At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.VIII.

The Temple,

City of Zion,

The Temple Lands.

“Yes, Your Eminence?” the under-priest said, entering Wyllym Rayno’s office in response to the archbishop’s signal.

“Have we heard anything from Father Allayn this morning?”

“Why, no, Your Eminence.” The under-priest shook his head. “Were you expecting a report or a message from him?”

“I was expecting to see him here in my office twenty minutes ago.” Rayno looked less than amused. The archbishop had always started his days early; given the current situation, he’d taken to beginning them well before dawn, and all of his senior subordinates had learned to do the same. “Send someone to find out what’s delayed him. And why he didn’t tell me he was going to be delayed!”

“At once, Your Eminence.”

The under-priest bowed and disappeared, and Rayno climbed out of his chair and stomped his way to his corner office’s window. Unlike the space made available to vicars, his office boasted none of the mystically changing scenes of woodland, forest, or mountain. He did have an excellent view across the Plaza of Martyrs to the harbor, however, and he stood with his hands clasped behind him, glowering at the scenery.

Allayn Wynchystair had better have a damned good reason for his tardiness—and an even better one for his failure to warn Rayno he’d be late! More than enough was going wrong without one of his most senior deputies suddenly deciding he had better things to do than bring him up-to-date on the Fist of Kau-Yung’s latest atrocities.

The archbishop growled a curse.

The scene before him looked perfectly ordinary. A huge, blazing arm of the sun had only just heaved itself above the eastern horizon, white wave crests chased themselves across Lake Pei, and the bright banners of Mother Church snapped gaily on the sharp breeze whipping in from the lake. Sails moved across the lake, the first few pedestrians of morning moved along the streets, and all of it was reassuringly normal, even tranquil.

And it was all a lie.

He sighed, his expression far more anxious than he’d allowed the under-priest to see, as he faced the truth.

Zion was a powder keg, and for the first time in his career, he couldn’t predict what was about to happen in its streets. The panic he couldn’t see from his window hung over the city of God like a foul miasma. Like a pestilence. The news from the front lines was devastating, and despite Rayno’s opposition, Zhaspahr Clyntahn had decreed that the Inquisition would suppress word of Earl Golden Tree’s surrender, just as it had attempted to suppress news of Bishop Militant Lainyl’s. And, just as it had failed in Lainyl Brygham’s case, it had failed in Golden Tree’s. Those accursed broadsheets—those impossible, demonic broadsheets—had shouted the news from every wall, every doorway. And whatever Clyntahn might tell himself, whatever he might insist upon in his increasingly savage—and rambling—conferences, the people of Zion believed those broadsheets more than they believed Mother Church herself.

Of course they did, and with good reason. That was why Rayno had argued in favor of telling the truth from the outset. Censor news if they must, but tell the truth in the official news they did release, lest the people reading those broadsheets decide it was God’s enemies who told the truth and His champions who lied. The Inquisition had never had to worry about that before those broadsheets, though, and Clyntahn seemed unable to admit that the techniques which had always worked before would work no longer.

Then there was the upsurge in the “Fist of God’s” attacks on senior clergy, especially among the episcopate. That was bad enough, but over the last five-day, eighteen regular agents inquisitor had been ambushed as they went about their duties. Seventeen of them were dead, the eighteenth was in a coma, and no one—not one single soul—had seen a Shan-wei-damned thing. No one. When the Inquisition couldn’t turn up a single witness to the brutal slaying of one of its own—when everyone insisted they didn’t have a clue what had happened—they were entering uncharted seas. Nothing like that had ever happened before. And the one thing he was certain of was that those murders hadn’t been committed by the Fist of God. The attacks had been too … sloppy. Too impassioned. They were the handiwork of outrage, not of a calculated strategy. Besides, the Fist of God had always disdained casual attacks on randomly chosen street agents inquisitor. No. Those attacks were the work of ordinary Zionites, the result of the rage boiling just beneath that tranquil surface outside his window.

It doesn’t mean the city’s entire population’s caught up in it, Wyllym, he told himself. How many people does it take to kill eighteen men, especially when they’re caught alone or with only a single companion to help them? It could be no more than a handful of malcontents! So Zhaspahr’s right. The attacks don’t prove the … disaffection is general.

No, it didn’t conclusively prove anything of the sort. But Wyllym Rayno had been an agent inquisitor—and a prosecutor inquisitor—in his day. He couldn’t have begun to count the number of cases he’d made on far flimsier evidence than the seventeen bodies in the Inquisition’s morgue.

