Stefyny knew the same riflemen were watching her now, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that her father was sick, probably dying, and that a ten-year-old girl had learned too much about what inadequate food did to someone who was ill.
* * *
“Crap. She’s not stopping.”
Private Ahntahn Ruhsail’s voice was as bitter as the icy wind when he saw the dark-haired girl trudging steadily towards the neat line of posts. The outer layers of the rags wrapped around her fluttered on that same wind, and though he couldn’t see it from his place on the guard walk that circled the tower’s enclosed top, he knew the cloth wrapped around her face was clotted with ice where her breath had frozen. It was a far cry from his own warm coat and the fleece-lined gloves and thick, knitted muffler his mother had sent him. She was a small, thin child, like all the others in Camp Chihiro—she couldn’t have weighed much over forty pounds, fifty at the outside—and the bucket she dragged with her was half her own size. God only knew where she’d gotten it. It looked like one of the slop buckets used by the inmates drafted to clean and maintain the guards’ barracks.
“What in Langhorne’s name does she think she’s doing?” Private Stahdmaiyr growled beside him.
“How in Bédard’s name am I supposed to know?” Ruhsail shot back. His eyes were bleak as he gazed down at the girl, seeing the determination in those thin shoulders. “Whatever she’s doing, she’s not stopping, though.”
“Oh, shit.”
There’d been a time, Ruhsail knew, when Stahdmaiyr would have felt quite differently. A time when the other private’s fervor and passionate faith—the same passion which had led him to volunteer for his present duties—would have been silently urging the girl on. When the old cliché that nits made lice would have been all the justification he needed. In fact, he’d said that very same thing when he’d returned from Sarkyn.
On the other hand, that had been before Sergeant Mahthyws and Sergeant Leeahm got their throats cut in their own barracks without a single soul seeing or hearing a thing. Stahdmaiyr’s enthusiasm for smiting the heretic seemed to have cooled quite a bit since then. There were plenty of other guards, and plenty of inquisitors, whose ardor hadn’t cooled, though. Who would happily have accepted the duty about to come Stahdmaiyr’s way. Once upon a time, one of them might even have been named Ahntahn Ruhsail, but his ardor had cooled even before the cleansing of Sarkyn. Smiting the heresy, fighting the spawn of Shan-wei for the soul of God’s own Church, giving all he had to serve the Archangels—that was one thing. What happened here at Camp Chihiro was something else entirely, and he’d found his soul lacked the iron to embrace that something else.
But that didn’t change the standing orders, and Ruhsail found himself guiltily and unspeakably grateful that Stahdmaiyr was the tower’s assigned marksman for the day. Of course if Stahdmaiyr screwed up, it would be Ruhsail’s duty to finish the girl off. He prayed it wouldn’t happen, but even as he prayed, he promised himself and the Archangels that if it did, he would make it as quick and as clean as he possibly could.
Stahdmaiyr checked the priming on his rifle, then leveled it across the chest-high railing designed specifically to give the guards a steady shooting rest, and cocked the lock. The orders were clear enough. There were to be no shouted threats, no orders to go back the way an inmate had come. The kill line was exactly what its name proclaimed, and if anyone violated it, the consequences were to be visited upon him with no warning, no attempt to turn him back first, as a salutary lesson to his fellows. So the private settled in behind the rifle, his sights tracking the little girl as she marched steadily, unwaveringly towards her rendezvous with his bullet.
Three more strides, Ruhsail thought, his face like stone and his heart like iron. Three more strides and—
“What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, Stahdmaiyr?!”
Both privates jumped so sharply that Stahdmaiyr almost squeezed off the shot. Then they whirled as Corporal Shain Fahbyan came storming out of the warm guardroom behind them. His dark face was like a thundercloud, and his eyes nailed Stahdmaiyr like matched arbalest bolts.
“I asked you a question!” he snapped.
“B-but … but—” Stahdmaiyr stammered, then stopped, looking imploringly at Ruhsail from the corner of one eye.
