And he made sure to assign Shalle to the officers.
Shalle had disrobed Tephe with a rook’s typical efficiency, straddled him, and took hold of his penis and began to stroke it. Tephe was confronted again with the rook’s Talent, dangling near his face. He took hold of it.
“I still do not know what your Talent is,” Tephe said.
“I think you do,” Shalle said, and with a quick motion slid Tephe into the place they both wanted him to be. Tephe drew his arms around Shalle’s waist and stood, causing the rook to laugh out loud and clasp hands around his neck to avoid the chance of him slipping out. Tephe turned and pushed Shalle into the bed, thrusting as he did so.
“This seems familiar,” Shalle said.
“Enough,” Tephe said, and thrust again, hard. Shalle’s hands moved from his neck to his hips, bidding him do it again. He did. Shalle moaned in delight.
After they were done, Tephe’s attention returned to the rook figurine. He picked it up again.
“It’s not that interesting,” Shalle said, draped across his chest.
“Not in itself,” Tephe agreed. “But for who it is from. I still have trouble imagining Quartermaster Usse offering you a bauble.”
“I thought it was very sweet of him,” Shalle said. “He was a very gentle man with me.”
“Then all of that gentleness went to you,” Tephe said.
“No,” Shalle said. “He spoke of his children with gentleness. And of his wife, though she left him. He said he always expected it and didn’t blame her. It’s hard to be married to a man who will never leave his ship.”
“He never did leave it,” Tephe said. “Until the end. Until he left it in a shroud.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” Shalle said. “I prefer to remember him as he was.”
“As he was with you,” Tephe said.
“As he was,” Shalle said, firmly. “Don’t discount that part of who he was just because you didn’t know it. None of us are all of who we are to any one person.”
“What are you hiding from me?” Tephe said.
Shalle smiled and lightly slapped his chest. “None of your business. Obviously.” Tephe laughed.
There was a quiet knock on the door. Shalle groaned, got up, found the robe and answered the door while tying its stays. A voice Tephe recognized as Lade whispered something.
Shalle looked back at Tephe. “Lade says the Gavril is at the door of the rookery.”
Tephe frowned. Ysta had been dead asleep when Forn had him checked on, and should have been for hours yet. The captain dressed quickly and went to the rookery door, where Lt. Ysta stood, a troubling shade of gray.
“Lieutenant,” Tephe said.
“CAPTAIN TEPHE,” said Ysta in a voice clearly not his own. “BY ORDER OF THE BISHOPRY MILITANT, THE RIGHTEOUS IS TO BE BROUGHT TO BISHOP’S CALL. MAKE ALL HASTE. YOU ARE EXPECTED PRESENTLY.”
Ysta choked, vomited and collapsed. Shalle slipped out of the rookery to attend him.
“He’s all right,” Shalle said, after a minute. “He’s just worn out. We should get him the healer’s bay.”
“No,” Tephe said. “Once Andso finds out we are to be brought to Bishop’s Call, he will want to use him again, even if he is laid out in a healer’s crèche.” He nodded toward the rookery. “Bring him into the rookery. Andso will not step foot in it. Ysta will sleep all he needs. When he is awake, send him to me.” With that Tephe went to the bridge, to halt preparations for Triskell and begin the preparations for Bishop’s Call.
To begin preparations for going home.
Chapter Four
Captain Tephe nodded to the guards. “Open the gate,” he said. The guards gave the order and the heavy iron gate of the landing citadel creaked open, revealing the city beyond it, and the mile-long thoroughfare connecting the landing citadel and the godhold on its other end. In between were tenements whose inhabitants hung out of windows and stood on street corners, waiting.
Waiting for him to parade the god.
Neal Forn came up to Tephe, bearing two bags, and handed one to the captain. “Your coppers, captain.” Tephe nodded, and took the bag. Inside were coins, which he would throw to the crowds lining the streets as he passed them. They would reach for the coins with one hand and throw trash and rotten things at the passing god with the other, shouting as they did so.
“I remember being on the other end of this,” Forn said, and gestured to the west. “I was a child six streets from here. When these gates opened, wherever we were and whatever we were doing, we came running. The captains and their mates would toss their coins and we would fight for them, and then take what we had and buy bread. When we were older, we would buy drink.”
“You remember this fondly,” Tephe said.
Forn snorted. “No, captain, not fondly. A thrown copper was often the thing that decided for the day whether I ate new, warm bread or what I had scraped out of a barrel to throw at the god.” He jerked his head out toward the tenements. “This is not a place to grow well as a child, captain. I do not think half those I grew with made it to an age to leave, and most of those who grew to that age never left. I do not doubt I will see some of my childhood fellows down this street today, shouting pieties and hoping for copper.”
“Toss them a coin, then,” Tephe said. “They will praise you when they drink tonight.”
Forn shook his head, and then looked out to the street. “I throw to the children,” he said. “They need the coins better. And one of them might yet leave. As I did.” Then the first mate gave his captain a small, bitter smile and took some distance from him.
