Hell's Foundations Quiver (32 page)

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.

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.