She took her time returning to the manor. She knew she should wait for Rudolfo, but she felt a sudden craving for solitude, and knew that his work for the night was just beginning. There would be uproar to quell, fears to assuage and assurances to offer to what little remained of P’Andro Whym’s lineage.
It was near dark when she approached the hidden doorway near the rear garden, and she stopped. The door was open, and a figure stood in the shadows of the concealed passage. She drew closer and stopped again, suddenly afraid and uncertain and alone.
Her father broke from the shadows, dressed in a deep gray archeologist’s robe. He said nothing, his face unreadable and hard though his eyes were soft. She said nothing, certain that her own face matched his own and equally certain that her eyes did not. She thought she would feel the anger again at the sight of him, but absolutely nothing stirred inside of her.
Their eyes met, and he nodded once, slowly. Then he moved?€Then he past her, his shoulder brushing hers as he went. She turned around to watch him go, and she thought he walked more slowly and with less confidence.
She considered calling after him, but she did not know what to say. Instead, she watched him walk away, and after he’d gone, she went into her new home and closed the door. She had a life to build with Rudolfo and their unborn son.
She did not find her father’s note until much later. She had not thought to look for it, though she could not remember a time when he’d ever failed to leave word for her. It was simple, scrawled quickly and without code.
For my forty-second daughter, the title read, upon the celebration of her nuptials and the birth of her son, Jakob.
It was a poem about a father’s love for his daughter. At the end of it, the father sailed into the waiting night and the daughter learned a new way of life.
Neb
The crowd caught Neb up and moved him. By the time he disentangled himself from it, most had left the pavilion to gather in the field outside. Voices buzzed, rising in an ever-growing noise. He stayed by the entrance watching Rudolfo speak with a handful of the Androfrancine bishops, even while his Gypsy Scouts loaded Sethbert’s body onto a stretcher to carry it off.
I would have done it for you, he thought. But he knew that Petronus buried his own dead in his own way and that he’d intended better things for Neb. Just as he also knew that the old man had no more wanted to kill Sethbert than he had wanted to take back the ring.
We do what must be done.
Isaak limped out of the pavilion. “Brother Nebios,” he said. “Have you seen Father Petronus?”
Petronus no longer wore the title, but Neb didn’t have the heart to remind Isaak of that. Instead, he shook his head. “He left quickly.”
Isaak’s eyes fluttered and flashed. “I am alarmed by the events of this day.”
Neb nodded. “I am too, Isaak.”
Isaak continued. “I know that what I have seen is wrong. I know that it goes against the teachings of P’Andro Whym. I also know that it must surely mean an end to the Order that brought me into this world. And yet I feel an unexpected satisfaction.”
Neb studied him, unsure of what to say. His own satisfaction came from knowing that the man who killed his father would never harm anyone again. But another man-P?€er man amp;#etronus-had made him an orphan all over again, bringing down what little remained of the only family he had ever known.
You were always an orphan, some voice deep inside of him said. He looked at Isaak again. He was an orphan, too, Neb supposed.
“I will look for him in his office,” Isaak said. “I must speak with him about what has transpired here today.”
Neb walked with him in silence, certain that they would not find Petronus in his office. He doubted they would find him at all, at least not around here. The old man’s work was done now, for better or for ill, and the world must now move forward from it.
They passed the canopy with its long trestle tables and benches, stacks of paper and bottles of ink. Even now, a few of the mechoservitors sat, gears humming and eyes flashing, as they wrote down the events of the council so that it might be preserved in the Great Library.
At Neb’s questioning look, Isaak paused. “I sent them out right away to record it all. I thought it could be important someday.”
Neb said nothing, and they continued without further words.
The office was dark and the door closed when they approached. The lamp was still warm when Neb relit, it and most of the papers had been neatly arranged on the desk for the next day’s filing. He saw an envelope with his name on it, and he took it, breaking the seal.
I’m sorry, it read. You were made for more than backward dreaming.
Isaak’s eyes dimmed, and his bellows pumped. “What does it mean?”
Neb lay the note back on the desk and leaned over the other pages. Notes and receipts of transfer, letters of credit, disposal of excess properties. All signed and sealed with the papal signet, and waiting for whoever would find them first. “It means the work goes on,” he said in a quiet voice. “It means we lament what light is lost and honor what remains.”
Leaving Isaak, he wandered the hallways and finally escaped into the gathering darkness. He ran into the woods as far as his feet could carry him, then found a stone and sat on it. He had no tears. He felt no anger. He simply was.
“I was always an orphan,” he said to that darkness as it drew in close around him.
He remembered Petronus’s note. You were made for more than backward dreaming.
Perhaps he was. Neb thought about Winters. He thought?€rs. He t about the dream where above them, a large brown world filled the sky. This is our home, she had said, laying naked beside him, and he believed her. Somewhere beyond this time, a new home arose.
Someday, in the fullness of time, he would help them find it. But until then, he would stay here in the Ninefold Forest. Perhaps Rudolfo would let him serve the library in some fashion.
“Are you still here?” he asked the empty forest.
Nebios ben Hebda heard the soft grunt and the slightest stirring from somewhere nearby, and he smiled.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo caught up with Petronus on the road to Caldus Bay on the evening of the following day. He’d spent most of a night and a day soothing his shaken guests. When he heard that the old man had slipped quietly out of the city the night before, he called for his fastest stallion. He waved off his Gypsy Scouts, and Aedric didn’t balk when he saw the anger in Rudolfo’s eyes.
He pushed his stallion hard, riding low and feeling the wind tug at his cloak and hair. He inhaled the smell of the forest, the smell of the horse, and the smell of the plains ahead.
When he spotted the old man and his old horse two leagues into the prairie, he felt for the hilt of his narrow sword and clicked his tongue at his steed. He pounded ahead, overtaking Petronus, and spun his horse. He whipped out his blade and pointed its tip at the old man.
Petronus looked up, and Rudolfo lowered his sword when he saw the look of devastation on the old man’s face. Those bloodstained eyes, he realized, looked too much like the red sky he’d seen over the smoldering ruins and blackened bones of Windwir.
The old man did not speak.
Rudolfo danced the stallion closer to ask a question that he already knew the answer to. “Why?”
“I did what I must.” Petronus’s jaw clenched firmly. “Because if I didn’t, everything else I did would be a lie.”
“We all do what we must.” Rudolfo sheathed his sword, the anger draining out of him. “When did you know? When did you decide to do this?”