“Petronus chose to give himself for this man,” Esarov said, cutting him off. “There’s nothing more to say here.” A small group of black-jacketed men appeared to their north, walking quickly toward them with hands on the hilts of their knives.
Rafe Merrique was already returning to the dock, whistling for them to follow.
As Esarov and his man gathered up, Rudolfo led Charles to the dock. Magicked hands reached up to pull the old man into the long boat and under the tarp. Next, the Gypsy Scouts climbed aboard and Rudolfo turned to join them.
A low voice materialized to his left and he jumped. “Guard Charles well,” it said, “and find Sanctorum Lux.”
Rudolfo looked and saw nothing. “Who is there?”
“A friend of Petronus’s,” the voice said. “He bid me pass this to you.” A sheaf of papers appeared-magicked hands thrust them at him.
He took them. “Have you seen Petronus? Is he well?”
The men in the black coats were calling out to Rudolfo, but they were too far away for him to pick out the words. Everyone but Rudolfo and the pirate had fled or climbed aboard the magicked longboat.
“Grymlis, I presume?” Merrique asked.
“Aye, Merrique,” the voice answered. Then, he added, “The mechoservitors should be able to cipher out Petronus’s notes.”
The name was familiar, but Rudolfo could not place it. He looked down at the bundle of papers, then tucked them into his shirt. The black-coats were nearer now, calling for them to stop. Merrique was already climbing into the boat, and hands reached toward Rudolfo as well.
“I will guard Charles well,” Rudolfo said. “I trust you’ll keep watch over Petronus?”
Grymlis snorted. “As well as I can from outside. Now go.”
Rudolfo nodded and let the hands pull him down into the boat.
When they reached the Kinshark and were again beneath deck, the first mate passed Merrique a note. “The bird came while you were away,” he said.
The pirate read it and passed it to Rudolfo.
Rudolfo frowned at the simple, uncoded message.
The Summer Papal Palace has fallen. The Marsh Queen rides to war.
Pylos and Turam march north.
The Ninefold Forest would have to respond, he realized. Their kin-clave with the Marshfolk and their protection of the Androfrancine remnant would require it. Of course, Jin Li Tam would know that. He looked up. “Is there time for me to send birds?”
Merrique nodded. “Certainly.”
Rudolfo excused himself and went to his cabin. He sat at the small table and stared at the message paper and ink needle. Beside it lay the packet of papers from Petronus, waiting for his attention. But before that, he had messages to craft. What he knew he must write in them weighed heavily upon him.
I should be home now, he thought. But the image of his son’s small, gray face caused him to shake off that feeling and lift the needle. Jin Li Tam was every bit the formidable strategist that he was-more so, even. He could trust her with this work as he did his own.
He scribbled the first message out in practiced triple code, then paused to reread it.
Esarov’s words earlier struck him. He did consider Petronus-and all of the Androfrancines-under his protection still. He took his word seriously, as his father had taught him, and he had taken that mantle during the war when Petronus offered it. Those refugees were his responsibility not just because of that, but because Petronus-that clever Franci behaviorist-certainly had known that when he bequeathed the vast wealth of the Order to Rudolfo that the Gypsy King would care for its refugees. But not just the refugees of Windwir. All refugees-some from the now-failed book houses of Turam, many from the Entrolusian Delta.
No, not refugees.
He thought of Neb out in the Wastes with Aedric and Isaak, beyond the bird, last time he’d received word from home. And now Winters no doubt prepared her first War Sermon to face some strange foe that arose within her own people. Rudolfo’s family had broadened to include even a metal man who carried the sorrow of genocide on his accidental soul.
I truly am a collector of orphans.
He felt the wind grab the sails as the ship moved downriver toward the open sea. Then Rudolfo pushed all other thought from his mind and gave himself to the notes he needed to send.
But even as he did so, he felt something grow within him that he was not accustomed to. It grew greater and stronger with each league of river they put behind them. Soon, he would be leaving the Named Lands for the first time in over two decades to find a mouse in a hayfield and leaving his Ninefold Forest Houses and their complex bonds of kin-clave in someone else’s hands for the first time since he took the turban at the age of twelve.
Rudolfo named the emotion he felt and sighed.
“I am afraid,” he said quietly to the empty room.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam cursed beneath her breath and felt the anger prickling her scalp. “He’s done what?”
Second Captain Philemus shifted uncomfortably. “He’s fled with Isaak and the Waste Guide Renard.”
She forced herself to breathe. Last night had been her night with Jakob, and he’d not slept at all. That had meant sleeplessness for her as well, until Lynnae came for him just as dawn tinged the sky pink. Not long after, she’d been summoned for this audience. She reached out for the note, and the Second Captain placed it in her waiting hand.
She was incredulous. Neb had run off over a week ago-along with Isaak and that Waste mongrel Renard-and she was just now finding out. “And why,” she asked, laying the message aside, “are we just learning this now?”
“There have been problems with the birds,” he said. “They’ve lost several over there, and their magicks don’t seem to hold. We’re not sure why.”
“So Aedric is back at the Gate now?”
The Second Captain nodded. “He awaits your orders.”
She looked down at the other two messages that had brought Philemus tapping at her door and sighed. One was from Winters, the other from Rudolfo. Her eyes went to Winters’s. The girl gathered her army and marched for the Summer Papal Palace in response to the distress birds that had flooded the Named Lands two days before. To the south, Pylos and Turam also sent soldiers north. If Jin’s geography was correct, the young queen would reach the Palace later today. The other armies would be days behind, though, slowed by the harsh weather.
She vaguely recalled that Rudolfo had kept a small contingent of Gypsy Scouts at the walled mountain fortress until the work had been taken up by a handful of surviving Gray Guard just before winter fell upon them.
At the time, it had been sound strategy: The Foresters had their hands full at home and the Gray Guard were capable. No one could have foreseen this.
Her eyes moved now to Rudolfo’s message, and she read it again quickly. Beneath the casual wording of a personal message to her lay the coded script of a competent though worried general. Bring Aedric and party back, the note said. Send him west with the Wandering Army to honor our kin-claves.
But here she was faced with a hard choice, she realized. Rudolfo did not know about Neb and Isaak. And as highly as she thought of the boy-and having heard somewhat of his quiet romance with Winters the Marsh Queen-she knew that were it simply the boy, her decision would not be so hard.
Jin Li Tam had watched her father sacrifice the children he loved for what he considered to be a higher gain. She could sacrifice Neb, she knew, though it would break her heart to do so.
It was Isaak she could not give up, and for reasons only she and Rudolfo were privy to. In her early days with the Gypsy King, on the night they had fled the Summer Papal Palace and Resolute’s guards, Isaak had told her that he still retained Xhum Y’Zir’s spell, buried within his memory scrolls.