“And why isn’t he here to tell me that himself?”
“The gout which has plagued him for so long has become much worse, Your Eminence. I believe his natural … unhappiness with recent events has aggravated the condition. At any rate, he is currently with the healers, although I believe he’ll be available to confer with you by tomorrow or the next day.”
“Tomorrow or the next day?” Saintahvo repeated in an ugly tone. “Well, My Lord, whatever Bishop Merkyl may feel or not feel—assuming his medical condition hasn’t … compromised his state of mind—I categorically reject your ‘logic’! We’re God’s warriors. We owe him our lives—and our deaths, if it comes to that—and He expects us to fight on in His cause, trusting that in the day of battle, He will be our fortress and our refuge. You will not retreat, My Lord!”
“Your Eminence, I might point out that for all your high ecclesiastic rank, you aren’t my intendant; Bishop Merkyl is. As such, I question whether or not you have the authority to countermand my intentions if he approves them.”
“Whatever you may think about my authority, My Lord, I disagree.” Saintahvo quivered visibly with the force of his rage. “And while I might officially be ‘only’ Archbishop Militant Gustyv’s intendant, I’m also the Grand Inquisitor’s personal representative. Are you prepared to tell him I lack the ‘authority’ to countermand your cowardly intention to run away from the enemies of God?”
His tone was scathing, his eyes contemptuous, but the earl only shrugged.
“I anticipated that you might … disagree with my analysis, Your Eminence,” he said in that same calm, almost conversational tone, “so I took the precaution of informing Vicar Allayn of my intentions.”
“You did?” Saintahvo asked in a rather different tone, obviously taken aback by Rainbow Waters reasonable sounding response.
“I did, indeed,” Rainbow Waters replied. “And I received his reply by semaphore shortly before sunset. Somewhat to my surprise, there was a second response, addressed to Archbishop Militant Gustyv in the Captain General’s personal cipher. Vicar Allayn was sufficiently alarmed by the … sweeping nature of my intentions that he wished to make his own and his colleagues’ view of them as clear as possible to the Archbishop Militant.”
He extracted a single sheet of paper from a folder on his desk and handed it to Walkyr. The archbishop militant didn’t seem especially eager to take it, but he did. Then he unfolded it and read it slowly. His face was expressionless as he reached the bottom, then reread it carefully and even more slowly. He looked up and folded the message very neatly and precisely. Saintahvo held out an imperious hand for it, but Walkyr seemed not to notice as he gazed across the desk at Rainbow Waters, who looked back at him with one raised eyebrow.
“May I ask if you find yourself in concurrence with the Captain General’s instructions, Your Eminence?”
“Yes,” Walkyr replied. There was something odd about his voice, a combination of trepidation and something else, something almost like … relief. “Yes, I do, My Lord.”
“Very good,” the earl said. Saintahvo looked back and forth between them, hand still extended for Vicar Allayn’s message, and Rainbow Waters picked up the small handbell on the corner of his desk and rang it once.
The sweet, musical sound seemed utterly incongruous against the backdrop of heretic artillery, but it was surprisingly clear and sharp. It hung on the ear for a moment, then the office door opened and Baron Wind Song reentered, accompanied by a half-squad of infantry in the uniform of the Emperor’s Spears, the Harchongese military police.
“Yes, My Lord?” the baron inquired, and the earl waved a graceful hand at Saintahvo.
“Arrest him,” he said.
.VIII.
The Temple,
City of Zion,
The Temple Lands.
“Yes, Your Eminence?” the under-priest said, entering Wyllym Rayno’s office in response to the archbishop’s signal.
“Have we heard anything from Father Allayn this morning?”
“Why, no, Your Eminence.” The under-priest shook his head. “Were you expecting a report or a message from him?”
“I was expecting to see him here in my office twenty minutes ago.” Rayno looked less than amused. The archbishop had always started his days early; given the current situation, he’d taken to beginning them well before dawn, and all of his senior subordinates had learned to do the same. “Send someone to find out what’s delayed him. And why he didn’t tell me he was going to be delayed!”
“At once, Your Eminence.”
The under-priest bowed and disappeared, and Rayno climbed out of his chair and stomped his way to his corner office’s window. Unlike the space made available to vicars, his office boasted none of the mystically changing scenes of woodland, forest, or mountain. He did have an excellent view across the Plaza of Martyrs to the harbor, however, and he stood with his hands clasped behind him, glowering at the scenery.
Allayn Wynchystair had better have a damned good reason for his tardiness—and an even better one for his failure to warn Rayno he’d be late! More than enough was going wrong without one of his most senior deputies suddenly deciding he had better things to do than bring him up-to-date on the Fist of Kau-Yung’s latest atrocities.
The archbishop growled a curse.
The scene before him looked perfectly ordinary. A huge, blazing arm of the sun had only just heaved itself above the eastern horizon, white wave crests chased themselves across Lake Pei, and the bright banners of Mother Church snapped gaily on the sharp breeze whipping in from the lake. Sails moved across the lake, the first few pedestrians of morning moved along the streets, and all of it was reassuringly normal, even tranquil.
And it was all a lie.
He sighed, his expression far more anxious than he’d allowed the under-priest to see, as he faced the truth.
Zion was a powder keg, and for the first time in his career, he couldn’t predict what was about to happen in its streets. The panic he couldn’t see from his window hung over the city of God like a foul miasma. Like a pestilence. The news from the front lines was devastating, and despite Rayno’s opposition, Zhaspahr Clyntahn had decreed that the Inquisition would suppress word of Earl Golden Tree’s surrender, just as it had attempted to suppress news of Bishop Militant Lainyl’s. And, just as it had failed in Lainyl Brygham’s case, it had failed in Golden Tree’s. Those accursed broadsheets—those impossible, demonic broadsheets—had shouted the news from every wall, every doorway. And whatever Clyntahn might tell himself, whatever he might insist upon in his increasingly savage—and rambling—conferences, the people of Zion believed those broadsheets more than they believed Mother Church herself.
Of course they did, and with good reason. That was why Rayno had argued in favor of telling the truth from the outset. Censor news if they must, but tell the truth in the official news they did release, lest the people reading those broadsheets decide it was God’s enemies who told the truth and His champions who lied. The Inquisition had never had to worry about that before those broadsheets, though, and Clyntahn seemed unable to admit that the techniques which had always worked before would work no longer.
Then there was the upsurge in the “Fist of God’s” attacks on senior clergy, especially among the episcopate. That was bad enough, but over the last five-day, eighteen regular agents inquisitor had been ambushed as they went about their duties. Seventeen of them were dead, the eighteenth was in a coma, and no one—not one single soul—had seen a Shan-wei-damned thing. No one. When the Inquisition couldn’t turn up a single witness to the brutal slaying of one of its own—when everyone insisted they didn’t have a clue what had happened—they were entering uncharted seas. Nothing like that had ever happened before. And the one thing he was certain of was that those murders hadn’t been committed by the Fist of God. The attacks had been too … sloppy. Too impassioned. They were the handiwork of outrage, not of a calculated strategy. Besides, the Fist of God had always disdained casual attacks on randomly chosen street agents inquisitor. No. Those attacks were the work of ordinary Zionites, the result of the rage boiling just beneath that tranquil surface outside his window.