He went to the sentry. This one was an Entrolusian infantryman. Sethbert had been sending them down so that the gravediggers weren’t pulling double shifts between digging and guarding. “How goes the watch?”
“Fine enough,” the soldier said, leaning on his spear. “Nothing stirring but the coyotes.”
Petronus looked north. If they were coming, they’d come from the north. But how? If they were skirmishers, they’d come in, kill, bury and then pull back. And if the boy were correct-if it was the Marsh King himself, bringing an army-then it would be something else altogether.
The Marsh King had not left his exile in five hundred years›e ht='. And that time, he’d left to lay siege to Windwir for half of a year until the Gypsy Scouts and the Gray Guard had pried them off the city and sent them back to their marshes and swamps.
Petronus looked at the guard. He was young-maybe twenty-and wide-faced.
“Any news?” Petronus asked.
The soldier studied him, sizing him up. “You’re the old Androfrancine that runs this camp.”
He nodded. “I am he. Though I’m not much of an Androfrancine anymore.”
“There are armies riding in from the west. They will be here tomorrow… maybe the next day. Most of us will ride on for the Ninefold Forests. Some of us will stay here and aid you in your work.”
Petronus nodded. “I’ve heard as much. Which do you hope for?”
The soldier frowned. “The first battles were over before I saw action,” he said. “But after seeing this-” he turned and tipped his spear toward the ruined landscape “-I don’t know.”
Petronus thought about this for a moment. “Why?”
“Part of me wants justice for this. Part of me wants to never cause harm to another.”
Petronus chuckled. “You’d have been a good Androfrancine, lad.”
The soldier laughed. “I suppose,” he said. “When the other boys played at war, I dug in the woods for artifacts beyond my family’s farm.”
“I was like that as a boy, too,” Petronus said. “Now I dig graves.”
The soldier pushed back his leather cap and scratched his short blond hair, returning to the question. “I’ll follow my orders when the time comes,” he said. “Want doesn’t come into it.”
Petronus felt a sudden kinship with the young man and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “Want rarely does,” he told him.
Petronus turned back to the north. The moon was still visible though no longer full. It cast eerie light onto the fields and hills east across the river and on the line of forest to the north.
Of course it had just been a dream, he thought. And his Francine sensibilities told him, regardless o›m, alf his upbringing, that dreams were the working of the deeper places inside. Bits of truth and lies we told ourselves, all fruit to be sorted as our bodies slept.
But why would Neb dream of the Marsh King?
He stood with the sentry until he was relieved and a new guard-this time one of his own men-took over. He chatted with the sleep muddled trader for a few minutes, then turned back to try and get an hour of sleep before the sun rose and they went back to their work.
When Second Summer passed, the rain would be on its heels. And after the rain, snow. They didn’t need any further complications than what the changing seasons could provide.
He was halfway back to the camp when he heard the shout behind him. Petronus stopped and turned. He moved quickly across the shattered ground, feet crunching in the ash.
By the time he reached the line again word had been passed, and the camp moved into Third Alarm. The lieutenant that Sethbert had attached to the camp-the same one that had let them pass what seemed forever ago-met them at the line.
The three men stood, facing north, staring.
At first, Petronus thought, it seemed the forest moved in on them. The moving branches rippled in the dim light of the blue green moon as it set over the hills.
An island broke away from the larger body and moved closer to them. A cluster of horses, Petronus realized, in formation around a larger horse at the center. A voice, amplified by magicks to carry across the river valley, bellowed out from it.
“I am the Marsh King,” the voice said in an archaic Whymer Tongue that few would recognize in this present age. But Petronus recognized it immediately. “Those who war against the Gypsy King war also against me.”
The guard and the lieutenant both looked to Petronus, their eyes wide with either fear or surprise. Petronus glanced at them, then stared back at the small island of mounted men and the contingent of foot soldiers behind them.
Petronus wondered what else Neb had dreamed. And he wondered, at the same time, if he really wanted to know.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam crept out of the darkened room holding her clothing against her naked skin. Rudolfo had pretended to sleep, she knew, sparing her the awkwardness of the morning after.
She pulled the bedroom door closed behind her and glanced around the room. Isaak now sat near the furnace, burning page after page of Rudolfo’s notes, jus›17;pult as the Gypsy King had instructed him over dinner. “You’ve finished then?” she asked.
He nodded, looking up at her. “And your betrothal is consummated?”
She chuckled at his directness. “It is indeed.”
“May your firstborn be strong and wily and inhabit the New Land with grace and awareness,” Isaak said, quoting one of P’Andro Whym’s lesser admonitions.
His words surprised her. Of course, she took powders for that. Betrothal was one thing; motherhood was another. Still, she imagined at some point, if her father’s designs held true through present events, she would walk that road.
“Thank you, Isaak,” she said.
She dressed quickly, putting herself back together but not nearly as well as she could have. It was important that they see they had indeed cemented the new arrangement. She was certain that the Pope would have the captain of his Gray Guard watching.
Rudolfo had surprised her yet again. Initially, she wondered if Sethbert’s assessment of him were true, but midway through dinner she’d known of a certainty that Sethbert was quite wrong. And in that time between the table and the bed, she’d even reached the conclusion that the Gypsy King was probably quite skillful in many matters, both private and public.
He’d confirmed this when they moved into the bedchambers. He’d confirmed it three times that night.
She’d approached the work with the same resolve and aloofness she had with the others before, giving only the parts of herself to him that her father-and custom-required. But he had worn her down with passion and gentleness, his hands moving over her body, pressing messages into her skin that disarmed her at the time and alarmed her now.
No, she corrected herself, the messages weren’t alarming. How she rose to them was.
And that final time, just an hour earlier, all of those words, spoken with his tongue and his hands across the landscape of her body, reached an unexpected and powerful crescendo.
Jin Li Tam prided herself on control in all things. And in the bedroom, she came (and went) as she pleased, keeping vigilant guard over her body’s responses to those who visited it. Of course, the visitors knew what she wished them to know. In some instances, they needed to know they had failed and that she had fabricated her end result. In others, she did not even bother to fabricate. And with a few, she had relieved the guards and given herself to the pleasure.
But Rudolfo had laid his ›o hthesiege, bribed her sentries and, eventually, taken the city. Some part of her could not-or would not-stop him, and that alarmed her.
She pulled on her shoes and checked herself in the small wall mirror.
“Are you ready, Isaak?” she asked.
The metal man stood. “I am ready, Lady.”
