After hours in his room poring over volumes of kin-clave law with Esarov, it was good to be under the sky again, and it made him homesick for his shack and his fishing boat in Caldus Bay.

He’d led a peaceful life there for thirty years, until the day of Windwir’s pyre. I should’ve stayed home. But even as he thought it, he knew that second guesses and self-doubt were a trick of the mind. Each past road, the Francis taught, shapes our present. Change one bit of that long and twisting walk and you change all of it.

He could have let Sethbert’s own mete out justice, could have extradited the former Overseer as his nephew and governors had demanded, but he’d needed a visible antagonist while the Androfrancine thirst for vengeance was high. He’d needed them to place their rage upon that solitary figure so that he could then take action to remove himself from office and end the Order. Otherwise, the backward dream would have eventually reasserted itself.

Still, Vlad Li Tam’s words haunted him. Rudolfo was my work even as you were my father’s. The notion that somehow his actions were manipulated from a lifetime of careful stimuli and engineered circumstances hollowed something inside of him. He’d seen the anguish upon Rudolfo’s face after the Gypsy King’s encounter with Tam on the Emerald Coast. He knew what price the Forester had paid at that family’s hands, and the idea that he himself was also a river moved by those careful machinations gave rise to anger and doubt he did not want to face.

A dark bird shrieked far above, and he looked to it. It moved quickly northward. He watched it vanish and turned back to the maze. As he did, a low whistle reached his ears.

Petronus glanced over his shoulder. The guards stood at the garden’s gate talking among themselves. Once he’d made his declaration of circumstances, Erlund’s grip had relaxed upon him. Certainly, they kept him locked in his suites, but they gave the old Pope wide latitude as he wandered the grounds. After all, fleeing now would make him a fugitive not just of Entrolusian law but of kin-clave, now that he had invoked that right as king.

Slowly, he strolled toward the entrance to the Whymer Maze and paused there in the shadow of those tall thorn walls.

He kept his voice low. “Is someone there?”

As he drew nearer, the stench struck him. It was the reek of sewage. “Aye, Father,” a familiar voice whispered, “and I’ve crawled a river of shite to be here.”

Grymlis. Wrinkling his nose, he moved farther into the Maze. He felt a breeze where there was no wind and realized that the Gray Guard had not come alone. He forced himself to walk at a leisurely pace until he was out of eyeshot of the guards. “What are you doing here?”

Grymlis gave a low chuckle, his voice warbling in the grips of the powder. “I’ve come to see if you’re finished with this foolishness yet. I’ve men watching your keepers, and I’ve a fresh pouch of scout magicks. Though the escape route may offend your regal sensibilities.”

Petronus continued to stroll the maze. “How did you know to find me here?”

“We’ve been coming for a week now. We’ve been watching and waiting. This is just the first time you’ve gotten close enough to the maze.”

It was Petronus’s turn to chuckle. “Any closer and the reek would do me in far better than Erlund’s axe ever could.” He studied the air where he’d heard Grymlis’s voice, but the magicks held him well and Petronus saw nothing. “So you’ve come to extricate me, then?”

“If you’ll let me.”

Of course, Petronus realized, his Gray Guard had to know the answer. And yet he still tried. Because duty compelled him. All his life, Grymlis had served the light. He’d served four Popes in his time, offering himself and his sword to them. Even when Petronus had sent him away to bury his Androfrancine Gray Guard uniform in the loamy soil of the Ninefold Forest, the old man had come wandering home like a castaway dog. “You know I won’t leave,” Petronus said as gently as he could.

He could imagine the man’s shrug. “You know I had to try. Something dark rises, Petronus, and I have a sense of foreboding like none I’ve ever had.”

Yes. Petronus heard the uneasiness in the man’s voice and it alarmed him. Even the use of Petronus’s proper name betrayed that worry. And Grymlis was unshaken under the most dire of circumstances. If he sat still long enough, Petronus felt the same foreboding. A reckoning approached, and he stood at the center of it. “This game of Queen’s War has been carefully laid out,” he said. “This is a battle I can win now that kin-clave is invoked.”

“I don’t trust it,” Grymlis said. “It’s foolhardy. The Marshers are uprising. An Y’Zirite resurgence is in full swing there, and the Androfrancine remnant is systematically disappearing. You’ve heard about the Summer Palace? And the armies in the north?”

Petronus nodded. “Esarov told me.” He’d lain awake that night ciphering the news. Marshers that burned their dead.

“It’s gotten worse. This resurgence is like nothing we’ve seen before, and its roots have grown deep and in secret. Rumor has it that Winteria’s army is divided. She herself rides to petition for kin-clave.”

Petronus winced. It was deep, then. The Order had kept a tight rein on these things, using its Gray Guard and its kin-clave to stomp out any hint of Y’Zir worship long before it reached the point of building critical mass. But the Marshers were already susceptible to mysticism. And though they were watched, they were a difficult people to infiltrate. With time and patience and care, a foundation of religion could be formed. Add to that an inexplicable access to forbidden blood magicks and men willing to die in service to the cause and it was a powerful weapon.

It could be no coincidence that just after Windwir fell, this new threat arose. Had Windwir stood, she had within her basements the means to counter these magicks, the weapons with which to bring down these foes. Some could say that without the shepherd, wolves savaged the fold. Still, it was not reasonable that a cult in the Marshlands could bring down Windwir. Not without a great deal of help.

Esarov had insisted that the threat that brought down Windwir had come from within. Vlad Li Tam believed his own family had somehow been compromised and used, along with Sethbert, to accomplish this. His golden bird and its presence at Windwir supported that belief. And beyond the fall of Windwir, chaos and violence rocked the Named Lands with both House Li Tam and the Order out of the way.

“It’s all threads of the same tapestry,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Aye,” Grymlis agreed. “And last week, I dreamed your death, Father, beneath an iron blade. Something is happening, and I believe we’re being herded as cattle to the cliff.” He paused, and Petronus felt the discomfort of his next words: “I’m fearful of what comes.”

Petronus nodded but said nothing.

“So again,” Grymlis said, “come with us. We will find a place to hide you. We will continue the work of walking this Whymer Maze.”

Petronus sighed. “What if my work in this is to follow the path I’m on?”

There was anger in Grymlis’s voice now, but the old guard worked hard to conceal it. “Then you should give me whatever orders you wish me to carry out both now and beyond your life here. Because if you do not come with me now, of a certainty I believe you will be dead within the month.”

“Because of your dream?”

“Because of my dream, yes.” He continued, “And don’t give me that Franci tripe about dreams being the secret mazes our souls work out, our hidden fears and forbidden desires. I know all of that. But I also know this: This dream feels true, and I’ll not stand by and watch it come to pass.”

Petronus stopped. He’d reached the center of the maze and saw the marble meditation bench there. He walked to it and sat down. He wasn’t sure that he believed the Francis anymore on that subject. Neb’s dreams during the grave-digging had tested and broken his belief. “I cannot go with you, Grymlis. I need to finish what’s begun with this.”