.XXI.
Royal Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande
“It’s my fault. It’s all my damned fault,” Koryn Gahrvai grated. “I knew something was wrong—I knew it—and I still—”
“No, it isn’t your fault,” his father said flatly. Earl Anvil Rock’s eyes were dark, his face haggard, as he looked at his son, but there was no doubt in his voice. “We took every precaution we could think of, short of actually clearing the square, and Irys and Phylyp were right. This wedding was a crucial component of our transition into the Empire. If we’d let it appear we were that frightened of how our own people would react to it, it would’ve been disastrous.”
“And this wasn’t?” The black stitches closing the long, deep gash in Gahrvai’s right cheek stood out plainly in the lamplight, and he carried his left arm in a sling. “Langhorne, Father! We’ve got over two hundred dead—and twice that many injured—in addition to Hektor and Irys!”
“I know. I know!” Anvil Rock’s expression was bitter. “But we never thought they’d be so stupid! Even the damned ‘Rakurai’ should’ve known better than to attack Irys.…”
His father was right, Gahrvai knew, not that it made him feel one bit better. It had been an act of madness to attack Irys directly, especially on this of all days. Whatever the Temple’s supporters might think, the fury it must generate among those who loved her and her brother would be incalculable. They’d known that and expected the Rakurai to be smart enough to realize the same thing. And so even though they’d conscientiously tried to include such threats in their calculations, they’d never really believed it would happen.
They’d been wrong.
It wasn’t like the mammoth explosions with which the “Rakurai” had first announced their existence. He supposed they should all be grateful for that much, although it was hard to be grateful for anything at the moment. They had no witnesses—no surviving witnesses—who’d seen exactly what had happened, but evidence suggested it had been the work of a lone fanatic. How he’d gotten his explosives into position remained a mystery, but at least they knew where he’d been: somewhere in the first few rows of the space which had been roped off for those who required assistance to get about or were unable to stand for lengthy periods.
People grown frail with age, no longer able to care for themselves properly, he thought bitterly. People—young or old—with spine fever, who’d had limbs amputated or permanently crippled by accident or disease. People who’d already suffered more than enough without Sir Koryn Gahrvai allowing someone to end their lives in one moment of transcendent horror.
The semi-circle of carnage around the assassin’s location had been incredible. Bodies had been ripped apart, as if by a charge of canister or grapeshot, and that was precisely what had happened. Whoever the murderous bastard had been, he’d clearly known what he was doing and he’d managed, somehow, to get the equivalent of one of the Charisians’ “sweepers” past all of Gahrvai’s precautions and watchers. The explosion had sent scores—probably hundreds—of old-fashioned half-inch musket balls scything outward in a fan directed at the wedding procession.
Sixty-two of the known dead had been Gahrvai’s soldiers and Guardsmen. Their bodies had absorbed much of the blast and fury, but over a hundred of the civilians gathered outside the Cathedral had either been killed outright by the explosion or trampled to death in the panic which followed.
“Whoever planned this knew exactly what he was doing,” Anvil Rock said after a long, brooding moment. “He got his frigging bomb into exactly the right position and detonated it at exactly the right moment.”
“Why not on the way in?” Gahrvai asked. His father looked at him, and he shrugged. “It probably doesn’t matter, but why did he wait? As you say, he obviously knew what he was doing, so why wait? Every minute he sat there was a minute one of my men—or even I, God help us—might’ve spotted him, realized something was out of true. So why not kill them as soon as possible rather than risk the delay?”
“I don’t know. How should any of us know what was going through his head?” Anvil Rock stumped to the window and looked out at the thousands of votive candles burning all across the enormous square in the windless night. “Maybe he was waiting until they were married so he’d be able to claim Irys was a Charisian. Maybe that was part of his ‘message.’ Or maybe he wasn’t in position yet when they walked into the Cathedral.”
“He was,” Gahrvai said flatly. His father turned his head, arching one eyebrow at him, and he grimaced. “No one was admitted to that section without a written reservation, issued by the Archbishop’s Guard after certification that it was needed and checked against the master list by two separate people, and no one was allowed to enter or leave it starting an hour before Hektor and Irys left the Palace.” He shook his head. “No, he was there, and somehow he got past all of us. We let him do this, Father.”
“We didn’t ‘let’ anyone do anything, Koryn!” Anvil Rock sounded decidedly testier. “We struck the best balance we could between security and the need to allow public access and—”
The door opened abruptly and a grim-faced Charlz Doyal came through it. Father and son turned to face him, and he raised the envelope in his right hand.
“This was delivered to the Palace ten minutes ago,” he said. “I’ve got the messenger in custody, but I don’t think he had any idea what was inside it. In fact, I think he’s telling the truth when he says he doesn’t even know who he was delivering it for.”
“I assume it has something to do with the attack?” Gahrvai said, and Doyal nodded. “In that case, what makes you so sure he wasn’t part of it from the beginning?”
“Because he’s a Bédardist monk from the Monastery of Saint Krystyphyr and he was told the message—addressed to you, by the way, My Lord,” Doyal said, glancing at the earl “—was from Father Symyn.”