And now Wynchystair couldn’t even be bothered to keep his appointment! Well, he was going to get an earful when he did arrive, and—

“Excuse me, Your Eminence.”

Rayno turned from the window. The under-priest was back, and his face was pale, his expression visibly shaken.

“What?” the archbishop demanded, fighting a sudden sinking sensation.

“Father Allayn—” The under-priest swallowed. “Father Allayn is dead, Your Eminence. He and Father Zhaksyn, Father Paiair, and Father Kwynlyn … they’re all dead.”

“All of them?!” Rayno stared at the aide.

“All of them,” the under-priest confirmed. “I just heard from Father Allayn’s secretary. He says … he says Father Allayn had summoned the others to an early meeting—over breakfast, I think—to hear their reports before his meeting with you. Someone threw a hand-bomb through the breakfast parlor window.”

“Schueler,” Rayno whispered. He stared at the under-priest for several seconds, then shook himself. “Tell Bishop Markys I want to see him immediately!” he snapped.

* * *

“That doesn’t sound good,” Father Elaiys Makrakton observed, his expression uneasy. The under-priest glanced at his assistant, Brother Riely Stahrns, then looked at the Temple Guard sergeant in command of the squad assigned to support them.

“Don’t ask me, Father,” the sergeant said edgily, head cocked as he listened to the shouts coming around the corner ahead of them.

“Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Makrakton said, his tone considerably heartier than he actually felt.

“If you say so, Father.”

The sergeant sounded as doubtful as Makrakton truly felt, but he jerked his head at his men.

“You heard the Father. Look sharp!”

Heads nodded, and Makrakton tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed the bayonets being fixed on the Guardsmen’s rifles. Then he drew a deep breath and nodded to Stahrns.

The daily briefing had all sounded so … routine this morning. It wasn’t a duty anyone wanted, of course, but someone had to go tear down the blasphemous broadsheets that went up every night, and today it was their turn. Makrakton had done his share of avoiding it any way he could. There was something about just touching the things, about coming into contact with something so obviously unclean. And even if they were torn down, they only reappeared the next morning. Never in exactly the same place, but there were parts of town—stretches like Zheppsyn Avenue—where they always appeared. They might be on a different building—on St. Nysbet’s today and on the Zheppsyn Avenue Library tomorrow—but they were always here. Anyone willing to believe their lies, could always find a fresh load of them on Zheppsyn.

He led the way around the corner, turning into the avenue, and his jaw tightened as he saw the crowd standing around the message board outside St. Nysbet’s. That was where the parish priest posted the day’s scripture every morning, but that wasn’t what they were reading today, and he felt beads of sweat under his priest’s cap as he realized how big the crowd was. There had to be fifty or sixty men standing around the message board, voices raised in an indistinct but angry surf of sound, and even as he watched, more trotted down the street, heading for the crowd.

Well, they couldn’t have that, now could they?

“Follow me,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth and went striding towards the growing knot of men.

“Here, now!” he shouted. “What’s all this, then?! You people know better than to believe the sorts of lies in those things!” He jabbed an accusatory finger at the broadsheets he could now see tacked to the message board. “Move along! Go about your business before I have to start taking names and—”

“No more lies!”

Makrakton’s head jerked up as the shout rang out. He didn’t know exactly where it had come from. It didn’t seem to have come from the men around the message board, but he couldn’t be certain. What he was certain of was that the entire crowd had turned to face him.

“I said—” he began again.

“No more lies and no more murders!” the same voice shouted. “The broadsheets are right, lads! Show Clyntahn what we really think of him!”

Makrakton couldn’t believe his ears. Sheer shock held him motionless for a moment, and that was one moment too long.

The crowd surged suddenly, but not to disperse. No, it surged towards Makrakton and his escort.

“What do you think you’re—?” He heard Brother Riely begin, but then the lay brother’s voice chopped off as a hurled cobblestone struck him squarely in the face.

Stahrns went down with a strangled scream, clutching at his ruined face, and the sergeant was suddenly shouting orders. The squad’s rifles came down, leveled, and a sheet of smoky fire lashed out across Zheppsyn Avenue. There were screams from the other side of that smoke, but the single, rushed volley didn’t stop the oncoming Zionites. They came out of the smoke, at least a quarter of them with cobblestones or other improvised weapons in their hands, and hurled themselves straight at the Guardsmen.

“Kill the bastards!” someone bellowed.

