Hell's Foundations Quiver (38 page)

Owl had simply decided that both the PICAs running around Safehold were emancipated personalities, and since Nimue Chwaeriau was seven Safeholdian years younger than Merlin Athrawes, he was senior to her due to time in grade and so remained the senior TFN officer on Safehold. In order to avoid any confusion about whom he might be addressing at any given moment, however, Merlin had become “Commander Athrawes” while Nimue had become “Commander Chwaeriau.” It made perfectly good sense and it was in perfect accordance—well,
almost
perfect, given the hacked state of Merlin's software—with Federation law, yet every time Owl used either form of address, Merlin felt a little more of the human being he'd once been slip away from him. If the truth be known, he thought of himself much more as Merlin now than he did as Nimue. Perhaps that would have been inevitable anyway, but the existence of his “younger sister” seemed to have driven the process both faster and farther, and he wasn't certain how he felt about that.

“Do that, Owl,” he said after only the briefest of pauses. “And when you get there, Aivah, be sure to give my regards to Sandaria and our guests.”

“I will,” she replied, and then her own expression sobered. “I only hope we'll ever be able to let them
leave
the Cave.”

“I think we will. And even if we never can,” Merlin's face hardened, and for just a moment Dialydd Mab looked out of those sapphire eyes at her, “it was still worth every single minute.”

“You're right,” she said softly, and laid one hand on his scarred cheek. Then she leaned close, kissed him on the forehead, and straightened with a gentle smile. “And I'll give them your love, as well as your regards,” she promised.

 

.XVIII.

Camp Dynnys, Lake Isyk, Tarikah Province, Republic of Siddarmark

“I've spoken to you about this before, Father,” Bishop Maikel Zhynkyns said coldly. “I don't think you properly appreciate the gravity of your offense.”

Father Aizak Mohmohtahny looked back across the desk at the man who administered Camp Dynnys. Zhynkyns was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and at the moment those eyes were chips of brown agate in a face of iron.

“The prisoners in this camp are here because Mother Church has excellent reason to suspect them of heresy and blasphemy,” the bishop continued. “The vast majority of them—as you know as well as I—confess and acknowledge their sins in the fullness of time. You do them no favors by suggesting to them by your actions that Mother Church will not, in the fullness of time, demand a full and total accounting from all of them for their crimes against her, God, and the Archangels. Are you deliberately attempting to hamper the Inquisition's holy mission, Father? And are you prepared for the consequences if that is indeed your intention?”

He paused, glaring at the under-priest in the cassock of Pasqualate green, obviously demanding a response.

“My Lord,” Mohmohtahny said, “I have no desire to hamper the Inquisition, but I have vows of my own. Those include healing any child of God.”

“Heretics have cut themselves off from God of their own volition!” Zhynkyns snapped. “Mother Church will grant absolution for true contrition for any lesser sin, yet the Holy Schueler made it abundantly clear that there can be no absolution for heresy and violation of the Proscriptions. God may forgive those who repent, even from the lip of the grave, but that's because God is empowered to forgive what man is not. And heretics, Father, are excommunicate, cast out, and damned. We are
required
to give them to the Punishment, and they are not covered by your healers' vows.”

“That may very well be true, My Lord. I'm a Pasqualate, not a Schuelerite, and I've never claimed to be an Inquisitor. Nor do I dispute your reading of the
Book of Schueler
and what it requires, and I would never set my judgment in opposition to Mother Church's. Yet Mother Church herself teaches that until someone is proved guilty and convicted as a heretic, that person must be considered
innocent
—as all of God's children must be presumed innocent until they be proven something else. And so I'm obligated to heal their hurts whenever possible until such time as they're fully sifted by the Inquisition and condemned for their crimes.”

He met the bishop's fiery eyes unwaveringly, and Zhynkyns suppressed an urge to scream in the impertinent young bastard's face.

