by David Weber
Rayno could understand his need to do something to stop the heretics, yet their own agents inquisitor’s reports clearly indicated that the Inquisitor General’s repressiveness actually fueled Reformist fervor. Even some of those with no desire at all to become part of a heretical, schismatic church had begun to question whether God could truly approve of the Inquisition’s ferocity. There was a reason people even here, in Zion, whispered prayers every night that the Inquisition would at least … moderate its severity.
Yet Clyntahn refused—more adamantly than ever, in fact—to admit that too much severity was actually as bad—or worse—than too little firmness.
It was fear, Rayno thought. Clyntahn would never admit it—not in a thousand years—but that was the reason he refused to relent. The worm of fear ate its poisonous way deeper into the Grand Inquisitor’s heart with every passing day, and his response was to lash out at those whose weakness—whose failures—fed his fear and made it strong. It was a worm Wyllym Rayno was coming to know only too well, one he’d found hidden in his own heart.Yet there was a difference between his fear and Clyntahn’s. Rayno liked it no more than the next man, yet at least he was willing to acknowledge it was fear he felt. Clyntahn wasn’t, and he was building a bubble about himself—a bubble in which it was still permissible to discuss how the Inquisition might respond most effectively to its enemies, or even ways in which specific reverses might be addressed, but no underling dared to suggest Mother Church’s triumph over each and every one of those enemies might conceivably be anything but inevitable.
Whether the Grand Inquisitor would allow even Duchairn or Maigwair to discuss the military situation with anything like frankness at this point was an open question in Rayno’s mind. What wasn’t a question was that even if he would for the present, the time was coming when he no longer would, and what happened then?
We need a miracle, God, he thought, still gazing at the Inquisitor General’s approaching schooner, remembering the celebrants’ reverent, rumbling liturgical responses in the mass he’d celebrated. Treasuring the chanted scripture and the soaring harmonies of the hymns. On a day like this, a Wednesday when he was freshly come from God’s own Presence, when God’s Day loomed so close upon the calendar, he could truly believe miracles were possible. You’ve given enough of them to the heretics. Now we need You to give one to us. Something to show we truly are Your champions, that You haven’t deserted us. That—
He stiffened in shock, his eyes flaring wide, as the schooner disintegrated into a boil of fire and smoke that filled his field of view. He actually saw two of the men on deck, both Schuelerite under-priests, simply disappear as the blast of fury snatched them into its maw and devoured them.
He leapt back from the spyglass and the ball of flame was suddenly tiny with distance, but that distance did nothing to dispel his horror as he watched broken debris—debris he knew included the shredded flesh of the priests he’d seen vanish into that searing wall of flame—arc upwards in dreadful silence while the bells sang sweetly, sweetly behind him.
Just over nine seconds later, the explosion’s rumbling thunder rolled over that golden song like Shan-wei’s own curse.
* * *
Zhozuah Murphai watched the same column of fiery, spray-shot smoke. His waterfront-level vantage point was rather different from Archbishop Wyllym’s … and so was his reaction. The brisk wind began to twist the column into a shredding spiral, bending it so that it loomed towards Zion, standing up from the surface of Lake Pei in a sign visible to every citizen of the city, and satisfaction blazed within him like the heart of a star.
Ahrloh Mahkbyth had been bitterly disappointed when he learned Helm Cleaver wouldn’t be able to reach Wylbyr Edwyrds upon his arrival after all. Security was simply too tight for his people to penetrate—no doubt because of the record of successes the Fist of God and Dialydd Mab had already run up. Mahkbyth’s people might have been able to get to Edwyrds before he left Zion, but the odds were overwhelmingly against it. So Murphai had volunteered to see to that part of the mission. After all, a PICA, had no need to breathe. Given that, it had made far more sense for Murphai to attach the charge—an Owl-provided charge of explosives not even Sahndrah Lywys would be able to duplicate for decades—to the keel of Edwyrds’ schooner while it waited for Edwyrds’ canal boat at Brouhkamp, the capital of the Episcopate of Schueler on the far side of Lake Pei. He’d rather enjoyed the irony of planting the charge in the episcopate named for the Inquisition’s patron “archangel.”
