Petronus did not for a moment believe the Gypsy King could be behind his own so-called good fortune, but it was obviously a part of House Li Tam’s work in the Named Lands.
He thought of his boyhood and the summer he’d spent with Vlad Li Tam, teaching him the rugged life of a fishing family as part of the boy’s training to someday take over House Li Tam. Even that arrangement, he now realized, was a part of Vlad’s father’s design.
“Perhaps,” he mumbled, “even this is, too.”
But to what end? He thought of the papers he’d passed to Rudolfo and willed that the Gypsy King would take up the work he’d started.
Then Petronus gave himself to sleep and for a few hours, let the questions slip from his grasping fingers.
Winters
The winter air over the Summer Papal Palace hung heavy with smoke, and Winters stood by the charred piles of bones and tried not to retch. She still could not believe what was happening.
They did not bury their dead. Instead, they paid them the greatest insult by stacking them like firewood and putting the torch to them.
Now, the soldiers worked against the weather, using pickaxes to hew out trenches for the burnt remains. It was just past morning now, and if they worked the rest of the day, they could give the Litany that night. Then, she would prepare her next War Sermon. She had never imagined it would be against a faction of her own people. But any rage she’d felt en route to this massacre paled in comparison to what she felt when first she smelled the cooking fires.
Winters heard footsteps behind her, then heard Seamus clear his voice. “We’ve a bird from the Gypsies,” he said.
She looked up and over her shoulder. It would be Jin Li Tam. She’d had word that Lady Tam was on the march. It had surprised Winters-so soon after Jakob’s birth. The price of being a queen. She forced her mind to the moment. “What does it say?”
“They ride for our southern reaches to parley with Meirov’s rangers.” Here, he laughed, though it was more of snort. “She wishes you to ride south and join them. without your army.”
She turned to fully face him. “I intend to do as she asks,” she said. “I mean to have the army to patrol our territories and find the source of this violence among our people. They will be within reach if I need them to the south.”
She watched several emotions play across Seamus’s face. Finally, he spoke carefully. “There is only one way to find this source. You do realize this.”
She did not know that she did until he said so. Then, it struck her and her heart sank. “Yes,” she said. “You must search for the mark. And start with the army.”
He nodded, and she heard the sadness in his voice. “What will you do with those we find, my queen?”
He knows my answer.
She stared at him for a moment, then looked away. “I will deal with them, Seamus, as my father would have done and his father, before him.” By the axe. The words tasted bitter in her mouth, yet she knew they were true. She would find within her the violence required. And perhaps that was how it was intended all along. Her dreams had turned bloody of late. Gone was the white-haired boy, Neb, and those few glimpses of the Home he would find them. Ezra’s reedy voice, echoing across her bathing cavern, filled her sleep now instead. A wind of blood to purge; cold iron blades to prune.
Thus shall the sins of P’Andro Whym be visited upon his children.
She shook off the cold of that echoing voice and looked to Seamus. “Send a bird to the Gypsies. Let them know that I accept their gracious invitation.”
Seamus nodded. She read unhappiness in his face; perhaps it was merely worry. “And will you lead the Litany tonight?”
She looked to the pile of charred bodies. She heard the steady ring of blades biting into the frozen ground. Overhead, a massive black bird circled alone, contrasted against skies that threatened more snow. “I will,” she said. “It is my place to.”
“One of the Twelve could stand in if you needed us to.”
She looked to him. It was worry. She’d considered him a grandfather for as long as she had memory. He’d been close to her father and had even been mated to her father’s sister for a short while before fever took her. “I need to do it, Seamus,” she told him. “I need my army to see me do this.”
A look of pride crossed his face. “You will be a strong queen.”
She sighed and looked back to the bodies. “Lately, I do not feel so very strong.”
His voice sounded suddenly like her father’s-or Hanric’s-and she felt the gooseflesh rising on her arms. “You do not need to feel it for it to be so.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Seamus.”
He returned the nod, studied her face for one last moment, and then turned. After he’d gone, she went back to studying the Androfrancine corpses.
She felt the wind upon the back of her neck and smelled something new on it. It was faintest hint of sweat and evergreen pitch.
It was an uncanny sense of presence, and she turned, feeling eyes upon her back. “Who’s there?”
The voice reached her as barely a whisper. “Lieutenant Adrys of the Ninefold Forest,” he said. “I’ve brought a company of Gypsy Scouts to your aid by Lady Tam’s order. We’re here quietly, of course.”
She squinted. Just barely visible, standing in Seamus’s tracks, crouched a shadowy form. “I will tell my captains; we wouldn’t want anything unfortunate to occur with our scouts in such close proximity to yours.”
He chuckled. “Forgive me, Lady Winters, but my men will not be found unless they wish to be. We think remaining discreetly invisible to your people is a better strategy given the”-here he paused to search for the best work-“internal nature of your foe.”
She bit her lip. He was correct, certainly, though she could not bear giving consent for these Gypsy spies to run magicked and secretly among her people. “Anything you can learn will be greatly appreciated.” Here she paused. Should she tell him what she knew and feared? What licked at the corners of her awareness ever since the day Seamus had shown her the mark upon his grandson? She forced herself to speak it. “I’m convinced it is some kind of Y’Zirite resurgence.”
He paused. “Are you certain?”
There had only been a few resurgences over the years. They’d ended badly beneath the boot heels of the Androfrancines or whatever watchdog they’d turned loose upon them, but they left their own wounds before fading back into history where they belonged. Tertius had covered them in detail during her lessons. The cutting was new, though. “Yes,” she said. “I’m certain. They bear the mark of House Y’Zir.”
She heard his indrawn breath despite the magicks that muffled it. “I will pass that word along to Lady Tam,” he said. “Meanwhile, we are tracking those responsible for this attack. I will dispatch word to you through one of my men should we learn anything.”
She inclined her head. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” She waited, wondering if she should ask the question that haunted her. She felt a slight wind as the shadow turned away, and she called out after him, her voice more thick with emotion than she wanted it to be. “Has there been any word from the expedition to the Wastes?”
She felt his hesitation. “That is a Ninefold Forest military venture, Lady Winters, that I am not at liberty to discuss.”
She closed her eyes. “You’re absolutely correct. My apologies, Lieutenant.”
The voice softened. “Rumor has it that you and the boy, Neb, are sweet for each other.”
She blushed and said nothing.
“We’re doing our best to find him. Aedric is seeing to it himself.”
She felt her stomach lurch, and the world tipped as the words sank farther into her. To find him. “Is he lost?” Now, that heavy emotion was a desperate whisper.
But the Gypsy Scout had already slipped away, leaving her alone with the sense of dread that grew, a dark and cold seed, within her.
The black bird she’d spied earlier shrieked suddenly, and to Winters, it sounded like laughter in that stormy sky.
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam fought her queasy stomach and kept herself low in the saddle. She’d completely underestimated the impact of Jakob’s powders on her sense of balance and movement. The horse threatened the light lunch they’d taken an hour earlier.