This afternoon, however, he was a mere spectator. He’d been sure to pick a good vantage point, well clear of the Temple but with an excellent view of the waterfront, while the other teams worked their ways into position. Nahrmahn and Owl had watched over them through the SNARCs, waiting until everyone was in place, and only then triggered the explosion through a SNARC relay.
In many ways, Murphai wished Mahkbyth could have been with him to share the moment. A man couldn’t have everything, though, and if Mahkbyth had been unhappy to lose that particular kill, the modifications he’d suggested to Murphai’s original plan more than compensated.
Besides, the ex-Guardsman wasn’t the spectator type. He was the sort of man who preferred to be more … hands-on.
Especially for some things.
* * *
Bishop Zakryah Ohygyns had just kissed his wife, hugged his children, collected his personal Guardsmen, and started back down his front walk to return to his office when he heard the explosion. Of course, he didn’t know it was an explosion; he simply knew it wasn’t a sound he should be hearing in Zion on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
He also knew how bitterly his wife resented the hours he worked. In her opinion, a bishop of Mother Church ought to be able to spend at least an occasional Wednesday with his family. But, no! Not her husband! He had to race home from mass, bolt down Wednesday dinner, and then turn around and head straight back to the office. She would never dream of complaining, especially in the middle of a jihad. But this Jihad had been going on for years now. It was long past time the Inquisitor General found someone else to carry some of Ohygyns’ load, at least on Wednesdays, and the fact that she would never complain about it in so many words—and certainly never to anyone else—didn’t keep her from making her feelings abundantly clear to him. Nor did it keep him from feeling guilty. Yet there was nothing he could do about it until the Jihad was won.
Maybe then I can convince Archbishop Wyllym I’ve earned a vacation, he thought, stopping on the sidewalk, one foot on the carriage’s running board as he craned his neck, trying to decide where that thunder had come from on such a cloudless day. The six men of his protective detail stopped with him, as puzzled as he was, and the driver on the coach’s high seat half stood, as if he thought he could actually see its source from his higher vantage point.
Maybe we could take the kids to visit her brother in Malantor, his thought ran on even as he tried to determine what he’d heard. God knows the beaches are nicer—and a lot warmer—in Tahlryn Bay than they are on Lake Pei or Temple Bay! And it’s been years since we had a real family vacation. Besides, she has a point. The Writ itself says a man’s duty to his family comes—
“For our sisters!” a voice said.
Ohygyns was still turning towards it when the trio of Composition D-charged hand grenades, with Delthak Works proof marks, exploded. There were two survivors from the men clustered around the carriage.
Zakryah Ohygyns was not among them.
* * *
Father Mairydyth Tymyns looked up from his copy of the current Decrees of Schueler with a muttered oath. It was Wednesday, for Schueler’s sake! Surely on this day, of all days, a priest could spend a little time re-dedicating himself to his holy purpose without being disturbed?
“What’s all that racket, Zherohm?” he demanded irritably.
There was no answer, and he swore again as he laid the Decrees aside and pushed up out of his chair. It sounded like Zherohm Slokym had just dropped something in the vestibule, but that wasn’t like him. The grizzled, thick-shouldered monk had been with Tymyns for years now, and for all his muscular bulk, he was as sure-handed as he was reliable. He was also just as passionate as Tymyns himself about ferreting out heretics. They suited one another, and the monk served as Tymyns’ combination personal bodyguard and batman/valet, as well as the senior member of his detail in the field.
“Zherohm!” he said in a louder voice, then cocked his head as what sounded for all the world like a peal of thunder rattled the windows of the modest house the Order had assigned to him.
Now what? he wondered exasperatedly. It can’t be thunder—not on a day like this! But in that case—
CRAAACK!
His library door’s latch splintered under the straight, savage kick of a heavy boot. The door flew wide, slamming explosively back against the wall, and Zherohm Slokym hurtled in through the opening. But he hadn’t arrived in response to Tymyns’ summons. And he wasn’t going to be explaining anything, either—not with his throat slashed from ear to ear. He hit the floor with a dull, meaty thud, and blood spread in a thick, hot pool across the carpet.
Tymyns was still staring at the body, smelling the strong, coppery stench of blood and stunned into utter immobility, when more solid, muscular men charged into the room in Slokym’s wake and strong, angry hands seized him.
There were four of them, he realized. All of them were masked, and they wore aprons—the heavy, full-length aprons butchers wore. They ought to have looked ridiculous, a corner of his mind thought, but they didn’t. Not with the bright spatters those aprons had already intercepted when Slokym’s severed carotid sprayed blood.
Of course, that same corner thought. They wanted to keep Zherohm’s blood off their clothes. They’ll just take off the aprons and leave them behind when they blend into the crowds and simply walk away from—
His shock-numbed thought processes stuttered back into life as he realized what else those men had come to do, and he opened his mouth to cry out as two of the intruders wrenched his arms agonizingly behind him as expertly as any agent inquisitor. He writhed frantically, fighting to pull away, but a third man twisted his fingers in his hair, yanked his head back, and crammed a thick wad of cloth into his mouth.
The Schuelerite’s desperate, belated shout for help was muffled, smothered into inaudibility, and his eyes went huge with terror as the fourth man—the one with the bloody dagger in his hand—reached inside the bib of his apron and removed an envelope. He dropped it on Slokym’s body, and then that featureless, masked face turned towards Tymyns.
“We have a message for you from our sisters, Father,” Ahrloh Mahkbyth said coldly, and Tymyns gurgled frantically, bulging eyes pleading for the mercy he’d never shown another, as his head was wrenched even farther back, arching his throat for the knife.
* * *
“Of course it wasn’t the ‘Fist of God’!” Zhaspahr Clyntahn snapped, glaring around the council chamber. “How in Shan-wei’s name could it have been? That schooner belonged to the Inquisition! Its crew consisted entirely of agents inquisitor and Schuelerite lay brothers, all sworn to the Order, and Bishop Wylbyr’s personal guards went over it inch-by-inch before they ever allowed him to board!” The Grand Inquisitor’s jowls were dark, his eyes fiery. “Are you suggesting that somehow a pack of murderous fanatics got a bomb big enough to do that much damage past its entire crew and all of that security?!”
Rhobair Duchairn and Allayn Maigwair were careful not to look at one another. Zahmsyn Trynair, fortunately for him, was out of Zion on diplomatic business, although he’d undoubtedly have been sitting in his corner emulating a mouse if he hadn’t been.
“I’m telling you, this is just the lying bastards taking credit for something they had nothing to do with!”