He’d trudged across the bottom of Brouhkamp’s harbor to see to that minor detail two days earlier. The truth was that he could easily have delegated that task to one of Owl’s remotes if he’d so desired. But he’d witnessed entirely too much of Edwyrds’ bloody handiwork over the last two years to let anyone else plant that particular charge.
This afternoon, however, he was a mere spectator. He’d been sure to pick a good vantage point, well clear of the Temple but with an excellent view of the waterfront, while the other teams worked their ways into position. Nahrmahn and Owl had watched over them through the SNARCs, waiting until everyone was in place, and only then triggered the explosion through a SNARC relay.
In many ways, Murphai wished Mahkbyth could have been with him to share the moment. A man couldn’t have everything, though, and if Mahkbyth had been unhappy to lose that particular kill, the modifications he’d suggested to Murphai’s original plan more than compensated.
Besides, the ex-Guardsman wasn’t the spectator type. He was the sort of man who preferred to be more … hands-on.
Especially for some things.
* * *
Bishop Zakryah Ohygyns had just kissed his wife, hugged his children, collected his personal Guardsmen, and started back down his front walk to return to his office when he heard the explosion. Of course, he didn’t know it was an explosion; he simply knew it wasn’t a sound he should be hearing in Zion on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
He also knew how bitterly his wife resented the hours he worked. In her opinion, a bishop of Mother Church ought to be able to spend at least an occasional Wednesday with his family. But, no! Not her husband! He had to race home from mass, bolt down Wednesday dinner, and then turn around and head straight back to the office. She would never dream of complaining, especially in the middle of a jihad. But this Jihad had been going on for years now. It was long past time the Inquisitor General found someone else to carry some of Ohygyns’ load, at least on Wednesdays, and the fact that she would never complain about it in so many words—and certainly never to anyone else—didn’t keep her from making her feelings abundantly clear to him. Nor did it keep him from feeling guilty. Yet there was nothing he could do about it until the Jihad was won.
Maybe then I can convince Archbishop Wyllym I’ve earned a vacation, he thought, stopping on the sidewalk, one foot on the carriage’s running board as he craned his neck, trying to decide where that thunder had come from on such a cloudless day. The six men of his protective detail stopped with him, as puzzled as he was, and the driver on the coach’s high seat half stood, as if he thought he could actually see its source from his higher vantage point.
Maybe we could take the kids to visit her brother in Malantor, his thought ran on even as he tried to determine what he’d heard. God knows the beaches are nicer—and a lot warmer—in Tahlryn Bay than they are on Lake Pei or Temple Bay! And it’s been years since we had a real family vacation. Besides, she has a point. The Writ itself says a man’s duty to his family comes—
“For our sisters!” a voice said.
Ohygyns was still turning towards it when the trio of Composition D-charged hand grenades, with Delthak Works proof marks, exploded. There were two survivors from the men clustered around the carriage.
Zakryah Ohygyns was not among them.
* * *
Father Mairydyth Tymyns looked up from his copy of the current Decrees of Schueler with a muttered oath. It was Wednesday, for Schueler’s sake! Surely on this day,
of all days, a priest could spend a little time re-dedicating himself to his holy purpose without being disturbed?
“What’s all that racket, Zherohm?” he demanded irritably.
There was no answer, and he swore again as he laid the Decrees aside and pushed up out of his chair. It sounded like Zherohm Slokym had just dropped something in the vestibule, but that wasn’t like him. The grizzled, thick-shouldered monk had been with Tymyns for years now, and for all his muscular bulk, he was as sure-handed as he was reliable. He was also just as passionate as Tymyns himself about ferreting out heretics. They suited one another, and the monk served as Tymyns’ combination personal bodyguard and batman/valet, as well as the senior member of his detail in the field.
