At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  Tears trickled down her filthy, bruised face as she sat in the chair, staring at the irons, waiting, but there was no answer.

  * * *

  No one ever saw the small, carefully programmed autonomous remotes that crept in through St. Thyrmyn Prison’s barred windows, crawled quietly down its chimney flues, flowed under its doors. They were tiny, no bigger than the insects they were disguised to resemble, and they radiated no detectable emission signature. They only made their way to selected points, chosen from the most painstaking analysis of the prison’s layout Owl’s satellite imagery had allowed. And once they reached those points, they simply dissolved into inert, unremarkable dust and, in the process, released their cargoes.

  The nanites which rose from those disintegrated remotes were still smaller, microscopic, their programmed lifetimes measured in less than a single Safeholdian day before they, too, became no more than dust. Yet there were millions of them, and they drifted upwards, freed from confinement, spreading in every direction. It took hours—far more hours than any member of the inner circle could have wished, just as it had taken too many days simply to design and fabricate them in the first place—but they spread inexorably, sifting into every nook and cranny, until they’d infiltrated the entire volume of that brooding, dreadful prison, found every living thing within those walls of horror.

  And then they activated.

  * * *

  Zhorzhet’s eyes widened and she strained desperately, futilely, against her bonds as she heard Father Bahzwail’s terrifyingly familiar stride coming down the corridor towards the torture chamber once again. She heard herself whimpering, hated the weakness, knew that all too soon the whimpers would once again become raw-throated shrieks.

  The upper-priest appeared in the arched doorway, smiling at her, drawing the black gloves onto his hands.

  “Well, I see you’ve been expecting me,” he said chattily, crossing to stand beside the glowing irons. He stroked one insulating wooden handle, polished and smooth from years of use, with a slow, gloating fingertip, and his eyes were colder than a Zion winter. “Now, where did we stop last time, hmmm?” He drew an iron from the brazier, waving its glowing tip in a slow, thoughtful circle while he pursed contemplative lips. “Let me see, let me see.…”

  She moaned, but then the Schuelerite blinked. He lowered the iron and raised his other hand to his forehead, and he looked … puzzled somehow.

  Zhorzhet didn’t notice. Not at first. But then she felt something, even through her shivering terror. She didn’t know what it was, but she’d never felt anything like it. It didn’t hurt—not really, and certainly not compared to the terrible, terrible things that happened in this dreadful chamber. But it felt so … strange. And then a gentle lassitude flowed into her—shockingly soothing after so much pain, so much terror. A soft, gray veil seemed to slip between her and the anguish throbbing through her body, and she gasped in unspeakable gratitude as she allowed herself to relax into its comfort. She had no idea what it was, how long it would last, but she knew it was the finger of God Himself. That He’d reached into her horrible, endless nightmare, to give her at least this brief moment of surcease. Her scabbed lips moved in a silent prayer of thanks and her head began to spin. No, it wasn’t her head. The entire torture chamber—the whole world—was spinning around her, and she was spiraling down, down, down, as if the sleep she’d been denied so long was creeping up upon her at last. As if.…

  * * *

  “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 s
mile. “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.”

  “Thank you,” Ahlverez murmured once more and led Lattymyr up the steep flight of stairs to the church’s backdoor while Brother Mahrtyn climbed back up to the high driver’s perch and drove the carriage back out of the courtyard.

  This really could be an incredibly stupid idea, the general told himself as he opened the ancient wooden door at the head of the stairs. Even assuming the son-of-a-bitch has something worth listening to, the mere fact that you’re meeting him could be enough to get both of you handed over to the Inquisition.

  Yes, it could. And he’d never have accepted the … invitation if it hadn’t been hand-delivered by Brother Mahrtyn. And, he admitted bleakly, if he hadn’t had so much personal experience with arrogant, incompetent superiors who completely ignored their subordinates’ advice—and reality. That had forced him to reconsider certain previously held views, and events since the Army of Shiloh’s destruction had lent their own weight to his decision to come.

  But it was still hard—harder than he’d expected, really.

  He stepped through the door into the smell of incense, candle wax, printer’s ink, leather bindings, and dust that seemed a part of every truly old church he’d ever visited. Saint Nezbyt’s was older than many, and saw less use than most, though its parish had once been a bustling, thriving one, if never precisely wealthy. Located in the harbor district near the docks, that parish had lost members gradually for several decades as workers’ homes were slowly but steadily displaced by commercial and Navy warehouses. Then the shipyards’ tremendous expansion to meet the needs of the Jihad had accelerated that displacement enormously. In fact, Archbishop Trumahn and Bishop Executor Wylsynn had seriously contemplated closing Saint Nezbyt’s entirely. In the end, they’d decided not to. Probably because Mother Church always hated closing churches—and, the more cynical might have added, depriving parish priests of their rectories—but also because Bishop Staiphan Maik and his staff had needed office space in his capacity as the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s intendant.

  None of that staff was present at this late an hour on a Wednesday, however. The nave and sanctuary were deserted, lit only by the gleam of presence lamps around the main and side altars, as Rainos and Lattymyr skirted the organ and the choir loft. A crack of light showed under the closed door to the side chapel dedicated to the Archangel Langhorne, and Rainos rapped lightly on the varnished wood.

  “Enter,” a voice responded, and Rainos’ eyebrows rose in surprise as he recognized it. Despite the avenue by which the invitation had reached him, he hadn’t really expected Maik to be personally present. Most churchmen would have avoided something like this like the plague, and the potential consequences for a bishop in Maik’s position if things went badly didn’t bear thinking upon.

  The general opened the door and stepped through it into the lamp-lit chapel, Lattymyr at his heels. The aide closed the door behind them, and Ahlverez looked at the man who’d invited him here.

