“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
“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.”
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.
Chapter 12
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.
But this leap, he thought. Gods.
He stood up from his desk and turned his back on the mountain of papers that cascaded there. He walked across the carpet, his slippered feet whispering as he went, and paused at the large open doors that led out to the small balcony attached to the Papal Offices of the Summer Palace. Second Summer had arrived, and the mountain air hung thick with heat. He walked out into it and looked out.
The balcony faced south, giving him an expansive view of the small village with its stone buildings and wood-shingled, high-pitched roofs. Beyond the village, the foothills of the Dragon’s Spine rolled down to forest and the forest stretched on for league upon league. The day ~, twas clear, and a hundred leagues distant he could see the sunlight thrown back from the surface of the Marsh Sea, spillover from the headwaters of the First of the Three Rivers.
Ten days ago, he’d been downstairs in the quarters reserved for the higher ranking members of the Order. The Summer Palace was first and foremost for the Pope, but it was also for the Pope’s friends, and the Archbishop Oriv had certainly been a friend through the years, using his knowledge of Androfrancine Law to bend around the various corners of kin-clave and protect the Order’s best interests at home and abroad.
And when the Pope’s own nephew had come up implicated in a scandal that involved Order holdings being sold for a pittance, Oriv had done his part to protect the light by keeping that particular corner utterly in the dark.
He’d been drinking hot brandy in the later part of the day that seemed now so long ago. It was a day, he realized, that people would someday ask about.
“Where were you,” they would ask, “when you saw the pyre of Windwir?”
And those who had been close enough to see it-surely most of the Named Lands, if the reports were true- would say where they had been, and the room they were in would grow quiet with loss and grief remembered.
That day, he’d looked up at a word from one of the acolytes who made up the staff of servants in the Summer Palace and he’d seen the pillar of smoke far south and east, rising into the sky. He’d disbelieved it, of course. There were certainly other explanations, other places along that line of sight; but when the birds arrived a day and a half later, he’d finally believed enough to call an Assembly of the Knowledgeable to determine the senior Order member. By the time that handful had gathered, more birds had come in-all with questions rather than answers.
They put forth the questions to identify the ranking brother. He’d known by looking around the room that it would be him.
And after, he’d gone alone into the Papal office and pulled the heavy iron key down from the wall. He’d taken one scholar, one scientist and two members of the Gray Guard contingent with him then, down into the cellars far below, walking the winding stone stairs until he stood before the vault.
He’d opened it, found the Letters of Succession from his friend, Introspect III, and carried them back up to the Assembly.
They named him Steward of the Throne and Ring first. When reports of the? reigh devastation arrived, he named himself Pope provisionally. It was understood-but not said-that he would lay down the office should someone from Introspect’s named list of successors turn up alive.
When Sethbert’s bird arrived, Oriv took his final step, and no one argued though all of them knew it was not the proper form. He burned the Letters of Succession for all of them to see and took his new name.
“I am resolved,” he said to the gathered Assembly, “to right this wrong and avenge the light extinguished.”
No one argued, even though it went against the teachings of P’Andro Whym. He named himself Pope Resolute the First and immediately issued the Writ of Shunning against the Ninefold Forest Houses and the man who his cousin, Lord Sethbert of the Entrolusian City States, had identified as the Desolator of Windwir.
