It was unthinkable. It couldn’t have happened. The mere thought of what Father Kuhnymychu had laid up for himself when his superiors heard about this must be enough to shake the boldest heart, and its potential consequences for the Inquisition in Siddarmark were staggering.
And the bastards will make an example out of that little girl and all that’s left of her family, anyway, he thought grimly. They’ll send all three of them to the Punishment. Unless.…
* * *
It was never really quiet in the barracks. There were too many sick, too many frightened, too many horrific memories and the nightmares they spawned for that. But darkness settled early this far north, and people who were chronically undernourished needed any sleep they could get.
It was bitterly cold, of course, for the miserly allotment of coal didn’t allow for anything remotely like genuine heat, and Stefyny Mahlard lay curled tightly around Sebahstean, pressed against his back as he burrowed into their father’s chest and Greyghor Mahlard’s arms cradled them both. The outer layers of the rags they wrapped about themselves during the day had been spread across all three of them, treasuring the shared warmth of their bodies like a miser’s gold. Her father’s breathing was a little easier, yet she’d seen the fear—the despair—in his eyes when she returned with the Pasqualate and the bucket of food. He’d insisted upon sharing that food with the barracks’ other inmates, although the Pasqualate had made him eat a hearty portion of it first. And afterward he’d sat with his arms wrapped around her, hugging her fiercely, whispering her name into her dirty, unwashed hair while Sebahstean nestled against her to share his embrace. He’d praised her courage, thanked her for all she’d done, told her how proud of her he was—how proud her mother would have been—and under the words and the love she’d tasted his terror. Not for himself, but for her.
She was no longer young enough to misunderstand that terror, but she didn’t care. She told herself that fiercely as she lay unsleeping, warming her brother’s thin body with her own, hearing the hacking coughs, the moans, the occasional dreaming cry of loss or whimper of fear in the icy dark. It had been worth it. Maybe the other priests and the guards would come for her in the morning. Despite all the bitter experiences of her young life, she didn’t fully understand the concept of “making an example,” yet she’d seen its consequences all too often, and she no longer believed all tales had happy endings. Maybe that would happen to her, as well. But if it did, then she would be with Mama and Rehgnyld and God, and that would be so much better than being here. And in the meantime, she’d helped her father, even if it was only for one single day. He’d taken care of her for her entire life, raised her, fed her, taught her, clothed her, always been there for her. He hadn’t done all of those things just because he’d had to; he’d done them because he loved her, and she’d realized long ago how terribly that love hurt him now that he could protect her no longer. But she loved him, too, and she’d finally been able to share that love with him fully and completely. He’d taught her that you took care of the ones you loved, and this time, maybe just this once, she’d been able to do that for him as he’d so often done it for her.
That made anything that happened after today worth it.
She wondered what would happen to the priest who’d helped her. She didn’t know his name, but she’d seen the way the soldiers looked at him—even the way the lay brother had looked at him, the expression of the Pasqualate he’d sent back to the barracks with her. He was an inquisitor, wrapped round with the terror that office had acquired since the Jihad began. He was one of the ones who made terrible things happen to people like Stefyny and her family. But this time he’d helped her, and how would the other inquisitors react to that? Part of her, the part which would never have been able to forgive the Inquisition even if she’d been allowed to live to old age, hoped they’d do something horrible to him. Hoped at least one of the people who’d helped destroy her entire world would suffer for it, even if he had helped her at the very end. But another part of her could only be grateful to him, and that part was bigger than the other one, and it hoped the others would remember that Langhorne himself had said, “I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was sick, and you gave me care.”
But they wouldn’t. That wasn’t what inquisitors did, and—
Stefyny never felt the tiny remote that worked its way under the tattered heap of blankets. She never felt it scuttle gently, silently across her hair to the side of her neck. She did feel a tiny twinge—nothing strong enough to be pain or even discomfort—as the remote found the vein in the side of her neck, made the injection, and oblivion took her.
