You will ever be my sunrise, he told her.

Then, because he knew that it was important to her that it be her own idea and that she lead in this particular dance, he let her take him by the hand and guide him into the waiting bedchamber.

Closing the door, they left Isaak to his work and he left them to theirs.

Brother Hebda haunted Neb’s dreams that night.

They were in the Androfrancine Cemetery, near the high, ornate gates that led to the Papal Tombs. His father met him there and they walked. Overhead, the sky looked like a bruise-green, purple, blue, shifting and sliding like oil on water.

“It’s going to get worse, son,” Brother Hebda said, putting his arm around him.

“What do you mean, Father?” Neb asked. Somehow, in his dreams he was able to take that leap, to give that title to this once large, once jovial man who visited him occasionally.

Death was unkind to Brother Hebda. He’d lost weight and his features had sagged with the weight of despair. He pointed to the south and then the west. “A Lamentation for Windwir has been heard across the Named Lands… and beyond, even. Armies converge here to grieve and rage with their eyes upon our bones. They ride east from here to avenge us upon the wrong house.”

Neb scanned that direction, but in his dream, the Great Library and the Office of Expeditionary Unction blocked his view. Of course, this part of his dream made sense-just before bed, Petronus had told them all the Gypsy Scout’s news. He felt a bony hand on his shoulder, felt the steel in Hebda’s arm as he steered Neb and pointed to the north.

“Curiosity is stirred in the north; the Marsh King brings his army into play, honoring a kin-clave older than our sojourn in this land.”

This piqued Neb’s curiosity. Petronus had not mentioned this. He realized suddenly that they had stopped walking, and he looked around. Now they stood at the foot of Petronus’s tomb. His name stood out from the rest, being the only Pope in the last millennium or better to take his given name as his holy name.

Hebda ran his hand beneath the name. “He will bring justice to this Desolator of Windwir and will kill the light that it might be reborn.”

Neb felt his stomach lurch. “Father, I don’t understand.”

Brother Hebda leaned down. “You do not have to. But you will play a part in this. When the time is right, you will stand and proclaim him Pope and King in the Gardens of Coronation and Consecration, and he will break your heart.”

Those gardens were a memory now. Of course he’d never seen them. They were opened only during the Succession. But he’d walked by›217ime them and he’d seen their design drawings in the library. They were smaller than he thought they should be.

He didn’t know what else to say. Something grabbed his heart and squeezed it. He felt his throat closing. He was afraid. He stammered but could not find his words.

“Nebios,” his father said, invoking his full name, “you came into this world a child of sorrow, destined to be a man of sorrow.” His father had tears in his eyes. “I am sorry, my son, that I have no hopeful word for you.”

Neb wanted to say that he’d gladly accept sorrow just for the hope of seeing his father again, but before he could open his mouth, he fell awake and realized he was shouting.

Petronus was by his side in an instant. “Dreaming again?”

Neb nodded. Not just shouting, but also sobbing. His hands went to his face and came away wet. His shoulders were still shaking. He caught his breath. There was something he needed to tell Petronus, something that seemed more important and more urgent than anything else from his dream.

Curiosity. Stirred. He remembered.

Looking up at Petronus, he said the words slowly and carefully. “The Marsh King brings his army into play.”

And Petronus winced when Neb said it.

Petronus cursed all the way back to the northern edge of camp.

He had no idea why the boy’s words had resonated so true with him, but they had. And Petronus may have been the Pope of the Androfrancine Order, but he was a fisherman at heart, and despite decades of Francine training still gave credence to the dead who spoke in dreams.

He went to the sentry. This one was an Entrolusian infantryman. Sethbert had been sending them down so that the gravediggers weren’t pulling double shifts between digging and guarding. “How goes the watch?”

“Fine enough,” the soldier said, leaning on his spear. “Nothing stirring but the coyotes.”

Petronus looked north. If they were coming, they’d come from the north. But how? If they were skirmishers, they’d come in, kill, bury and then pull back. And if the boy were correct-if it was the Marsh King himself, bringing an army-then it would be something else altogether.

The Marsh King had not left his exile in five hundred years›e ht=". And that time, he’d left to lay siege to Windwir for half of a year until the Gypsy Scouts and the Gray Guard had pried them off the city and sent them back to their marshes and swamps.

Petronus looked at the guard. He was young-maybe twenty-and wide-faced.

“Any news?” Petronus asked.

The soldier studied him, sizing him up. “You’re the old Androfrancine that runs this camp.”

He nodded. “I am he. Though I’m not much of an Androfrancine anymore.”

“There are armies riding in from the west. They will be here tomorrow… maybe the next day. Most of us will ride on for the Ninefold Forests. Some of us will stay here and aid you in your work.”

Petronus nodded. “I’ve heard as much. Which do you hope for?”

The soldier frowned. “The first battles were over before I saw action,” he said. “But after seeing this-” he turned and tipped his spear toward the ruined landscape “-I don’t know.”

Petronus thought about this for a moment. “Why?”

“Part of me wants justice for this. Part of me wants to never cause harm to another.”

Petronus chuckled. “You’d have been a good Androfrancine, lad.”

The soldier laughed. “I suppose,” he said. “When the other boys played at war, I dug in the woods for artifacts beyond my family’s farm.”

“I was like that as a boy, too,” Petronus said. “Now I dig graves.”

The soldier pushed back his leather cap and scratched his short blond hair, returning to the question. “I’ll follow my orders when the time comes,” he said. “Want doesn’t come into it.”

Petronus felt a sudden kinship with the young man and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “Want rarely does,” he told him.

Petronus turned back to the north. The moon was still visible though no longer full. It cast eerie light onto the fields and hills east across the river and on the line of forest to the north.

Of course it had just been a dream, he thought. And his Francine sensibilities told him, regardless o›m, alf his upbringing, that dreams were the working of the deeper places inside. Bits of truth and lies we told ourselves, all fruit to be sorted as our bodies slept.

But why would Neb dream of the Marsh King?

He stood with the sentry until he was relieved and a new guard-this time one of his own men-took over. He chatted with the sleep muddled trader for a few minutes, then turned back to try and get an hour of sleep before the sun rose and they went back to their work.

When Second Summer passed, the rain would be on its heels. And after the rain, snow. They didn’t need any further complications than what the changing seasons could provide.

He was halfway back to the camp when he heard the shout behind him. Petronus stopped and turned. He moved quickly across the shattered ground, feet crunching in the ash.

By the time he reached the line again word had been passed, and the camp moved into Third Alarm. The lieutenant that Sethbert had attached to the camp-the same one that had let them pass what seemed forever ago-met them at the line.