Canticle

For Winters, it was a reminder of the thorny walls that she knew waited ahead of her. Perhaps after Hanric’s spirit found its way to their new home he would send her some of his strength and courage for her bloody climb.

In her heart, Winters knew that her own would not suffice. Biting her lip, she walked out into the snow and tried not to cry.

Chapter 5

Petronus

The sun had not yet risen when Petronus left his cabin and freed his birds. They scattered, a rainbow of threads decorating their feet and carrying word of the attack and the change in protocol to the network he’d created in the last seven months. Now, this station would simply forward its messages, recoded, to whatever relay points Grymlis had arranged. Petronus watched as the dark winter sky swallowed them and the multicolored messages they carried. Black threads of danger on some, the blue thread of inquiry on others, red for war on yet others. The only absent color was the green of peace.

The sky was shifting from black to gray when he gathered up his kit and satchel to meet the others by the boathouse near the water.

Grymlis and one of the others had allowed their magicks to fade. The remaining two had reapplied the powders. The old captain looked angry and argued in low tones. “What do you mean he’s dead?” He glanced up, noting Petronus’s approach. “How did it happen?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” the Gray Guard answered. “I went in to prep him for movement and he was dead. Cold as snow.”

Grymlis sighed. “Put him in the boat, then. We’ll ship him as well. We need to get a look at him once his magicks have played out.”

Petronus joined them and did not protest when one of the soldiers took his travel kit. He resisted when the other reached for the satchel. “I’ll keep this,” he said. He looked to Grymlis. “Our prisoner is dead?”

Grymlis nodded. “Yes.” The old Gray Guard looked tired, his eyes red and glassy from the magicks. His beard and hair were longer than the last time they’d seen each other. And now, instead of the gray uniform of the Androfrancine Army, he wore the nondescript trousers and shirt of a common laborer. Of course, the scout knives on his belt and the longsword slung over his shoulder said he was anything but common. “Poison perhaps,” he added as an afterthought. “Though we found nothing when we searched him.”

The sleeping village stirred around them. Petronus’s dock, boathouse and cabin were on the edge of town, but already scattered lights announced the new day and a few quiet boats moved into the bay to get a head start on the work. He’d thought of leaving a note but wasn’t sure what he would say in it. In the end, he’d opted to say nothing. If the events of last night were but a beginning, the less his neighbors knew, the better he imagined it would go for them.

And for me.

Grymlis took his arm. “Are you ready, Father?”

Petronus snorted. “I’m too old for all of this. Where exactly are we going?”

“Someplace safer than here.” They moved off together toward the waiting boat. “Balthus and I will be joining you. These two will stay back and reroute the messages.”

Petronus nodded at the strategy. He’d worked hard to build his little network, bringing in what scraps of knowledge he could to puzzle out the truth behind Windwir’s fall.

They climbed into the boat, mindful of the tarp-wrapped bodies at their feet. Another tarp-wrapped body was lowered in after them; then the magicked soldiers cast them off. The slightest whisper of shifting snow betrayed their quick retreat. Petronus looked to his house and dock and imagined he was seeing them now for the last time.

If the assassin hadn’t paused to speak, he would have succeeded. Petronus grabbed that thread and worked it as Grymlis’s young lieutenant worked the oars and rowed them around the edges of the Bay. Caldus Bay was massive-nearly a sea of its own, he knew, from the hours he’d spent poring over the artifacts and writing of the Age of Settlement, that time just after the Age of Laughing Madness when the Order was newly formalized, having grown to the point of requiring a clearer hierarchy and chain of command. He’d nearly pursued history, specializing in that field. But his advisor had seen his potential in Francine School. Franci B’Yot had been the leading scholar of human nature and evolution-and a correspondent with the young P’Andro Whym after the first Scientism Movement failed. The Francine science ultimately won young Petronus’s attention, and it served him well now as he thought about his attacker.

He wished to punish me. And that meant it was likely someone Petronus had wronged, someone who could blame him for something. No villain is evil for evil’s sake, according to the Settlement playwright Sebastian. Because every antagonist wanted to accomplish something that they could at least convince themselves-if not others-was benevolent.

And this villain wished to punish-or perhaps the master he spoke of wished it. Petronus shivered at the memory of that voice, then remembered something.

“He spoke Whymer,” Petronus said.

The old guard grunted and looked up. “He did.”

The Whymer tongue was ancient and guarded, the house language of P’Andro Whym. It was unusual that anyone not affiliated with the Order would speak it. “His accent was heavy. We didn’t train him-but one of our own did.”

“Yes,” Grymlis said, looking around them and cocking his head. His voice lowered. “We’re nearly there,” he said.

Petronus looked around, seeing nothing. “Nearly where?”

Grymlis whistled, low and long. He waited. Then just ahead and to port, an answering whistle. Petronus squinted in that direction. Certainly, with the sky barely gray he couldn’t expect to see anything with much certainty. But the absence of anything at all, not even a shadow on the water, was perplexing. That combined with the proximity of the whistle alarmed him. Grymlis offered a roguish smile. “All these years,” he said, “I wondered how he did it.”

“Who?”

The bow of their boat brushed against something solid, but there was nothing there.

Grymlis chuckled. “That sea jackal you yourself employed on a few delicate matters.”

Even as he heard the voice above him, Petronus made the connection. “Father Petronus,” the pirate Rafe Merrique said, “I’m pleased to see that your demise was overstated.”

Petronus’s laugh was more of a bark. Stretching out his hands, he touched the cold wet sides of an invisible wooden ship. “You spirited me away to the Emerald Coasts the night after my funeral.” He studied the air above him where the voice seemed to be.

“Aye,” the pirate the said. “It appears I did. At the time, I didn’t ask any questions.”

Grymlis stood up. “I’m sure we paid you quite well not to.”

But who is paying you now? Merrique had cost a small fortune each time they hired him once he’d exhausted his need for the technological wonders the Androfrancines were willing to offer for the occasional use of his vessel. Touching the hull of the old magicked sloop, he could appreciate just why Rafe Merrique placed such a high price on his services. There was no way the old pirate was turning a kindly deed. Petronus had always dealt favorably with him during his office, but that was fairness three decades ago and not sufficient to merit uncompensated assistance. No, someone was paying him well to be in this place at this moment.

He caught Grymlis’s eye and willed his hands to move quickly. Who is paying him?

Grymlis’s own hands moved faster. Allies on the Delta.

Petronus blinked and, forgetting his hands, spoke aloud. “The Delta?” He’d killed Sethbert with his own hand in front of a thousand Androfrancines. He’d excluded the Entrolusian delegate from attendance, rejected Sethbert’s