* * *
The burlap robe was scratchy, and no protection against the bitter cold. At least the weather was a tiny bit warmer—it was actually above freezing, for a change—and he was going to be much warmer all too soon.
Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd—no longer Father Kuhnymychu, but simply Kuhnymychu the Apostate—stumbled through the snow in his bare feet, and wondered which was the greater terror: what was about to happen to him, or the eternity waiting on its farther side?
He’d already endured much of the Punishment, and he’d discovered the agony was even worse than he’d ever thought it was. There was a sort of justice in that, he supposed.
The Inquisition had always taught that a Schuelerite who betrayed his vows deserved no gentleness, although the truth was that he didn’t think he had betrayed them. The child and her father hadn’t yet been convicted of heresy, and there was nothing in the vows he’d taken which forbade him to minister to the accused before they were convicted. Yet whether or not he’d violated his vows, there was no question that he’d defied the Inquisitor General. That much he had to admit—had admitted, willingly, even before the Question. And it might well be true, even as Father Zherohm had declared when he was defrocked and handed to the inquisitors who’d been his brothers, that his actions had strengthened Shan-wei’s power in the world. After all, if one of the Inquisition’s own violated the regulations laid down for the governance of the holding camps—allowed misplaced leniency to encourage the heretical to maintain their defiance of God’s plan and the Archangels’ plain commandments rather than seek pardon and penance—it could only encourage others to do the same thing, which must inevitably undercut all Mother Church’s effort to crush the heresy.
Once, Kuhnymychu would have agreed unhesitatingly with that damming indictment. Now he was … uncertain, and fresh fear filled him as the stake loomed before him. Had he failed God in the moment of his greatest test? Or had it truly been the Holy Bédard who’d moved his heart and guided his actions? One way or the other, he was about to learn the truth, and his lips moved in silent prayer—the only form of prayer left him, for they’d cut out his tongue lest he take this last opportunity to strike out at Mother Church’s work in the world—as the chains went about him.
A tear surprised him, crawling slowly down his cheek, and he realized he wept not for himself, but for a little girl he’d met only once. A little girl whose courage and love had reached out and broken his armor of certitude and breached the fortress of faith about his heart. No doubt she’d been doomed from the moment she set out to find help for her father just as surely as he’d been doomed when he gave it, and it was God’s own mercy she’d been spared what was about to happen to him. Yet even though all of that was true, he wished she might have lived.
God had willed otherwise, he thought. He made himself raise his head and open his eyes once again, remembering the three still bodies which had been carried out of that prison barracks the very next morning. The inmates had brought them forth and laid them side-by-side, the children flanking the father, in the churned snow. They hadn’t tried to conceal the deaths, as they usually did, in hopes the living would continue to receive their rations until the guards discovered they’d died. And they hadn’t scavenged the pitiful family’s garments the way they usually did, either. They’d laid them out as decently and with as much respect as they could. I
t had been their own act of defiance, and they’d watched in silence as the labor party of other inmates impressed for the duty carried them to the vast, unmarked graveyard where so many others had already gone.
They hadn’t been buried immediately. Too many others died every day for that. Instead, they’d been laid side-by-side in the open trench. Then they’d been left, abandoned to the short northern day, the long northern night, and the sifting snow, waiting for the more tardy of the dead to join them, until the frozen chunks of dirt had been shoveled over all of them the following day.
No one had spoken any words for them, unless it had been the labor gang, praying as silently as Kuhnymychu prayed now. He hoped they had, and even as he stood among the piled faggots and gazed at the flaming torch, pale in the sunlight, a strange feeling of joy flowed through him when he realized he was praying for them just as much as for himself.
“You have heard the judgment and sentence of holy Mother Church, Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd,” a deep voice intoned. “Have you anything to say before that sentence is carried out?”