Tephe gave him his distance and instead looked back toward the god, secured in an ornate rolling cage whose iron bars were too thick to allow the god hope of escape, but wide enough to let through the trash flung at it. Surrounding the cage were a dozen of the godhold guard, dressed in livery of red, gold and black, holding pikes of second-made iron. The pikes were meant to be ceremonial but were nevertheless sharpened and balanced for attack and discipline. Gods were known to attempt escape on their brief journey to the godhold, or their few remaining worshippers to attempt to rescue their lords.
Where either the gods or their followers would go from there was another matter entirely. The inner city of Bishop’s Call was sealed by The Lord Himself, a mosaic ring of first-made iron circling it. No enslaved god, weakened and stripped of its native power, could hope to pass. Nor would The Lord’s followers approach the ring, although for another reason entirely. While even the smallest nugget of first-made iron could bring a man more copper than he might see in a year, stealing iron from the Sealing Ring condemned the thief to have his soul consumed. Death beyond death.
Tephe shuddered at the thought, and looked up to see the god, in its cage, staring directly at him.
Between Tephe and the god Priest Andso interposed himself. “Captain, we are ready,” he said. The priest was dressed in fine robes of green and gold and held a long prieststaff in his right hand. The priest, Tephe knew, would parade close enough to the cage of the god to imply it was he himself who caged and controlled it, but not so close that he would be struck by the trash thrown at it. “We are ready,” the priest said. “And it is a glorious day to parade!”
Tephe glanced at Forn, who discreetly rolled his eyes. They both turned back to the street, whose edges now swarmed with crowds, jeering and readying their refuse to hurl at the god as it passed by. The guards at the gate nodded to the captain; the gate was now fully open.
Tephe took a deep breath, jammed a hand into his bag of coppers, and stepped forward toward the street, and toward the godhold.
“Are you well, Captain Tephe?” asked Bishop Major Chawk. Chawk and two other bishops sat at a long, curved table of dark soapwood, sheaves of documents in front of each. Tephe stood in front of the desk, in a meeting room in the sprawling Bishopry, which in itself was nearly as large as the city which putatively contained it. “You appear distracted,” the Bishop said.
??
?My apologies, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I was recalling the parade upon our arrival.”
“Ah, yes,” Chawk said. “Did you enjoy it, Captain?”
“It is always an honor to show to the faithful the power of Our Lord, to whom even the gods submit,” Tephe said.
Chawk chuckled. “A very politic answer, Captain. But you do not need to be politic here.”
“Yes, Eminence,” Tephe said, and kept his true opinion about that statement to himself.
“We have read your report on the events surrounding your defeat at Ament Cour,” said another of the bishops, whom Tephe recognized as Stei Ero, the Bishopry’s Vicar of Archives, charged with intelligence gathering. “Also your late addition of the incident with the god. And it will come to you as no surprise that we have collected additional accounts of both incidents, both from your ship’s priest and from other sources.”
“You have a spy aboard the Righteous,” Tephe said.
“Does this offend you, Captain?” Ero asked.
“No, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I hide nothing from the Bishopry Militant, or the Bishopry in general. Your spy will not tell you anything I would not. Therefore he is no harm to me or to my ship.”
“You are indeed an honest captain,” murmured Ero, who patted his stack of documents. “If perhaps not always a wise one. We might have expected better from the captain of a ship of the line than your withdrawal at Ament Cour. What do you say to that, Captain Tephe.”
Tephe held himself very still. “I would say to you that we were engaged by three ships of equal strength to the Righteous, and at close quarters, and with a god who had lately brought us to Ament Cour and who was not at full strength, either to deflect attack or to aid us in escape,” he said. “Through the grace of Our Lord we were able to destroy one of those ships and disable a second, all the while drawing the ships away from the planet itself and giving the faithful there time to fortify themselves against attack, and to call for additional ships to defend them. We left Ament Cour space only when the Righteous’ wounds were too grave to sustain another attack, and even then our god had strength only to bring us as far as the outer planet in Ament Cour’s system. We hid in that planet’s rings, running dark and cold, until both ship and god were recovered well enough to travel once more.”
“You provide us with a rationalization for your failure,” Ero said.
“I provide you with an accounting, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I stand here for my choices and will suffer any judgment they provoke. I chose within my power the wisest course of action for my ship and for the people of Ament Cour. Perhaps another captain would have done other, and better. These were my choices.”
“Well said,” said Chawk. “And in all, well done. You defended your ship and the faithful as far as you were able, and better than most would have done. This is nevertheless of bitter comfort. Before more of our ships could drive off the one ship the Righteous had been unable to defeat, it destroyed three cities on Ament Cour. Hundreds of thousands of souls lost in all.”
“They did not land troops?” Tephe said. “Nor raid the cities?”
“Such was not their goal,” Chawk said.
“What was their goal?” asked Tephe.
“Genocide!”
The word blasted from the third bishop, whom Tephe did not recognize. He did recognize the apprehension both Chawk and Ero formed on their faces when the third bishop spoke. Whomever he was, he outranked them both, and significantly.
“Yes, genocide,” continued the third bishop. “A systematic eradication of the faithful. Not to make it easier to steal things, or to barter hostages for money, or to loot and rape, but to destroy Our Lord by destroying that which sustains him!”
