Alahnah bit her lip, her eyes more worried than ever. It was true that Rhobair Duchairn was undoubtedly the most beloved and respected member of the entire vicarate here in Zion, and she never doubted that he was the good man Krystahl had just called him. For that matter, his position as Mother Church’s Treasurer was the third most powerful in the entire Church hierarchy. But there were those rumors …
Alahnah was always very careful never to use the term “Group of Four” to anyone under any circumstances, but she knew what it referred to. And if it really existed—and she thought it did—then Vicar Rhobair was only one member of it … and not the one in charge of the Inquisition.
“I think it’s a mistake, Krys,” she said. “And with all due respect, Sebahstean’s not exactly the most … cautious person we know. For that matter, you know how he tends to obsess over things like rules. Remember when he and I used to play chess all the time! Uncle Gahstahn didn’t call him the ‘local law master’ because he was reasonable about things, you know!”
“I read the same passages he did, and ‘local law master’ or not, he’s right this time.”
“You’re going to do this, whatever I say, aren’t you?”
“Somebody has to,” Krystahl repeated. “Mother Church ‘is a great beacon, God’s own lamp, set upon a mighty hill in Zion to be the reflector of His majesty and power, that she might give her Light to all the world and drive back the shadows of the Dark. Be sure that you keep the chimney of that lamp pure and holy, clean and unblemished, free of spot or stain.’” Alahnah’s heart sank as her cousin quoted the Archangel Bédard. “That’s what we’re doing, and that’s all we’re doing.” Krystahl’s spine straightened and she squared her shoulders with an odd mixture of devotion and defiance. “It’s all we’re doing … and it’s also the least we can do.”
* * *
“Do you have a minute, My Lord?”
Zakryah Ohygyns looked up from the latest report and the ruby ring of his episcopal rank glittered as he beckoned with his right hand.
“At the moment, I’d welcome a distraction,” he said wryly, pointing at a chair on the other side of his desk. “I know I officially have to sign off on all these reports, but do you think the Grand Inquisitor really needs to know how many copies of the Book of Sondheim we have in the borough library?”
“Probably not,” Father Erek Blantyn said, but his smile was less amused than it might have been, and Ohygyns felt his stomach tighten in reflex reaction.
There were a lot of reasons Father Erek might be un-amused by any number of things … and very few of those reasons were anything the Bishop Inquisitor of Sondheimsborough really wanted to hear about. Unfortunately, it was Father Erek’s job to bring exactly those sorts of things to Ohygyns’ attention.
The bishop inquisitor tried—really tried—not to hold that against him.
“Why do I suspect you’re here to tell me something I’d really rather you didn’t?” he asked now.
“Because I haven’t found anything to tell you about that you wanted to hear for the last year or so, My Lord? Or perhaps because you noticed this?”
He waved the folder he’d been carrying under his left arm.
“Probably.” Ohygyns sighed and pointed at the chair again. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason you have to be uncomfortable while you tell me. Sit.”
“Thank you, My Lord.”
Blantyn settled into the chair and laid the folder in his lap, then folded his hands on top of it. Ohygyns wasn’t surprised when he didn’t open it. Blantyn always brought the documents to support one of his briefings with him, just in case Ohygyns wanted to see them for himself, but he couldn’t remember the last time the priest had needed to refresh his own memory before presenting an absolutely accurate account of what those documents contained.
“What is it, Erek?” the bishop inquisitor asked now, his tone and his expression both much more serious than they had been.
“We have a new report on one of the seditionists we’ve been watching,” Blantyn said. “I think he’s moving into a more active phase. One active enough to bring him under Archbishop Wyllym’s Ascher Decree.”
Ohygyns’ jaw tightened. Wyllym Rayno, the Inquisition’s Adjutant, had recently issued a heavily revised Decrees of Schueler, the codified regulations and procedures of the Office of Inquisition, over the Grand Inquisitor’s signature. Ohygyns found himself in agreement with the vast majority of the revisions, although he regretted the stringency—the temporary stringency, he devoutly hoped—forced upon Mother Church by the heretics. If the schismatic Church of Charis wasn’t crushed, utterly and completely—if it survived in any form—the ultimate unity of Mother Church was doomed, and that could not be permitted.
But that didn’t mean Zakryah Ohygyns liked what the new Decrees required of him, and he especially disliked the Ascher Decree, named for the fallen Archangel Ascher, who held sway over the lies crafted to lure loyal children of God away from the truth. Obviously anyone who truly did lend himself to that sort of despicable deception and temptation had to be cut out of the body of the Faithful, but he didn’t like the way Archbishop Wyllym’s most recent decree lowered the threshold for exactly what constituted deliberate deceit.
“Who is it?” he asked levelly. “And have I already been briefed on whoever it is?”
“No, you haven’t been, My Lord,” Blantyn replied, answering his second question first. “As to who it is, it’s a young fellow named Sebahstean Graingyr. He’s a journeyman printer with a shop over on Ramsgate Square.”
“And what brought him to your attention in the first place?”
“We suspect he’s been producing broadsides critical of the Grand Inquisitor.” Blantyn’s face had become utterly expressionless, and Ohygyns felt his own expression smoothing into a similar mask. “There’s evidence—pretty strong evidence, actually—that he not only printed them but personally posted them in half a dozen places here in Sondheim.”
“Wonderful.” Ohygyns leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I assume you didn’t find anything linking him directly to the Fist of Kau-Yung?”
Blantyn winced very slightly as Ohygyns used the proscribed label for the terrorists stalking Mother Church’s prelates. It wasn’t a term the bishop inquisitor would have used with just anyone, but they had to call the organization something, and Ohygyns flatly refused to use its self-bestowed title and call it the Fist of God. Other Schuelerites constructed all sorts of awkward circumlocutions to avoid using either phrase, but Ohygyns was too direct for that. Plainspoken to a fault himself, he preferred subordinates who were the same.
“No, My Lord. There’s no evidence linking him directly to the terrorists. To be honest, the quality of the printing amply demonstrates there’s no direct link. The ones we’re certain came from his presses simply aren’t anywhere near as finely produced as the ones attributed to the Fist of God.” Blantyn used the term without flinching. “And to be fair to Master Graingyr, he’s never posted a single word in support of the heresy. In direct support, I mean, of course.”
Ohygyns grimaced at Blantyn’s qualification, but he understood it. So Graingyr was another of those who found Vicar Zhaspahr’s stringency difficult to stomach and he’d decided to do something about it. Well, in many ways, the bishop inquisitor couldn’t blame the people who felt that way. And, under normal circumstances, he would simply have had someone who did quietly brought in and counseled, probably with a fairly hefty penance attached, for criticizing the mortal custodian of God’s Holy Writ. Unfortunately, under those same normal circumstances, it would have been far easier to separate that mortal custodian—who, like any mortal, could be fallible—from the Holy Writ he preserved, which could never be fallible. When the entire basis of Mother Church’s authority was in question, when she was fighting a desperate war for her very survival, nothing could be allowed to undermine the integrity of the Writ … and her custody of it.