Rudolfo blinked. “You can’t mean that. They need you.”

“No,” Petronus said, “they truly don’t.” He sighed. “But you do. And I can give you what you need.”

Rudolfo felt his eyes narrowing. “What is that?”

Petronus exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I can give you the Great Library.”

I could take it. But even as he thought it, Rudolfo knew that he would not. “What do you want?”

“I think you know what I want.”

“Continue,” Rudolfo said. He suddenly knew what was coming.

“I will make it plain.” Petronus looked at him, his eyes suddenly hard and bright. “If your guardianship of Windwir is not sufficient motivation, then by way of the kin-clave between your houses and mine, as King of Windwir and Holy See of the Androfrancine Patriarchy, I require the extradition of Sethbert, former Overseer of the Entrolusian City States. He will be tried for the Desolation of Windwir and for the souls lost in his act of unprovoked warfare.”

Rudolfo thought of Sethbert now, in his cell on Tormentor’s Row. He’d arrived a few days ahead of Rudolfo, and the Gypsy King was surprised at his reluctance to watch the physicians at their work.

Before Windwir, he often took his lunch on the observation deck when they were in session so he could listen to the physicians’ calm exegesis beneath the screams of their patients. But since his trip to the Emerald Coasts, since discovering that he himself-along with the rest of the Named Lands-had languished beneath someone else’s salted knife, he could not bring himself to take comfort in that work any longer. And he’d suspected for a time now that Petronus might invoke the Order’s rights by kin-clave.

“I will extradite him for trial,” Rudolfo said. “But you will give me a Pope if you won’t stay yourself.”

Petronus smiled and shook his head. “I will give you what you need, but I do not guarantee you a Pope.” When Rudolfo opened his mouth to protest, he continued. “The honoring of kin-clave shoul“€in-claved not be confused with someone else’s backward dream.”

Rudolfo tilted his head, not sure if he’d heard properly. “Backward dream?”

“The world of P’andro Whym-like the world of Xhum Y’zir and his Age of Laughing Madness-is not the world of today, Rudolfo, and certainly not the world of tomorrow. In the early days, before the Whymer Bible was compiled, before the Androfrancines named themselves and robed themselves and built their Knowledgeable City at the heart of the world, they met a need because it was there at the moment.” He held up his empty cup, turning it in the candlelight. “The cornerstone of Androfrancine knowledge is that change is the path life takes, yet we all dream backward to what has been rather than dreaming forward to what can be… or better yet, to dream in the now.”

Rudolfo sighed. He could feel the truth of the old man’s words in the dull ache of his muscles and soul from his long, contemplative ride. “We love the past because it is familiar to us,” he said, “whether that past is light or dark.”

“Yes,” Petronus answered. “And sometimes, we try to carve the future into an image of the past. When we do so, we dishonor past, present and future.”

The words struck Rudolfo, and he understood now at least part of Petronus’s strategy. “You do not feel the Androfrancines need a Pope. It is why you left.”

Petronus waved his hand. “It was many things. It was also about knowing my own soul. If I had continued, whatever I did would be a lie.”

Rudolfo leaned forward. “How did you know? What brought you to that place of knowledge?”

Petronus shrugged, and laughed loudly. “My whole life brought me to that place of knowledge. There was no one thing. I woke up one morning and simply knew.” He tapped out his pipe. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

Rudolfo raised his eyebrows. “What makes you say that?”

The old man smiled. “Your life has changed, Rudolfo. Your Wandering Army will soon wander no more and your Gypsy Scouts will run the forests without their Gypsy King. You will live in one house with one woman. And soon, your library will be the center of the world. This little town will grow beyond its past just as you have grown beyond yours. Add a few children-an heir to nurture, perhaps…” Petronus let the words die. “I know you know these things. I know you think about them.”

Rudolfo’s guard slipped and his thought slipped with it, coming out in a quiet voice. “What if my life becomes a lie?”

“Or what if it’s becoming true?” Petronus stood.

Rudolfo shook the sudden doubt away, and stood as well.

“Will you take Sethbert off Tormentor’s Row and place him in a simple cell?”

Rudolfo felt a twinge. “I will order it so.”

“I will see him tomorrow.” Petronus walked to the stairs, then turned back to Rudolfo. “We will hold the trial at the conclusion of the Council of Bishops.”

Rudolfo nodded. “I concur.”

Petronus paused at the top of the stairs. “Do you remember what you said of Neb? That he would make a fine captain?”

Rudolfo nodded. The boy was intelligent and capable, a strong leader who influenced others without knowing it. That was a blade that could be sharpened into the fine edge of an intentional strategist. “I do. The Order is fortunate to have him.”

A dark look crossed Petronus’s face and Rudolfo saw loss there. “Remember those words, Rudolfo.”

Rudolfo said nothing. He felt a another twinge, something restless moving beneath the surface of this all. He felt his eyes narrowing, but if Petronus noticed, he did not show it.

“Sleep well,” the Pope said as he started his descent back into the manor.

“I will,” Rudolfo replied. But he knew that he wouldn’t. A gnawing feeling of dread grew in his stomach about the coming council, and at the center of it stood a man with a strategy Rudolfo did not yet fully grasp.

More and more, Neb found himself feeling at home in the Ninefold Forest. The work satisfied him, and the forest Gypsies fascinated him. And the Northern Marshes were just across the Prairie Sea from him.

As the days slipped past, Neb watched the small town fill to overflowing. The last large caravan arrived from the Summer Papal Palace that morning, and yet more tents went up in the large open meadow where the council pavilion stood.

This is all that is left, he thought as he watched the men in their dark robes walking among the rainbow-clad forest Gypsies. It staggered him, remembering a time when this many black robes would have been a relatively small gathering. He_“€thering.217;d brought the matter of recruitment up to Petronus several times in the last two months, but the Pope had deflected it. At first, Neb thought it was coincidence combined with the distractions of Petronus’s office and the exhaustion he must surely feel. After all, the old man rarely slept these days, poring over page after page of parchment in his office late into the night, arriving early in the morning to do the same all over again.

But now, these deflections recurred enough that Neb realized Petronus was avoiding the subject. Still, in itself that may have been no more than a desire to take care of the more pressing issues. The mechoservitors worked day and night now to reproduce the library from their memories, their hands blurring as they moved pen across paper. Rudolfo had recruited a half dozen bookbinders and outfitted them in nearby tents while proper facilities could be built. Already, the manor was filling with stacked volumes, its halls and rooms smelling of new paper and fresh ink.

If that weren’t enough to keep Petronus’s attention on the here and now, there were vast Androfrancine properties that required difficult decisions. A group of one thousand did not have the same needs as a group one hundred times that size, but which holdings should be kept and which should be abandoned or bartered or sold off? Even if the Order planned for recruitment, it had taken two thousand years to build its power, and Neb doubted it could ever come back in the same strength it had before, even bound to the Ninefold Forest Houses.