by David Weber
“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.”
“He’s already made plans to quietly disappear for a few five-days,” Nahrmahn told her. “He’s spread the alert through your organization in Zion—and composed a message for you, as well, although obviously he expects it to take five-days to reach you. In the meantime, he’s been ‘called away on business,’ leaving that assistant of his, Myllyr, to mind the shop. It’s an innocuous enough excuse that he can always come back if there’s no sign that they suspect him. In the meantime, he’ll be safely out of the Inquisition’s reach.”
“That’s all well and good, Nahrmahn,” Sharleyan’s com voice said somberly. “And believe me, from a cold-blooded, strategic perspective, I’m deeply relieved to hear it. But completely aside from the damage their knowledge could do if the Inquisition gains it—and Merlin and Nynian are right; even if all they get is a better understanding of how Helm Cleaver’s organized, they’ll be far more dangerous—there’s what we know is happening to them right now.”
“I know,” Merlin acknowledged, his sapphire eyes dark, his mouth a hard line. “I’ve met both of them—I know them. If I could do anything to get either of them out of St. Thyrmyn’s, I damned well would, Sharley. But we can’t. The prison’s too close to those frigging power sources under the Temple for Nimue or me to stage a seijin jailbreak, and nothing else could possibly work. Helm Cleaver sure as hell can’t break them out!”
“That’s true.” Cayleb’s face was bleak, far older than his actual years. “But there are other forms of escape—like the one we’d’ve given Gwylym, if we’d only been able to figure out how.”
“I know what I’d like to do,” Nimue Chwaeriau said harshly. “You’re right, Merlin—we can’t rescue them. But if they’re so eager to call you and me demons, I say we visit a little demonic vengeance on them.”
“What do you mean?” Merlin asked, and the image Owl had projected into Mer
lin’s vision showed her teeth.
“I mean we strap a two-thousand-kilo smart bomb onto one of the recon skimmers and drop it right down St. Thyrmyn’s damned chimney!” she snarled. “We program it to use only optical guidance systems, so it’s completely passive, without a damned thing for any sensors in the Temple to see coming, and we blow the entire prison to hell! At the very least, we spare Zhorzhet and Marzho a horrible death—yes, and every other poor bastard in the place, too. But just as important, I think it’s time we gave these sick sons-of-bitches a little of Dialydd Mab’s medicine closer to home. Let Clyntahn and Rayno try to explain why their precious Inquisition’s just been hit by what has to be one of Langhorne’s own Rakurai right in the middle of Zion!”
Agreement rumbled over the com, but Merlin shook his head.
“That could be a good idea,” he said. “It could also be a very bad one, though. For instance, we couldn’t possibly do that with a black powder bomb, and anything more advanced than that might very well cross some parameter in a threat file somewhere. We don’t know whether or not there’s anything under the Temple that would be capable of recognizing high explosives residue when it sees it, and the prison’s so close anything like that would have to get a sniff of the dust. Even if that weren’t true, the law of unanticipated consquences worries me, because we don’t know how Clyntahn and Rayno would spin that kind of an explosion. I’m inclined to think you’re right, Nimue—a lot of people would think that it had to be a Rakurai strike, and that would almost have to be a good thing from our perspective. But there are other ways it could shake out. He might argue that it’s clear proof we really are demons, for instance, and the people who’re already inclined to believe him—and there are a hell of a lot of those people, even now—would probably accept that it was just that. Unless we’re prepared to hit other targets the same way—a lot of other targets—he’ll probably proclaim that we can’t because the ‘Archangels’ have intervened to stop us, and I don’t think we could do that without killing a hell of a lot of innocent people along the way. And from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, we couldn’t be positive, even with the heaviest bomb one of the skimmers could lift, that we’d kill Zhorzhet and Marzho.” His expression was unflinching. “Trust me, if I could be positive of that—positive we’d be sparing them the Question and the Punishment—I’d be a lot more inclined to say damn the consequences, and pull the trigger!”
“I think those are valid points.” Maikel Staynair’s voice was somber, heavy with grief. “And I think we should also bear in mind that whatever we do—or don’t do—hasty decisions may have serious implications for the future. Merlin’s right that the notion of unleashing ‘Rakurai’—especially in Zion—is something we should consider very carefully before we act. And before we do, we should be very clear on when and where any of those future strikes might be in order. Particularly since we can’t strike the Temple itself. As I understand it, that ‘armorplast’ covering it would stop almost any bomb we could throw at it?”
“That’s true,” Cayleb acknowledged heavily. “Mind you, I’m fully in favor of Nimue’s bomb if that’s the best possibility we can come up with, but you and Merlin are right. That sort of escalation could take us places we don’t want to go … and we can’t be positive it would save our people from the Question. I think we have to be careful our desperation to do something doesn’t lead us into doing exactly the wrong thing.”
Nimue looked rebellious, but she settled back in her chair in her Manchyr chamber without further argument.
For the moment, at least.
“The prison’s just over the line into Sondheimsborough from Templesborough, right on the edge of the safety zone you established, Merlin,” Nahrmahn said after a moment. “Could we get a SNARC remote into it safely?”
“I don’t want to actually see what they’re doing to them, Nahrmahn!” Aivah said harshly.