“No more murders!” someone else shouted, and then—

“Death to the Grand Fornicator!”

The enraged mob rolled over the Guard squad. Two or three of them went down on the Guardsmen’s bayonets, but the squad was too shaken, too taken aback. It wasn’t a disciplined force; it was simply a group of confused, disbelieving men with rifles in their hands, and they never had a chance.

Makrakton had a momentary glimpse of a stolen rifle butt coming at his face, swung like a baseball bat by a burly civilian in a bricklayer’s apron. It was only a blur, then it smashed into his jaw and he went down, three-quarters stunned.

The boots were waiting.

* * *

Zheppsyn Avenue was not unique.

The broadsheets had, indeed, gone up again the night before, the way they always did. But these broadsheets were different. For months—years—they’d appeared, morning after morning, and all they’d ever done was to report news. At first, they’d been dismissed by every loyal son or daughter of Mother Church as the lies they obviously were. But over time, five-day-by-five-day, month-by-month, the citizens of Zion and the Temple Lands—of Harchong, and Desnair, and Dohlar—had realized they weren’t lies. They were truth, and yet that was all they’d been. They’d never called for action, never urged anyone to rebel. In fact, they’d gone out of their way to avoid anything of the sort.

But these broadsheets weren’t like that. These broadsheets were written in fire and quenched in rage. They recounted the hideous casualty totals from the front. They enumerated the millions of Siddarmarkians who’d died in the Inquisition’s holding camps, listing the grim total camp-by-camp. They gave the totals for the numbers of Zionites who’d simply disappeared in every borough of the city … and broadsheets in each borough gave the names of the agents inquisitor responsible for that borough’s disappearances. The broadsheets nearest the Temple listed all of the vicars and bishops and priests Zhaspahr Clyntahn had purged. The broadsheets nearest the Plaza of Martyrs gave the numbers for how many people had been tortured and burned to death as the Punishment decreed. The broadsheets on individual church doors gave the names of Inquisition informants, parish-by-parish.

And this time, they didn’t simply give information.

Children of God!

The day has come to retake God’s Church from the evil men who make a mockery of God’s law and His love for His children! Zhaspahr Clyntahn is no servant of God. He is evil and corruption, and he is death! Death for any who oppose him—who oppose him, not God! Death for your sons and fathers and brothers fighting not for God, but for Clyntahn the Corrupt! Death for children and infants in arms in the camps of Siddarmark! Death for your children, for anyone who dares to question the monster he’s made of the Inquisition! And death for Mother Church herself if no one stops him before he transforms her forever into an image of his own cruelty and vile ambition!

Strike! Strike now! Strike hard! Take back your Church in the name of God and the Archangels!

Death to the Inquisition! Death to Zhaspahr Clyntahn!

And this time members of Helm Cleaver—and the hidden audio remotes of an electronic being named Owl—were scattered about the city in strategic locations to be the voices of rage … and the sparks of holocaust.

* * *

No one had seen it coming.

Perhaps they should have, but they’d been the forces of Mother Church for so long, spoken with the full authority of the Holy Writ, of the Book of Schueler and the Proscriptions. They’d spoken for God, and who would dare to argue with Him?

They’d never been able to eradicate the accursed broadsheets, but they’d become accustomed to them. They’d hated them, feared them, understood the way in which the truth they proclaimed gnawed away at the Inquisition’s narrative, but that was all they’d done. It had never occurred to them that one day that might change. Nor had they realized the way in which those broadsheets’ proven veracity, the fact that they’d never—not once—been caught in a lie, would validate them on the day they did change.

A third of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s agents inquisitor disappeared in the first two hours. Most of them suffered the same fate as Elaiys Makrakton and Riely Stahrns. Some were less fortunate and spent far longer dying. And some—either out of simple prudence or because some deep-seated part of them had always known those broadsheets spoke the truth—simply stripped away the purple badges of the Order of Schueler, discarded their cassocks, and vanished into the streets of the city.

* * *

“What should we do, Father?”

Father Zytan Kwill stood on the mounting block before the gate of the Hospice of the Holy Bédard, the largest homeless shelter in the city of Zion, and stared at the vast crowd filling the square before him.

“What should we do, Father?!”

The question went up again, and Kwill drew a deep breath. He would never see ninety again, and the frailty of age had wrapped itself about him, but in that moment, with every eye—every heart—in that enormous crowd focused upon him, he was a giant. A giant who knew at last exactly what to say.

“My children—God’s children—you know what to do! The Writ itself tells you! Remember the words of the Archangel Chihiro!

