At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.V.

Rhobair Duchairn’s Office,

The Temple,

City of Zion,

The Temple Lands,

Republic of Siddarmark.

“That was delicious, Rhobair.”

Vicar Allayn Maigwair wiped his mouth and laid the snowy napkin down beside the empty bowl before he sat back with a sigh of repletion.

“Thank you,” Rhobair Duchairn replied with a smile. “I let Brother Lynkyn keep his cooks, but I extorted their clam chowder recipe out of them at knifepoint. I’m glad you enjoyed it, Allayn.”

“Oh, I did. I did!” Maigwair shook his head. “In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more because I’ve rediscovered how much I prefer simple menus. There’s something … honest about food like clam chowder. I never really enjoyed those fancified dinners we used to have before Zhaspahr got the wild hair up his arse about Charis. Although if I’m going to be honest,” he smiled with a trace of bitterness, “that had less to do with menus and more to do with the fact that I knew the rest of you considered me the lightweight of our little group.”

Duchairn opened his mouth, but Maigwair shook his head before the other vicar could speak.

“The main reason that bothered me was because I figured it was probably true,” he confessed with a slightly broader smile. “On the other hand, it’s occurred to me since that you can be smart as Proctor himself without having a lick of common sense. Our good friend Zhaspahr strikes me as a case in point. And then there’s Zahmsyn.”

“Good of you to leave me out of their company,” Duchairn said wryly as Maigwair paused, and the Church’s captain general snorted.

“I’m not going to propose any of us as geniuses, given the fucking mess we’ve managed to land the entire Church in! And ourselves; let’s not forget that! But the truth is, you were the only one who even tried to put the brakes on. I sure as Shan-wei didn’t!”

He scowled, reached for his beer stein, and finished its contents in a single long swallow.

“Keeps me up nights worrying, that does,” he said in a much quieter voice. “I’m not looking forward to what God and Langhorne will have to say to me on the other side.”

“None of us should be,” Duchairn said in an even quieter voice.

He leaned back in the swivel chair on his side of the enormous desk—he and Maigwair were sharing yet another working lunch in his office—and contemplated the other man. They’d been forced into ever closer partnership as they coped with the rising flood of the Jihad’s disastrous requirements. The fact that they knew Zhaspahr Clyntahn regarded them both with the utmost suspicion—and was undoubtedly simply waiting for the appropriate moment to act upon that suspicion—had only glued them more tightly together. And in the process, Duchairn had realized his own view of Maigwair as a slow, unimaginative plodder had been … less than fair. Or accurate. Allayn Maigwair might not be the most brilliant man he’d ever met, but he was a long, long way from the stupidest. And as he’d just pointed out, brilliance all too often ran a piss-poor second to common sense, and that he’d turned out to have in abundance. Yet for all the closeness with which they’d come to coordinate their plans and efforts, this was the first time Maigwair had ever expressed his own misgivings about the Jihad’s origin—or probable outcome—quite so clearly.

“I don’t think any rational human being would think God wants to see His children slaughter one another in His name,” the Church’s treasurer continued, his soft voice clearly audible against the muted backdrop of the blizzard howling outside the mystically heated comfort of the Temple. “Maybe it is necessary, sometimes, but surely it ought to’ve been a last resort, not the first one we reached for!”

“I know.” Maigwair set his stein back beside his empty soup bowl and gazed down into it for a long moment. “I know.” He looked back up at Duchairn. “But we’re astride the slash lizard, and we’ve taken all of Mother Church there with us.” His mouth was a grim line. “Until we’ve dealt with the outside threat, we can’t risk trying to deal with any that might be … closer to home.”

Duchairn nodded slowly, and his eyes were as dark as Maigwair’s.

