Ehrin open his mouth to argue, but thought better. Here was the opening he needed to question his grizzled business partner.
“Kahran, years ago—back in 1265—you accompanied my father on an expedition to the eastern plains. Was this backed by the Church?”
The question was needless—the Church oversaw all travel beyond the central mountains.
“Of course. What of it?”
Ehrin gestured. “Then you went quite willingly, with no scruples about Church intervention?”
Kahran stared into his drink. “It was different, back then.”
“The Church was less powerful?”
The silence stretched, and Ehrin sensed something. There was a tension in the air. It was as if Kahran wanted to tell him something, even though years of conditioning had taught him the wisdom of keeping quiet.
At last he said, “No, the Church was just as powerful then as it is now.”
“So why didn’t you object then?” Ehrin cried.
Bleak eyes, as grey as old snow, regarded him. “I did,” the old man said in a small voice.
“And... ?”
“I voiced my objections to your father, in this very room. In fact, he was seated in the very chair you occupy now.”
“My father was never a lover of the Church—but he argued against your objections?”
Kahran shook his head. “No, he agreed with me.”
“I don’t understand. In that case, why did he agree to go?”
Kahran took a mouthful of Spirit, then said, “He didn’tagree to go. Your father had no say in the matter. When the Church wanted to mount an expedition, they came to him. They requisitioned five ships, your father and myself, and we could only agree to go along.”
“And if you hadn’t agreed?”
Kahran shook his head. “Then it would have been the freezing frames for us, my boy. And even I, who loathed the Church and everything it stood for, didn’t want my carcass stripped and lashed to a frame for all my detractors to piss on.”
Ehrin let the silence stretch. He thought of his father’s letter. At last he said, “What did you see, out there on the shore of the western plains?”
For a brief second, it was as if Kahran’s opalescent irises saw not the glass he was clutching in his claw, but whatever they had beheld out there on the ice, fifteen years ago. Then he looked up and said sharply, “Who says we saw anything?”
Ehrin smiled. He had to tell the old man about the letter. He had come so far, got Kahran to open up about the Church—which he had been loath to do before now.
“Kahran, last night I read something in a letter, sent by my father from Sorny.”
Kahran looked up, animated in way he had not been until now. “What did he say?” he demanded. “If it was incriminatory, then lose not a second and destroy the letter.”
The old man’s vehemence unsettled Ehrin. “My father merely wrote that he had seen something... something terrible. He mentioned you.”
Kahran’s eyes penetrated Ehrin like an ice-fisher’s harpoon. “Did he say what he had seen?”
“No. That is, he merely said that you had both seen something terrible. He told my mother that he would tell her more when he returned.”
“And that was all? No more?”
“No more. I swear.”
Kahran nodded. “Good. That’s good. Thank the mountains he was wise enough to keep his silence.”
“Kahran, you’re talking in riddles. What did you see that was so terrible?”
The old man’s eyes time-travelled again, and then looked up and across at Ehrin. “As if you really think I would risk putting you in danger by telling you,” he said quietly.
Ehrin nodded. He knew Kahran well enough to realise when he had pitched up against the oldster’s stubbornness. He changed tack. “Before my mother died, she told me something. She said that he had defied the Church to his cost...” He paused, then asked, “What did she mean, Kahran?”
He should have known better than to think he could prise the truth from the old man’s lips. Kahran merely turned on him a defiantly benign gaze, and said, “Who am I to fathom the dying words of an old and confused woman, my boy?”
Ehrin smiled to himself, accepting defeat for now, but swearing that he wouldn’t leave himself in ignorance for long.
“Another drink, Kahran? We must discuss the plans for the new liner.”
Kahran smiled, and nodded, and was reaching for the decanter when a tap sounded on the door.
Ehrin’s secretary appeared at the far end of the room. “A messenger from the Prelate, sir. Shall I show him in?”
Ehrin was aware of his heartbeat, then told himself that a messenger would be sent irrespective of whether or not the tender had been won.
He ordered the messenger to be sent in, and a second later a young boy, garbed in the fanciful livery of the Church, slipped into the room and passed Ehrin a long envelope sealed with the jagged circle sigil of the High Church.
“Wait outside. I’ll compose my reply immediately and send it back with you.”
When they were alone again, Ehrin looked across at Kahran and raised the envelope. “What do you think?”
“I think we are the best company in Agstarn, and the Church will know this. They will offer the tender, but with strings attached.”
“Well,” Ehrin said, breaking the seal. “We shall see.”
He read the short paragraph, etched into the parchment with an exquisite hand, then looked up at Kahran and read the missive aloud. “After brief deliberation, the Council of Elders of the Agstarn High Church hereby notifies Ehrin Telsa, Chairman and Director of the Telsa Dirigible Company, that the tender for the exploration and surveying of the western plains has been found satisfactory. Ehrin Telsa will present himself at the Church council chambers, at four o’ clock on the 33rd day of St Jerome’s month, for further instruction.”
