A dark look crossed Petronus’s face and Rudolfo saw loss there. “Remember those words, Rudolfo.”
Rudolfo said nothing. He felt a another twinge, something restless moving beneath the surface of this all. He felt his eyes narrowing, but if Petronus noticed, he did not show it.
“Sleep well,” the Pope said as he started his descent back into the manor.
“I will,” Rudolfo replied. But he knew that he wouldn’t. A gnawing feeling of dread grew in his stomach about the coming council, and at the center of it stood a man with a strategy Rudolfo did not yet fully grasp.
Neb
More and more, Neb found himself feeling at home in the Ninefold Forest. The work satisfied him, and the forest Gypsies fascinated him. And the Northern Marshes were just across the Prairie Sea from him.
As the days slipped past, Neb watched the small town fill to overflowing. The last large caravan arrived from the Summer Papal Palace that morning, and yet more tents went up in the large open meadow where the council pavilion stood.
This is all that is left, he thought as he watched the men in their dark robes walking among the rainbow-clad forest Gypsies. It staggered him, remembering a time when this many black robes would have been a relatively small gathering. He brought the matter of recruitment up to Petronus several times in the last two months, but the Pope had deflected it. At first, Neb thought it was coincidence combined with the distractions of Petronus’s office and the exhaustion he must surely feel. After all, the old man rarely slept these days, poring over page after page of parchment in his office late into the night, arriving early in the morning to do the same all over again.
But now, these deflections recurred enough that Neb realized Petronus was avoiding the subject. Still, in itself that may have been no more than a desire to take care of the more pressing issues. The mechoservitors worked day and night now to reproduce the library from their memories, their hands blurring as they moved pen across paper. Rudolfo had recruited a half dozen bookbinders and outfitted them in nearby tents while proper facilities could be built. Already, the manor was filling with stacked volumes, its halls and rooms smelling of new paper and fresh ink.
If that weren’t enough to keep Petronus’s attention on the here and now, there were vast Androfrancine properties that required difficult decisions. A group of one thousand did not have the same needs as a group one hundred times that size, but which holdings should be kept and which should be abandoned or bartered or sold off? Even if the Order planned for recruitment, it had taken two thousand years to build its power, and Neb doubted it could ever come back in the same strength it had before, even bound to the Ninefold Forest Houses.
And then there was the matter of Sethbert and the trial. The thought of the former Overseer rekindled a rage buried deep in Neb. Since the screaming wagon arrived, Neb had stopped dreaming about Winters and the reunion he longed for. Instead, he dreamed of killing Sethbert.
Isaak found him at the edge of town, watching the Androfrancines move about in their small city of tents. “Pope Petronus is calling for you.”
“How is he today?” He’d noticed the dark circles, and had even heard Petronus snap at one of the servants the day before. He had an edge about him that Neb hadn’t seen, even during the worst of their work in Windwir.
Isaak shrugged. “He is exhausted. He seems… weighed down.”
Neb nodded. He’d never asked Petronus why he’d left so many years ago, but he couldn’t imagine that coming back was something he’d wanted to do.
I forced him to it. No, he reminded himself, Sethbert’s act of violence had forced Petronus to it. More than that, it was the kind of man that Petronus was.
“We do what we must,” Petronus had told him those times Neb had brought it up. “You did what you had to do and so will I.”
Still, Neb regretted his part in it. He thanked Isaak and made his way back to the seventh “€o the seforest manor.
Petronus’s door was closed when he reached the office. He knocked at it, and a gruff voice answered.
When he saw the look on Petronus’s face, he froze.
He knows about the weapon, he thought. He’d wanted to do what he was told with it. He’d taken it and had gotten halfway to the blacksmith with his fire and hammer, intending to have it broken into pieces and melted down. But he’d ended up in the forest with it, running his hands over it, feeling the history of it. It was probably five hundred years old, rebuilt no doubt from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. It represented something-a part of the light, he supposed-and in the end, he could not bring himself to destroy it. In the end, he’d buried it in its oilcloth beneath the massive, mossy stump, marking the place with a few white rocks.
Neb opened his mouth to explain, but Petronus gestured to a chair and spoke first. “Sit down, Neb.”
Petronus was distracted, shuffling papers on his desk until he found a neatly folded and sealed note. “I wanted to talk with you before I gave you this.”
Neb looked at him, suddenly not so sure it was about the weapon. He saw deep grief on the man’s face, and his eyes were dark. “What is it, Petronus?”
When they were alone, he’d insisted that Neb call him by name, but now Petronus’s eyes hardened. “You will address me now as Excellency or Pope,” he said.
Neb felt his jaw go slack and his stomach lurch. “How may I serve you, Excellency?”
Petronus nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “Would you serve me, then, Nebios?”
Neb swallowed. Suddenly, he felt afraid and alone and uncertain. “You know that I would do anything for you, Father.” He wasn’t sure why he’d slipped into the older, more familiar term. Perhaps because he’d heard Isaak use the same. Or perhaps because over the last nine months, the man had played the role.
Petronus nodded again. “Very well then.” He handed the note over to him. “I am rescinding your status in the Order.”
Stunned, Neb took the note but did not open it. “If this is about-”
Petronus shook his head. “It is not about you.” Their eyes met. “The assignment in Windwir and your work here were only intended to be… temporary.”
Neb wasn’t sure what he felt. On the surface, shock. Below that, anger and despair and confusion. “I don’t understand. There is much work to be done still. I can-”
Petronus’s voice rose. “Enough,” he said. “You named me your Pope.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Would you so easily challenge my authority?”
Neb swallowed and shook his head, fighting back the tears that suddenly threatened to ambush him.
Petronus looked away. “Your work has been exemplary, as my letter indicates.” Neb stared at him, watching the old man’s eyes go everywhere in their avoidance of his own. “You have become a fine young man and a strong leader.” He paused. “You will of course be permitted to attend the council and trial if you wish it.” But his eyes told Neb that he would rather he did not.
Petronus went back to shuffling the papers on his desk, and Neb sat in silence, staring at the folded note in his hands. He wanted to tear it into pieces and throw it back at the old man, shouting at the top of his lungs that he would not be discarded so easily. He wanted to cry and run to the old man’s side and beg him to tell him what this was truly about, because he could see plainly that something dark-something terribly dark-worked at the soul of the man he credited with saving him from the madness of those early days after the Desolation.
No, he realized. Petronus did not save him. Hope did.
The old man continued shuffling through his papers, not speaking.
Because there are no other words left between us, Neb realized.