Part of the problem was that Aizak Mohmohtahny wasn't officially under Zhynkyns' direct command, despite the vast gulf in their priestly ranks. The young Pasqualate was attached to the Camp Dynnys guard force, drawn from the Army of God and technically responsible to Bishop Militant Bahrnabai Wyrshym, rather than directly to the Inquisition. The insolent son-of-a-bitch wasn't actually supposed to have any contact at all with Camp Dynnys' inmates, but he'd taken it upon himself to “improve their conditions.” He'd actually drafted members of the guard force to work on sanitation in the camp—officially because disease that began with the inmates could readily spread to the guard force, as well. And Zhynkyns was certain he was quietly diverting rations from the guards' mess halls to the prisoners with the same justification: if starvation weakened their resistance to disease, the pestilence might well spread beyond their own numbers, exactly as the
Book of Pasquale
warned that it would.

No doubt it all seemed harmless enough to Mohmohtahny. It probably made him feel better in the face of the stern demands of the Punishment of Schueler, too. In the end, it was going to accomplish nothing where the true, spiritual well-being of the inmates was concerned, of course. Only the cleansing of the Punishment could hope to reclaim a heretic's soul from hell, and beside that, what could the fate of their physical bodies possibly matter?

But it
could
matter, and what neither Mohmohtahny nor Colonel Ahgustahn Tymahk, the camp guard force's commanding officer, seemed capable of grasping was just how destructive his actions truly were. Anything which might suggest to the inmates that the Inquisition would not, in fact, deal with them as sternly as the
Book of Schueler
required could only strengthen the perversity and corruption which had drawn them into the worship of Shan-wei in the first place. Their accursed mistress would whisper in their ears that they might yet evade the penalty their apostasy and heresy had laid up for them throughout all eternity. The “kindness” for which fatuous fools like Mohmohtahny patted themselves sanctimoniously on the back was actually the greatest cruelty they could possibly have shown the heretics consigned to Zhynkyns for sorting and cleansing!

The bishop hovered on the brink of ordering Mohmohtahny's arrest on charges of undermining the Jihad. There could scarcely be a more clear-cut case of defiance of the Inquisition's true mission, however it might be cloaked in the letter of Church law, and Zhynkyns had no doubt that Inquisitor General Wylbyr would support him fully. Yet he hesitated, and the reason he did only filled him with even more fury.

The little bastard knows what happened at Camp Chihiro
. The thought grated through the bishop's mind like gravel through a manufactory's gears.
Somehow, those frigging broadsheets have gotten through into
my
camp, and this insubordinate little shit knows what happened to Father Zherohm, Father Fhrancys, and Brother Zhorj. That's what this is really about. He's running scared that the demonic “
Seijin
Dialydd” will get
him
if he doesn't lick the prisoners' arses!

A trickle of cold arsenic ran under the magma of Zhynkyns' rage. Deep inside, he knew what that arsenic was, however fiercely he refused to face it. And in that same deeply hidden place, he knew Aizak Mohmohtahny wasn't driven by fear of the false
seijins
' retribution. The Pasqualate might be—was—tragically wrong about the consequences of the false kindness that encouraged a heretic to persist in his heresy, but he was sincere. It was Camp Dynnys'
inquisitors
who were terrified that Mab's bullets or blade might find them.

The way in which his fellow Schuelerites had allowed their purpose and resolve to falter in the face of a threat to their mortal bodies was enough to turn Maikel Zhynkyns' stomach. It was more than simply disgusting; it was a failure before God and a defiance of His most holy command through Schueler Himself. Despite all he could do, the tempo at Camp Dynnys had undeniably dropped. It was reflected everywhere he looked, from the rate of confessions from inmates to the catastrophic drop in summary judgments written up by his agents inquisitor as they sifted the evidence. They were careful to cover themselves by filling in all the blanks, dotting all the “i”s and crossing all the “t”s. They'd suddenly rediscovered all the petty legalisms Inquisitor General Wylbyr and the Grand Inquisitor himself had set aside in the face of the mortal threat the Charisian-spawned heresy posed to Mother Church and God's plan for all the world. It was the tactic of a law master more interested in sterile legalisms than the true purpose of the law, yet it gave them cover—at least until the Inquisitor General, Archbishop Wyllym, or the Grand Inquisitor denounced it—and at the moment, they were actually more afraid of the “
seijins
” then they were of Mother Church and the Inquisition.

