David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I’m not talking about the vicarate.” There was something smug-and ugly-about the Grand Inquisitor’s assurance, Duchairn thought, but then Clyntahn continued. “I’m worried about people outside the vicarate. I’m worried about all the bastards in Siddarmark and Silkiah who’re going their merry way violating the embargo every day. I’m worried about the upsurge in ‘Reformist’ propaganda that’s turning up in Siddarmark… and other realms, according to my inquisitors. Places like Dohlar and Desnair, for example-even the Temple Lands! And I’m worried about people who are going to lose heart because Mother Church seems unwilling to reach out her hand and smite the ungodly.”

“We’ve been trying to smite the ungodly,” Duchairn pointed out, trying to disguise the sinking sensation he felt. “The problem is that it hasn’t been working out very well despite our best efforts.”

“The problem,” Clyntahn said, his tone and expression both unyielding, “is that we haven’t reached out to the ungodly we can reach. The ungodly right here on the mainland.”

“Like who, Zhaspahr?” Trynair asked.

“Like Stohnar and his bastard friends, for one,” Clyntahn shot back. His lips twisted, but then he made them untwist with a visible act of will. “But that’s all right, I understand why we can’t touch them right now. The three of you have made that abundantly clear. I won’t pretend it doesn’t piss me off, and I won’t pretend I don’t think it’s ultimately a mistake. But I’m willing to concede the point-for now, at least-where Siddarmark and Silkiah are concerned.”

Duchairn’s heart plunged as he realized where Clyntahn was headed. He couldn’t even pretend it was a surprise, despite the sickness in his belly.

“I’m talking about those prisoners Thirsk took last year,” Clyntahn went on flatly. “The ones he’s somehow persistently managed not to hand over to the Inquisition or send to the Temple. They’re heretics, Zahmsyn. They’re rebels against God Himself, taken in the act of rebellion! My God, man-how much more evidence do you need? If Mother Church can’t act against them, then who can she act against? Do you think there aren’t thousands- millions- of people who aren’t asking themselves that very question right this moment?”

“I understand what you’re talking about, Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said cautiously, “but Thirsk and Bishop Staiphan have a point, as well. If we deliver men who surrender to us to the Inquisition to suffer the Question and the Punishment of Schueler as they ought, then what happens to our men who try to surrender to them?”

“Mother Church and the Inquisition cannot allow themselves to be swayed from their clear duty by such concerns,” Clyntahn said in that same flat, unyielding tone. “Should the heretics choose to mistreat our warriors, to abuse the true sons of God who fall into their power, then that blood will be on their hands, not ours. We can only do what The Book of Schueler and all the rest of the Writ call upon us to do and trust in God and the Archangels. No one ever told us that doing God’s will would be easy, but that makes it no less our duty and responsibility to do it. In fact, we ought-”

He stopped, clapping his mouth shut, and Duchairn felt the despair of defeat. Maigwair wasn’t going to support him, despite what he’d just said. Not when a part of him agreed with Clyntahn to begin with, and especially not when the Grand Inquisitor had just made his fury over what had happened in the Markovian Sea so abundantly clear. And Trynair wasn’t going to argue with Clyntahn, either. Partly because he, too, agreed with the inquisitor, but even more because of what Clyntahn had just stopped short of saying.

He’s offering a quid pro quo where Siddarmark and Silkiah are concerned, Duchairn thought bitterly. He’s not putting it into so many words, but Zahmsyn understands him just fine, anyway. And without at least one of them to back me, I can’t argue with him either. If I try, I’ll lose, and all I’ll accomplish will be to burn one more bridge with him.

It was true, every word of it, and the Treasurer knew it, just as he knew the demand for the Charisian prisoners to be shipped to Zion would be sent out that very afternoon. But somehow knowing he couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d tried didn’t make him feel one bit less guilty and dirty for not trying after all.

“May I ask how the meeting went, Your Grace?” Wyllym Rayno, Archbishop of Chiang-wu, inquired a bit cautiously.

He was almost certainly the only person in Zion who would have dared to ask that question at all, given the rumors circulating through the Temple about Greyghor Searose’s written report. He was also, however, the adjutant of the Order of Schueler, which made him the Grand Inquisitor’s second-in-command in both the order and the Office of Inquisition. The two of them had worked closely together for almost two decades, and if there’d been one person in the world whom Clyntahn had truly been prepared to trust, that person would have been Rayno.

“Actually,” Clyntahn said with a smile which would have astonished any of his fellows among the Group of Four, given the tone of the meeting which had just ended, “it went well, Wyllym. Quite well.”

“We’ll be able to move against the heretic prisoners in Gorath, then, Your Grace?” Rayno’s tone brightened, and Clyntahn nodded.

“Yes,” he replied, then grimaced. “I had to go ahead and more or less promise-again-to keep our hands off Siddarmark and Silkiah.” He shrugged. “We knew going in that that was going to happen. Of course, my esteemed colleagues don’t have to know everything we’re up to, now do they?”

“No, Your Grace,” Rayno murmured.

He wondered how many of the rest of the Group of Four realized the extent to which Clyntahn used his well-earned reputation for bullheaded refusal to compromise and fiery temper to manipulate them. It had taken even Rayno years to discover that at least half that reputation was a weapon the Grand Inquisitor had crafted deliberately, with careful forethought. Its true effectiveness depended on the reality of the fury hiding so close beneath its wielder’s surface, of course, but on his bare-knuckled climb to the Grand Inquisitorship, Zhaspahr Clyntahn had discovered that while intolerance and ambition might make him hated, it was his passionate temper which made him feared. He’d learned to use that temper, not simply to be used by it, to batter opponents into submission, and the technique had served him well. It was a brute force approach, but it was also only one of the many weapons in his arsenal, as one unfortunate victim after another had discovered.

“What can you tell me about this new weapon Searose is blathering about?” Clyntahn asked with one of the abrupt changes of subject for which he was famous.

“Our agents in Charis continue to… fare poorly.” Rayno didn’t like admitting that, yet there was no use pretending otherwise. “Wave Thunder’s organization obviously has Shan-wei’s own luck, but I’m afraid there’s no point pretending he isn’t extremely competent, Your Grace, as well. Every effort to build an actual network, even among the Loyalists in Old Charis, has failed.”

“That wasn’t the question I asked,” Clyntahn pointed out.

“I realize that, Your Grace,” Rayno responded calmly. “It was more in the nature of a prefatory remark.”

Clyntahn’s lips twitched on the brink of a smile. He was well aware of the extent to which Rayno “managed” him, and he was perfectly content to go right on being managed… within limits, and as long as Rayno produced results.

“What I was going to say,” the archbishop continued, “is that our original hypothesis appears to be correct. According to one of the very few agents we have in place, the Charisians are casting what amounts to hollow round shot and filling the cavities with gunpowder. What he hasn’t been able to confirm is how they’re getting them to explode, although he’s offered a couple of theories which sound to my admittedly untrained ear as if they make sense.”