“One of the inmates is about to cross the kill line, Corp,” Ruhsail said. In fact, he noted without seeming to look away from Fahbyan, she already had.
“So?” Fahbyan demanded.
“Standing orders.” Ruhsail’s anger and disgust at those same orders turned his reply curt, almost choppy, and Fahbyan’s jaw tightened.
The corporal propped his gloved hands on his hips and looked back and forth between the two privates.
“That’s a kid.” His voice was flat. “It’s not somebody trying to rush the line. It’s not an escape attempt. Not even somebody old enough to know what the hell he’s doing. It’s a frigging kid.”
Ruhsail and Stahdmaiyr looked at each other. Ruhsail understood exactly what Fahbyan was saying, but all three of them knew it made no difference. Orders were orders, and if they weren’t followed.…
“Let her go,” Fahbyan continued in that same flat voice. “Let the Fathers deal with her.”
“Uh, whatever you say, Corp,” Ruhsail said.
The noncom gave them both one more glare, then stepped back into the guardroom and slammed the door behind him. The privates looked at each other again, then drew deep breaths, almost in unison. They turned back to the compound below where a small, shivering girl child had just crossed the kill line without drawing a single shot, and as they did, Ahntahn Ruhsail felt a deep, complex stab of relief and guilt. Relief that she hadn’t been shot, relief that she hadn’t become yet more innocent blood on his own hands, and relief that he and Stahdmaiyr were covered by Fahbyan’s orders.
And guilt that he hadn’t been the one to make that decision.
* * *
“Father.”
Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd’s head turned sharply at the single word. Brother Lahzrys Ohadlyn had stopped in mid stride and was looking to their left. Father Kuhnymychu followed the direction of the lay brother’s gaze and felt his jaw tighten.
The ragged child had obviously seen them, as well. She’d stopped for a moment, and Father Kuhnymychu could almost physically feel the fear radiating off her like another, even icier wind. But then her spine stiffened, she turned, and she walked directly towards them.
Father Kuhnymychu watched her come and wondered why none of the guards had fired. But only for a moment, because deep inside, he knew exactly why they hadn’t.
Her rag-wrapped feet crunched through the crusty snow bordering the path between the camp’s buildings. She stopped, a few feet from them, and peeled the frost-stiffened cloth away from her face, and her gray eyes were huge in a gaunt, thin face. Her nose was misshapen, her bloodless lips chapped and split and crusted with scabs, and there was a century of bitter experience in those ten-year-old eyes as she looked up at them silently.
“Well, child?” he snapped.
Father Kuhnymychu hadn’t meant to speak, but those silent eyes drew the words out of him like pincers. He shuddered deep inside as that thought went through the back of his brain, for he’d seen pincers used in deadly earnest all too often over the year just past.
“My father’s sick.”
The soprano was as thin as its owner, yet there was steel at its heart. There was fear—Father Kuhnymychu could hear it—but there was no hesitation. This child knew exactly what she was doing, what she was risking, and she’d chosen to do it anyway. It didn’t matter whether it was courage or desperation—or love—or if there was any difference between those qualities. She knew, and the steely determination in that thin, shivering body touched Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd with shame … and something very like envy.
“And why do you tell me this?” he heard his own voice say.
“Because he needs food,” she said flatly. “Hot food. Good f
ood.”
* * *
Stefyny stared up at the tall, dark-eyed under-priest. She could tell he was a priest or an under-priest, because his priest’s cap bore the brown cockade of his rank, and she tried not to show her terror, for that cockade was edged in the purple of the Order of Schueler. His face was as unyielding as the winter’s cold as he looked down at her, and something even colder ran down her spine. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been shot crossing the kill line, but her shrunken stomach clenched within her as she smelled the half-remembered scent of hot food drifting from the mess hall behind the two warmly clad, well-fed men.
They’re going to kill me. The thought ran through her, yet she never looked away. They’re going to kill me for trying to save Daddy’s life. But I don’t care. Not anymore.