Kahran smiled. “Even when imparting news that one might find advantageous, the Church is parsimonious in its praise.”
“I will go, Kahran, and learn what crippling provisos the Church requires.”
The old man looked at him. “But you will assent to do their work whatever.”
Ehrin smiled. “I am a realist,” he said, and then recalled his father’s words, I have neither the space nor the time to describe here the terrible things K and I have seen today...
* * * *
2
The council chambers of the High Church were situated at the very hub of the city, from which radiated long, wide boulevards like the spokes of a cartwheel. It was, so the city planners of Agstarn had stated long ago, the microcosmic mirroring of the word itself: a great disc of land, which was the centre of the grey universe. More practically, Ehrin thought as he skated along the boulevard, turning his face away from the bitter southern wind, the positioning of the Church administration at the very centre of things signified the order of the world according to ecclesiastical edict: the Church was the fulcrum around which everything turned, whether it be affairs of the spirit or of the state.
That was the reality, and there was no gainsaying the fact. The Church was all-powerful, with representatives, both overt and covert, in all strata of society and in every level of business and administration. Such was the power of Prelate Hykell and his bishops that opposition was a pathetic affair, restricted to mutterings in closed drawing rooms, and even those mutterings circumspect lest servants, or even members of one’s own family, related one’s apostasy to the authorities. Opponents, those citizens foolish enough to openly defy the Church, had been known to vanish in the night or succumb to mysterious accidents, always fatal.
A palisade of high railings surrounded the council buildings, within which was a cobbled courtyard. Unlike the other byways of the city, this area was kept free from ice by a team of workers whose job it was to pick the forming ice from the cobbles, leaving them pristine and dry for the tender feet of the Church officials. The ice-pickers stood about, leaning lazily upon their
tools, watching the citizens, come to petition Church Elders, with the superciliousness of the privileged workers they thought themselves to be.
Ehrin unfastened his skates, slung them over his shoulder and made his way across the dry, hard cobbles towards the imposing double doors, each the height of three men, fashioned from rare ironwood.
Before citizens reached the massive doors, however, it was necessary to pass down the approach avenue; at one time in the past, this would have been a journey to strike fear into the heart of even the most pious citizen. The avenue was flanked by great timber crosses, set out like so many letter Xs, the freezing frames upon which many a heretic had met their end. There had been no public execution for almost fifty years, but even so the time-worn freezing frames were a grim reminder of the power of the Church, a silent warning that the High Council would not balk at reinstating capital punishment if they deemed the circumstances warranted such measures.
Ehrin averted his gaze as he passed the multiple shadows of the frames, keeping his eyes on the cobbles but even so feeling the symbolic weight of the timber cruciforms on his conscience.
In the early days of his courtship with Sereth, he had been wary of stating his opposition to Church thinking and teaching. Sereth was, after all, the eldest daughter of Bishop Jaspariot, a doddering old fool put out to pasture as the chaplain of the city penitentiary, but dangerous nevertheless in that he had the ear of Prelate Hykell. Sereth was a believer, like the majority of Agstarnians—her credulity understandably reinforced by the views of her father. Despite their mutual attraction, each found the other’s views somewhat shocking, a novelty that had enhanced the frisson of amorous excitement in the initial stages of their courtship. Latterly, however, Ehrin had come to find his fiancée’s unquestioning parroting of Church dogma more than a little frustrating, while Sereth professed alarm at his heresy.
The fact was that he loved the fey, beautiful Sereth, and knew that in time she would come to view the universe as he did... though he would have to exercise caution in how he articulated his more radical theories.
Two uniformed Church guards stood beside the double doors, which were opened by a liveried flunky. Ehrin passed in to a vast entrance hall fitted in ostentatious luxury with great ironwood panels polished to a fiery lustre. His palms were sweating already—the council chambers were kept as hot as the foundry, only adding to his belief that the Church Elders were a clique of pampered sybarites.
At a reception desk he proffered his letter to a disdainful clerk, and was told to climb the stairs and take a seat outside chamber eleven.
He was kept waiting twenty minutes, uneasy beneath the imperious gaze of a scarlet-clad guard who stood to attention beside the council chamber’s entrance. He wondered if it were the heat that caused his flushes, or the thought of the imminent scrutiny of the Church Council. He entertained the ludicrous notion that word of his heterodoxy had found its way to the Elders, and that his summons here was not to ratify his tender but to pass sentence on his views.
Interrupting his thoughts, the door opened and a clerk stepped out and spoke his name. Ehrin stood and hurried after the clerk, moving from the gaze of the guard to the more imposing regard of the three Church Elders seated behind a solid ironwood desk, their grizzled heads silhouetted against the stained glass window set into the wall behind them.