“Zherohm!” he said in a louder voice, then cocked his head as what sounded for all the world like a peal of thunder rattled the windows of the modest house the Order had assigned to him.
Now what? he wondered exasperatedly. It can’t be thunder—not on a day like this! But in that case—
CRAAACK!
His library door’s latch splintered under the straight, savage kick of a heavy boot. The door flew wide, slamming explosively back against the wall, and Zherohm Slokym hurtled in through the opening. But he hadn’t arrived in response to Tymyns’ summons. And he wasn’t going to be explaining anything, either—not with his throat slashed from ear to ear. He hit the floor with a dull, meaty thud, and blood spread in a thick, hot pool across the carpet.
Tymyns was still staring at the body, smelling the strong, coppery stench of blood and stunned into utter immobility, when more solid, muscular men charged into the room in Slokym’s wake and strong, angry hands seized him.
There were four of them, he realized. All of them were masked, and they wore aprons—the heavy, full-length aprons butchers wore. They ought to have looked ridiculous, a corner of his mind thought, but they didn’t. Not with the bright spatters those aprons had already intercepted when Slokym’s severed carotid sprayed blood.
Of course, that same corner thought. They wanted to keep Zherohm’s blood off their clothes. They’ll just take off the aprons and leave them behind when they blend into the crowds and simply walk away from—
His shock-numbed thought processes stuttered back into life as he realized what else those men had come to do, and he opened his mouth to cry out as two of the intruders wrenched his arms agonizingly behind him as expertly as any agent inquisitor. He writhed frantically, fighting to pull away, but a third man twisted his fingers in his hair, yanked his head back, and crammed a thick wad of cloth into his mouth.
The Schuelerite’s desperate, belated shout for help was muffled, smothered into inaudibility, and his eyes went huge with terror as the fourth man—the one with the bloody dagger in his hand—reached inside the bib of his apron and removed an envelope. He dropped it on Slokym’s body, and then that featureless, masked face turned towards Tymyns.
“We have a message for you from our sisters, Father,” Ahrloh Mahkbyth said coldly, and Tymyns gurgled frantically, bulging eyes pleading for the mercy he’d never shown another, as his head was wrenched even farther back, arching his throat for the knife.
* * *
“Of course it wasn’t the ‘Fist of God’!” Zhaspahr Clyntahn snapped, glaring around the council chamber. “How in Shan-wei’s name could it have been? That schooner belonged to the Inquisition! Its crew consisted entirely of agents inquisitor and Schuelerite lay brothers, all sworn to the Order, and Bishop Wylbyr’s personal guards went over it inch-by-inch before they ever allowed him to board!” The Grand Inquisitor’s jowls were dark, his eyes fiery. “Are you suggesting that somehow a pack of murderous fanatics got a bomb big enough to do that much damage past its entire crew and all of that security?!”
Rhobair Duchairn and Allayn Maigwair were careful not to look at one another. Zahmsyn Trynair, fortunately for him, was out of Zion on diplomatic business, although he’d undoubtedly have been sitting in his corner emulating a mouse if he hadn’t been.
“I’m telling you, this is just the lying bastards taking credit for something they had nothing to do with!”
Clyntahn slammed back in his chair, staring at them, and the crackling silence stretched out as his furious scowl dared them to disagree with him.
“I understand what you’re saying about the security around the Inquisitor General,” Maigwair said at last, his tone that of a man picking his words with extraordinary care. “And I’ll readily admit that I don’t see any way assassins could’ve gotten through it, either. But they obviously got to at least half a dozen other servants of the Inquisition right here in Zion, and something happened to Bishop Wylbyr, Zhaspahr. His boat blew up in plain sight of anyone on the waterfront, and the fact that he was returning to Zion was pretty widely known. Not only that, his escort was waiting down at the docks.” The captain general shook his head. “We can’t pretend he wasn’t aboard when the damned thing went up! And that means we need some sort of statement, some sort of explanation for how that could’ve happened if it wasn’t the ‘Fist of God.’”