“‘In the day of wickedness, be not wanting. In the day of corruption, be not afraid. In the day of evil, stay not your hand. When Darkness comes before you, pretending to be Light, when those who should be your shepherds become slash lizards devouring the sheep, when darkest night consumes the sun, cling to God with all your might and all your strength, and know that He will send you the true shepherd, the good shepherd! Find that shepherd. Seek him out, for you will know him by his works. Trust him who leads you to Light. Follow him, fight for him, bear him up and do not let him fail, for the good shepherd loves the flock. The good shepherd nurtures the flock. And the good shepherd dies for the flock. Be you also good shepherds. Face those who would do evil in God’s name, and cut them from you forever!’”

There was silence for a moment—a moment in which he could hear the distant roar of the furious city. In which he could hear distance-faint screams, occasional shots, and over all of it the sigh of God’s own wind filled with the bright, clean sunlight of summer.

“You know who the false shepherd is, my children,” Zytan Kwill said then. “You know him by his works, by his darkness, by his destruction. And you also know the good shepherd! The good shepherd who’s been here for you—for all of you—and who you know will lay down his life for you if God wills it! Go! Find him! Fight for him! Be you also good shepherds and do what God has called you to do this day!”

Another moment of stillness, and then—

“Death to the Inquisition!”

* * *

The column of dragoons trotted down the avenue. The horses seemed uneasy—probably from the smell of smoke—and their riders were grim faced. But they rode in disciplined silence, accompanied only by the sound of shod hooves on cobbles, the jingle and rattle of tack and weapons.

“Thank God,” Father Zhordyn Rahlstyn murmured fervently.

He and Brother Anthynee Ohrohrk crouched inside the deserted shopfront, peering through its windows into the street. They’d been fortunate Ohrohrk had remembered the shop had been closed ever since its owners had been taken into custody. They’d managed to get inside before anyone spotted them in the street, and they’d hidden there, wondering what to do next.

Given what they’d seen happen to half a dozen of their fellow agents inquisitor—and, for that matter, to the squad of Temple Guardsmen who’d been assigned to support them that morning—wandering around the streets struck them as a very bad idea. They were fortunate their Guardsmen had lasted long enough, drawn enough of the mob’s attention, for them to run, but they couldn’t count on that sort of good fortune lasting forever.

“I can’t believe this, Father,” Brother Anthynee said, hands still trembling as they watched the mounted column coming towards them. “I can’t believe it! How could they all turn on us like this?!”

“When Shan-wei’s loose in the world, anything can happen, Anthynee,” Rahlstyn replied almost absently. “And those eternally damned and accursed broadsheets—that’s what set them off! But don’t think they’ve turned all of Zion against us. Against God, I mean.” He shook his head. “God and the Archangels don’t desert their own! That’s why They’ve sent us this cavalry, and in the fullness of time, They’ll take back control of God’s city for His rightful servants.”

“Of course They will, Father.” Ohrohrk sounded less than totally convinced, but he nodded sharply when Rahlstyn looked at him.

“Then let’s go out and greet our rescuers,” the upper-priest said.

The two Schuelerites opened the shop’s front door and stepped out into the street as the front rank of the column drew even with it. The officer at its head touched his horse with a heel, and the big roan swung around, trotting over to where Rahlstyn stood.

The upper-priest’s heart rose as he recognized the rider’s insignia. It was that of a full bishop militant, a division commander, and there must have been two thousand men in the column behind him.

“Praise Langhorne and Schueler you’ve come, My Lord!” Rahlstyn cried. “May I ask your name?”

“Kradahck,” the bishop militant said. “Dynnys Kradahck. And yours, Father?”

“Zhordyn Rahlstyn, My Lord. And this is Brother Anthynee Ohrohrk.” Rahlstyn’s spirits rose still higher as he recognized the bishop militant’s name. He wasn’t “just” a division commander. Bishop Militant Dynnys Kradahck commanded the Holy Martyrs Training Camp, the main Army of God training facility twenty-two miles from the City of Zion. To have reached the city so soon he must have been summoned by semaphore—or perhaps messenger wyvern—almost the moment the outbreaks began. The proof that the Grand Inquisitor and Captain General had reacted so promptly and strongly was a tremendous relief.

“I never thought I’d be so relieved to see the Army here in Zion,” he said frankly, “but some sort of madness seems to have seized the city! Thank God you’ve arrived! Are more troops on the way?”