“What?” Anvil Rock’s eyes widened in confusion, then narrowed in sudden speculation. “Symyn Hahlek? Why him?”
“According to the monk—and I’ll send a semaphore message to his abbot as soon as it’s daylight to confirm all this—the letter was handed to the monastery’s hosteller by a Langhornite under-priest who guested at Saint Krystyphyr’s on his way to Lian on Archbishop Klairmant’s business. When he stopped, he discovered he’d inadvertently brought the letter with him, and his business in Lian was too urgent for him to lose three days returning to Manchyr to deliver it in person. So he asked the abbot to have it delivered to you for him. Our monk was selected to do the delivering, and I’d guess he got to Manchyr at least a day earlier than our Langhornite expected, given all the traffic clogging the roads with the wedding coming up. If he’d been just an hour quicker, he’d’ve gotten to the Palace before the wedding party left. As it was, and after the explosion in the square, it took him hours to find someone willing to admit him to deliver it.” The man who’d become the Regency Council’s chief of intelligence shook his head. “I don’t think he had a thing to do with it, My Lord. And I do think whoever used him for this wanted to point a finger in Father Symyn’s direction.”
“And what’s in the damned letter?” Anvil Rock demanded.
“See for yourself, My Lord.”
Doyal held out the letter. Anvil Rock took it with the air of a man reaching for a venomous serpent and unfolded it slowly, then tilted it to allow his son to read over his shoulder.
To the everlastingly damned and accursed heretics, blasphemers, and demon-worshippers who have rebelled against God’s will, murdered His priests, joined themselves to Shan-wei’s cause, entered into the Dark with all their hearts, and made themselves the enemies of all God’s faithful sons and daughters. Know that you have shown your true colors as the betrayers of Corisande and all her people, as well as God, the Archangels, and Mother Church. If you will embrace the harlot of Charis and the servants of Shan-wei, if you will sell all of Corisande into Charisian bondage, you make yourselves the enemies of every true child of God and lover of Cori
sandian freedom. You think yourselves safe, protected by the bayonets of the soldiers who slavishly serve you in defiance of the Grand Vicar’s writ of excommunication. You believe not even God can reach you, and in your corruption and arrogance, you raise your hands against Him Whose Archangels gave life to this entire world. You set your will against His, you seek to deliver all the people of this realm of Corisande into the chains of Hell, and in the dark recesses of your hearts, you exult in the power you pervert in Shan-wei’s name. But God can reach you, through the hands of His servants, and we have taught you so this day. Be warned. This is but the first of the blows Langhorne’s Rakurai have in store for any who renounce their true allegiance and duty to God and give themselves to the Dark, instead. Treason, blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy can be expunged only by blood, and expunged they assuredly will be.
There was no signature, and Gahrvai’s eyes narrowed. Assuming there was an ounce of honesty in the person who’d written it, the letter confirmed that this had been the work of Clyntahn’s “Rakurai.” Of course it might equally well be intended as disinformation. He was rather at a loss to think of anyone else who might have been behind the attack, yet they’d had proof enough in Corisande that secular opponents to the Regency Council could seize upon religious pretexts to cover their own ambitions.
Then there was the supposed author of the letter. Symyn Hahlek was Archbishop Klairmant’s senior and most trusted aide. No one who’d ever met Father Symyn would believe for a moment that he might have been involved in something like this. Unfortunately, the number of people who’d met him was minute compared to the number of people who hadn’t met him. The fact that he was a native Corisandian might lend a certain credibility to the theory that his patriotism had been so outraged by the decision to join the Charisian Empire as to drive him into open rebellion, and the fact that the letter had been left at Saint Krystyphyr’s by someone claiming to be a Langhornite could lend additional credence for those inclined to believe the worst, given that Hahlek was himself a Langhornite under-priest. And, of course, Archbishop Klairmant’s aide would have been well placed to provide the assassin with the written reservation needed to get into position for the attack. There was no way in the world Hahlek had done anything of the sort, but the “Rakurai” had nothing to lose trying to drive a wedge between him and Archbishop Klairmant.
“Well,” he said finally, taking the letter from his father and skimming it once again. “I’m not particularly inclined to take a mass murderer’s word for the sanctity of his motives, and I’m certainly not prepared to accept that Father Symyn, of all people, would’ve been party to something like this.”
“Neither am I.” Anvil Rock snorted harshly. “Ambitious bastards, aren’t they? Not content with implicating Father Symyn, they’re ready to take a shot at Taryl, too!”
“Um?” Gahrvai looked up from the letter, frowning. Then his expression cleared. “I missed that one somehow, Father. You’re right, though.”
The supposed Langhornite’s announced destination of Lian was the third largest town in the Earldom of Tartarian. Given how he’d directed their attention there, he’d almost certainly gone somewhere else entirely, but it would obviously be to Clyntahn’s advantage if his killers could drive a wedge between Anvil Rock and Earl Tartarian, his closest friend and most trusted political ally. And what they might not be able to convince Anvil Rock of, they might hope to convince Prince Daivyn of. He was only a boy, and it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that his grief and his hunger for vengeance upon his sister’s murderers might cause him to turn upon those accused of complicity in her death.