You’re right, Allayn. Unfortunately, some outside threats are easier to deal with than others, he thought with a certain acid humor. And then there’s the little problem of timing. Supposing that we somehow miraculously “deal” with Charis and the Republic, what happens when Zhaspahr realizes we have? Just how are we supposed to “deal” with him if he has the two of us killed as soon as he decides he no longer needs us to keep his fat arse in the Grand Inquisitor’s chair? That is sort of the heart of the question, isn’t it?

He thought about asking that out loud, but he didn’t, and as he studied Maigwair’s expression, he felt vaguely ashamed by the temptation. Because the truth was that he honestly didn’t think Maigwair’s first concern was over his own survival. Not any longer. And if it had taken the other vicar a little longer to reach that point, at least he had reached it. And the Writ itself taught that what mattered was the destination, not how long it took to get there.

Some things were best not said, however, even between just the two of them, and even here in his own office. If nothing else, it was dangerous to get into the habit of confiding too easily—or too openly, at least—when the Inquisition commanded so many spies, so many sets of ears. Maigwair had been given fresh proof of that only last June when Clyntahn summoned a dozen of the captain general’s most trusted colleagues to receive their orders to betray him. Unfortunately for the Grand Inquisitor, the “Fist of God” had blown up the traitors—along with the Second Church of the Holy Pasquale of the Faithful of Zion—and Maigwair had moved with surprising speed to take advantage of the sudden vacuum at the top of the Army of God’s hierarchy.

He’d been rather more careful about who he’d selected to fill those offices this time around. It was to be hoped he’d been careful enough.

And in the meantime, the treasurer reminded himself, while winning the Jihad would be nice, we somehow have to see to it that we at least don’t lose it. God knows I’ve heard of lighter challenges!

“Well,” he said out loud, cradling his own stein in both hands, “I think we’ve covered just about everything from my side, at least as far as current production plans are concerned. Is there anything else you think we need to discuss on that side, Allayn?”

“No.” Maigwair shook his head and laid one hand on the fat looseleaf binder beside his tray. “I’m comfortable that we’ve come up with the best projections we can based on reports from the front and Brother Lynkyn’s estimates.” He shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I was satisfied with those projections, because I’m damned well not, and I really don’t like what meeting them is costing the Army in terms of personnel. But that doesn’t mean we can come up with better ones.”

“I wish we could cut you a little more slack on the manpower side,” Duchairn said soberly. “Unfortunately, I need those men badly.”

“Oh, I know that! And if it’s a choice between putting them into uniform and having enough weapons to go around for the men we already have in uniform, I’m all in favor of letting you have them! It’s just the caliber of the men in question. And then there’s the little matter of how much more weight this makes us throw on Rainbow Waters and the Mighty Host.” The captain general shook his head. “It’s slowing the training process, too, and that means we’ll be slower hitting our deployment targets this summer.”

Duchairn nodded. The voracious demand of the manufactories supporting Mother Church’s war effort was cutting into the personnel available to Mother Church’s armies. There’d always been some competition in that regard, but it had gotten steadily worse—far worse—as the Church found itself confronting the floodtide of Charisian productivity. Duchairn’s comb-out of the great orders had provided a huge upsurge in available hands two years ago, but much of that manpower surge had vanished like a prong buck sliding down a crusher serpent’s gullet. Not because the hands the personnel requisition had provided weren’t working harder than ever, but because the previous year’s military catastrophes had required even more weapons—replacement weapons, as well as the newly designed and developed ones—than anyone had dreamed might be the case.

The production techniques Lynkyn Fultyn and Tahlbaht Bryairs had pioneered right here in Zion helped enormously, and Fultyn had assembled what he called his “brain trust” to push that process along. Duchairn knew the Chihirite monk was nervous about pulling so many of his more innovative thinkers together into a single group so close to Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s personal eye, and the treasurer had been careful to point out in his memos to his colleagues how incredibly important that group’s efforts were. That didn’t keep him from worrying about the targets he and Fultyn had pasted onto those men’s backs, but it was the best he could do, and they needed the “brain trust.” They were not only Fultyn’s primary problem solvers—the analysts he turned to whenever yet another new piece of Charisian technology was brought to his attention—but were also engaged in what Fultyn called “efficiency studies.” They were specifically charged with studying the production techniques and processes being mandated and enforced across every single one of Mother Church’s manufactories for the specific purpose of finding ways in which those techniques could become even more efficient.

