by David Weber
And if it didn’t underscore that treason, Stantyn would be no great loss, anyway.
As far as the renegades’ realizing Clyntahn was simply biding his time before having them arrested, Rayno was certain they must have already recognized what was coming. At least one vicar who’d been a member of the Circle for over ten years, according to Stantyn, had committed suicide the month before. Two more had perished in what looked like accidental deaths, although Rayno was confident appearances were deceiving.
No, all three of them killed themselves,he thought again. They decided that would be an easier end than the one The Book of Schueler lays down for heretics. And they probably decided it was the only way to keep the Inquisition from going after the remaining members of their families, as well.
He didn’t know if they’d been right about that last point, or not. That would be Clyntahn’s decision, and while the Grand Inquisitor’s first inclination would undoubtedly be to make examples out of the traitors’ families, as well, he might choose not to. If he held his hand in that regard, it might encourage future enemies to take the same escape—remove themselves from the vicar’s path without putting him to the bother of having them removed. It would be interesting to see which approach Clyntahn chose in the end.
And for now,Rayno thought dispassionately, he’s enjoying the knowledge that the others have realized what’s coming. It’s not as if they could get far in the coldest month of a Zion winter even if they tried to run, and in the meantime, they have to see him every day and know what’s going to happen to them. And so does everyone else in the vicarate, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.
That was the real reason Clyntahn had waited so long, Rayno was certain. It wasn’t something the Grand Inquisitor was going to discuss in detail even with him, but Rayno hadn’t served Clyntahn so long and so well without realizing how the vicar thought.
Clyntahn had deliberately stoked the steadily growing fear within the vicarate, but not out of simple sadism, or even out of a simple desire to punish those who’d dared to challenge the Group of Four’s control. No. He’d used the gnawing terror to hone the internal, factional tensions which always afflicted the Temple during the winter months to an even sharper, more dangerous edge. He’d wanted to force decisions, to drive even those who’d traditionally attempted to stand aloof from the vicarate’s internal political struggles to choose sides. To commit themselves. And he’d wanted them to do it under circumstances he controlled. His own command of the Inquisition, and Allayn Maigwair’s command of the Temple Guard, gave the Group of Four an absolute monopoly on force within the Temple and Zion, and the winter had trapped all of Mother Church’s highest hierarchy right here. There was, quite literally, no countervailing force, which meant everyone knew Clyntahn was in a position to bring the full, sledgehammer repressive power of his office down on anyone who marked himself out as the Group of Four’s enemy.
In the face of that sort of threat, it was scarcely surprising that even many who nursed serious doubts as to the Group of Four’s handling of the crisis had found themselves looking for ways to prove their loyalty. To curry favor like a frightened dog, licking the hand which threatened to beat it in the hope of buying some sort of mercy. Or, at least, of securing short- term survival. Because even the dimmest dullard had to recognize that without short- term survival, there could be no long- term survival.
No doubt it did amuse Clyntahn to use enemies and rivals to serve his own political ends. In fact, Rayno never doubted it did, and he supposed the streak of cruelty, even sadism, that demonstrated was a serious flaw. Yet he’d come to the conclusion long ago that all men had flaws, and that the greater the man, the greater the flaw tended to be. And the fact that Clyntahn enjoyed making his enemies suffer made his strategy no less effective. Besides, it wasn’t as if any other strategy had ever truly been possible, for there could be no rapprochement between Samyl Wylsynn and Zhaspahr Clyntahn. It simply couldn’t happen—if for no other reason, because Clyntahn would expect other potential adversaries to see it as an act of weakness on his own part. As an accommodation he’d sought because he doubted the strength of his iron fist. It was essential he prove he entertained no such doubt . . . and that he would not tolerate that doubt’s existence in any other vicar’s mind.
To do that, he must use that strength. He had to crush his enemies, openly and utterly, and so he would. He might delay the moment, might stretch out the agonizing anticipation, in order to force others to offer him their submission, but the ultimate outcome had never been in doubt. It could never have been in doubt, lest it be seen as hesitation or timidity on his part.
Rayno understood that, and his own estimate was that Clyntahn had accomplished virtually all of his goals. Further delay would achieve very little in terms of the internal dynamic of the members of the vicarate likely to survive the coming purge. Which meant that, at this point, Clyntahn was holding his hand for purely personal reasons. Having achieved his political objectives in all their essentials, he was treating himself to the predatory satisfaction of watching his doomed foes suffering all the anguish of anticipation.
And if anyone else realizes that’s what he’s doing, it will only make them even more terrified of crossing him in the future. So even now, he’s still killing two wyverns with a single stone, as it were.
The only flaw in the Grand Inquisitor’s satisfaction was the possibility that some of his enemies’ families might escape him after all, but neither he nor Rayno were concerned by the possibility that anyone who hadn’t already disappeared might do the same. Rayno still hadn’t figured out how the missing family members—and especially the Wylsynns—had managed to vanish so thoroughly, although he’d come to suspect there was an additional player in the game. One Stantyn didn’t know about and so had been unable to betray. There was a sense of... craftsmanship to the families’ disappearances which reminded Rayno strongly of the disappearance of Archbishop Erayk Dynnys’ family. He still hadn’t been able to figure out how that had happened, either, but he’d developed a grudging respect for whoever had managed to get them out of the Temple Lands and into Charis without leaving a single footprint behind. The adjutant general would cheerfully officiate over the fellow’s execution, whoever he might be, but he did respect the quality of his opponent.
