Rudolfo sat back down in the saddle. “Perhaps you will succeed,” he said. “Perhaps you will not.” He shrugged. “I’m offering myself and my half-squad of Gypsy Scouts. If the Writ of Shunning is your concern, we’ll ride apart from your charges and watch out from afar.”
An old Androfrancine broke from the group and approached. “What is the concern here, Hamik?” he asked. True, he wore a simple, tattered robe, but Rudolfo saw the ring upon his finger.
“You’re the arch-scholar of this concern,” Rudolfo observed.
The old man nodded. “I’m Cyril. Of the Turam Francine House. You’ve the look of a Forester about you.”
Rudolfo nodded and bowed slightly with a flourish. “I’m sure I must.”
“He’s offered his blades to ours. He claims a half-squad of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts.”
He watched at least three emotions wash over the arch-scholar’s face. At first, surprise. Then anger. Then weariness. These are the only currency our hearts can spend now, Rudolfo thought. He added his own voice to that of the guard’s. “I am also bound for the Papal Summer Palace to parley with Pope Resolute regarding the Desolation of Windwir. I am aware of his Writ of Shunning but remain confident that the matter shall be resolved peaceably in its own time and manner.” He patted the pommel of his sword. “Meanwhile, my blade and the blade of my men for the true children of P’Andro Whym. We will keep our distance if it pleases you.”
A hard look crossed the arch-scholar’s face. “And you want nothing for this?”
He smiled. “Only the chance to restore faith in my questionable name.”
Both the guard and the arch-scholar’s eyes widened a bit, and Rudolfo savored their silence as if it were a fine, chilled wine.
Finally, the arch-scholar nodded and spoke. “Very well, then.” He paused and Rudolfo could see the question he wanted to ask next forming on his face before forming on his tongue. “An {guepaud what is your name?”
Rudolfo threw back his head and laughed. “But of course I am Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army.” He inclined his head, doing his best to bow from the saddle. “And I am at your service.”
Neb
Neb stood at the river’s edge and watched the setting sun. They’d made their camp the day before, setting the tents up carefully outside the place where the city’s walls had once stood, near the river. Petronus-Petros, he reminded himself-was a crafty old fox. He’d studied very little Androfrancine Law in the Orphan School but he’d read enough of the codices and Council of Findings volumes to know that it was more complex than a Whymer Maze.
He wasn’t sure it would work, but he hoped it would.
They’d spent the day digging trenches in the charred earth, long shallow trenches.
“We start with those who fell outside the city,” the old man had told them when they gathered up that morning. “We’ll work in the daylight, and should anyone approach, I will deal with them.”
They worked all day digging the trenches, but no one approached. At one point, Neb thought he’d seen a rider at a distance, but the rider turned south and vanished.
Now, he stood by the river and stripped out of his clothes. They were black with soot, along with the rest of him.
Neb could’ve bathed in camp. There were tubs of heated water that a few of the women had put on for the diggers. But the day had worn into him like a wagon wheel on a familiar road and he’d needed to slip away from the others to recollect himself.
He waded into the cold waters, and jumped when his foot moved across something round and slippery. The skull floated to the top, pulled downriver by the slow current. He watched it go and realized suddenly that he felt nothing at all.
“This is my life now,” he said to the skull as it bobbed away.
Wind he could not feel caught at the ashy ground and put up a small cloud of gray. “Hail, boy,” a voice said from the cloud.
Neb looked, seeing nothing, silently cursing himself for not bringing a knife. He crouched in the water, his hand feeling for a rock. But knife or rock, it wouldn’t matter. Even if he could bring himself to wield either, it would do nothing against an enemy he couldn’t see.
“You’ve nothing {17;"0eto fear from me,” the voice said.
Neb’s eyes moved over the shoreline. But the sun was lower now, and any chance of picking up a glimmer of light, even if it could slide somehow over the magick, was rapidly fading. “I’ll not go back to Sethbert,” he said in a low voice.
The scout chuckled. “I don’t blame you for that. I’m not from Sethbert.”
A Gypsy Scout then, he thought. “You’re from the Ninefold Forest Houses, then?”
“Aye,” the voice said. “And you’re with the gravediggers.” It was a statement, not a question.
Neb nodded. “I am. I…” He didn’t know how to finish his thought. “I used to live here.”
Now the voice moved downriver a bit. “I’m sorry for your loss, then. Sethbert has wronged the world with his treachery.” A pause. “But don’t worry, boy. He’ll pay for it.”
Neb hoped the Gypsy Scout was right. He hoped it with everything inside of him. “How goes the war?”
Now, the Gypsy Scout sighed. “Not good, I’m afraid. The Pope has issued a Writ of Shunning against us. He’s been somewhat misinformed about matters.”
“He’s no Pope,” Neb said, and regretted it as soon as he said it.
Fortunately, the scout did nothing with it and continued. “General Rudolfo rides even now to parley with him. We’re dividing the Wandering Army, and most are falling back to the Ninefold Forest.”
Most. The thought lingered before he asked. “Most?”
The voice was upriver from him now. “Some of us are staying behind. We will be keeping watch over you from the shadows while you do your work. Tell the old man we would speak with him here at the river when the sun rises tomorrow.”
Neb nodded. “I will tell him.” He paused, thinking about it for a moment. “There was a woman with red hair. From House Li Tam. She fled Sethbert’s camp a week past for yours.”
“She is safe,” the Gypsy Scout said. “Rudolfo spirited her away along with the metal man before the first battle.”
A mechoservitor, Neb thought. Another survivor of Windwir. He wondered if there were others. It seemed odd {ItTim to him that the mechanicals would survive the destruction, but he welcomed what little of the Androfrancines’ light remained in the world, though he wondered what a mechoservitor’s role in this different world would be.
And the woman-her blazing green eyes and her copper hair filled his memory. She’d towered above him, standing a full head over Sethbert even. “I’m glad she’s safe,” he said.
A low whistle carried across the charred landscape. “I’m needed elsewhere,” the Gypsy Scout said. “Pass word to the old man. Tomorrow at dawn. Tell him it’s Gregoric, First Captain of the Gypsy Scouts.”
Neb nodded. “I will.”
Silence, then the faintest whispering of wind along the ground.
The sky was purple now and the light was leaking out of it quickly, turning the water as dark as the field of ashen bones that stretched west from the river as far as he could see.
With so many of the dead watching, Neb scrubbed himself clean as quickly as he could, then ran back to the camp to find his Pope.
Resolute
Pope Resolute the First had chosen his name quickly. Until ten days ago he’d simply been Archbishop Oriv, and that really hadn’t been much as far as he-or anyone else for that matter-was concerned. He’d climbed the ranks of the Order, starting out as a digging acolyte and working his way into a paralegal role researching and scripting matters of Androfrancine Law for the Office of Land Acquisitions. Somehow, in his later years, he’d earned the favor of Pope Introspect III and had found himself suddenly a bishop. The leap from that role into archbishop-assigned to oversee the Order’s vast property holdings throughout the Named Lands-had been a relatively short one.