethbert would be in a cell. He expected Petronus would have insisted upon that, not wanting to legitimize that particular Whymer interpretation, with its cutting and peeling in the name of redemption.

Those guards would be above reproach, but the cooks would not be. And the message would be easy enough to send through them. A long strand of hair-Sethbert’s sister’s, in fact-tied to the foot of the game hen he would take for his final meal. The hen would be served whole just as Sethbert preferred. And another strand of hair-this one shorter and taken from his nephew Erlund, tied carefully around the small bird’s bill. More threats at the end of a string of threats.

Of course, Vlad Li Tam had no intentions of killing Sethbert’s family. All of his children but those he’d brought with him for this last northward journey-and the daughter who no longer acknowledged him-waited for him on iron ships loaded with all of House Li Tam that they could carry.

But the threat would be clear, and sometimes a threat was enough to move the river. Vlad Li Tam was certain he could count on Sethbert taking the cue and keeping silent. And that silence would let his old friend finish the work he’d been made to do.

Smiling to himself, Vlad Li Tam continued his stroll through the town. He paused again at the gates of the seventh forest manor, studying the windows and doors and comparing them to the drawings and specifications he’d memorized so long ago.

There were messages for the manor as well, messages he would deliver personally.

But only after he finished moving the river.