Psalms of Isaak 01 – Lamentation

He knows about the weapon, he thought. He’d wanted to do what he was told with it. He’d taken it and had gotten halfway to the blacksmith with his fire and hammer, intending to have it broken into pieces and melted down. But he’d ended up in the forest with it, running his hands over it, feeling the history of it. It was probably five hundred years old, rebuilt no doubt from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. It represented something-a part of the light, he supposed-and in the end, he could not bring himself to destroy it. In the end, he’d buried it in its oilcloth beneath the massive, mossy stump, marking the place with a few white rocks.

Neb opened his mouth to explain, but Petronus gestured to a chair and spoke first. “Sit down, Neb.” Petronus was distracted, shuffling papers on his desk until he found a neatly folded and sealed note. “I

wanted to talk with you before I gave you this.”

Neb looked at him, suddenly not so sure it was about the weapon. He saw deep grief on the man’s face, and his eyes were dark. “What is it, Petronus?”

When they were alone, he’d insisted that Neb call him by name, but now Petronus’s eyes hardened. “You will address me now as Excellency or Pope,” he said.

Neb felt his jaw go slack and his stomach lurch. “How may I serve you, Excellency?” Petronus nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “Would you serve me, then, Nebios?”

Neb swallowed. Suddenly, he felt afraid and alone and uncertain. “You know that I would do anything for you, Father.” He wasn’t sure why he’d slipped into the older, more familiar term. Perhaps because he’d heard Isaak use the same. Or perhaps because over the last nine months, the man had played the role.

Petronus nodded again. “Very well then.” He handed the note over to him. “I am rescinding your status in

the Order.”

Stunned, Neb took the note but did not open it. “If this is about-”

_{Petronus shook his head. “It is not about you.” Their eyes met. “The assignment in Windwir and your}

_{work here were only intended to be.}

_{te.mp.orary.”}

They meant to protect us.

It made sense now. The Androfrancines had ever considered themselves the shepherds of yesterday, guarding the New World from itself and from a past they feared might be repeated.

They meant to protect us .

He felt the tears now, pushing at his eyes, and his thoughts turned suddenly as that greater strategy took form before his very eyes. Someone out there had penetrated Vlad Li Tam’s network of sons and daughters or his closely shielded staff. They had somehow maneuvered the rescripting of the golden bird to implicate Vlad Li Tam in the Desolation of Windwir. A savvy player of queen’s war, when the consort was threatened, would have moved him to a point on the board as far removed from that threat as possible. Vlad Li Tam, dismantling his vast network, had done so.

But who was the other player, that Vlad Li Tam would remove himself utterly from the New World, transferring his wealth to the Androfrancine Order and donating his holdings to the new library, leaving nothing behind but his daughter?

Someone beyond the Named Lands . Petronus felt his knees go weak.

The Androfrancines had known this, at least some part of them. And they had feared it even to the point of seeking out the terrible song of Xhum Y’Zir to protect the Named Lands from this invisible threat.

In the end, their best intentions for the light had nearly extinguished it.

Perhaps his actions had been justice. Perhaps they had been mercy. Either way, Petronus had done what he had done. Sethbert lay dead and the Order lay dead alongside him. He thought of Grymlis and the Marsher village so long ago.

He put papers in the pouch and put the pouch with the small pile of things he intended to take back with him to Caldus Bay.

By the time he’d finished packing, the tears had already begun.

Jin Li Tam

In the pandemonium that followed Sethbert’s execution, Jin Li Tam slipped from the pavilion. She’d seen something unexpected there-one of the younger Androfrancines looked surprisingly like one of her many siblings, and when their eyes met, he had looked away, and then vanished through one of the three wide entrances.

She followed.

She felt no anger over Sethbert’s death. He would’ve died regardless, she realized. A?€he realind despite the years she spent with him, at no time had she forged any kind of bond with the man. She had