He saw the balding crown of Charles’s head bobbing its way through the crowd, moving toward him at a leisurely pace. When they made eye contact, it was like lightning striking twice.
From afar, Charles appeared to have aged well, but up close, he was haggard and worn down. He weighed fifty stones less than he should, and though his clothes were new, they were ill fitting upon him. As he approached, the Arch-Engineer scowled and Petronus watched his hands.
This was a foolish trade, Father, Charles signed once the crowd parted enough for them to see one another.
Petronus inclined his head slightly. Perhaps, he answered. Are you well?
They met in the middle and briefly embraced. “I am as well as I can be,” Charles whispered. Petronus heard heavy emotion in the man’s voice and wondered exactly how the time had gone. Charles had been Sethbert’s prisoner first, and that could not have been easy. And Ignatio, Erlund’s new spymaster, had a reputation for cruelty though his master seemed more civilized.
Petronus released him. “Rudolfo is coming for you,” he said. “He can be trusted as you trust me.”
Charles nodded. “Did my messages get out?”
Petronus looked up. Ahead, the guards were craning their heads above the crowd, keeping watch on the two old men. “At least one did,” he said, then his hands moved. Is it true? Is Sanctorum Lux what I think it is?
His answer was a simple gesture. Yes.
The guards were moving into the crowd now, slowly, and Petronus resisted the urge to question Charles further. His words tumbled out now even as he steeled himself for the rest of his walk across the market. “You serve the Gypsy King now, Charles,” he said in a low voice. His hands pressed a final message into the man’s shoulder. Serve him well; preserve the light.
He thought for a moment that he saw tears in the old Arch-Engineer’s eyes, but he didn’t look closely enough. He didn’t want to know.
Instead, he willed his feet to carry him forward and willed his heart not to be afraid. If Esarov’s scheme worked, he’d be free soon enough. If it didn’t, he’d find that reckoning he had expected to face.
He pushed past Charles and into the crowd, carefully rehearsing his lines. The soldiers met him, and each took an elbow with firm hands, escorting him that last twenty steps. Lysias waited for him, his face dark with worry.
“General,” Petronus said with a nod. “It’s been a while.” He’d last seen the man during the parley that finalized peace following Resolute’s suicide and Sethbert’s removal from power.
Lysias blinked at him, and Petronus wondered if he reached for a fitting title before finally giving up. “It’s not safe here,” he finally said, dropping any need for an honorific. “We need to go.”
Petronus smiled. “One moment,” he said. Then, he pulled himself up to full height and turned toward the crowd. Already, the soldiers on each arm tugged at him, and he shook off their hands violently as he raised his voice over the square.
“Hear me,” he shouted. “I am Petronus, last true son of P’Andro Whym and last Pope of the Androfrancine Order, reigning King of Windwir.” He saw Lysias’s look of surprise out of the corner of his eye and wondered if the general had truly thought Petronus would vanish silently and willingly into one of Ignatio’s many basements. He also saw the confusion upon the soldiers’ faces as they looked to their leader for direction, but this was not his intended audience. He turned and took in the openmouthed, wide-eyed stares of the people in the market. Their voices died down as they took in the old man in his simple, travel-worn robes. “I am Petronus,” he shouted again, “and I give myself willingly into the hands of your Overseer, invoking my rights by monarchy.”
He opened his mouth to shout again, but now the hands were firm upon his elbows and he was being steered-nearly dragged-out of the crowded square and toward a waiting wagon.
Lysias drew alongside him, his face red. “This was supposed to be a quiet affair.”
Petronus smiled. “You’ll forgive me for spoiling your silence.” Behind him, he knew Esarov’s men were already spiriting Charles away through a series of alleys and windows and basements. He would be out of the city by nightfall and under Rudolfo’s protection in two days’ time if all went according to plan.
After that, Sanctorum Lux awaited.
The firm hands were now lifting him up into the wagon and closing the iron-reinforced doors. Most of the market now watched, and Petronus felt pleased with himself.
So far, he thought, things were off to as good a start as they could be.
Leaning back into the cushioned bench, Petronus closed his eyes and willed the rest of their plan to go as smoothly. But even then, as he tried to lay out the strategy and imagine the events that were coming, he found his mind pulled again and again toward Rudolfo and Charles and Sanctorum Lux.
Where was it? Who had built it? Was it safe?
The questions rolled on even as the windowless carriage bumped its way down cobblestone streets, turning left here and right there, until passing through the gates and picking up speed on the open highway.
Petronus found the carriage jostling him into a light sleep. In it, he dreamed of miles and miles of books-old and new-stretching out for as far as the eye could see. And Neb was there, grinning like a wolverine, alongside Charles and Rudolfo and Isaak.
I am not in my own dream, Petronus realized.
But then again, he didn’t need to be.
He only needed to know that the light was in such capable hands.
Chapter 15
Winters
Winters sat beneath the guttering lamp and pored over another volume from the Book of Dreaming Kings. Since her meeting with Ezra nearly a week before, she’d given as much of herself as she could spare to the long, winding row of shelves that stretched back to their earliest days in the Named Lands.
She’d started with the volumes that her grandfather had added, written down from his dreams with meticulous care, and now she read her father’s. So far, she’d found nothing, but she wasn’t sure exactly why she looked. The old man had told her that the book hadn’t changed until Windwir fell.
During my reign. Still, something in her longed for some clue, anything, that would negate his words or expand upon them. She replayed them again and again, and each time she saw the white lines of a scar upon his chest that was easily older than she was. Whoever Ezra was, he’d taken the mark of House Y’Zir a goodly while ago-when her father still lived. And her father had seen the fall of Windwir in his dreams, though the old man’s scar could well have been older than even that visitation.
Winters shuddered to think the cutting went back even farther.
She heard a low whistle and looked up.
Seamus, the oldest of her Council of Twelve, approached. Even in the dim light, his face was drawn and pale. “My queen,” he said in a low voice, “we are at alarm.”
She stood quickly, closing the book she read. “What is it?”
“We’ve received birds from the Summer Papal Palace,” he said. “They are under attack.”
“By whom?” The Papal Palace was under Gypsy protection, populated now by a few hundred Androfrancine refugees who had chosen not to make their way to the Ninefold Forest. She blew out her lamp and joined him at the entrance of the cavern that housed the book.
His mouth was a firm, white line. Then he spoke. “By us, it seems.”
She walked ahead of him, forcing him to keep up with her shorter legs. As they walked, her mind spun.
By us. Three weeks earlier, she wouldn’t have thought it possible. But now, after seeing the bodies of her own men with the mark of House Y’Zir carved into them and after hearing Ezra speak to the changing times and the rise of this so-called Crimson Empress, Winters knew that no matter how ludicrous it appeared on the surface, it could very well be true.