However good that opponent might be, however, none of the other families were going to disappear. All of them were under constant surveillance, and he’d handpicked the Inquisitors responsible for keeping them that way. Of course, he’d done that in the Wylsynns’ case, as well, but this time he’d assigned double teams to each family, and it struck him as extraordinaily unlikely that he could have that many traitors (if that was truly what had happened in the Wylsynns’ case) in his own ranks. No, the other families weren’t going anywhere without his knowledge. In fact, he rather wished some of them would make the attempt. If they did, they might yet lead his Inquisitors to the others, and he’d become privately convinced that that was the only way he was going to find those others at this point.
Not that he had any intention of giving up the hunt. And meantime . . . “Have you given any more thought to exactly when you wish to have them arrested, Your Grace?” he asked after a moment.
“I think we can give them another five- day or so, don’t you, Wyllym?” The adjutant general’s question seemed to have restored the Grand Inquisitor’s humor, and he smiled jovially. “There’s no need to cut the others’ time with their families short, now is there?”
“I suppose not, Your Grace.” Rayno returned his superior’s smile with rather more restraint.
Unlike Clyntahn, Rayno would take no personal satisfaction from the Grand Inquisitor’s enemies’ destruction. Nor was he particularly looking forward to having the members of their families put to the Question in front of them. It was, he acknowledged, one of the most effective of the Schuelerites’ techniques for extracting information, and their inability to apply it to the family members who had escaped probably
helped explain at least some of Clyntahn’s frustration. For himself, however, Rayno would be just as happy to avoid as much of that sort of thing as he could. It was unlikely to be necessary, in any case. They had plenty of evidence already, they could count upon the accused to confess in the end (the accused always did confess in the end, didn’t they?), and aside from a few junior bishops and archbishops who’d managed to get out of the city before winter closed in, they could put their hands upon the guilty parties anytime they chose.
Even those who’d contrived to get out of Zion had only delayed the inevitable. They were all being watched by trusted Inquisitors who were simply waiting for the semaphore message to take them into custody.
I suppose it’s remotely possible one or two of them might manage to escape, at least briefly. But not more than one or two . . . and anyone who does run won’t get far.
No one who knew Lysbet Wylsynn would have recognized her in “Chantahal Blahndai’s” warm, but extremely plain, Harchong- style poncho, worn over an equally utilitarian hooded, woolen coat. At least, Lysbet thought, as she tucked her mittened hands into her armpits under the poncho, burrowed her chin deeper into her woven muffler, and hunched her head against the wind, she devoutly hoped they wouldn’t have.
She’d always hated Zion in the winter. Her husband’s estates lay in the southern Temple Lands, just across the border from the Princedom of Tanshar. Lysbet’s own family, although it had connections to quite a few of the great Church dynasties, was Tansharan, and while winter could be cold enough along the Gulf of Tanshar, it was never as bitterly frigid as winter in Zion. Her husband had been born barely five miles on the Temple Lands’ side of the border, and he fully understood—and shared—her distaste for Zion winters. He seldom insisted that she join him here for the winter months.
He hadn’t planned on her joining him this winter, either, and for considerably more weighty reasons than her dislike for snow. In fact, he’d sent her word (very discreetly) that he thought it would be wise for her to make alternate travel plans. Unfortunately, she’d become aware, even before his message arrived, of the fact that she and the children were being watched.
It hadn’t been anything most people would have noticed, but Lysbet Wylsynn wasn’t “most people.” She was a smart, observant woman who’d recognized when she accepted Samyl Wylsynn’s proposal that wedding a husband from that particular dynasty was inevitably going to embroil her in Temple politics. The notion had repelled her, but despite the differences in their ages, Samyl most definitely had not— her lips twitched in bittersweet memory—and she’d shared his outrage over what Mother Church had become.
She hadn’t expected things to get this bad. Not really. No one ever really expected the end of their world, even when they genuinely thought they were prepared for it. Yet she’d always been at least intellectually prepared for the possibility of disaster, and over the last couple of years—especially since the Group of Four’s disastrous assault on the Kingdom of Charis—she’d been quietly taking precautions of her own. And unlike the other members of Samyl’s Circle within the vicarate, Lysbet had known who the true hub for the Reformists’ communications had been. When Adorai Dynnys had been forced to flee to Charis following her husband’s arrest, she’d passed her own responsibilities on to Lysbet. In the process, she’d had to give Lysbet certain information only Adorai and Samyl had possessed, which meant Lysbet had become aware of Ahnzhelyk Phonda’s importance to the Circle . . . even though almost no one else in the Circle had entertained the least suspicion of that importance.
