“Nebios ben Hebda.” He could smell the musky earth smell of her, and without warning he felt warm lips brushing across his cheek. “The Marsh King is very pleased with you,” she said.

He jumped at the kiss. At night, the magicks were virtually impenetrable. “Winters?”

But she was already off and running back into the night.

Vlad Li Tam smiled and sipped at the kallaberry smoke through the long stem of his pipe. He’d replayed the day’s events again and again and could not be more pleased. When he’d finally left, Rudolfo, Meirov and the Marsh King had been discussing strategy for the night’s work.

Now all he needed to do was wait.

“Obviously my fiftieth son did very well with the ring.”

The aide nodded. “He did, Lord.”

“I have fine, strong children.” He closed his eyes, feeling the smoke lift him. But he wondered if the smoke would lift him past what was coming tonight.

“Your children are legendary, Lord,” the aide said. “There is also word from your thirty-seventh son. He rides with Resolute the First.”

Vlad Li exhaled the smoke. “He’ll arrive to a surprise tomorrow.”

“He has a good source on the Guard,” the aide said. “He will feed us what he can on their movement and strategy.”

Vlad Li Tam pondered this. “Oriv’s contingent of Gray Guard is too small to do much beyond protect him. Still, knowing their location will be useful. And perhaps we’ll glean something from his parley with Sethbert.”

But he wondered how long Oriv would hang on to what small foothold he had now that Petronus had proclaimed himself. Certainly there would be some of the Androfrancine Remnant that remembered Petronus, but the fact that he’d faked his own death thirty years ago would turn some away. It was certainly a challenge to Androfrancine Law. No Pope had ever quit before, let alone gone to such lengths to do so.

But bringing one back from the dead had proven to require equal lengths. Petronus had resisted at every turn. Vlad Li Tam’s betrayal had been quietly arranged. A new ring forged with a bit of the Fargoer’s steel he’d kept for such an occasion along with specifications for the ring that he had found in the Androfrancines’ very own library nearly thirty years ago.

He wasn’t sure how the Marshfolk and Sethbert played into it, but Vlad Li Tam sensed a strategy alongside his own-something that even overlapped his own schemes. Scraps of it drifted to the surface from time to time.

His own part was complex. But this other strategy was as elaborate as a Whymer Maze, he knew that much. And he knew that the Androfrancines had been afraid of something. Their quiet, somber tones as they discussed the need for a strong leader, for a new guardian of the light, set apart from the rest of the world.

He took another pull from his pipe, listening to the crackle of the dried berries as they burned beneath the match his servant held. “We will return to the Emerald Coast tomorrow,” Vlad said.

Already, he knew his iron armada had redeployed, blockading the river and seaports throughout the Entrolusian Delta. Sethbert’s reinforcements would come by foot, and his supply chain would come by land now rather than by water. The lines of war had not been clearly drawn, but at the very least he could see the shape and size of what loomed ahead.

If Rudolfo was as strong as Vlad had made him to be, the war would soon be behind him. The library would be underway. The Order would limp to the shadows and simply die of its wound. His daughter would raise a child that mixed the Gypsy King’s strength with the cunning of the Tam. The light would flickeUht andr but would not go out.

But at what cost?

Vlad Li Tam sighed and sipped his pipe again.

Rudolfo crouched at the forest line and felt the magicks take him. Twice now the unseemly task fell to him, and as much as he disliked it, it was necessary and practical if he were to accompany his men on the raid.

As if reading his mind, Gregoric shifted uncomfortably beside him, and Rudolfo heard the muffled crunch of pine needles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Rudolfo,” the first captain said, voice muffled with the magicks. He’d dropped the title… something he only did when he was speaking more as friend than soldier.

Rudolfo looked at the patch of night where Gregoric crouched. “You’ve known me for how long, Gregoric?”

“All of my life.”

He nodded. “Then you’ve known what I would do since we crafted the strategy for tonight’s work.”

Rudolfo felt a hand on his shoulder. “Aye,” Gregoric said, “I’ve known it. But the world has changed, and so has your role in it.”

Change is the path life takes, Rudolfo thought, remembering the words of P’Andro Whym. “You suggest that for the benefit of the library, I take less risk?”

“Not just the library,” Gregoric said. “All that’s left of the Androfrancines is in your care and in the care of your Ninefold Forest Houses. You’ve also a wife and a people to think of now.” Gregoric paused, and Rudolfo could read the hesitation in his voice. “If you fall,” the first captain said, “this war will be over for us. If you fall, what’s left of the light may go out.”

Rudolfo loosened the twin scout blades in their sheaths at his belt. He preferred his long, narrow sword, but the magicks were better suited for knife-fighting, especially in the close quarters they allowed. “I will not fall, Gregoric,” he said in a low voice.

Rudolfo heard the thunder now, building in the north, and waited. When the Marsh King’s army appeared, moving fast and low across the plains and bathed in the blue green light of the moon, it looked like a black ocean rolling across the land. They rode silently, even Hanric, bearing down ?theon the Entrolusian advance camps. Rudolfo stood and stretched. He could feel the magicks in his blood now, itching beneath his skin. He could smell the sweat of the horses behind him, mingled with the scent of ash and snow.

The Entrolusians had expected the attack. They’d leaked word to one of the spies they’d turned and had given him time to get that word to Lysias.

The first Entrolusian advance camp moved to third alarm and launched their birds long before the Marsh King’s army poured over them.

Farther west, another camp went into alarm, and Rudolfo smiled. That would be Meirov’s rangers.

“It’s time,” Rudolfo said, drawing his knives and tucking them underneath his arms, blades pointing behind him.

Gregoric whistled, and the squad moved out.

They ran south and east, the magicks muffling their boots as they whispered across the snow. Rudolfo felt his heart pumping, and the darkness melted back to a gray light as his eyes adjusted to the powders. He could hear the fighting now in the front lines and he picked up his pace, watching the open ground vanish between him and the far side of the meadow.

They hit the forest and spread out, adjusting their course to avoid the pockets of infantry racing toward the front lines.

As they ran, they clicked their tongues lightly against the roofs of their mouths from time to time-the slightest of sound, but with the amplification of their hearing, it was enough to get a sense of their loose formation. Rudolfo stayed in the center and made no sound at all.

Two leagues slipped past in the span of minutes, and they widened their circle in order to flank Sethbert’s camp. If Vlad Li Tam’s source in that camp spoke true, the mechanicals were stored in the center, near the tents of the Delta Scouts and not far from Sethbert’s massive canvas palace.

Behind them, the sounds of fighting grew. It was a simple bit of misdirection, Rudolfo realized, that he hoped Lysias would fall for. They had counted on the mechanicals being guarded, but expected the Entrolusian general to shift resources to Sethbert when the bird arrived.