The clerk indicated a low seat before the desk, and only as Ehrin sat down did he realise, with a jolt of shock, that the central figure of the trinity was none other than Prelate Hykell himself. He felt a rash of fresh sweat break out on the skin of his palms.
The Prelate was leafing through a sheaf of documents, fastidiously scrutinising certain passages and affecting disinterest in Ehrin.
The two bishops to either side of the Prelate gazed at Ehrin with all the interest of bookends.
All three wore the scarlet ceremonial robes of the High Elders, while the Prelate himself wore the chain of his office, bearing the heavy grey boss depicting a circle circumscribed by jagged teeth—the valley of Agstarn and the surrounding mountains. Behind them on the window, the boss was repeated, this time set upon a circle of blue—denoting the sea—on a field of grey, the outer universe.
Ehrin thought that the Church’s cosmology was even more ludicrous when stated symbolically like this, a view he had expressed to Sereth on more than one occasion, arousing her flustered ire.
A movement to his left made him aware of a fourth figure in the room, a man seated on a high-backed chair against the wall, garbed in scarlet robes. The fur of his face was grey, and balding in patches with great age, and the look in his iron-wood eyes was of unrelenting austerity. Ehrin returned his gaze to the stained glass window, uncomfortable.
Prelate Hykell looked up from his papers and stared at Ehrin. He was a middle-aged man, severely thin, his black fur greying only slightly. He had about him an air of dignity, of gravitas that, despite himself, Ehrin had to acknowledge.
He found himself wondering if this well-educated man really did believe that the city of Agstarn, and all around it, floated on a platform amid endless wastes of grey nothingness.
“Ehrin Telsa,” Hykell said. “It is gratifying at last to meet the man behind such a fine proposal. You are to be congratulated on such a thorough petition.”
Despite himself, Ehrin swallowed and nodded his gratitude.
“I am especially impressed by the comprehensive manner in which you have costed the mining project, and assessed the putative profits that might arise.”
Ehrin murmured something self-depreciatory, wishing that the Prelate would get the niceties out of the way so that he could hurry across town and inform Sereth of the good news.
“But tell me, Mr Telsa, aren’t the running costs of the flight a little on the conservative side?”
Ehrin smiled. “We would take only two dirigibles, and they would be piloted by myself and one of my employees. Our staff would be minimal; it is after all the surveyors and engineers who will be the important personnel on this expedition.”
For the next thirty minutes they traded talk of a technical nature, the Prelate betraying his ignorance with a series of questions that Ehrin answered with ease.
The catechism came to a close; the Prelate shuffled his papers, and Ehrin assumed that he was about to be dismissed. He was surprised by Hykell’s next question.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking if you share the philosophical views of your late father, Mr Telsa?”
Ehrin opened his mouth, at a loss, then gathered himself before the Council noticed his lapse. “Philosophical views? I was ten when my father died.”
“Quite,” Hykell said, “and a great tragedy and loss it was, too. However, your father was known for his headstrong opinions regarding matters of theosophy.”
Ehrin was quick with his reply, “That might have been, but if so he failed to debate them with me.”
“Debate,” Hykell said, “is not the only way to disseminate opinion. Children are susceptible to subtle influence. If he reared his children in a godless household, he would not necessarily need to preach anti-establishment views in order to inculcate his children in godless ways.”
The Prelate’s piercing grey eyes fixed Ehrin with something like accusation.
After a second, Ehrin composed his reply. “My mother was a pious and God-fearing citizen, your Excellency. The matter of rearing children was entrusted to her—my father was too busy expanding his business concerns, and undertaking expeditions for the Church, to give his time to my welfare.” Which was not quite the truth, but it would suffice for the probing Prelate.
Hykell inclined his head in feigned understanding. The bishop to his left, a wizened grey specimen with the mean face of a mountain ape, cleared his throat, and the Prelate gestured for him to have his say.
“If indeed your mother versed you in the ways of God and the Church, then it would appear that your belief has, let us say, lapsed somewhat of late.”
Ehrin felt three pairs of
eyes staring at him—four pairs, including those of the silent Elder in the corner—as the Elders awaited his response. He nodded and replied, “It would appear that you have access to my innermost thoughts,” and instantly regretted rising to their bait.
Hykell smiled. “We are not mind-readers, Mr Telsa. We need not resort to such magical methods when mere observation furnishes us with the facts. I refer, of course, to your absence from Church ceremonials—not merely weekly services, but monthly commemorations and thanksgivings.”
“Like my father,” Ehrin responded evenly, “I am a busy man. My work gives me little or no time to pursue outside interests. I put in a ten-day week at the foundry—”
“The pious,” Hykell said quickly, with what sounded like a stock response, “can find time to give thanks to the Lord and the Church which mediates between this realm and the next.”
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