“It was obviously an accident,” Clyntahn snapped, leaning forward again to slap one meaty palm on the conference table for emphasis. “For that matter, we don’t know for certain it was even the ‘Fist of God’—” the three words came out like a curse “—that murdered Ohygyns and the others!”
Maigwair couldn’t keep his eyes from rolling, and Clyntahn’s lips tightened.
“All right,” he grated. “I’ll grant you that that almost had to be the frigging terrorists. But it’s only a fluke those murders came so close to the explosion! I’ll admit it’s one hell of a coincidence—and the timing sucks—but that’s all it can be, damn it! They’re trying to make something that was pure serendipity look like it was all part of a single, coordinated operation because that will make them look so much more dangerous than they really are. But it couldn’t have been! They’re trying to take advantage of a completely separate accident!”
“An accident?” Maigwair repeated, and Clyntahn slapped the tabletop again, harder.
“Yes, damn it—an accident! The Inquisitor General’s guard detail had its own weapons along, which means they were carrying ammunition. Besides, the boat itself had cannon! There had to be powder and shot in its magazine for those, didn’t there? Obviously a spark must have set it off somehow!”
Maigwair’s jaw tightened, and Duchairn clamped his own teeth together, remembering another explosion, at a place called Sarkhan, which Clyntahn—and Wylbyr Edwyrds, for that matter—had flatly denied could have been a “coincidence.” And there’d been one hell of a lot more gunpowder aboard that canal barge to explain the accident, too. The “cannon” aboard Edwyrds’ pint-sized schooner had consisted of a total of six wolves: half-pound swivel guns, purely antipersonnel weapons that were effectively outsized smoothbore muskets. He had no idea how much powder it would have had in its magazine—he was pretty sure Maigwair did, which probably explained the incredulity the captain general couldn’t keep out of his eyes—but it certainly hadn’t been enough to produce that explosion. Divers had already confirmed that the schooner’s wreckage was spread over two hundred yards of lake bottom, and its midsection had simply disintegrated. The shattered bow and stern lay almost forty yards apart at the heart of the debris field, totally severed from one another. No powder supply for half a dozen wolves was going to accomplish that.
“I suspect quite a few people will find a spontaneous magazine explosion less believable than a successful assasination,” Maigwair said after a moment with what Duchairn privately thought was foolhardy courage. Clyntahn’s lips drew back, but the captain general continued before he could speak. “I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened that way, Zhaspahr. I’m just saying that even if it’s precisely what did happen, some people will find it difficult to accept.”
“And your point is?” Clyntahn demanded harshly.
“My point is that those who find it difficult to accept may be
gin to wonder if we’re not trying to sell them a falsified cover story because we’re afraid to admit what really happened.” Maigwair met the Grand Inquisitor’s glare steadily. “I’m not saying that’s what it is, Zhaspahr; I’m saying that’s what the more … fainthearted may think it is.”
“The Inquisition knows how to deal with ‘faintheartedness’!”
“I don’t doubt it, but dealing with it after the fact doesn’t strike me as the best approach, especially if we can be more … proactive. I’m only suggesting that there was already a great deal of concern in the city, especially after the news of Rhaigair Bay. And word of the other murderers has already spread all across Zion. Even if the terrorists hadn’t said a word, anyone who puts the explosion together with the obvious—and simultaneous—assassinations is going to leap to the conclusion that they were coordinated, part of the same terrorist attack. It’s only human nature to think that way unless it can be proven differently, Zhaspahr! My question is whether or not we want to give the appearance that we’re trying to deny something they’ll be naturally inclined to believe has to be the truth. Half of Zion was down on the lakefront, enjoying the first sunny Wednesday in over a month. They saw the explosion, and if anyone here in the city decides Mother Church is lying to them about something they saw with their own eyes, it could undermine the credibility of anything we tell them from here out. Especially if the heretics give them a different story, the way the terrorists are doing right this minute.”