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” he said, and shook his head, his expression gentle. “To be honest, monitoring their questioning so we know what may have been gotten out of them would be of critical importance, but I wouldn’t expect anyone except Owl and me to actually view any of the take from the sensors. That wasn’t what I had in mind, though—not really.”
“Then what were you thinking about?” Merlin asked.
“I was thinking about the sabotage function.” Nahrmahn’s image frowned. “I remember something you said a long time ago, Merlin—something about the remotes’ incendiary capability and how it could have been used to eliminate … someone.”
The pause before the pronoun was barely noticeable, but Merlin understood it perfectly. And he also understood why, with Irys part of the conversation, the deceased Prince of Emerald didn’t want to explain that the candidate for assassination in question had been her father.
“I remember the conversation,” he said out loud. “You’re thinking about penetrating St. Thyrmyn’s, finding them, maneuvering a couple of the incendiaries into their ear canals, and setting them off.”
Aivah looked at him with a horrified expression, and he reached out and took her hand in his.
“It would be quick,” he told her quietly. “Very quick, especially compared to what they’re already facing. In fact, it would almost certainly be faster and less painful than Nimue’s bomb.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she nodded, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.
“Unfortunately, Commander Athrawes,” Owl’s avatar said, “I compute that the prison in question is too close to the Temple.”
“Why?” Cayleb asked. “We’ve sent remotes in closer than that before.”
“Yes, we have, your majesty,” the AI replied. “In all of those instances, however, the remote has been placed as a parasite on some individual or vehicle passing through the zone we wished to scan. It has been set for purely passive mode, and the telemetry channels have been deactivated until it leaves the dangerous proximity to the Temple once more.”
“I see where he’s going, Cayleb,” Merlin said. The emperor looked across the study at him, and he shrugged heavily. “Placing the remotes accurately enough to do the job would require two-way communication. We’d have to actually steer them into place, which would be a ticklish maneuver at the best of times, and we’d have to be able to see where they needed to go while we were doing it.” He shook his head. “Those remotes are pretty damned stealthy, but I’m afraid there’s no way we could guarantee a telemetry link that close to the Temple wouldn’t be detected.”
“Oh God,” Aivah whispered, and her pale face seemed to crumple, as if the dashing of Nahrmahn’s suggestion had destroyed her final hope.
Merlin released her hand, to put his arm about her and drew her head down against his chest. She pressed her cheek into his breastplate, and one hand stroked her hair gently. They sat that way for several seconds, and then that hand paused and Merlin’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Cayleb asked sharply. Merlin looked at him, and the emperor twitched his head impatiently. “I know that expression, Merlin—I’ve seen it often enough! So out with it.”
Aivah sat up, brushed the palm of one hand quickly across her wet face, and looked at him intently from eyes which held a fragile gleam of hope.
“Have you thought of something?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, “and even if I have, it’s not something we’ll be able to do instantly. But if it works,” in that moment, his smile was Dialydd Mab’s, “it should provide Clyntahn and Rayno with all the ‘demonic vengeance’ you could possibly hope for, Nimue.”
* * *
Zhorzhet Styvynsyn shivered uncontrollably and licked cracked and broken lips.
She sat once again in the horrible wooden chair, fastened in place, waiting for them to hurt her again, and felt the spirit—the faith—which had sustained her so far flickering, fading. Guttering towards extinction as it slipped from her desperate fingers.
So far, she’d told them nothing, and
she clung to that knowledge, to that fierce determination. But that determination was beginning to fail, to crumble under the unceasing assault—under the pain, the hopelessness, the degradation. The carefully metered beatings, the rapes.
Alahnah had died, screaming, under the Question in front of her, begging her to tell the interrogators anything she knew to stop them from hurting her. Zhorzhet had sobbed, twisting in the chair, fighting her bonds, blinded by tears, but somehow—somehow—she’d held her silence while she watched her friend die.
She’d screamed herself, often enough, over the endless, terrible hours since Alahnah’s death—begged them to stop hurting her when the red hot needles were used, when the fingernails and toenails were ripped away. But even as they made her beg, made her plead, she’d refused to speak the words that might actually have made them stop.
Yet she knew her defiance was nearing its end. Alahnah wasn’t the only innocent they’d Questioned in front of her, and agony wasn’t the only torture they’d used upon her. They’d left her in that accursed chair, keeping her awake endlessly, dousing her with buckets of icy water whenever she started to nod off—or touching her with a white-hot iron, just for a change. They’d taken turns hammering her with questions, again and again—leaning close, screaming in her face, threatening her … and then hurting her horribly to prove their threats were real. They’d held her head under water until she was two-thirds drowned, mocked and degraded her. She’d refused to eat, tried to starve herself to death, and they’d force-fed her, cramming the food down her throat through a tube. And always—always—they’d come back to the pain. The pain she’d discovered they could inflict forever, in so many different ways, without allowing her to escape into death.
And soon, all too soon, they’d return to do that again. They’d promised her, and they’d left the brazier and the irons glowing ready in it to remind her.
Please, God, she thought. Oh, please. Let me die. Let it end. I’ve fought—really I have—but I’m only mortal. I’m not an angel, not a seijin, I’m only me, and I can’t fight forever. I just … can’t. So please, please let me die.