  “My Lord,” he said rather coldly.

  “Sir Rainos,” the other man said. “Thank you for coming. I know it couldn’t have been an easy decision … for several reasons,” the Earl of Thirsk added.

  “I suppose that’s one way to put it.” Ahlverez twitched a brief smile, then bent to kiss the Staiphan Maik’s ring. “My Lord,” he said again, in warmer tones.

  “I, too, thank you for coming, my son,” Maik told him as he straightened. The silver-haired bishop’s brown eyes were very steady. “As Lywys, I know it must have been a difficult decision. Unfortunately,” it was his turn to smile, and the expression was sad, “many people face difficult decisions at the moment.”

  “Yes, they do, My Lord,” Ahlverez acknowledged, then looked back at the Thirsk and raised both eyebrows in silent question.

  * * *

  Lywys Gardynyr watched those eyebrows rise and murmured a mental prayer. There were more ways this meeting could go disastrously wrong than he could possibly have counted, and he was frankly amazed Ahlverez was here at all, given the bitter hatred between the Ahlverez family and himself. Maik had been openly dubious when Thirsk broached the possibility of the meeting, and the earl hadn’t blamed him a bit. But he trusted Shulmyn Rahdgyrz’ judgment as much as that of any man in the world, and Rahdgyrz had been Sir Rainos Ahlverez’ quartermaster during the disastrous Shiloh campaign. His reaction when Thirsk cautiously sounded him out about Ahlverez had been … enlightening.

  And, it would appear, judging by the fact that he’s actually here, that Shulmyn had a point, the earl thought now. Of course, I suppose it’s always possible he only wants to hear what I have to say in hopes I’ll come up with something so incriminating he can hand me straight over to the Inquisition.

  Given what he had in mind, the possibility certainly existed. Thirsk opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Bishop Staiphan raised his hand, his ruby ring glowing in the lamplight.

  “Excuse me, Lywys,” he said, “but as the host of this little meeting—or, at least, as the bishop providing a site for it—I think explanations to the General should come from me, first.”

  Thirsk hesitated for a moment, then inclined his head.

  “Of course, My Lord,” he murmured, and Rainos turned back to the prelate.

  “The idea for this meeting was Lywys’, Sir Rainos,” he said. “Initially, he was hesitant to mention it to me, for reasons which are probably fairly evident. But he suspected he might need a suitable … intermediary to convince you to accept his invitation. And then, too, of course, it probably wouldn’t have been very healthy for either of you if he or a member of his staff had contacted you. Especially after Mother Church’s reaction to the suggestion that Admiral Rohsail’s prisoners not be delivered to the Punishment.” The bishop smiled fleetingly. “I realize the suggestion—which I also supported, as it happens—came from neither of you. I’m afraid certain … senior churchmen don’t truly believe that, however.”

  He paused, head tilted, and Ahlverez nodded his understanding.

  “I’m also aware of the long-standing … animosity between your family and him,” Maik continued levelly. “I know the reasons for it,
and I’ve had to deal with its consequences virtually every minute of every day since I was assigned to Gorath by Archbishop Wyllym.” His eyes hardened. “I can tell you of my own certain knowledge that Lywys Gardynyr has never once, in all the time I’ve known him, made a decision out of personal pettiness or done a single inch less than his duty required of him. I know Duke Malikai was your cousin and the husband of Duke Thorast’s sister. But I am as certain as I am of God’s love that what happened off Armageddon Reef was not Lywys’ fault. That he did all he could do to prevent it. And I strongly suspect, Sir Rainos, that you know the same thing, whatever Duke Thorast is willing to admit.”

  He paused again, waiting, and silence stretched out. Ahlverez’ face was hard, his eyes dark. But then, finally, his shoulders settled ever so slightly and he seemed to sigh.

  “I don’t know that, My Lord,” he said. “I have, however, been forced to come to believe it.” He smiled bleakly. “It’s not a subject I’m prepared to discuss over the family dinner table, you understand. But—” he looked squarely at Thirsk “—Faidel was always a stubborn man. And a proud one. He wasn’t the type to allow anyone else to shoulder his responsibilities … or to rely on a subordinate whose authority might seem to challenge his own. Or, for that matter, to defer to a subordinate whose knowledge might underscore his lack of knowledge. It’s not easy for me to say that, but I’ve had some experience standing in your shoes, My Lord. So, yes, I can believe you did your utmost to prevent what happened … and were ignored.”

  “Sir Rainos,” Thirsk said frankly, “I think I know how difficult it must have been for you to come to that conclusion. And to be fair to your cousin, while I think what you’ve just said about him was accurate, it’s also true that I had no more idea of what the Charisians—” he watched Ahlverez’ eyes very carefully as he deliberately avoided calling them heretics “—were about to do to us at Armageddon Reef than he did. No one outside Charis had any clue about the galleons, the new artillery, the new tactics—any of it. Even if Duke Malikai had actively solicited my advice and taken every word of it to heart, Cayleb Ahrmahk still would have devastated our fleet.” He shook his head. “He went right ahead and completely destroyed the portion of it under my direct command in Crag Reach, after all. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that simply because you feel you can’t blame me for everything that happened, it would be the height of unfairness to blame your cousin for everything, either. I’ve done that, in the privacy of my own thoughts,” he admitted. “More than once. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I felt that way at least partly to excuse my own failure, when it was my turn at Crag Reach. After all, if it was all because he hadn’t listened to me, then none of it was my fault. But the truth is that however many mistakes he made, however stubborn he might have been, in the end we were simply beaten by a foe who was too powerful—and too unexpected—for it to have ended any other way, no matter what we did.”