Canticle

the rest of us by joining us.” Her eyes went to Winters again, and this time, Winters held them and tried to let the hatred pass over her. The Queen of Pylos continued, her stare unbroken. “The Marshers have been a problem since the days of Settlement; now, it has gone too far. Their babblings and barbarism, their constant skirmishing in the border towns”-here she wrinkled her nose-“even the smell of them has polluted the Named Lands too long.”

Pay her no mind, Jin Li Tam’s hands said, but Winters felt the water building in her eyes. She willed herself not to cry. It would be weak to cry. She listened to the calm in Jin Li Tam’s voice and wished for it to wrap her as tightly as Jakob’s blanket. “I cannot speak to your difficult history with her people, but Queen Winteria is committed to eradicating this threat. Even now, her army searches the Marshlands to find and bring justice to this resurgence. She’s just come from burying the Androfrancine dead at the Summer Papal Palace.”

The general from Turam spoke up. “We’ve lost three caravans en route to your new library; slaughtered and left on the road to rot.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked to Winters suddenly. “This resurgence. what is its nature?”

Winters glanced to Jin Li Tam and her hands. Keep your answer brief.

She swallowed, her mouth tasting like dirt and iron suddenly. “It is an Y’Zirite resurgence.”

She heard their breath expelled together. Meirov looked to her, then remembered herself and looked to Jin Li Tam. “We had feared as much. There were strange markings upon their dead.” Resolve and bitterness crept back into Meirov’s voice. “More the reason for a firm response from all houses in the Named Lands now before this violence grows further.”

Jin Li Tam’s voice was reassuring now and confident. “We are responding firmly,” she said. “I have pledged our support to Winters; we will help her find and deal with this threat against us all by working together with her army-not by invading their territories.”

Meirov stared at Jin Li Tam. “Our kin-clave with the Forest is tenuous at best, Lady Tam. It has not gone unnoticed that your House is the only to have benefited from Windwir’s fall-or that your House has been unscathed in this more recent treachery. If you prevent us from our work here, Pylos will view such action as a revocation of kin-clave.”

The general nodded beside her. “Turam as well.”

“That,” Jin Li Tam said, “would be most unfortunate.” She whistled low, and the Gypsy Scouts started moving in from their positions. “I believe we’ve taken this parley as far as we can for the moment. I welcome further dialog in future parleys under calmer circumstances. I hope that you will-”

But Meirov interrupted her, her voice cold and measured. “We’ve no intention to parley further. If you prevent us from our work here, we will consider it collusion with the Marshfolk and there will be war between us.”

Jin Li Tam turned her horse slowly, and Winters watched the careful calculations that played out quietly in her eyes. “We did not come to make war but to keep peace.” Those blue eyes narrowed, and her voice suddenly grew cold as well. “But if you engage my army or cross farther north into the Marshlands, we will meet you with our knives, Meirov. I am sorry for your loss-it is a terrible crime, and I cannot imagine the depth of your rage and anguish-but these are troubled times in our land, and you must ask yourself: Is there a better path that we might take?”

Winters started to turn her horse, but suddenly felt she should say something-anything-despite Jin Li Tam’s recommendation. She felt her brow furrowing, and even as she opened her mouth, she felt the tears filling her eyes; and at first, her voice was strangled. “My heart is broken for your loss, Queen Meirov, and my soul is pledged to justice for all that have been wronged so deeply by this evil.”

But Meirov did not speak. Her eyes said everything that needed saying.

As they turned and slowly rode from the clearing, Winters swallowed a sob and ran a quick hand to wipe at the tears she could no longer prevent.

They rode back to camp silently, and as they did, she tried to conjure up Jakob’s tiny face, his tiny hands, the smell of him and the way his mouth bubbled when he slept. It was the most peaceful moment she had known in weeks, holding him, but now even the memory of it eluded her. She could not find it or hold it in the midst of this grief storm.

All she saw instead were the hateful eyes of a bereaved mother burning into her, accusing her, cutting her deeper than any scout knife ever could.

Petronus

Petronus paced the small room and listened to the buzz of voices just past the oak door that separated him from the council chambers.

In a few minutes, he would be called upon to pass through that door and join Esarov at the advocate’s bench for his arraignment. At the heart of it, it was a simple and brief matter. But still, it weighed upon him.

After the interrogation, house arrest had become much more bearable. Erlund’s own chefs prepared his meals, and he’d access to birds and books in addition to more than adequate time with his advocate, the former leader of the revolution, Esarov the Democrat. The past days had been an endless flood of questions as they prepared for today and for what was to come beyond this time. It was an elaborate strategy and one that Petronus could not only appreciate, but enhance with what he himself brought to bear upon the matter.

He’d amassed a fair knowledge of kin-clave law alongside his mastery of Androfrancine law and Named Lands statecraft over his years in the Order. And Esarov’s clarity of focus and sharp mind for legal tactics-combined with the man’s stagecraft-would serve well.

Today would be brief, he reminded himself. What followed after would take time, but the landscape they’d covered through Esarov’s pile of books gave Petronus confidence of the outcome.

Still, he paced.

He heard the noise beyond the door swell. That meant Erlund and his council of governors had entered the room. Next, the small bell in the corner of the room would ring and the silent guards seated at either side of the entrance would stand and escort him in.

You wanted a reckoning, old man. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind exactly, but Petronus was confident in the rightness of it. His mind had wandered back to that brief encounter with Charles in the market square. And at night, he dreamed about a library stretching deep underground, hidden in some forgotten corner of the Old World. If this reckoning of his could bring back so much of the light, his own personal outcome didn’t matter. And despite his strong confidence in what was to come, some part of him knew that it was a dangerous river he forded here. One misstep and he could find himself swept away.

The bell rang and the guards stood. When they opened the door and passed through, Petronus followed.

The council room was large and round, paneled with elaborately carved oak offset with gold fixtures and trim. The high domed ceiling was painted in themes of early Delta history with scenes from the First Settlers Congress and the signing of that document that guided the fledgling band of City-States into its prominence in the Named Lands.

The nine governors sat on a platform in an arrangement of seats and tables set up like a horse shoe; and set apart from them, centered in the open end of that U shape, stood the Overseer’s dias and upon it, a worn chair and table. Erlund looked up at him from that place and their eyes met.

The disinterest there spoke volumes, but Petronus was not surprised. He knows what is coming.

The Overseer wore his crimson prosecuting robe, and to his right, the prosecutor he’d selected-Ignatio in this case-dressed in similar fashion. Behind them, the governors wore black robes not terribly dissimilar from the robes of an Androfrancine. As Petronus scanned their faces it was not hard to pick out the four that had been chosen by Esarov’s democratic city states. They did not have the blank stoic regard of the others. Their faces spoke of purpose and pride rather than obligation, though in time Petronus wondered if that might fade as the newness of their roles wore off and as the reality of their work ahead on the Delta set in.

Esarov was the only person to stand as Petronus entered. He wore gray as befitting an advocate, and his long hair was pulled back and powdered. His spectacles gleamed in rays of sunlight that sliced into the room from high glass windows, and he nodded once at Petronus, his smile slight but confident.

Apart from these and a handful of others scattered throughout the observation balconies and the audience chamber, the massive room was empty. Guards stood at each of the doors.

Petronus forced his shoulders to straighten and walked to the empty chair beside his advocate. The two of them sat in unison as Erlund brought down a gavel.