Petronus sighed. “Some part of me knew it when I saw the column of smoke. Another part knew it when I saw the field of bones and ash.”
Rudolfo pondered this and nodded slowly, searching for the right words to say. When he couldn’t find them, he spurred his horse forward and left the old man alone with his tear?€ with his.
Rudolfo raced the plains until the moon rose and stars scattered the warm, dark night. At some point, everything fell away but a false sense of freedom that Rudolfo embraced for the moment because he knew it would pass soon. He sped through the darkness, feeling the stallion move beneath him, hearing its hooves on the ground and the snorting of its breath. It was he and his horse and the wide open prairie, with no House Li Tam, no library, no Androfrancines, no nuptials and no heir. And though he knew it was false, Rudolfo honored the lie of it until he saw the forest on his right. Then he slowed the stallion and turned for the trees, eventually slipping from the saddle and leading the horse on foot back in the direction of what was true.
He took the less familiar paths, and thought about his life. He thought about the days before Windwir fell and the days after. He thought of nights spent in the supply wagon because he preferred it to a bed. He thought of days spent in the saddle instead of his study. Beds shared with more women than he could count and the one woman he knew he must have.
My life has changed, he told himself, and he realized that it would not have if he had not wished it so. He had chosen to rebuild the library, to keep something good in the world of its philosophies, art, drama, history, poetry and song. He had also chosen to align himself with Jin Li Tam, a beautiful and formidable woman that today he could respect, and one day he would love. Between them, they would bring forward a life who would also, if Rudolfo had his way, be formidable and beautiful. And he would inherit the light and be a shepherd of it as his father was.
Rudolfo thought of these things, and he thought of the old man making his way towards the coast, tears wetting his white beard. He thought of his friend Isaak limping about on his mangled leg and wearing his Androfrancine robes. He thought of the boy, Neb, who had stood when Petronus bid someone kill for the light. He thought of Vlad Li Tam at his bonfire, burning the record of his family’s work.
The Desolation of Windwir has reached us all, he thought.
It no longer mattered why. It mattered that it never happen again. And Rudolfo saw clearly his part in that, and he saw how a lamentation could become a hymn.
The less familiar paths fell away, spilling him onto the road. He crossed it, still leading his horse, and stayed to the forest, though he could see the lights of his sleeping city now. He continued on, approaching the library hill from the southern side.
He would stable his horse. He would let himself into the manor. He would approach Jin Li Tam in her bedchamber, and he would whisper quietly with her into the morning about a forward dream th?€rward drat they could share between them. In the morning he would give the order to dismantle Tormentor’s Row, and let go of that backward dream so that his son, Jakob, and his metal friend, Isaak, could build something better. But first, he had to see the small part that he had started for them.
Ahead, he heard soft voices, a low humming, and a whispering sound he could not quite place. Leaving the horse, he stepped forward, silent as one of his own Gypsy Scouts, to pull aside the foliage that blocked his view.
The bookmakers’ tent lay open before him, its silk walls rolled up to let in the night. The soft voices were those few of the remnant who had stayed behind to help, moving from table to table, laying out parchment and fresh quills. The metal men worked at those tables, their gears and bellows humming and their jeweled eyes throwing back the lamplight.
Rudolfo stayed for an hour, sitting in grass that grew damp with dew, soothed by the sound he couldn’t place before.
It was the sound of their pens whispering across the pages.
Postlude
It is a bird, and it has been dead for a month but does not know it. Its snapped neck leaves the head hanging limp as its wings pound the sky.
It flies over a hillside beneath a blue green moon and perches for a moment on a fresh-hewn cornerstone.
It flies over a field of ash beside a river, and it opens its beak to taste the memory of war and bones upon the wind.
It flies over an ocean, an armada of ships gathering at its edge, steam from their engines fogging the bird’s dead eyes.
It flies homeward, this dead messenger, at the Watcher’s bidding.
The bird enters a small window. It lands upon a scarlet sleeve, and when it opens its beak, a metallic whisper leaks out.
“Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children,” the kin-raven tells its master.