He looked away from the torches, and he realized suddenly that he no longer questioned why he’d tried to help Stefyny. He knew Whose voice he’d heard in that moment. Knew it now, beyond any possibility of doubt or mistake. He’d heard the rumors about the heretic Gwylym Manthyr’s execution, even seen one of the illustrated broadsheets, though he hadn’t been supposed to. He hadn’t believed the story that broadsheet had told … then. Now, as Father Zherohm Clymyns put that question to him, he knew it had told the truth.
And that meant Zhaspahr Clyntahn, and the Inquisition, and Mother Church herself had lied. Gwylym Manthyr had been silenced before his death, and for the same reason he had: fear. Fear that just as Erayk Dynnys had done in the Plaza of Martyrs itself, he would have spoken the truth from the very shadow of death. And the Inquisition he had served, Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd knew now, dared not face that truth.
He gazed at Clymyns, his eyes hard above the mouth which could no longer speak, and he knew why Clymyns had come. The upper-priest was Wylbyr Edwyrds’ senior aide, taking more and more responsibility and authority upon his shoulders. He was the brain and soul of the Inquisition in Siddarmark, the very voice of the Inquisitor General, and he’d come to be that voice here, today, accompanied by Father Fhrancys Ostean and Brother Zhorj Myzuhno. Both of them were also members of Edwyrds’ personal staff, and despite Myzuhno’s relatively junior rank, all three were members of the Inquisitor General’s inner circle. They were here to drive home the lesson of Ruhstahd’s fate for any other Schuelerite whose ardor might falter or fail.
He could no longer speak, but as Clymyns’ eyes met his, filled with scorn and the knowledge that he couldn’t, he remembered again that broadsheet of Gwylym Manthyr’s defiant death. It might not seem like much, here at the very end of all mortal things, but it was all he had, and there were far worse examples he might have followed.
He spat defiantly at Clymyns’ feet and matched the defiance in his own eyes against the upper-priest’s scornful contempt.
* * *
Dialydd Mab lay on the hillside in his white snow smock and waited patiently, twelve hundred yards from the execution site. Over half that distance was deep virgin snow no one could get across in a hurry even after they figured out where he had to have been. The cross-country skis beside him would have taken him far away by the time they did, and no merely mortal pursuer was going to overtake a PICA on skis.
That was important, because it meant he’d been able to come himself, instead of dispatching one of Owl’s remotes. And it meant there’d be ski tracks for those pursuers to find and follow—tracks which would prove a human being had been there and lead the inevitable pursuit well away from any town or village as they sped straight towards the Samuel Mountains and escape.
He found himself wishing there’d been a way to spirit Ruhstahd away, as well, but there hadn’t been. That was another reason why he was here. He couldn’t save the man, but there was one last gift he could give him.
Well, two, really, he supposed as he nestled his cheek into the stock of his rifle and prepared to deliver the first.
It looked like a standard M96, but appearances could be deceiving. Owl had built that rifle especially for Dialydd Mab. Its rifling was more precise than anything even Taigys Mahldyn’s shops could have cut, the barrel lining was chrome plated, the stock was precisely tailored to his height and reach, and the cartridges in its magazine—loaded with a smokeless propellant centuries in advance of anything pre-Merlin Safehold could have produced—drove its massive bullets at well over two thousand feet per second, with a muzzle energy of better than five thousand foot-pounds. The pre-fired cases he’d brought to leave behind him had been filled with black powder to leave the proper residue for anyone who examined them, even though that precaution was almost certainly unnecessary. He’d also brought along a half-dozen black powder-filled squibs to produce the appropriate smoke cloud and be sure the camp guards found his position, the tracks leading them astray, and the letter to Wylbyr Edwyrds he intended to leave behind. But for this moment, on this day, he wanted the most precise instrument Owl could give him.
He didn’t need any special sighting system to take advantage of that precision. Not when he had one of his own built in. Now pitiless sapphire eyes, far colder than their artificial origin could ever have explained, gazed over the rifle’s open sights and his index finger stroked the trigger.
* * *
“Very well,” Zherohm Clymyns said flatly, hard gaze glittering with triumph as he nodded to the inquisitor with the torch, “if you have nothing to say, then—”
His head exploded.