Kradahck looked down at him thoughtfully, and Rahlstyn suddenly found himself wondering if his anxiety—and his sudden relief—had betrayed him into what might be misconstrued as impertinence. He was an upper-priest of the Inquisition, of course, and Kradahck was only a bishop militant, which was just a military rank, really. He wasn’t certain, but he rather thought Kradahck had been a mere under-priest a few years earlier. For that matter, he might be one of the Army of God officers who’d been directly consecrated from the laity in answer to the desperate need for senior officers.

“Yes, Father,” the bishop militant said after a moment. “There are quite a few additional troops en route. Infantry, for the most part, so they’ll be some few hours behind the mounted men.”

“May I ask what your orders are?” Rydach asked in a deliberately more courteous tone, and Kradahck nodded.

“I’m on my way to relieve the Temple Annex and restore order.”

“May Brother Anthynee and I accompany you?”

“Oh, I think that can be arranged, Father,” Kradahck replied, and looked over his shoulder at the youthful, brown-haired major who’d just cantered up to join him, accompanied by a quartet of noncoms. “Father Zhordyn, this is Major Sahndyrsyn, my aide.” Rahlstyn nodded to the major, and Kradahck waved a hand at him and Ohrohrk. “Hainryk, these are Father Zhordyn and Brother Anthynee. Arrest them.”

Rahlstyn was still staring in goggle-eyed disbelief when four very tough-looking dragoons grabbed the agents inquisitor.

They weren’t particularly gentle.

* * *

“What in Shan-wei’s name is happening?!” Zhaspahr Clyntahn demanded furiously. “Wyllym! What’s the meaning of this?!”

“Your Grace, it’s … it’s—”

Rayno broke off, unable for once to find the words to answer the Grand Inquisitor.

“Don’t just gobble, damn it!” Clyntahn snapped. “Why hasn’t this rabble already been dispersed!”

He stabbed an angry finger at the sea of rioters crowding into the Plaza of Martyrs. Most wore civilian clothing, but here and there Rayno saw men in AOG uniform. The vast majority of them seemed to be armed only with improvised bludgeons, or paving stones, or even nothing at all, but there were dozens—possibly even scores—of rifles in that enormous crowd, and the rumbling snarl coming from it was enough to freeze a man’s blood.

“Your Grace,” the archbishop said finally, taking his courage in both hands, “they haven’t been dispersed because the Army is supporting them.”

“What?!” Clyntahn wheeled around, and Rayno shook his head.

“Your Grace, this has to’ve been carefully planned, and the treason was spread more broadly than anyone could have imagined! Officers of the Temple Guard—our own officers!—opened the Guard arsenals and distributed weapons to the mob. Others actually led rioters into municipal and Church buildings! Many of the Guard remained loyal, I believe, but they had no more idea this was coming than we did. Most of them were seized before they could even begin to react, and every agent inquisitor we had in the street when this … this madness began had to run for his life. I’m afraid a great many of them couldn’t run fast enough, and the situation’s only continued to spiral farther and farther out of control. Vicar Rhobair’s occupied the Treasury and seized control of the semaphore office and the dock master’s offices, and it looks like Major Phandys is actually leading the mutineers who followed his orders to seize the buildings. As soon as I realized what was happening, I sent agents inquisitor to arrest Vicar Allayn, but none of them have returned, and Army troops—apparently under his personal command—have surrounded St. Thyrmyn. The prison is on fire—they’re using infantry angle-guns to drop shells into its courtyard!—and none of our brethren inside the facility have been able to escape.”

“How the fuck did you let this happen?!” Clyntahn snarled.

“Your Grace, even the Fist of Kau-Yung is involved in this!” Rayno snapped back. “Three quarters of my senior people—Wynchystair, Gahdarhd, Ohraily, Zhyngkwai, at least a dozen more—were assassinated almost simultaneously this morning. Nobody even saw whoever threw the grenade that killed Gahdarhd and his senior assistant!”

Clyntahn stared at him speechlessly, and Rayno made himself draw a deep breath.

“Your Grace, if it had been only Duchairn and Maigwair, or if it had been only the Fist of Kau-Yung—or even if it had been all of them, perhaps—we might have been able to retain control. I can’t say for certain; no one could! But I can tell you for certain that it was this—” it was his turn to jab his finger out the window “—this … this mob—that guaranteed we couldn’t control it.” He shook his head again. “The entire city caught fire, probably in the space of less than one hour. It certainly didn’t take more than two! How were my people supposed to deal with something that sudden, on that kind of scale? We simply couldn’t do it, Your Grace!”