Yet even with all the “brain trust” could do, Mother Church’s productivity per man-hour remained drastically lower than that of Charis. There were times that seemed impossible when Duchairn looked at the thousands of artillery pieces—and the hundreds of thousands of rifles—pouring from her manufactories, yet it remained true. And, far worse, because the capability of those cannon and rifles remained inferior to that of the weapons in heretic hands, her defenders had no choice but to substitute quantity for quality. The Treasury had poured out a floodtide of marks building manufactories to make that possible, and that tide continued to flow, even though Duchairn had been forced to more and more desperate expediencies to sustain it. But manufactories needed far more than bricks and mortar, and money wasn’t the only thing that had to be carefully budgeted to meet the Jihad’s insatiable appetites.

More and more of the Temple Lands’ women were moving into manufactory jobs and proving themselves equal or superior to the men who would normally have held those jobs, but that process was in its early stages and there simply weren’t enough women—yet, at least—in the labor force to sustain the necessary production levels. Quite aside from the hands which could be taught the necessary skills “on-the-job,” the steadily expanding numbers of manufactories needed hands which were already skilled. Even more critically, they needed supervisors, people who could teach those skills, who could implement the directives coming down from Fultyn’s St. Kylmahn’s offices.

That was why Maigwair had instituted a draconian manpower allocation policy within the Army of God. Experienced mechanics, and especially experienced master mechanics, who enlisted (or, increasingly, were conscripted) for the AOG, never saw an army parade ground. Instead, they became corporals or sergeants who were handed over to Duchairn and assigned wherever they were most badly needed. The numbers provided that way were lower than one might have thought, given the scale of the Army of God’s rebuilding efforts, but they were a critical component of Duchairn’s weapons production. Yet they would have been almost equally valuable to the Army’s frontline maintenance commands, and even if that hadn’t been true, their education, skills, and intelligence meant they represented a large supply of men who would have made excellent officers. Given the numbers of new formations Maigwair had been forced to stand up, the loss of so many potential officers was painful indeed.

“Allayn, if there was any—” Duchairn began, but Maigwair shook his head.

“I said I didn’t think we could come up with better arrangements, and I meant it, Rhobair. The worst part is the delay in getting our new divisions trained up to something that can hope to face Charisians in the field. The number of experienced officers and noncoms we provided to the Mighty Host a couple of years ago is biting us on the arse in that regard, I’m afraid. But the delay means the Harchongians will have to carry even more of the load in the field longer than my people had originally projected.” The captain general’s expression was grim. “We’d hoped to have them ready for deployment by late November. It looks now like I may be able to get the first new divisions on their way by the end of next month. It’ll be May, at least, and more likely June of even early July before we can get the bulk of them to the front, and I’ll be honest with you, Rhobair. Even when we get them there, they’ll still need a lot of additional training before I’d consider them suitable for anything much more demanding than holding fortified positions. They certainly won’t be equal to Charisian mounted infantry in any sort of mobile battle, that’s for damned sure! But there’s nothing we can do to change that.” He shrugged. “Sometimes your only choices are between bad and worse, I’m afraid.”

“Been a lot of that going around for the last few years,” Duchairn agreed sourly. “But it looks to me like Rainbow Waters has come up with the best way to use what we can give him.”

“Assuming he can put his plans into effect without any more … elbow joggling from certain parties in Zion.”

Maigwair’s tone was even sourer than Duchairn’s had been. But then the captain general shrugged again.

“The truth is,” he told the treasurer, “he’s got a lot better chance of pulling that off than anyone else would. And thank God he’s got a brain that works!”