* * *
Anger stirred under Father Kuhnymychu’s shame. He was God’s priest, consecrated to the Inquisition, sworn to eradicate heresy and to smite the heretic with the full power of Schueler’s sword. His faith and determination, his courage, his dedication to God’s will filled him with holy fire, fit to meet any challenge the Archangels might send him! How dared this ragged urchin—the very spawn of heresy, or she wouldn’t have been here in the first place—challenge him this way? For that was what she’d done. In just eight words she’d defied every one of the Inquisition’s actions—and him—and he felt his right hand clench into a fist and started to raise it.
“Do not despise the wisdom of childhood.” The words of the Book of Bédard flashed unbidden through his mind. “Childhood is a canvas, pure in its innocence, awaiting the brush of experience. In time, that canvas will become the portrait of a life and the growth of a living soul. But that portrait may be rich with color, filled with the texture of joy, or gray and ugly, shrouded in the bleakness of despair. It is your responsibility to guide that brush as God would have it guided. Nor will the guiding leave your life, your faith, unchanged, for a child’s eyes see what adults do not. A child’s gaze is unblinkered by preconception, and children have not learned to look willfully away from truth. Do not be deceived! That searching gaze, those fearless questions, are God’s gift to you. A child’s questions require answer; answer requires explanation; explanation requires thought; and thought requires understanding, and so even as they ask, they teach. Learn from them, treasure the opportunity God has given you, and remember always that whenever one teaches, two learn, and there is no greater joy than to learn together.”
His hand fell back to his side and the cold air was a knife in his lungs as he inhaled deeply. He felt Brother Lahzrys standing behind him, felt the lay brother’s eyes on his own back.
It was odd. He was a priest. That was all he’d ever wanted to be, and in that moment, he remembered the bright, burning day he’d first discovered he had a true vocation. It seemed much farther away and longer ago than it had actually been, and he wondered what had happened to that young man, so filled with joy and eagerness. Heresy must be stamped out among the children of God, with all the rigor the Book of Schueler prescribed, just as cancer must be cut from a living body to save the patient’s life. Bishop Wylbyr was right about that, and Father Kuhnymychu couldn’t argue with the logic of the Inquisitor General’s conviction that anything which happened to a heretic in this life was but a foretaste of what awaited him in eternity.
He never doubted there were innocents imprisoned in Camp Chihiro. He regretted that, but it was the fault of Shan-wei and of heretics like Maikel Staynair and Cayleb Ahrmahk, like Greyghor Stohnar and Zhasyn Cahnyr, who had led so many others into corruption. Sin and apostasy could hide in the tiniest corner, and they would fester there like cankers, spreading their poison to even the most steadfast and faithful, if left uncleansed. Mother Church had no choice but to sweep every corner, sift every hint of heresy, if she was to purify the Republic of Siddarmark once again. Her servants must cut through the choke trees and rip out the wire vine strangling the garden entrusted to their care, yet they were merely mortal. They were fallible. Even with God’s own guidance, they might well reap some of His flowers as they battled the noisome weeds seeking to choke the life from all of Creation. The Inquisitor General was right about that, too, and if the Inquisition erred, if the innocent perished as the price of combating the corrupt and the vile, then God and the Archangels would gather those innocent souls in arms of love and soothe away the memory of their suffering in the joyous glory of God’s own presence. Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd believed that, with all his heart. Yet it was hard to hold to the armor of his faith and the sword of his duty as he stared down into that thin, desperate face.
“What’s your name, child?”
Even as he asked, he knew he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t humanize this child, shouldn’t allow his natural feelings to undermine the flinty steel of his calling and purpose. Shan-wei knew too well how to tempt and beguile by appealing to the goodness inside any man or woman, and the vilest of sins could wear the mask of innocence.
“Stefyny,” she said. “Stefyny Mahlard.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Sarkyn.”
His nostrils flared, and he heard the extra fear in her voice as she admitted she’d come from the town which had been cleansed for its abhorrent act of sabotage. Bishop Wylbyr had singled out Sarkyn, both for the punishment it deserved and as an example to others who might be tempted by Shan-wei to undermine the Jihad. This child might not understand why the Inquisitor General had made that decision, but she clearly understood that Sarkyn and its people had been chosen for the Inquisition’s special attention.
