Lamentation

Petronus looked around again. Overhead the sky was charcoal on steel, but it hadn’t rained all day. It was quiet. The occasional skirmishes between the Marshers and the other armies had toned down considerably after the first few days. So far they’d avoided any kind of pitched battle, and Petronus suspected that the generals were all trying to decide what to do about this new arrival. Uniting their forces against the Marsh King would certainly be sufficient to drive him back, but it would leave them weakened for the long march east.

Time that allowed the Wandering Army to strengthen its position, though how effective they’d be without their leader remained to be seen.

It was as if the Named Lands themselves were the board upon which they played.

Unless. The thought nibbled at him and his eyes widened at the strategy unfolding in his mind.

He wondered how much of this Vlad Li Tam had planned from the start, and he wondered how much Rudolfo knew of it.

Most of all, he wondered if Sethbert realized that he’d been used.

Sethbert

Sethbert’s hands shook with rage as he fought to suppress the violence inside of him that demanded release. He forced his eyes back to the report.

“This,” he said slowly, “is entirely unacceptable.” He looked up to lock eyes with Lysias. “How many?”

“Forty-seven, Sethbert.”

Sethbert noted that the general failed to use his title. “Forty-seven deserters in two weeks? We’re not even fully engaged.”

Sethbert watched a look of disgust march across the general’s face. “It has nothing to do with cowardice. It has everything to do with your indiscretions. Men will not willingly follow a monster.”

“Surely you can break their will?”

Lysias shook his head. “You don’t have enough loyal officers to do that. You will leak resources slowly. It is time to relieve these and bring forward fresh faces. You do not want to mix the bad in with the good. The spoiled pear always takes the barrel.”

“Fine,” Sethbert said. “Make it so.” He looked to his aide. “And you have a message for me?”

The young man stepped forward and passed the unrolled paper to Sethbert. “It isn’t good news, Lord.”

Of course it wasn’t. The day had brought no good news. There’d really been no good news since the day the Marsh King showed up across the valley, blasting his nonsensical ramblings across the night, every night, for how long now?

Shortly after that mud-bugger showed up, he’d received word from Oriv-Pope Resolute, he reminded himself- that their funds had been frozen by House Li Tam. He’d flown into a rage to hear it. He’d known it was a risk-that there might be someone higher placed than his cousin out there somewhere. And after the first week, because no one had come forward disputing Resolute’s succession, he’d assumed no one would.

Of course, there had also been mixed news. As angered as he was about Rudolfo’s escape, he was pleased to learn that they had resorted to violence. It meant they no longer needed to keep up the pretense of civility in their dealings with him.

“How did it arrive? And from whom?” he asked, squinting at the message.

“It came under Androfrancine thread from House Li Tam, Lord.”

He read the note, feeling his anger rebuilding. He saw everything right in front of him. House Li Tam again. His consort now Rudolfo’s betrothed-an alliance formed. Perhaps, he thought, Rudolfo was involved from the start. In bed with the Androfrancines along with Vlad Li Tam and, though he did not know how, the Marsh King as well.

What would they gain by the Desolation of the Named Lands at the hands of those?hanghtrobed tyrants? That question bothered him, but not overly so.

What bothered him more was that now they played a Pope of their own onto the board. Convenient that he was in hiding, invoking some obscure Androfrancine codex. And even Sethbert knew enough of their law to realize it was a stretch of that rule’s intent.

He read the proclamation, his lips moving as he followed the words. When he finished, he crumpled the note and cast it aside. While the aide scrambled for it, Sethbert kicked over a chair.

“There is another Pope,” the Overseer finally said.

“What does he say?” Lysias asked.

At Sethbert’s wave, the aide passed the note to Lysias. He scanned it quickly. “This changes the war,” Lysias finally said. “It is now a contest of words and swords. It will shift loyalties but it is impossible to say which. Or how we’ll stand in the end.”

“We need to fix the problem within our ranks. We will punish the men who fled.”

“We don’t have the resources to track them down,” Lysias said.

“I have a better idea,” Sethbert said. “I will address it personally.”

Lysias nodded. “And what about the gravediggers?”

Sethbert thought. “We’ll continue to subsidize their work in the name of the true Pope, Resolute the First.”

“Very good, Lord.”

He smiled at the respect he had purchased at some small price. Or at least the form of respect. He doubted Lysias had ever truly respected him. A man like that wouldn’t appreciate Sethbert’s strength of character.

After the general left, he turned to his aide. “Cross-reference the deserters with their homes of record. Send a bird to the Overseer’s Watchmen. I want a wife, a child, a mother, a sister. But don’t kill them. Blind them. Mute them. Tell them why.”

The aide paled. “Lord?”

Sethbert smiled, thinking about lunch and hoping it was pheasant or pork. “And when it’s done, have word leak to the men of it.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Now, fetch me a mechoservitor and tell the chef I’ll take my lunch outside today.”

The aide bowed and walked quickly away.

Alone, Sethbert righted the chair he had kicked over in his rage. Then he sat on it, and wondered what Rudolfo would do now that he was free. He’d been delighted to hear that the Gypsy King had delivered himself over to Resolute in the first place, and he’d known that he would not stay away from his Wandering Army and his Ninefold Forest for too long. His cousin was barely competent and no match for the wily fop.

But now, with Rudolfo’s alliance with House Li Tam through strategic marriage, his role in this deepened considerably more than just a Gypsy King enraged at the death of a city.

Sethbert took no pleasure in his lunch that day.

Neb

Neb read the proclamation again, his fingers moving over the ring buried in his pocket. He looked at the haphazard sketch of the Androfrancine Papal seal, a great finishing touch on the message, then returned to the beginning of the proclamation.

Oh My People it began, and it continued in perhaps one of the most moving documents he had ever read. It read with the resonance of ancient greatness, something that one could study but never emulate. Within it he felt the death of something beautiful, and the solemn, humble work of saving what could be saved knowing full well that nothing would ever be as good as it had been.

This truly was a man he could want to be like.

Of course, Neb saw Petronus’s mastery even in the way he led the gravediggers. At some point, Brother Hebda said he would proclaim him Pope. Maybe it was figurative, he thought. Maybe he was supposed to give him the ring.

He’d thought about it a dozen times since he’d found the damned thing. And each time, he pushed it back out of his mind for reasons he could not fully conceive.

He looked up again, and realized in his headlong walk out of camp he’d wandered pretty far into the ruins of