A handful of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts fell in around them as they walked. They hadn’t yet changed into their dress uniforms, and their rainbow-colored woolen trousers and shirts were damp from the forest. Uncharacteristically, they grinned at their general.

He smiled back at them. “I hear you’ve pulled together a Firstborn Feast like no other before it,” he said to them.

Their grins widened and then vanished as First Captain Aedric approached from town. His face looked worried and he gripped a note in his hand. For a moment, he seemed to study Isaak and then fixed his eyes on Rudolfo. “I’ve just had two birds from the Wall.”

Rudolfo stopped. They had inherited the watch on the Keeper’s Wall when they took on rebuilding the library. The mountain range separated the Named Lands from the Churning Wastes, the ruins of the Old World. The Androfrancines had controlled access to the one pass until Sethbert broke their back and Petronus dissolved the Order, passing its role on to Rudolfo and his Ninefold Forest Houses.

Shepherd of the light, he thought.

“What is happening at the Wall?” He took the notes and read them quickly. Coded into the message was an emphatic urgency. A metal man, clothed in robes, claiming to be an Arch-Engineer of the Order’s Office of Mechanical Science in a city that was now desolated. I bear an urgent message for the hidden Pope, Petronus, Rudolfo read. Sanctorum Lux must be protected.

He looked up from the note and turned to Isaak. “What is the name of the engineer who created you?”

Isaak blinked, his eyes flashing golden in the crisp twilight. “Brother Charles, Lord.”

Rudolfo nodded. “Yes. Brother Charles. Arch-Engineer of the Androfrancine Office of Mechanical Science?”

Isaak nodded. “Yes, Lord.”

He stroked his beard. “When was the last time you saw him?”