Of course, she probably didn’t know what had happened to Hahskyll Seegairs, Vyktyr Tahrlsahn, and their lay assistants and army escort after the town of her birth had been cleansed.…
He felt Brother Lahzrys stiffen and wondered what the lay brother was thinking. Brother Lahzrys was a simple and direct servant of God and Schueler, with an unflinching readiness to do whatever the Jihad required. He knew the many ways in which Shan-wei and her servants distorted and violated the truth, yet not even Brother Lahzrys could be unaware of the broadsheets which had appeared in the Temple Lands’ cities and towns. Which even appeared—somehow; no one could explain how—on barracks walls in places like Camp Chihiro. Nor was he unaware of the rumors those broadsheets had spread of what had happened aboard a barge in the Holy Langhorne Canal … and why.
It doesn’t matter, Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd told himself. Even if every one of those rumors is true, it still doesn’t matter! We’re God’s warriors. If Shan-wei’s servants strike us down, a thousand more will spring up in our place, and what fear does death hold for those who die obedient to God’s will?
Yet even as he thought that, a small, treacherous corner of his soul knew that it wasn’t the death the false seijin Dialydd Mab had threatened which gnawed at his spiritual armor. No, that acid had been distilled in the charges Mab had hurled at the Grand Inquisitor himself, for if the man who spoke for Mother Church truly was—
He cut that thought off ruthlessly. This was neither the time nor the place for it … assuming there ever could be a time or a place to consider such faith-destroying corruption. But it was easier to tell himself to put it aside, pretend he’d never thought it, than to actually accomplish that task, and he forced himself to focus once again on the child before him.
* * *
Stefyny’s fear spiked as the tall priest’s face hardened and his eyes turned to flint.
I tried, Daddy, she thought. I really, really tried. I’m sorry.
A single tear burned down her cheek in the icy cold, but she never looked away, never let her eyes fall. The winter seemed to hold its breath, and then, unexpectedly, the Schuelerite held out his hand to her.
“Come with me, child,” he said.
* * *
Two thousand miles from Camp Chihiro, Merlin Athrawes sat in his bedchamber in distant Siddar City, watching the SNARC’s recorded imagery, and wished he could read Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd’s thoughts.
Merlin seldom watched the SNARCs’ take from the Church’s concentration camps. His sense of duty insisted he ought to, yet he couldn’t. That inability shamed him, but he literally couldn’t. Intellectually, he knew Nahrmahn and Cayleb and Sharleyan were right, that it was both unjust and illogical—even arrogant—to blame himself for all the carnage and cruelty of the Church of God Awaiting’s Jihad. He understood that. It just … didn’t help, sometimes. And perhaps even more to the point, he couldn’t afford the bitter, corrosive rage those camps sent roaring through his soul every time he so much as thought about them. If he went through them as his fury demanded, stalking through their guards in a whirlwind of steel, showing them the same justice he’d visited upon Tahrlsahn and Hahskyll Seegairs, it could only lend a damning credence to the Inquisition’s charges of demon worship and summoning. That was why he’d been so careful to proclaim the seijins’ mortality in Dialydd Mab’s letter to Zhaspahr Clyntahn. He couldn’t—could not—escalate beyond the capabilities The Testimonies and legend assigned to the seijins of yore, and what “Mab” and his fellows had already accomplished pressed all too perilously upon those limits.
Yet Nahrmahn had been right to ask him to view this imagery.
He watched the Schuelerite under-priest take the little girl’s hand and lead her into the guards’ mess hall. Watched Ruhstahd personally fill Stefyny’s bucket to the brim with hot food, ignoring the stupefied and all too often outraged AOG privates and noncoms. Watched that same under-priest walk her across from the mess hall to the infirmary, watched him send one of the Pasqualate lay brothers back to Stefyny’s barracks with her.