“From your mouth to Langhorne’s ears,” Duchairn agreed reverently.

Taychau Daiyang clearly intended to fight his own sort of campaign, and taking all of the known factors into account, his was almost certainly the best campaign plan available. As Maigwair had just said, sometimes it came down to a choice between bad or worse, but the Earl of Rainbow Waters clearly understood what was in play—not just on the field of battle, but in the foundries and manufactories.

Despite how steeply Mother Church’s total production of weapons had grown relative to the Charisians over the last year or two, he was not at all confident about the outcome of that side of the Jihad. In fact, Duchairn had no doubt that curve was about to begin reversing itself, and not just because the Treasury was so close to outright collapse.

Both he and Maigwair were convinced Zhaspahr Clyntahn was holding back information the Inquisition had gleaned about the Empire of Charis’ manufacturing capacity. That was ultimately stupid; the reality would become painfully evident on the battlefield sooner or later, and Duchairn couldn’t decide whether Clyntahn was concealing things because he genuinely believed the Charisians were profiting from demonic intervention he didn’t want spreading to Mother Church’s own manufactories or if he was simply in what a Bédardist would have called “denial.”

Given the way he’d twisted the Proscriptions into a pretzel any time he decided it suited his purposes, it was probably the latter.

Whatever else he might try to hide, however, the Inquisitor had been forced to admit that at least a half dozen additional major manufactory sites were about to come on-stream in the Empire of Charis. Three of them, in Old Charis itself, bade fair to eventually rival the sprawling Delthak Works which had spawned so many of the Church’s military disasters, but that was scarcely the worst of it. The Maikelberg Works in Chisholm were also expanding at breakneck speed, and reports indicated that the Charisian Crown was using the windfall of the Silverlode Strike to finance additional works in Chisholm and Emerald, as well. There were even reports of two new manufactories breaking ground in Corisande—and another in Zebediah, of all damned places! And to make bad worse, the majority of Siddarmark’s foundries and manufactories had always lain in the eastern portion of the Republic, which meant they’d been beyond the Sword of Schueler’s reach. Most of them were once again working propositions, and while there was no way they’d be matching Charisian levels of efficiency anytime soon, their productivity was still rising steadily … and at least as swiftly as anything Mother Church could boast.

And if the Imperial Charisian Navy succeeded in its quest to control the Gulf of Dohlar.…

The truth is that no matter what we do—no matter what we physically could do, even if I had an unlimited supply of marks—we’ve lost the production race, he thought bleakly. They’re not simply more efficient than we are in their existing manufactories, the number of their manufactories is increasing more rapidly than ours … and their rate of expansion’s climbing like one of Brother Lynkyn’s rockets. And despite everything Brother Lynkyn and people like Lieutenant Zwaigair can do, the weapons they’re producing—especially their heavy weapons, like their artillery and those damned ironclad warships—are better than ours. And it looks like their rate of improvement’s continuing to climb just as quickly as their manufactory capacity! At the moment, we’re still producing more total weapons—a lot more total weapons—per month than they are, but by midsummer—early winter, at the latest—even that won’t be true any longer.

The tsunami coming out of Charis would simply bury the Mighty Host and the Army of God on the field of battle. That was obvious to both him and Maigwair, however resolutely Clyntahn might continue to insist that a man armed with a rock and the invincible spirit of God was superior to any rifle-armed heretic ever born. And since there was no hope of preventing the sprawling Charisian merchant fleet from delivering those ever-increasing numbers of weapons to their armies, Mother Church’s only hope was to find a way to eliminate the armies themselves before the tidal wave destroyed everything in its path. Which, given the past record of the Army of God and its allies, would be a … nontrivial challenge, Duchairn thought mordantly.

“How likely do you really think it is that Rainbow Waters will be able to follow his campaign plan? His actual plan, I mean; not the one he’s officially submitted for approval.”

