By rights, Clyntahn’s glare should have incinerated the Chancellor on the spot, but Trynair met it without flinching, almost as if he were still a member of the Group of Four, and Duchairn cleared his throat. The Grand Inquisitor’s eyes snapped to him, glaring like a slash lizard at bay, and he shook his head.
“Zhaspahr, you head the Inquisition. Ultimately, decisions about spiritual and doctrinal loyalty reside with you. At this momen, however, Allayn and Zhasyn are right. You know I’ve never really agreed with your concerns about Thirsk’s possible disloyalty, and to be honest, I don’t now, either. But even assuming you’re absolutely right about him, the policies and defensive measures he and Fern are proposing are the strongest, most effective ones possible. Maybe they won’t be enough, and maybe Thirsk is a weaker reed than any of us might prefer. But nobody could do more—it’s not physically possible to do more in this situation—and removing the man responsible for doing it, the man whose resolution underpins his entire navys, can only weaken those measures.”
It was his turn to meet Clyntahn’s incandescent eyes, and he sat very still as he waited for the Grand Inquisitor’s explosion.
* * *
“—and then the gutless, puking cowards told me that if I thought I could come up with someone who could get more out of the goddamned Dohlarans I should tell them who it was!”
Wyllym Rayno stood in Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s enormous office, watching his superior pace furiously back and forth across it. The Grand Inquisitor’s cassock swirled with the fury of his stride, and his jowly face was dark. He might have allowed himself to be dissuaded from dragging Thirsk back to Zion, but Rayno knew the signs. He was working his way into … reconsidering that decision. Which might be unfortunate in too many ways to count.
And not just for the Jihad.
“Your Grace,” he said carefully, “my own reports would tend to support those Vicar Zhasyn has received.”
Clyntahn stopped pacing and whirled to glare at him, but the archbishop only shrugged, ever so slightly, his expression calm. It was, perhaps, just as well that the Grand Inquisitor couldn’t see the way his hands had tightened on one another in the concealment of his cassock’s full sleeves.
“What did you say?” Clyntahn said icily.
“I said our reports, including Bishop Staiphan’s, tend to corroborate Vicar Zhasyn’s analysis. I don’t defend anyone who’s allowed his faith to falter, Your Grace. I’m simply saying there’s a great deal of … uncertainty and fear. Understandably, I think, among members of the laity who have to be terrified by this fresh evidence that Shan-wei is loose in the world once more.”
“So you’re saying I should just roll over for this? That I should let this traitorous, cowardly son-of-a-bitch stay right where he is, in command of his precious navy, even if that means he’ll just sit at anchor and let the frigging heretics do whatever they want out on the Gulf of Dohlar?” The Grand Inquisitor showed his teeth. “I might point out that that means they’ll be able to do whatever they want along the coasts of the Gulf of Dohlar … and the Sea of Harchong, for that matter. I don’t think your fellow Harchongians will be very happy when the rest of their cities start burning like Rhaigair. Of course, Chiang-wu is inland, isn’t it?”
“Your Grace, I have kinsmen in Tiegelkamp and Stene, not just Chiang-wu.” Rayno met Clyntahn’s eyes. “I don’t want to see any Harchongese cities burning—I don’t want to see any cities burning. But in the face of the heretics’ presence in the Gulf and what’s happened to Rhaigair, it’s especially important that the man the Dohlaran man in the street trusts to do everything possible in defense of the Kingdom be left where he is, at least for now. If he provides proof, or even strong circumstantial evidence, that he isn’t doing everything possible, you’ll have grounds enough to justify taking him into custody in anyone’s eyes. And—” the archbishop allowed himself a very small smile “—this state of panic won’t last forever. One way or the other, it will ease as God and Schueler show us the path forward. It will be time to summon Thirsk to Zion when that happens. In the meantime, whether we trust him or not, let’s use him as effectively as we can.”
“And if he bites us on the arse in the meantime?” Clyntahn demanded, although he seemed at least marginally calmer than he had been.
“I think we’ll simply have to trust in God—and Bishop Staiphan’s vigilance—to prevent that from happening, Your Grace,” Rayno replied, and saw Clyntahn relax a tiny bit more at the mention of Staiphan Maik.
The auxiliary bishop had been the Grand Inquisitor’s personal choice as Thirsk’s intendant, and Clyntahn retained a great deal of confidence in him. From the beginning, Maik’s reports had emphasized Thirsk’s competence and loyalty to the Dohlaran crown but acknowledged Clyntahn’s concerns about the earl’s spiritual reliability. Although Maik had never seen any signs of unreliability, he’d clearly kept a king wyvern’s eye out for it. Rayno had admired the skillful way the intendant had maneuvered within Clyntahn’s antipathy for the Dohlaran admiral, and he’d even taken it upon himself to … adjust certain of Ahbsahlahn Kharmych’s more poisonous reports to support Maik’s efforts. Whatever Clyntahn might have thought, they truly had needed Thirsk where he was.
Unfortunately, it was evident to Rayno him that the intendant had become a much closer ally in Thirsk’s confrontations with Thorast. That had probably been inevitable, if Maik was going to do his job, but over the last several months, and especially since the death of Thirsk’s family, Rayno had begun to sense a personal closeness between the admiral and his intendant.
That was worrisome, yet if he informed Clyntahn he’d become suspicious of Maik’s ultimate loyalties, the Grand Inquisitor would insist on personally reviewing all the relevant correspondence. That could be … inconvenient, since the raw files wouldn’t mesh perfectly with what Rayno had reported to him. Normally, that wouldn’t have worried him all that much. Clyntahn had known for years that his adjutant occasionally “massaged” information, and because the Grand Inquisitor had been confident of Rayno’s loyalty—and total dependence upon him—he’d been willing to have that information flow managed. Indeed, a part of him had recognized that he needed someone to manage it to protect him against the consequences of his occasional fits of rage.
But those fits of rage had become ever more frequent. How he might react now to the discovery that Rayno had “concealed evidence” of Thirsk’s—and possibly even Maik’s—potential treason wasn’t something the archbishop cared to contemplate.
Better not to mention how deeply involved Maik’s been in the formulation of Thirsk’s defensive strategy, either, he thought. The way he’s feeling right now, there’s no telling what that might touch off. At the very least, he’s likely to insist Maik come back to Zion for a debriefing. And what happens if Maik refuses?