So far as Lysbet knew, she and Samyl—and Samyl’s brother, Hauwerd—were now the only people in the Temple Lands who knew about Ahnzhelyk’s connection to the Circle at all. So when she’d realized she and the children were being watched, that any effort to flee would be instantly intercepted, she’d decided on a plan of her own. Instead of staying away from Zion, she’d written—openly, using her privileges as a senior vicar’s wife to send it over the Church semaphore—to tell Samyl she’d be joining him there this winter, after all. And she’d made arrangements to do just that.
Then she’d made rather different (and much quieter) arrangements with Ahnzhelyk. She hadn’t expected all three of the Inquisitors who’d been spying on her to end up dead in the process, but she hadn’t shed any hypocritical tears over their demises, either. Unfortunately, Ahnzhelyk’s initial plan to immediately get her and the children out of the Temple Lands had proved unworkable in light of the clandestine but intense search for them which Wyllym Rayno had instigated. The open hunt for her family’s “abductors” would have been a serious obstacle under the best of circumstances, yet it was Rayno’s ruthlessly efficient secret hunt which had inspired Ahnzhelyk’s caution.
And her determination to get as manyother families out of the city as she can, Lysbet reminded herself now. The selfish mother in her—the mother who wanted her children in safety, and Shan- wei with anyone else’s children!— bitterly resented that decision on Ahnzhelyk’s part. Most of her, though, agreed entirely. Despite her terror for her own family’s safety, she knew that simply abandoning anyone else they could have saved would have been a betrayal of everything the Circle had ever stood for.
And since her husband, and her brother- in- law, and most of their dearest friends in the vicarate were going to die for what the Circle had stood for, Lysbet Wylsynn could no more have betrayed their cause than Ahnzhelyk could.
None of which had made the nerve- racking five- days hiding here in Zion, the city which had become the heart of the beast itself, any easier to endure. The good news was that Chantahal Blahndai didn’t look at all like Lysbet Wylsynn. She was older, her hair was a different color, she had a prominent mole on her chin, and she was at least thirty pounds heavier than slender, youthful Madame Wylsynn. Not only that, but whereas Madame Wylsynn had been accompanied by both of her sons and her daughter when she disappeared, Chantahal had only a single son.
It was amazing how skilled someone who’d followed Ahnzhelyk’s vocation became when it came to matters of cosmetics and hair dye, and winter clothing made it far easier to pad one’s figure without anyone noticing. And while most mothers wouldn’t normally have wanted their twelve- year- old daughters and eight- year- old sons spending the winter in what was, however elegant it might be, a “house of ill repute,” Lysbet had no concern in Zhanayt’s or Archbahld’s case. In fact, she couldn’t think of anyplace they might have been safer, and her greatest concern had been that one of them—especially Archbahld, in view of his youth—might inadvertently betray them all to the Inquisition. Her older son, Tohmys, on the other hand, was fourteen now—a serious boy who already shared his father’s sorrow (and anger) over what Mother Church had become. He was his uncle’s nephew, as well, however. Like Hau werd, he’d been headed for a career in the Temple Guard, and despite his youth, he was a skilled swordsman and an excellent shot, whether with a matchlock musket, an arbalest, or a standard bow. He was also fiercely protective of his mother, and he’d flatly refused to join his younger brother and sister in hiding.
Truth to tell, Lysbet hadn’t tried all that hard to convince him to do so. Partly because she recognized his father’s son and knew a futile endeavor when she saw one. But mostly because as much as she trusted Ahnzhelyk, and as effective as Ahnzhelyk had always proved herself to be, Lysbet hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to put all of her eggs in one basket. Which was also the reason Ahnzhelyk had made completely different arrangements to whisk Lysbet’s oldest daughter (well, stepdaughter, technically, although she was the only mother Erais had ever actually known) and her husband and son out from under the Inquisition’s nose. Lysbet suspected that her own willingness to come to Zion had been a factor in Ahnzhelyk’s ability to do just that. She’d been so clearly willing to walk directly into the spider’s web that the Inquisition’s vigilance over Sir Fraihman Zhardeau and his wife and son had lapsed, at least a little.
She’d rejoiced in quiet, fervent gratitud
e when Ahnzhelyk got her word that Fraihman, Erais, and young Samyl had made good their escape . . . at least for the present. But now, under a wind- polished sky of frozen blue, as she made her way along an icy sidewalk half- blocked by overnight snowdrifts, their centers trampled down by the feet of earlier traffic, she felt the familiar weight of despair. Not for her own safety, and not really for the safety of her children and grandchild—although that was a much sharper, more bitter- edged anxiety than any she might feel for herself. She had no intention of becoming careless, yet she’d come to the conclusion that if the Inquisition had been going to find her or her children, they would have done so by now. No, the despair she felt was not for herself, but for her husband and all he’d striven for so long to accomplish. For the friends and trusted colleagues who’d given him their allegiance and their assistance . . . and who were going to share in his agonizing death when the moment came.
It’s not as if he tricked or deceived any of them into supporting him,she thought, hugging herself more tightly under her poncho as the keen- toothed wind whistled between the tenements on either side of the street. All of them were as angry and determined as he was, and all of them knew this could happen. Yet to know it is going to happen, that someone like that greedy, bloody- minded bastard Clyntahn is going to win after all ...