“Noticed that, did you?” Maigwair gave the treasurer a lopsided smile. “Careful to hide it all in the ‘contingencies’ section, wasn’t he?” The captain general shook his head in admiration. “Just between you and me, I’ve never really liked Harchongese bureaucrats very much. Always seemed to me that they were even worse than our bureaucrats! But there are times when a good, bluff military man such as myself can only watch in awe and admiration as they dance rings around their superiors.”

Duchairn chuckled, but Maigwair was right. Rainbow Waters—or someone on his staff, at least—obviously understood the fine art of obfuscation even better than most Harchongians, and the earl knew exactly what Zhaspahr Clyntahn wanted to hear. Duchairn was fairly sure he also appreciated the way Harchong’s monumental loyalty to Mother Church inclined the Grand Inquisitor to put far more faith in a Harchongese commander than in anyone else. He’d certainly played to that inclination with consummate skill! His official dispatches were brimful of the offensive spirit, pointing out the way in which his fortifications and massive supply dumps would enable him to operate with far greater freedom once the weather permitted a general advance. And in the meantime, of course, they provided security against any sudden, unexpected move by the heretics.

What he very carefully hadn’t pointed out was that he had absolutely no intention of ordering any of the general advances he’d laid out in such enthusiastic detail, supply base or no. His calculation of the military realities—which he’d shared privately with Maigwair, via an oral report delivered by Archbishop Militant Gustyv Walkyr—was that the sustained, rapid fire of the Charisians’ new rifles and revolvers, coupled with their portable angle-guns and heavier artillery, would make any assault prohibitively expensive. He had the manpower to “win” at least some offensive battles simply by throwing bodies at the enemy, but the process would gut even the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels. And, given the Charisians’ greater mobility, any assault he launched, however brilliantly it succeeded, was unlikely to prove decisive, since he couldn’t prevent his enemies from slipping away and eluding pursuit.

He hadn’t said a single word about that in any of his written reports. Acknowledging that Mother Church couldn’t possibly take the war to her enemies and win wasn’t something Zhaspahr Clyntahn wanted to hear, even out of a Harchongian. And despite his … pragmatic awareness of the realities he faced, the earl himself remained far from defeated, because he’d also calculated that those same realities favored the defense whoever happened to be doing the defending. Having faced that starting point squarely, he’d proceeded to throw away the rule book—even the brand-new one, devised by the Army of God—and created an entirely new operational approach. He’d even come up with a term to summarize his new thinking: the “tactical defense/strategic offense,” he called it. And from Maigwair’s description of it, it struck Duchairn as commendably clear and logical.

The earl had no intention of simply lying down and dying—or running away—whenever the Charisians finally put in their appearance. His “defense in depth” would slow their attack, bleed their forces, force them to use up manpower, weapons, and ammunition fighting their way through one fortified position after another. And then, at the moment they were fully extended, he would launch his counteroffensive. With luck, the enemy would be caught off-balance and forced back, possibly even fully or partially enveloped and destroyed in detail. At the very least, his armies should be able to regain their original positions for a far lower price than that opponent had paid to push them back in the first place.

In fact, the difference in price tags might—might—be enough to offset the Charisians’ preposterous ability to conjure new manufactories out of thin air. In his bleaker moments, Duchairn suspected that hope was whistling in the dark, but what he knew for certain was that it was the only approach which offered even a possibility of success.

No doubt if Rainbow Waters’ strategy had been honestly explained to Clyntahn—which, thank God, no one had any intention of doing—the Grand Inquisitor would have denounced it as defeatist, since it conceded the offensive to the enemy. He might even have been right about that. The problem was that any other strategy would simply lead to Mother Church’s far speedier collapse.

