Grymlis’s next words marched out clear and slow. “You are a clerk hiding in the mountains, tallying up your leftovers while beggars and refugees bury your dead.” His voice became a growl. “While your cousin and his alliance play at army and tell you what they wish for you to know. While your banker diverts your Order’s funds into the pocket of a pretender you know nothing about. While the greatest weapon this world has ever seen walks and talks and serves Lord Rudolfo his chilled peach wine.”
The words stung him, and his first thought was to slap the general. His second thought was to demand his arrest. In the end, he did neither. He felt his shoulders slump. “What would you do?”
“Nothing… from here.” Grymlis strode forward, throwing open the doors to the balcony, letting the cold wind blow snow onto the thick Emerald Coast carpets that lined the office floor. “If you stay a week longer, you’ll have stayed too late. Leave the steward in charge. Leave a company of the Guard if you must. Set those who’ve come home to whatever work you will.” His eyes were sharper and harder now than a thousand angry dreams. “But for light’s sake, man, go out and be King and Pope. You’ll not sway the tide of loyalty up here in hiding.”
The words resonated. It was completely contrary to his cousin’s direction. But after the week with Rudolfo and the mechoservitor, he’d started doubting how truthful his cousin had been. And he still could not move past the fact that his cousin had known somehow that he was away from Windwir on the day if fell. He suspected strongly that Sethbert might even have had some hand in arranging that. Coupled with that, Oriv knew that hisEv k fr mother’s sister’s son had no love toward him and no loyalty to blood.
He’d even found himself wondering from time to time if Sethbert had somehow arranged the Desolation of Windwir as Rudolfo had maintained. Some of the refugees spoke of rumors, words passed from soldier to merchant to farmer and so on.
He looked outside again, then looked back to Grymlis. The old guard waited patiently.
“We have a reserve treasury here?”
Grymlis nodded. “Certainly.”
Be your name, something deep inside of Oriv whispered. Resolute.
“Very well, General. Ready half of the contingent. They ride with me under your command in three days’ time. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly, Excellency,” Grymlis said with a smile.
Now, thought Resolute, to be the clearest and loudest voice.
Calling for his birder, he crafted his reply to the pretender’s proclamations in as loud and clear a tone he could muster. Next, he wrote to Sethbert in the same tone, instructing his cousin that he would meet him on the plains of Windwir in one week’s time.
When he finished, he turned his chair so that he could look out of his window and watch the falling snow.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam sat at the desk in the makeshift office the steward and house staff had created for her and Isaak, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the work.
Tomorrow, she’d return to the River Woman and pick up her powders. There was no guarantee that they would work. These measures were only taken on rare occasions, when other strategies failed. And regardless of the efficacy of the powders, there was still the matter of Rudolfo ingesting them and rising to the challenge of copulation. The former concerned her, but not overmuch-she’d been trained by the best of poisoners, though she smiled at the irony of this particular situation-lacing his food or drink with a substance that would bring life rather than death. As to the latter-she had no worries. The Gypsy King’s soldiers might be swordless, but they needed no marching instructions.
She stood and stretched, looking across the room to Isaak. He sat at his own desk, his robes neatly pressed and cleaned, both of his hands blurring as they simultaneously filled two sheets of parchment. The pentips scratched lightly at the papers in a kind of harmony with one another, and his eyes flashed as he wrote. It took less thanE to sh a minute for him to fill both pages and move them aside with practiced efficiency, letting them dry on the stack as he started new pages.
She walked toward him, glancing down. Lists of books and authors and shelf locations from a library that was now a crater of ash and bones. “I’m going to walk,” she said.
He looked up, nodded slightly to acknowledge her, then continued.
She let herself out of the manor, and her Gypsy Scouts fell in behind her. She recognized Edrys, a young sergeant that had been with them at the Summer Papal Palace, and she smiled at him.
She turned to them as they left the manor gates. “Today, I wish for you to walk with me… not behind. I would know more of my new home.”
The two scouts exchanged apprehensive glances. “Lady Tam,” Edrys started, “I’m not sure-”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sergeant Edrys, have you been forbidden to have discourse with me?”
“No, Lady Tam. I just-”
She interrupted again. “Am I in some way odious to you and not worthy of your company or your conversation?”
He turned red. “No, Lady Tam. I-”
“Good,” she said. “Walk with me.”
They both hurried to either side of her, and together they went out into the streets.
A light, cold rain fell, and the air was heavy with the promise of snow. She’d climbed what they were calling the Library Hill the day before and had seen that the Dragon’s Spine was wrapped in white like a Marsh bride on her nuptial day. Within days, the snow would reach them here, whiting the forest and turning the Prairie Sea that surrounded the Ninefold Forest into a vast desert of snow dunes. The intense cold would even freeze the rivers in some places farther north.
It was a vast difference from the sunny climate of the City States on the Entrolusian Delta or the tropics of the Emerald Coasts farther south and west.
And this will be my new home.
They walked together at an easy pace, and Jin savored the cold air even as she shivered against it. The furrier was busily crafting her winter wear-boots, hats, heavy coats and pants-but they wouldn’t be ready for another week. Until then, she wore a parka she found in the back of her closEack2;bet. The Gypsy Scouts had gone from silk to wool with the changing of the seasons, dyed bright as the rainbow houses they served.
“I would know more of my husband-to-be,” she said to Edrys as they walked.
He paled at her statement. “Lady Tam, I-”
She laughed. “Edrys, you worry too much. I’ll not ask anything unseemly. I believe you can know much of a man by the men he keeps near him. Or would you prefer that I know my husband through the prostitutes he keeps on rotation or through the house staff that serves him?”
His face went red when she mentioned the prostitutes, and she smiled inwardly. Those surface details were simple matters to discuss, really. As were at least seven of the hidden passageways within the seventh forest manor. She suspected that each of the nine manors was a world of secrets in itself.
She suspected the same of Rudolfo.
“What would you know, Lady?”
“How long have you served him?”
Edrys did not miss a step. “I’ve served Lord Rudolfo all my life.” She knew this. Many of the Gypsy Scouts were the sons of Gypsy Scouts, raised on the magicks and the blades along with their mothers’ milk.
“And what is the single most true thing about him?”
Edrys thought about this for just a moment. “He always knows the path to take.” He paused. “And he always takes it, no matter what the cost.”
She nodded. This certainly seemed true of him. She’d been trained first and foremost to watch and to listen. She heard the things that were said and unsaid. She made a point of seeing the overlooked and underestimated. “Was Lord Jakob that way as well?”
Edrys chuckled. “I’m far too young to have known Lord Jakob. I was born the year he and Lady Marielle were killed.”