The impact energy sent the corpse stumbling forward to sprawl on its belly. Sheer incredulity held the assembled audience motionless, trying to grasp what had happened, as the crack of the rifle which had delivered justice upon him—tiny with distance, yet sharp and clear through the icy air—reached them almost two seconds later.
The second round announced its arrival two and a half seconds after the crack of the first. It struck Fhrancys Ostean between the shoulder blades as he turned towards Clymyns, ripped through his heart and lungs in a spray of crimson, and wounded yet another Schuelerite.
The first ripples of panic washed through the spectators as understanding dawned. They began to turn, looking for the source of that deadly fire, and Zhorj Myzuhno collapsed with a hoarse, squealing shriek as the third bullet slammed its way through his liver and erupted from his back.
The panic became total, then. Faith was a frail shield against those heretical thunderbolts, and the warriors of Mother Church’s Inquisition fled wildly towards the protection of Camp Chihiro’s buildings. To their credit, a handful of the Army of God officers assigned to the camp’s guard force kept their heads, going prone but scanning the hills until they found the telltale puffs of smoke.
Kuhnymychu Ruhstahd saw it all and somehow he knew who was behind that rifle. He knew it was the same rifle which had spoken from the bank of the Holy Langhorne Canal, and he, too, stared at that distant powder smoke, for he knew something else, as well. He knew the seijin behind that rifle—the true seijin, called by God as surely as any seijin of old, whatever Zhaspahr Clyntahn might claim—had one last gift for him. He watched that hillside, eyes bright and suddenly unafraid as he waited for that gift, and never heard the fourth and final shot that killed him instantly.
.XVI.
St. Tyldyn, Northland Province, Republic of Siddarmark
The bullet hissed by, not quite close enough to actually hit him but not so wide a miss as all that, and Traveler shied in protest.
“My Lord, will you please keep your head down!” Lieutenant Slokym snapped with rather more asperity than a mere lieutenant was supposed to use in addressing a general officer. “We really, really don’t need anything … untoward happening to you!”
“I don’t intend for anything to happen to me, toward or not, Bryahn,” Baron Green Valley sa
id mildly, and touched Traveler with a heel to encourage him to move smartly. It would be embarrassing, to say the least, to get himself killed by one of the zealots of the Temple rearguard.
Impatience and frustration are piss-poor reasons for getting yourself killed by anyone, Kynt, he reminded himself rather more tartly than he’d spoken to his aide. And not even SNARCs will keep you from doing that if you insist on being stupid. Just like your nannies won’t do a whole lot to keep you alive if you take a bullet someplace like—oh, the heart or the brain, maybe?
A sudden crackle of fire, clearly from the 5th Mounted Regiment’s M96s, answered the single shot which had whistled past his head and splinters flew from the stable loft where the marksman had taken his stand. Three more rifles cracked from inside the stable, smoke spurting from hastily hacked loopholes in its walls, and then another shot blasted out from the same spot as the first, far too quickly to have come from a muzzle-loading weapon.
“I’m getting just a bit tired of those newfangled rifles of theirs,” he remarked to no one in particular as he swung down from the saddle in the shelter of a nice, solid stone wall. It looked as if it had once been part of a smithy. Of course, that had been before the retreating Temple Boys burned three-quarters of the town of St. Tyldyn to the ground.
“I can’t say they make me very happy, either, My Lord,” Slokym said sourly.
More of Colonel Gairwyl’s riflemen were firing at the stable, but their initial rate of fire had eased and Green Valley nodded approvingly. Additional ammunition had come forward, and they’d expended less of it taking Esthyr’s Abbey than he’d allowed for, yet the new cartridges remained in less than bountiful supply. He’d impressed the need to avoid wasting them upon his COs, and he was glad to see Gairwyl had taken his admonition to heart. The mounted infantry were still sending enough forty-five-caliber bullets the stable’s way to encourage the Temple Boys inside it to keep their heads down, but they weren’t simply blazing away when they had no clear target.