Duchairn winced as he used the noun “collapse” even in the privacy of his own thoughts, but there was no point pretending. He and his hideously overworked staff had done a better job of propping up Mother Church’s finances than he’d ever dared hope they might. Yet despite every miracle they’d worked, they were only rearranging deck chairs as the ship foundered beneath them. Revenue streams were better than projected, and the initial response to his “Victory Bonds” had been far more favorable than anticipated, yet the civilian side of the ecnomy teetered on the very brink of collapse. He’d declared freezes of both wages and prices and instituted rationing—managed by the parish priests—of the most critical commodties, backed up by the full power of the Inquisition, but that had only succeeded in driving the price increases underground. Unless they were willing to equate black marketeering with treason to the Jihad and resort to the Punishment for violations—which he flatly refused to do—that was only going to get worse, and nothing he or the Inquisition did seemed able to halt the increasingly steep discount of the Temple’s new, printed marks in favor of gold and silver. As of his last monthly report, the “exchange rate” was running at over sixty-to-one in favor of hard coinage, and despite the persistent (and accurate, unfortunately) rumors that the Temple’s more recently coined marks had been adulterated, the differential continued to climb. The steadily approaching failure of his fiscal structure was inevitable, and the ever more drastic lengths to which he’d gone to stave it off as long as possible were only going to make the crash even more catastrophic when it finally occurred.

By the time the summer campaign season began in northern Haven and Howard, the Mighty Host would have just under two million men in the field. The newly revitalized Army of God, straining every sinew over the winter, would have almost eight hundred thousand new troops with the colors; combined with its surviving strength from the previous year, Mother Church would have just over a million men of her own.

That meant Maigwair would deploy very close to three million men this year, exclusive of anything Dohlar and the Border States might be able to sustain. That would be a far greater troop strength—far better equipped and with far more artillery support—than Mother Church had ever had before, although as Maigwair had just pointed out, the new AOG divisions wouldn’t be available before June or July. They would, however, be coming up behind the Mighty Host rapidly, which would provide a cushion against Harchongese losses in the earlier part of the campaign season. In fact, the combined strength of the Host and the new AOG formations would be at least four times as great as the Inquisition’s worst-case estimate of the numbers of men Cayleb and Stohnar could throw against them. The sheer firepower that represented was awesome to contemplate, and it seemed incredible—impossible—that it could be shattered the same way the Armies of the Sylmahn and of Glacierheart had been shattered the year before, especially with Rainbow Waters’ cool, practical brain in command.

Yet it could happen. Charisians were as mortal and as fallible as anyone, whatever Clyntahn might say about demonic intervention. What had happened to them in the Kaudzhu Narrows demonstrated that clearly enough! And if anyone could hand them another defeat, this time on land, that anyone had to be Rainbow Waters. Yet in Rhobair Duchairn’s estimation, even he had only an even chance—at the very best—of pulling it off. And if he failed, if the Charisians destroyed the Mighty Host the way they had every other army they’d faced—or even if they only drove it back with heavy casualties and the loss of much of its equipment—the Jihad was over.

They might find millions more men prepared to die in Mother Church’s defense, men willing to charge into the enemy’s guns with no more than raw courage, sheer faith, and their bare hands. But bare hands would be all they’d have, because Mother Church simply couldn’t replace the weapons of the armies she had in the field now. Not again. Win or lose, live or die, her purse was effectively empty. They were at the last stretch of her resources, and if those resources weren’t enough, her defeat was certain.

“Well,” he sighed, draining off the last of his own beer and setting the stein back on his desk, “I suppose we’ll find out whether or not the Earl can pull it off soon enough. In the meantime, I wonder what the Desnairians are up to?”

“Nothing good,” Maigwair growled.

“Well, they did get badly burned in Shiloh,” Duchairn pointed out more judiciously. “What happened to them at Geyra Bay didn’t make it any better, either. I’m sure—” the irony in his tone glittered like a bared razor “—they’re doing their very best to get back into the field against Mother Church’s enemies.”

“And if you really believe that, I’ve got some bottomland to sell you,” Maigwair said dryly. “Just don’t ask me what it’s on the bottom of.”