Tephe glanced toward Chawk, whom to him seemed the most sympathetic to him on the panel. “What sustains Our Lord, Bishop Major?” he asked.
“Faith sustains Him, Captain,” Chawk said, reprovingly. “As you must know from the commentaries.”
“ ‘For I am nourished by the faithful, and draw upon their celebration,’ ” quoted Tephe. “I know my commentaries well, Bishop Major.”
“Then it is perhaps that you do not understand them fully,” Chawk said. “When Our Lord speaks of being nourished by the faithful, He is not speaking in metaphor. Our faith sustains and strengthens Him, and gives Him the power to extend His grace to us, and to defeat and enslave His enemies, which in its turn allows us to travel the stars and find the space we need to increase our numbers and allow Him to grow more powerful and protect us further.”
“And so to destroy His faithful is to wound Him directly,” Tephe said.
“Even so,” Chawk said.
“This is not in the commentaries,” Tephe said.
“Our Lord is not a fool,” Ero said. “He does not reveal how He may be wounded.”
“Neither has a genocide been part of the tactics those outside Our Lord’s grace have used against Him or the faithful,” Tephe said. “This is neither in the commentaries nor in the military histories.”
The bishops were silent as Chawk and Ero looked toward the third bishop. He in turn moved his gaze to Tephe.
“Prostrate yourself,” he said to the captain.
Tephe fell to the floor, unquestioning.
“You are charged with silence,” proclaimed the third Bishop. “What is spoken to you here is not to be spoken again, on remit of your soul.” From the floor Tephe quaked; he knew this bishop was warning him that his soul would be consumed. “I charge you again with silence; and charge you a third time. You may rise.”
Tephe rose.
“You have not heard of genocidal tactics being used because they have not been used for thousands of years,” Bishop Ero said. “You know from the commentaries that in the Time Before, thousands of gods contested for the souls of the faithful and that Our Lord prevailed. What is not spoken of are the tactics these gods used in their attempts to diminish Him.”
“Genocide was used by some, then.” Tephe said.
“By all, good captain,” Ero said. “By every one. And yet Our Lord still prevailed, and in doing so enslaved hundreds of the gods who contested against Him, and diminished the others so greatly that His preeminence was uncontested. These gods exist now on the margins of His empire, with only enough faithful to nibble at His feast. The looting and hostage taking of which we earlier spoke.”
Tephe nodded. His earlier tours were a list of defenses against just such minor attacks and parries, and the goal in these engagements was twofold: to protect the faithful under attack and to capture rather than kill the gods who powered the enemy ships, so that they might be enslaved and thus used to increase the number of His ships.
“Captain, what happened at Ament Cour was not the first of its kind,” Ero said.
Tephe looked at the bishop, shocked. “Other genocides?”
“Ament Cour was the third in the last month,” Chawk said. “Smar and Breese also were attacked. Their cities and the faithful within were put to flame and fire. Millions of the faithful taken from the grace of Our Lord. It would have been as this at Ament Cour, save for your actions.”
“Many still died,” Tephe said.
“Yes,” Chawk said. “But many lived who would not have.”
“This is the first I have heard of these atrocities,” Tephe said.
“You are not the only faithful of late enjoined to silence,” said the third bishop.
“There was only one Gavril on Smar and on Breese allowed to speak beyond his own planet, as is so on every world,” Ero said. “All of their messages come through us, here. It is not difficult to keep a secret if we wish it so, and we have wished it.”
“It is not yet time to concern the faithful with this matter,” Chawk said. “We prefer at the moment to have them believe that these minor gods and their followers are yet looting and hostage taking.”
“With deference, your Eminences, this deception is not a thing which will long endure,” Tephe said. “These minor gods have go
ne from small incursions to wholesale slaughter of the faithful. This is not a change in survival tactics. This is a change in underlying intent. Something has changed to take them out of hiding and into bald and murderous assault.”
“Clever captain,” Ero said, after a moment.
“I am not clever, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I can read a map when it is laid out in front of me.”
“There is a new god,” Chawk said. “We do not know from whence it came. It has come to the edge of Our Lord’s dominion. Its strength is considerable. We believe its presence provokes these little gods to misbehavior.”
“They ally with it,” Tephe said.
“Gods do not ally,” growled the third bishop.
Tephe bowed his head, deeply. “With deference, bishop, if what I have heard here is correct, then these gods are acting in a manner that suggests coordination and an underlying strategy. It does suggest an alliance.”
“There is no alliance,” said the third bishop, leaning forward in his chair. “He would know if there were. He says there is not. He says the gods hate each other as ever they have.”
Tephe realized with a growing coldness who the third bishop must be. “Yes, Eminence,” he said. The third bishop reclined into his chair once more.
“Whatever the cause for these actions, Our Lord has been lately weakened,” Chawk said, drawing the conversation to himself. “His primacy over His dominion is not threatened, yet neither would it be wise for Him to ignore the threat that exists at His doorstep.”
“I will do all that is asked of me to aid My Lord,” Tephe said. “Though it cost me my life.”