And what truly stoked the vitriol of his fury was that deep, dark, never-admitted awareness that
he
was just as terrified of Dialydd Mab as any of them were.

If I order Tymahk to arrest him, the bastard's likely to refuse. He'll say Mohmohtahny hasn't done anything against the Army's regulations. And he'll point out that that's why I have inquisitors. And that's the rub, isn't it? Because I
do
have agents inquisitor who would be required by their vows to obey me and arrest the little prick … and they might not do it
.

It was unlikely anyone would be stupid enough to defy him openly. Certainly not when word of their defiance would inevitably reach the Grand Inquisitor or Zion! But every single one of them would try to find a way to make sure someone
else
arrested Mohmohtahny and—at least in theory—nominated himself for Dialydd Mab's next bullet. The order would be passed along, misfiled, conveniently overlooked, or anything else they could think of to delay the inevitable. Eventually, Mohmohtahny
would
be arrested and almost certainly sent to the Punishment, but the simple fact that it would take days—possibly five-days—would undercut Zhynkyns' authority far more seriously than Mohmohtahny's present actions possibly could.

Unless the bishop wanted to
personally
arrest the Pasqualate. That would be one way to avoid that potentially poisonous delay.

And if Dialydd Mab truly existed—which he did—and if his demonic familiars carried word of Zhynkyns' actions to him—which they might—then
Maikel Zhynkyns
' name might just appear on one of the notes Mab and his fellows left behind them, sealed in the blood of inquisitors.

The bishop drew a deep, steadying breath.

“Father Aizak,” he said, “Mother Church is at war, and not just any war. This is
Jihad
, a battle for her very survival and for the souls of every man, woman, and child ever born or ever to
be
born. I understand the distinction you're making between the accused heretic and the
convicted
heretic, but this is no time for legal niceties or for false kindness which ultimately encourages the heretic to cling to his heresy rather than renounce it and seek the welcoming arms of God. If you persist in these activities, if you persist in going beyond your responsibilities to your comrades in the Army of God, then I will have no choice but to present my report on your actions—and their probable consequences—to the Inquisitor General himself. I don't think he'd find that report pleasant reading … or that you'd find his reaction to it particularly pleasant, either. Do you understand me, Father?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

There might have been a tiny flicker of fear—or uneasiness, at least—in Mohmohtahny's eyes, but the young Pasqualate only nodded.

“Then go and consider very carefully what I've said to you today,” Zhynkyns said icily, trying to pretend to himself that he hadn't just kicked the can down the road rather than dealing with it. “I would advise you most earnestly not to find yourself standing before me for the same reason again.”

He held Mohmohtahny's gaze for a slow, measured ten-count. Then he nodded coldly.

“That will be all, Father.”

 

.XIX.

Evyrtyn, and The Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, The South March, Republic of Siddarmark

“
Shit!
”

Private Lairy Ghanzalvez cowered in the bottom of his muddy hole as the rumbling,
ripping
sound of heretic shells snarled overhead. They sounded for all the world like a sail splitting in a high wind. That was a sound Ghanzalvez had heard the one time he'd been foolish enough to venture out to sea on his brother-in-law's fishing boat to trawl the Dohlar Bank. The memory of that stormy disaster—he and the brother-in-law in question had spent two days clinging to the keel of their overturned vessel before another trawler found them—was why he'd sworn he'd never go to sea again.

At the moment, a mere hurricane would have been a welcome diversion, however.

The shells sizzled onward, then hammered Ghanzalvez' bones with the shock of their explosions. The red-cored eruptions shattered the already battered church upon whose steeple one of Baron Traylmyn's signal parties had mounted their flagstaff. Shingles, bits and pieces of carved angels and archangels, sparkling shards of stained glass, and jagged chunks of building stone flew up and out in a fiery whirlwind, then crashed back in a lethal rain of debris, and the private clasped both hands over his helmeted head in a frail effort at self-protection.