When they finished Petronus took Neb to the inn, and they stuffed themselves on catfish stew and fried bread.
As Neb wiped the last of the stew from the bowl with his last crust of bread, he smiled at the old man.
Petronus smiled. “We’ve done a good day’s work.”
Neb nodded. They had. And though he really hadn’t done much himself, he’d learned in a way that he’d never learned in the Orphan’s School. Watching this man work, building trust here and suspicion there-grabbing a grin from this one and a nod from that one. He’d never seen anything like it, and it stirred a part of him. He was suddenly pushed back into his past.
“But I don’t know what I want to be,” he’d told his father during one visit.
Brother Hebda smiled. “Do not be what you do,” he said. He’d been trained in the Francine Disciplines and Neb had always enjoyed seeing them lived out in real life. “Doing and being aren’t the same.”
“But isn’t who I am determined by what I do?”
His father’s face broke into an even wider smile. “Sometimes. But what you do can change from situation to situation. Can a good man kill?”
Neb shook his head.
“But the Gray Guard kill… are they good?”
Neb thought about this. “I think they are. Because they are doing their job to protect the light.”
Brother Hebda nodded. “They are. But say they were ordered to kill a man because he was a heretic, but really he was an enemy of a spiteful c sf a822uckold? Are the Gray Guard then defined by what they do?”
Neb laughed. “I only said I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”
Brother Hebda laughed, too. “Oh. That’s easy, then.”
“Really?”
His father nodded and leaned in. “Watch for the ones who leave your mouth hanging open. Study them, find out what they love and what they fear. Dig the treasure out of their soul and hold it to the light.” He leaned in even closer now, so that Neb could smell the wine on his breath. “Then be like them.”
He remembered thinking in that moment that Brother Hebda was a man he wanted to be like. That very winter, Neb turned in his first grant request to study in the care of an expedition to the Wastes, preferably assigned to Hebda Garl as a student apprentice.
Now, after a day of watching Petronus-or Petros-at work, he’d found someone else he could want to be like.
After dinner, they went out to the gathering crowd. It wasn’t a large crowd. Not everyone had come. But enough had. And they stood in the square among the tents and carts, near the open doors of the inn. They stood around an overturned tub that the old man climbed onto, holding a shovel over his shoulders.
Neb watched from the side. The mayor, all agreement earlier, now seemed agitated and anxious to speak. Neb wondered what had changed.
“I’ll be brief,” Petronus said before the mayor could try to introduce him. He dropped the shovel from his shoulder and pointed north with it. “You all know what happened to Windwir. It’s a field of ash and bones for as far you can see.” There were muted gasps in the crowd. “We are all the Children of the New World, and at some place in our lineage, we are each kin-clave unto one another. We know this to be true.” He waited for heads to nod, a few voices to speak out. “I’m not a man to leave my kin unburied,” Petronus said.
Then the old man went on for another fifteen minutes, laying out a plan of action that astounded Neb with its simplicity.
“Those who can,” Petronus said, “will come and help as they can.” Shifts of a week on and a week off by thirds-two men at home looking after their neighbor’s farm as well as their own while that good citizen was away. Women working in similar shifts. And those who had nowhere else to go-they would leave with Petronus and Neb in the morning and go set up their camp.
“What about pay?” someone asked.
And Neb’s mouth fell open at Petronus’s words. “Those who need it will get it. Those who don’t will work for love.”
Petronus hopped down from the washtub and winked at Neb. “How did I do?”
Neb nodded, wishing he could say something. Then he heard another loud voice and looked. The mayor had climbed onto the washtub now and was holding a scrap of paper up in the air. “I have a word to share as well,” he said. “Though I hate to contradict our well-spoken guest.”
The mayor waited for the crowd to quiet. “I have word today that Bishop Oriv at the Papal Summer Palace has been named the Pope of the Androfrancine Order and King of Windwir. His Excellency has ordered all Androfrancine resources and personnel be gathered there to be inventoried in the light of this great tragedy. He also sends along a Writ of Shunning against the Ninefold Forest Houses and an Exercise of Holiness.”
Neb gasped. A Shunning was an Old World practice that had carried over to the New World through the wisdom of P’Andro Whym. It severed all ties of kin-clave, making its recipient fair game for anyone and an enemy of the light. It had only been used a handful of times, and usually as leverage to manipulate a Pope’s desired outcome. But during the Heresies, it was used as a mask for open war.
And the Exercise had fallen out of fashion for over a thousand years. But there was a time when once in seven years, the Pope declared an Exercise of Holiness, calling for Windwir to be closed to the outside world for an entire year. Twice, it had been used to wait out schisms-a year of separation could quell most arguments. Enforced by the Gray Guard, violators early on were killed… but later merely punished and evicted.
If Neb had wondered about its meaning, it would’ve been clear on Petronus’s face.
“There will be Gray Guard at the Summer Palace,” Petronus said in a quiet voice. “Not many. Not enough to enforce this.”
The mayor continued. “And out of kin-clave with Windwir, Lord Sethbert, Overseer of the Entrolusian City States, has agreed to provide guardianship and enforcement of the Exercise. His Excellency, the Pope, compels all townships within the Providence of Windwir to comply and assist as required.”
Neb watched the crowd to see how they would respond. And he watched Petronus, too. The old man’s face was hard and unreadable. The mayor climbed down and no one moved.
Finally someone spoke up, and Neb was surprised at the voice. It was his voice, clear and marching forward with every word.
“I am not a man to leave my kin unburied,” Neb said.
And when he said it, he couldn’t help but think of Brother Hebda.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo sat in the shade of a fir tree, alone, and thought. There was dried blood on his sleeve and his boot, but it wasn’t his. He’d killed a magicked sapper the night before when they breached the perimeter. Rudolfo’s men had taken a beating had held their ground. Three of his Gypsy Scouts-three-lost in one night.
Gregoric slipped beside him and sat. “General Rudolfo,” he said.
Rudolfo nodded. “Gregoric. What do you think?”
Gregoric shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The bird had arrived two hours earlier bearing news of the new Pope and the Writ of Shunning. Rudolfo had immediately sent word to House Li Tam and the Seventh Forest Manor. Just as he’d finished, his Captain of Intelligence had approached with more bad news. “We’ve word that two more brigades of Delta infantry are northward bound. And Pylos and Tyrn are sending contingents.”
That’s when Rudolfo slipped from the camp into the forest in order to think. Of course he’d known that Gregoric, still magicked from the morning patrol, had followed at a distance. And after sufficient time had past, his first captain had done as he always did and came to sit with his friend.
Rudolfo sighed. “I think we may have to pull back and find new vision. This new Pope has changed the pieces about on the board.”
“Aye,” Gregoric said. “We still have some time. A few days. We can do what we can and then divide the army.”
Rudolfo nodded. “And I will be needed elsewhere.”
Tomorrow, with his own half-squad of Scouts, Rudolfo would ride for the Papal Summer Palace to parley with this Pope. Behind him, his Wandering Army would fall back to their forest islands until their general called them back to war.
For the first time in a week, Rudolfo wondered if he truly would prevail.