“Oh, I agree they’re planning on keeping their heads as far down as they can—up their own arses, actually, as far as I can tell,” Duchairn replied. “They are still getting at least some of their tithes through, though. In fact, they’ve even turned up the wick. I’m not sure exactly how they’re managing it, but they’re actually eleven percent ahead of their tithe obligations, even on the new, steeper schedule. Not only that, the Desnairian crown’s bought something like twenty million marks of the new bond issue, too.” The treasurer shook his head. “Must be even more gold in those mines than I thought there was.”

“Trying to buy off Zhaspahr’s inquisitors, are they?”

“Pretty much.” Duchairn nodded. “On the other hand, you know, it’s remotely possible you and I are a little too cynical where they’re concerned. Zahmsyn keeps telling me that, anyway.”

“Zahmsyn’s telling you anything he thinks will keep Zhaspahr from deciding he’s expendable,” Maigwair said cynically. “Especially because, frankly, he is. Expendable, I mean.”

And that, Duchairn reflected, was brutally true. Vicar Zahmsyn Trynair, who’d once been the mastermind of the Group of Four that truly plotted Mother Church’s course—whatever canon law might say—had become little more than a cipher. Of course, looking back, Duchairn had his doubts about the degree to which Trynair (and everyone else) had always thought he was the Group of Four’s mastermind in the first place.

Over the last year or so, especially, the treasurer had come to realize Clyntahn had been heading towards the destruction of Charis long before Erayk Dynnys’ supposed failures gave him the excuse he needed. The only question in Duchairn’s mind was his motive for deciding Charis must die. It was always possible, given the Grand Inquisitor’s blend of gluttonous hedonism and fanaticism, that he truly had distrusted Charisian orthodoxy. Yet it was equally possible—and, frankly, more likely—that he’d seen the Jihad—or at least a jihad—as the strategy which would finally give the Inquisition total and unquestioned control of Mother Church and the entire world from the very start.

He doubted Clyntahn had ever imagined Mother Church’s inevitable victory would be as costly as the Jihad had already proven, far less that it might not be quite as inevitable as he’d thought, but the cost in blood and agony—in other people’s blood and agony—wouldn’t have fazed him for a moment. If a few million innocent people had to die in order for the Inquisition—and Zhaspahr Clyntahn—to secure absolute power, that would have struck him as a completely acceptable price.

If Duchairn was right, Clyntahn had been pulling the rest of the Group of Four’s puppet strings all along. And whatever the Grand Inquisitor’s secret agenda might have been, Trynair had depended upon the twin strengths of his control of Grand Vicar Erek XVII and his ability to orchestrate smooth, skillful diplomatic strategies and policies, both within and without the ranks of the vicarate. To the secular rulers of Safehold, he’d been the face of Mother Church’s will in the world; to the rest of the vicarate, he’d been the suave diplomat who adroitly balanced one faction of prelates against another. Yet now even the Grand Vicar was too terrified of Clyntahn’s Inquisition to defy him, and all those other machinations, all that diplomatic footwork, meant absolutely nothing. At bottom, diplomats operated on credit, and if there was anyone in the world who understood the limitations of credit, Rhobair Duchairn was that man. When diplomacy failed, when your bets and your hedges and bluffs were called, only raw power truly counted, and Trynair was no longer a power broker.

I guess the Group of Four really has become the Group of Three, because there are only three poles of power left: the Army that has to fight the Jihad; the Treasury that has to somehow pay for the Jihad; and the Inquisition that has to keep people willing to support the Jihad. So it comes down to Allayn, Zhaspahr … and me. But at least Allayn and I recognize—or are willing to admit we recognize, anyway—that there are limits to the power we control. I truly think Zhaspahr isn’t … and what’s going to happen when he finally comes face-to-face with the truth?

Rhobair Duchairn had asked himself many questions over the past five years.

Very few of them had filled his blood with as much ice as that one did.