me from the Summer Papal Palace. He killed one of the Gypsy Scouts with it. But I thought Lord Rudolfo brought it with us.”
“Perhaps this is a different device,” Petronus said. But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t likely. There had been less than a half dozen of these in the world, and none of them should have ever left the care of the highest officials of the Order or officers of the Gray Guard. When he was Pope, they kept one in his bedchambers, and one in each of his offices. The others had been locked away in vaults deep beneath the library.
Neb looked at it, and Petronus wondered if he noticed the bloodstains in the stock. They’d wiped it down, but it had sat in the blood long enough for it to stain the light wood stock. “It’s fairly simple mechanics,” Petronus said. “A spark ignites a wax-paper envelope of powders. The explosion of these powders propels a projectile-or in this case, a handful of iron slivers. It’s wildly inaccurate beyon?€accurated a handful of sword-lengths.”
But close enough for Oriv’s purpose. If it really
Because if the weapon had been in Rudolfo’s care, it had somehow managed to leave it again. And if that were the case, it was possible that Oriv’s suicide might not have been exactly that. Not that it mattered at this point.
It was clearly an instance of Oriv’s tragic end being in everyone’s best interests. Especially Oriv’s best interests if the note he left behind spoke any the truth at all, that he had collaborated with his cousin for the Desolation of Windwir. His quick exit, mouth on the muzzle of this restored artifact, saved Oriv facing Androfrancine justice.
Petronus would never let him suffer beneath the knives of Rudolfo’s physicians in the way that Sethbert now did on his long journey north. But he’d have still enforced what strong punishment he could, and Oriv’s life would have been forfeit.
He looked at the weapon, then looked to Isaak and Neb. “I want this destroyed,” he said. “It is a secret we can no longer guard properly.”
He watched Neb’s eyes widen. “But Excellency,” he said, “it could be-”
Petronus did not let him finish. “Brother Nebios,” he said in his sternest tone, “it is not to be studied. It is to be destroyed.” He leaned in, feeling the anger rise in his cheeks. “I’ll not let another weapon fall into the wrong hands.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. He saw the look of confusion on Neb’s face, then saw understanding dawn as the boy went pale. “Another weapon?”
Petronus said nothing, even when Neb repeated his question. Finally, he covered the weapon back up. “Destroy it,” he said.
Neb nodded. “Yes, Excellency.”
Now Petronus looked to Isaak. “I want you to go over the inventories again. I want to see what war-making magicks and mechanicals still live within the mechoservitor memory scrolls. We will have hard decisions to make in the days ahead about which parts of the light we keep and which we allow to remain aptly extinguished.”
Isaak nodded. “Yes, Father.”
They stood and left. Neb cast another curious glance at Petronus, but he pretended not to notice. He knew the boy would be?€ boy woucurious now. He might even hate him for this.
If not this, Petronus thought, he certainly would hate him for what was coming.
And Petronus would not blame him for that. He hated himself as well.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam waited until dusk before approaching Petronus’s small office. Neb and Isaak had left for the evening, and the suite of rooms that housed the Androfrancine Order’s operations was quiet and dark except for the light coming from beneath the Pope’s door. The Gypsy Scouts who guarded him announced her arrival and ushered her in.
The old man looked up from a stack of paper and laid down his pen. “Lady Tam,” he said, inclining his head slightly.
“Excellency,” she answered, returning his nod. Her eyes found the caged bird on the corner of his desk. When she was a girl, she spent hours listening to the bird, teaching it simple phrases, in the moist heat of her father’s seaside garden. It seemed smaller now.
And battered, she realized. Its metallic gold feathers were streaked with black burn marks, and the bird’s head hung askew along with its entire right side. Bits of copper wire protruded from a charred eye socket. It couldn’t even stand properly-it crouched in the corner of the cage and twitched, its one good eye blinking rapidly.
She sat on one of the plain wooden chairs in front of his desk, her eyes never leaving the bird.
Petronus must have followed her gaze. “You recognize this mechanical?” he finally asked.
She broke her stare and looked to Petronus. “I do, Excellency. It was my father’s-a gift from the Androfrancines. It arrived with his library today.”
Petronus’s eyebrows raised. “His library? Why would Vlad Li Tam send his library?”
She had spent the better part of the day wondering the same thing. Her father cherished his books, and she could not imagine what might lead him to relinquish them. “I’ve been asking myself the same question, Excellency,” she said.
“Have you asked him?”
She shook her head and paused to find the right words. “My father and I are not in communication.”
Jin Li Tam watched the surprise register on Petronus’s face. She met his eyes and saw the questions forming in them, then watched as h?€n watchee forced those questions to the side. “So for some unknown reason, Vlad Li Tam has donated his library to our work here. And he’s included this mechanical bird.” He paused. “You seem disturbed by this, Lady Tam.”
She nodded. “There’s more,” she said, swallowing. Part of her was afraid to move forward. Over the past months, she’d gone from questioning her father’s will to despising his work in the Named Lands.
I hate my own part in it even more, she thought, looking back to the bird again. She realized Petronus was waiting for her to continue. “Neb thinks he saw the bird near Windwir on the day the city fell.”
Petronus leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “Did your father ever use the bird for message transport?”
She shook her head. “He did not. He considered it to be too noticeable.”
Petronus nodded slowly, now looking at the bird himself. “I had wondered if he had a hand in this.”
Jin Li Tam’s stomach sank. She’d not yet said it, but she wondered the same. Certainly, Sethbert had brought down the city. There was no question of that. He’d admitted it to her freely. But she knew Sethbert-given to fits of mood and rage, given to as much slothfulness as ruthlessness. She did not doubt he carried out Windwir’s Desolation. But she did not believe for a moment that he wasn’t led in that direction. And there was one man in all of the Named Lands whose sole work was bending people to do his will, using his network of children to gather the intelligence and execute his strategy. Finally, she said the words that she’d dreaded saying since the moment she saw the bird. “I fear my father used Sethbert to bring down Windwir.”
Petronus nodded. “It must be a hard conclusion for you to arrive at,” he said. His voice took on a gentle tone. “It is hard to discover that what we love most is not as it seems.”
She nodded. Suddenly, she found herself fighting tears. She forced them back, and thought about this old Pope. His words carried conviction and she found a question forming in her mind. She hesitated, then asked it. “Is that why you left the Papacy?”
Petronus nodded. “It is part of it.”
“And now, all these years later, you’ve come back to it. Do you ever wish you’d just stayed in the first place?”
Petronus sighed. “I wish that every day.” When he spoke next, his voice was heavy with grief. “I keep thinking that if I had stayed, perhaps I could have averted this tragedy entirely.”
She’d wondered?€17;d wonsimilar things today as she thought about the bird and what it might mean. She’d been with the Overseer for nearly three years, feeding information to her father and leaking information to Sethbert at her father’s direction.