“I wonder where else copies of this will turn up?” Gahrvai mused aloud after a moment. “Just sending it to the Palace seems a bit under ambitious.”
“A good point,” his father acknowledged.
“A very good point, in fact,” Doyal agreed. “Remember Seijin Merlin’s letter right after the Gray Lizard Square attack. He said Clyntahn sent out his killers solo, with specific orders not to build any sort of local network we might penetrate. If this was the work of the ‘Rakurai’ and they’re operating true to form, there won’t be anyone to tack up broadsheets or stand on street corners haranguing people. So if we do see copies of this letter on walls throughout the Princedom, we’ll know we’re dealing with something else. Frankly, I hope we are. A bigger network could do more damage, but it would also give us—and the seijins—a better chance of penetrating them.”
“I’d like that, Charlz,” Koryn Gahrvai said very quietly, turning back to the window and the candle flames burning in vigil as the grieving people of Corisande prayed for their princess. “I’d like that a lot.”
* * *
Irys Aplyn-Ahrmahk sat beside her husband’s bed. The right side of her face was one massive bruise, the dull ache of a broken cheekbone marched throbbingly through her, and her vision was curiously unclear, wavering like something seen through heat shimmer and illuminated with waves of color which had nothing to do with lamplight. At another time, she might have noticed that pain, worried about that lack of clarity. Tonight she did neither. She simply sat, holding Hektor’s right hand in hers, listening to the harsh, wet sound of his breathing, and her eyes were dry. She was past the tears now, at least for the moment, and there was a great, aching emptiness at the core of her.
Hektor had saved her life. There was no question about that. But the cost of her salvation came too dear. He’d shielded her with his own body, and in protecting her, he’d been hit three times himself—in the left arm, in the back of his right thigh, and on his right shoulder blade.
The leg wound was the least severe, a deep, ugly trough ripped through the big muscle on the back of his thigh as if by some huge talon. He’d lost far too much blood from it, but the arm was worse. Under other circumstances, the Pasqualates would almost certainly have amputated just below the elbow, and even if by some miracle the arm had been saved, it would have been severely impaired, even crippled, for life.
But that wasn’t going to be an issue, she told herself drearily. Because the bullet which had hit his shoulder had passed completely through his body, ripping its way through his right lung, missing his heart by fractions of an inch, and doing God only knew how much other damage on its way through.
The senior Pasqualate had faced her with the stern compassion and honesty of his Order when she’d demanded the truth. Hektor, her husband, was dying. No surgeon’s skill, no apothecary’s knowledge, could change that. In truth, the Pasqualates had no idea why or how he had survived this long.
I’m sorry, love. The thought floated with a fragile, harrowed serenity over the empty ice of the future which had seemed so bright this morning. I’m so sorry. I should’ve known what that monster in Zion would do when you saved Daivyn and me from his butchers. I should’ve realized he’d move heaven and earth to correct his failure, and I should’ve stayed as far away as possible from you. My father, my brother, and now you. Everyone I let myself love, he marks for death. But he missed me. She laid a slender hand on Hektor’s forehead. He missed me. And someday, somehow, somewhere, my love, I will rip out his black heart with my bare hands, and the only thing I’ll ask—the only thing I will go to God on my knees for—is that he know who’s killing him.
“Irys?”
She looked up.
Maikel Staynair stood beside her chair, still wearing his vestments, splashed with Hektor’s blood, although he’d insisted that she change out of her blood-soaked wedding gown. Staynair had been among the first to reach them, the one who’d applied pressure to the sucking chest wound, gotten tourniquets around the wounded leg and arm, while Irys was still unconscious. Without him, Hektor would have died long before the Pasqualates got to him, and he’d refused to leave Hektor’s side, or hers, since.
“He’s still alive, Your Eminence,” she said quietly, smoothing the dark, curly hair. “Still alive for now.”
Staynair’s eyes were gentle and compassionate, without the stark despair she
knew must look back at him from her own. It was the nature of his vocation, she supposed. She recognized his own grief for Hektor, his own anger, yet for him there was still a future. There would always be a future for him, even beyond the dark wall of death, one formed and revealed to his inner eye by the depth of his faith, and she knew even now how important that shield of his faith would be to her in the days to come. Yet just now, at this moment, it was more than she could share, and she felt one of the tears she’d been certain she’d exhausted hours ago trickle slowly down her cheek.
The archbishop’s gentle finger wiped it away and he put his arm around her in wordless comfort.
“You should go, Your Eminence,” she said, leaning her head against his support. “There must be hundreds of other people who need your comfort and care, and you’ve already spent hours with me. Hektor doesn’t know you’re here, and I already know how much you love both of us. You’ve given me that, and I’m not so selfish as to keep you when others need the same gift from you and there’s nothing more you can do, anyway.”