“Bring her,” he said curtly, and two black-gloved inquisitors dragged her to her feet.
She thought about struggling. Every instinct cried out to fight desperately, but no resistance could help her now, and she refused to give them the satisfaction of beating her into submission. And so she walked between them, her head high, gazing directly in front of her and trying not to shiver in her nakedness.
It was a long walk … and it ended in a chamber filled with devices fit to fill the strongest heart with terror. She recognized many of them; others she had no name for, but it didn’t matter. She knew what they were for.
Her captors dragged her across to a heavy wooden chair. They slammed her down in it and strapped her wrists and ankles to its arms and heavy front legs. Then she coughed as another strap went around her throat, yanking her head back against the rough timber of the chair back.
“Leave us,” the upper-priest said, and his assistants sketched Langhorne’s scepter in silent salute and disappeared, still without speaking a single word.
She sat there, still staring straight in front of her, and he settled onto a stool, sitting to one side, out of her line of vision unless she turned her head to look at him. He said nothing. He only sat there—a silent, predatory, looming presence. The silence stretched out interminably, until she felt her good wrist beginning to turn against its strap, struggling involuntarily as the terrible tension piled slowly higher and higher within her. She tried to make her hand be still, but she couldn’t—she literally couldn’t—and she closed her eyes, lips moving in silent prayer.
“So, this is what the ‘Fist of God’ looks like.”
The cold, cutting voice came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that she twitched in surprise. Her head started to turn automatically in the upper-priest’s direction, but she stopped it in time, and he chuckled.
“Not very impressive, once you drag the scum out of the shadows,” he continued. “You and your employer are going to tell me everything you know—everything you’ve ever known. Did you know that?”
She said nothing, only clenched her teeth while she continued to pray for strength.
“It’s amazing how predictable heretics are,” the upper-priest mused. “So brave while they hide in the dark like scorpions, waiting to sting the Faithful. But once you drag them into the light, not so brave. Oh, they pretend—at first. In the end, though, it’s always the same. Shan-wei’s promises won’t help you here. Nothing will help you here, except true and sincere repentence and penance. Is there anything you’d care to confess now? I always prefer to give my charges the opportunity to confess and recant before the … unpleasantness begins.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Well, I didn’t really think there would be,” he said calmly. “Not yet. But one thing we both have is plenty of time. Of course, ultimately, I have far more of it than you do, but I’m willing to invest however much of it is necessary to … show you the error of your ways. So why don’t I just let you sit here and think about it for a bit? Oh, and perhaps you’d like a little company while you do that.”
The stool scraped as he got off it and walked to the chamber door. Her eyes popped open again, against her will, and his path carried him into her field of vision and she saw him clearly at last. He paused and smiled at her—a dark-haired, dark-eyed man, broad shouldered and perhaps four inches taller than she was—and she closed her eyes again, quickly.
“Bring her in,” she heard him say, and her hands clenched into helpless fists as she heard someone else whimpering hopelessly. Metal grated, clashed, and clicked, and then a hand twisted in her hair.
“I really must insist you open your eyes,” the upper-priest told her. She only squeezed them more tightly together—and then someone shrieked in raw agony. “If you don’t open them, I’m afraid we’ll have to hurt her again,” the inquisitor said calmly, and the shriek sounded again, more desperate and agonized even then before.
Zhorzhet’s eyes jerked open, and she moaned involuntarily—not in fear, but in horror and grief—as she saw Alahnah Bahrns.
The younger woman was as naked as she was, but she’d been brutally beaten. She hung from chained wrists, welted and bleeding, her skin marked with at least a dozen deep, angry, serum-oozing burns where glowing irons—like the one in the hand of the hooded interrogator standing beside her—had touched. She was no more than half-conscious, and all the fingers on both hands were obviously broken.
“She didn’t have a great deal to tell us,” the upper-priest said. “I’m afraid it took some time for us to be fully satisfied of that, though.”
He nodded to the hooded interrogator, and the other man gripped Alahnah’s hair, jerking her head up, showing Zhorzhet the eye that was swollen totally shut, the bloody, broken mouth. He held her that way for several seconds, until the upper-priest nodded, then opened his hand contemptuously and let her head fall limply forward once more.
“At first, she insisted it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding, of course,” the upper-priest told Zhorzhet conversationally. “That she knew nothing at all about your accursed organization. But after we’d reasoned with her for a bit, she understood how important to the soul confession is. She admitted you’d recruited her for the ‘Fist of God,’ although from how few facts she could tell us, she’s obviously a new recruit. Still, I think it might be … instructional for both of you to spend a little time together before I get down to reasoning with you.”
He released his hold on her hair, and then he and the masked inquisitor simply walked away and left them.
* * *
“We have to do something.” Aivah Pahrsahn’s voice was tight, over-controlled. “We all know what they must be doing to them right this moment.” She closed her eyes, her face wrung with pain. “That’s terrible enough, but—God help me—what they know is even worse.” She shook her head. “If they break—when they break; they’re only human—they can do terrible damage.”
“Forgive me,” Nahrmahn Baytz said gently over the com link, “but the actual damage they can do is limited. You set up your organization too carefully for that, Nynian.”
“If you’re talking about details of other cells, you’re probably right, Nahrmahn,” Merlin said grimly. “But both Marzho and Zhorzhet know a great deal about general procedures, and Marzho, especially, had to know Nynian’s overall strategy. At the very least, the information they have can give Rayno and Clyntahn a much better look inside how Helm Cleaver’s organized. Not only that, Marzho definitely does know Nynian used to be Ahnzhelyk Phonda, and God only knows what Rayno’s investigators could do with that bit of information! I don’t think any of us will ever make the mistake of thinking they’re incompetent, whatever else they may be, and they’ve got the manpower and the resources to investigate every single person who ever interacted with Ahnzhelyk. There’s no way of telling where that might lead.” He shook his head. “And if the Inquisition goes ahead and announces it’s captured agents of the ‘Fist of God’ and produces them for the Punishment, it may go a long way towards undermining the aura of … inevitability Helm Cleaver’s been building.”
“Ahnzhelyk’s not the only thing Marzho knows about that could cause serious damage, either.” Aivah’s voice was equally grim. “You’re right, she does know I used to be Ahnzhelyk, but she also knows ‘Barcor’ used to be a Temple Guardsman … and that he’s a shop owner in Zion. She doesn’t know his real name, or what sort of shop, but that’s enough to lead the Inquisition to Ahrloh Mahkbyth—especially if they put that information together with the fact that it was Ahnzhelyk who helped build his initial clientele—and if we lose Ahrloh, we lose the head of Helm Cleaver’s action arm in Zion.”