before Petronus’s so-called assassination. They were sitting in the office on the upper floor, the afternoon sun spilling into the room through glass doors wide open. They’d pored over the papers from morning until night and only had the afternoon left because of Li Tam obligations that called him elsewhere.
After a particularly challenging conversation on asset liquidation, Petronus paused, and a pained look crossed his face. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be if you weren’t Lord Tam of House Li Tam?”
“I can’t,” Vlad remembered saying. “I was made for this. I can’t imagine being anyone other than who I am.”
Petronus had thought about this and nodded. “But do you ever miss fishing?”
Vlad Li Tam laughed. “Every day.”‹«ry /p›/font›
Five minutes later, the staff and servants at the Papal Summer Palace did not know what to do when their Pope came bellowing down the hall for bait and tackle and wine.
Now all these years later, Vlad Li Tam still believed the answer he’d given his boyhood friend. He had thirty- seven sons and fifty-three daughters, all honoring him in some fashion. At no time had he wondered what it might have been like otherwise.
It’s what he was made for. Somehow, he had to make his friend see the same thing for himself.
Vlad Li Tam turned to the Master Sergeant. “We will need the birder to order a flock. You’ll have a day to set up the bird-tents.” He looked over his aide. “You’ll have the same day to rescript the proclamation.” He drew in on the pipe as his servant held a long stick match to it. “The next day, we ride for Windwir.”
He dismissed them with a nod, and they stood to leave.
I’m coming, Petronus, he thought.
After they left him, not even the kallaberry smoke could lift his spirits.
Chapter 18
Rudolfo
Rudolfo arose early, as was his custom, and walked alone through the forest. He whistled, long and low, to warn his sentries that he approached. They whistled back to acknowledge him, but after years of riding with their general, they did not approach or interrupt.
He loved the mornings most of all. It was a time when the world still slept and he could be in solitude, apart from everything. It was a time for processing strategy and plotting the day’s schemes.
The rain let up sometime in the night, but the ground and foliage were still wet. The air hung heavy with moisture-ribbons of mist moving low across the ground in the deep gray of predawn.
They would ride hard today and put yet more distance between themselves and the last of the Androfrancines. But soon enough, that small remnant would be the last of Rudolfo’s concerns.
War was coming. A bigger war than he’®/fo;d imagined when he launched that dark raven with its scarlet thread what seemed so long ago. Then, he’d thought it would his Wandering Army against Sethbert. But much had happened in the weeks that followed.
Vlad Li Tam’s message intrigued him and he wondered how this new development would play out. A second Pope, one with a more direct line of succession, could mean divided loyalties. At the very least the Writ of Shunning would not stand, though he was certain Sethbert and his cousin would force the issue for as long as they could. The Androfrancines’ leadership crisis would reproduce itself around the world as the houses of the Named Lands were forced to pick a side.
For all he knew, this Pope was also in Sethbert’s pocket. Though he doubted it very much. Li Tam’s involvement would have been different if that were the case.
Of course, the papal succession aside, there were other developments that also intrigued him. He’d seen the messages and knew now about the Marsh King’s sudden declaration of kin-clave with him. A strange and unexpected alliance that prompted him to send birds to the Forest Manors, sending his stewards into the records archives to search for some shred of information about kin-clave between the Gypsies and the Marshers. The only connection Rudolfo could make was the Marsh King’s capture when he was a boy.
Still, the Marsher Army was a formidable force when pulled together. Less predictable even than the Wandering Army, they relied on chaos-even madness-to prevail. Known mainly for their skirmishing raids, those few times the Marsh King’s army had been called together over the last thousand years were formidable for those they faced. They rarely won when strategic minds came into play against them, but they never really lost, either. They slunk back north to their swamps and marsh grass, daring generals and kings alike to enter their demesnes and fight on Marsher land.
Few did, though the Androfrancine Gray Guard had forced the issue with them a time or two, exacting a price on skirmishers who raided the villages and towns that Windwir protected.
Why would the Marsh King side with the Ninefold Forest Houses?
And alongside that strange and unexpected alliance, there was another. His sudden kin-clave with House Li Tam through betrothal to Vlad Li Tam’s forty-second daughter. It was a surprise that Rudolfo still did not know quite how to measure.
The consummation had been effective and even pleasurable. Though it wasn’t the physical act that defined the pleasure of that night for him. Certainly, she was skilled enough. And judging by her response to him, their skills were well matched for the deed. But his pleasure had been deeper than their bodies pressed together or his hands tangled in her long, honey-scented hair or their mouths moving along one another’s bodies. There was something deeper. Something sparked by their mutua? byangl conquest of one another. For though he took great pride in wearing her down and at long last commanding her body to pleasure, the truth of it was that she had done the same thing for his heart, and he was compelled now to think of her, to wonder about her, to wish to see her.
He’d considered going to her that night. Their eyes had caught across the fire and they’d traded brief smiles. But in the end, they’d slept side by side but in their separate tents.
And her father had not changed his strategy to the best of his knowledge. Nor would Rudolfo change his. He would align himself with this new Pope-if he were a man of reason and moderate strength-and he would win that new Pope to his way of seeing. When the war was finished, he would rebuild the library in a place where he could watch over it, a place far from the meddling of men like Sethbert.
Rudolfo heard a whistle behind him. It was too high and it did not warble at the end.
Setting his jaw, he crouched near a thick evergreen and drew his long, curved knife. He did not return the whistle, and after a moment he heard soft footfalls.
“Lord Rudolfo?” It was Jin Li Tam’s voice.
He stood, putting his knife away. “I’m here, Lady Tam.”
She slipped through the foliage with the ease of a Gypsy Scout. “I don’t quite have the whistle down,” she said.
Rudolfo smiled. “It’s nearly there. You learn quickly.”
She curtsied. “Thank you, Lord. May I join you for your walk?”
He’d just started to think it was time to turn back, time to rouse the last watch from their few precious hours of sleep and strike camp for the long day’s ride ahead. “Please,” he said.
She came alongside him, and they were both careful not to touch. “You are well?”
“I am. And you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Better now that we’re on our way.”
They walked together, side by side, and her measured footsteps impressed him. She moved like a scout, confident and light with her step. The ferns and branches around her only trembled lightly as she went past; they did not leak the water that had collected there.
The sky lightened above them, patches of it showing through the canopy of forest.
Rudolfo enjoyed the silence as they continued together. Eventually, they reached the edge of the wood and
