* * *
“What did you say?”
Zhaspahr Clyntahn stared across his desk at Wyllym Rayno, and for the first time the archbishop could ever remember, the Grand Inquisitor’s florid face was paper white.
Of course, his own wasn’t much better.
“Father Allayn’s personally confirmed it, Your Grace,” he said, wondering how his voice could sound so … normal.
“Everyone? Everyone?” Clyntahn demanded in a tone which desperately wanted the answer to be no.
“Everyone,” Rayno replied heavily. “Every prisoner, every interrogator, every guard, Bishop Inquisitor Bahltahzyr, every member of his staff—anyone who was inside St. Thyrmyn’s. All dead.”
“But no one outside the prison?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“But … how?” The question came out almost in a whisper, and something very like terror burned in Clyntahn’s eyes.
“We don’t know, Your Grace.” Rayno closed his eyes for a moment, then raised one hand in a helpless gesture. “We have our own healers—members of the Order we can trust, not Pasqualates—examining the bodies even now. And as soon as they’ve finished, we’ll dispose of them in the prison crematorium.”
Clynthan nodded in understanding. The gesture was almost spastic. It would be far from the first time the crematorium on the prison’s grounds had been used to hide the Inquisition’s secrets. If it turned out that a prisoner wasn’t suitable for public execution for whatever reason, it was simplest to just make sure they disappeared forever.
But it had never concealed a “secret” like this one.
“W-what have they found? The healers?” he asked now.
“Nothing, Your Grace,” Rayno said heavily. “Just nothing at all. There are no wounds, no signs of violence, no indications of any known disease, no evidence any of them even sought assistance, assuming they had time for that. It’s as if one moment they were walking around, going about their normal duties. And the next, they … they just died, Your Grace. Just died and dropped right where they stood. One of the lay brothers actually collapsed across the threshold as he stepped out of the prison. That was what drew the outside guards’ attention so quickly.”
“Oh, Sweet Schueler.” This time, it truly was a whisper, and Clyntahn’s hand shook as he gripped his pectoral scepter. “Pasquale preserve us.”
Rayno nodded, signing himself quickly with the scepter, and his eyes were dark as they met the Grand Inquisitor’s.
How did they do it? his brain demanded of itself. How could they do it?
He never doubted that it had to have been the false seijins—no, the demons who pretended to be seijins!—but how?
There’s nothing like this in the records—not in The Testimonies, not in the Book of Chihiro, and not in the Inquisition’s secret files. Nothing! Never. Not at Shan-wei’s hands or during the War Against the Fallen. Not even Grimaldi accomplished anything like this after his fall!
He tried to push that thought from him, to concentrate on how the Inquisition must deal with this. At least it had happened at St. Thyrmyn’s. With only a little good fortune, they could conceal it from the rest of Mother Church and her children, at least for a time. Pretend it had never happened—deny it had, if the false seijins and their allies spread the story. But he knew, and the Grand Inquisitor knew, and eventually more and more of their inquisitors would hear whispers, rumors, about what had truly happened. St. Thyrmyn’s was too central to the Inquisition, too vital a nexus for its operations, for the secret not to leak at least among the senior members of their own order. And once that happened, it would inevitably spread still farther. When it did, when they could no longer simply deny it, how did they address it, explain it?
He had no idea, but worrying about that was vastly preferable to facing the far more terrifying question beating in the back of his brain.
If the heretics’ demon allies could do this, what else could they do?
.XIV.
St. Nezbyt’s Church,
City of Gorath,
Kingdom of Dohlar.
“I wish I was sure this was a good idea, Sir,” Captain Lattymyr said quietly as the closed carriage turned into the courtyard behind St. Nezbyt’s Church.
“You wish you were sure?” Sir Rainos Ahlverez laughed shortly. “This has the potential to turn into something very un-good, Lynkyn. That’s why I should have put my foot down and refused to let you tag along!”
“Wouldn’t have had much luck with that after all this time, Sir,” Ahlverez’s aide replied with a slow smile. “Besides,” the smile faded, “I doubt it would’ve mattered in the end.” He shrugged. “Been made pretty clear to me that the Army doesn’t need my services at the moment any more’n it needs yours.”
“And for that I’m truly sorry,” Ahlverez said quietly.
“No, Sir.” Lattymyr shook his head, eyes stubborn. “You did exactly what needed doing, and an officer of the Crown could be in a lot worse company.”
“But not much more dangerous company,” Ahlverez pointed out as the carriage drew up in the courtyard. “And this particular meeting’s not likely to make that company any less dangerous.”
“Maybe not, but I didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be this evening, Sir. Might’s well spend it watching your back.” The tough, weathered-looking captain smiled again, briefly. “I’m getting sort of used to it, actually.”
Ahlverez chuckled and reached out to clasp his aide’s shoulder briefly before he reached down and unlatched the carriage door.
The driver—a solid, phlegmatic-looking Schuelerite monk with iron-gray hair and dark eyes—had already climbed down from the box. Now he unfolded the carriage’s steps and stood holding the open door.
“Thank you, Brother Mahrtyn,” Ahlverez said, climbing down, and the monk nodded.
“I’m happy to have been of service, General,” he replied in a deep voice. There was a rasping edge to the words—from an old throat injury, Ahlverez suspected, looking at the scar on the side of the man’s neck—and the monk bobbed his head in a respectful but far from obsequious bow.
Ahlverez nodded back and waited until Lattymyr had joined him. Then he raised an eyebrow at the monk in silent question.
“The side chapel, My Lord,” the Schuelerite replied, addressing him with the courtesy due the general’s rank no one had yet gotten around to formally taking away from him. “Langhorne’s, not Bédard’s.”