“My God,” Clyntahn whispered

He looked back out at the Plaza of Martyrs and his face tightened as a straw-stuffed effigy in an orange cassock was dragged across the plaza to one of the charred posts to which so many heretics had been chained. The effigy was lashed to the post, and a torch flared.

And over it all, he heard the shouts.

“Death to the Inquisition! Death to the Grand Fornicator!”

And, more terrifying—and far more infuriating—even than that, a single name, chanted over and over and over again.

“Du-chairn! Du-chairn! Du-chairn!”

The shouts rose above the vast, indistinguishable crowd surf of the mob, and he swallowed hard.

“Your Grace, we have to go,” Rayno said urgently.

“Go?” Clyntahn turned back to the archbishop. “You mean run? Run away like a dog with my tail between my legs?!”

“Your Grace, we’ve lost. For today, at least, we’ve lost. I have reports of additional Army troops moving into the city from the Holy Martyrs Training Camp. I don’t doubt more are coming from farther away. Apparently there’s been some fighting in the ranks, some resistance by men who understand where their true loyalty lies, but their resistance has been crushed. Most of the men marching into the city seem to be prepared to follow their officers’ orders even against the Inquisition, and at least a quarter, probably more, of the Temple Guardsmen we’d counted upon to support our agents inquisitor have gone over to the traitors. And between the cordon around St. Thyrmyn and what happened to our people who were caught in the streets, I doubt there are more than twenty percent of our agents inquisitor in any position to help us. Without more men, we can’t hold the Temple. We just can’t. So it’s time to get you out of Zion to someplace where you can rally the Faithful to deal with this.”

“Someplace like where?” Clyntahn demanded.

“This madness can’t have infected the entire Temple Lands,” Rayno replied. “There are too many Faithful out there, and they couldn’t possibly have coordinated something like this all across the Temple Lands without our picking up some indication of what was coming. They obviously believe that if they can take Zion, if they can control the Temple itself—and if they can take you—the rest of the Temple Lands will fall into line. That means this is the focal point of their entire rebellion. So if we can get you away, outside the area of their control, I’m sure we can rally forces from the other episcopates. And, in a worst case, if we can get you to Harchong—where we know we can count on the people’s loyalty and faith—God will surely show us the path to reclaim Zion in His good time.”

Clyntahn stared at him for a handful of heartbeats. Then he nodded sharply.

“You’re right, Wyllym,” he said crisply. “Let’s go.”

* * *

No one knew why the tunnel had been dug in the first place. It was obviously as ancient, or almost as ancient, as the Temple itself, because it was illuminated by the same mystic panels that lit the Temple. Its walls were lined with brick, however, not with the smooth, solid stone the Archangels had used. According to the oldest rumors, it had been built after the Archangels’ servitors had withdrawn to the Dawn Star and it had departed in glory.

Wyllym Rayno didn’t know about that, but he did know it was one of the Inquisition’s most tightly held secrets. It was over seventeen miles long, from the Temple’s cellars all the way across Templesborough and Langhornesborough to the countryside beyond, and its exit was hidden under a vineyard the Order of Schueler had very quietly owned for well over three centuries.

The tunnel was amply large enough for the thirty picked agents inquisitor escorting him and the Grand Inquisitor to safety. Every one of those bodyguards was an experienced veteran of either the Temple Guard or the Army of God—men who’d distinguished themselves in rooting out heresy and proven their loyalty time and again. Of course, simple loyalty and zeal weren’t enough to gain a man admission to the Grand Inquisitor’s own guard. They also had to have thoroughly demonstrated their competence, and there wasn’t a man of that guard who wouldn’t have qualified easily for an officer’s commission in the AOG.

Another seventy men waited at the vineyard, sent ahead to secure the exit and arrange horses. Rayno wished they had horses in the tunnel itself, but although it was wide enough, its roof was far too low, which was … unfortunate. The Grand Inquisitor was a poor rider, but he was even more poorly accustomed to seventeen-mile hikes, and the entire party had to pause for rest far more often than Rayno preferred. Every time they did, he worried that someone they’d believed was loyal might have betrayed the tunnel’s existence to the traitors. That they were being pursued even as they stood guard, waiting for Clyntahn’s breathing to settle back into a normal range.

But, eventually, they reached the far end and went hurrying up the steps. They emerged into another cellar, quiet and cool, shadowed by enormous wooden vats, and Rayno heaved a vast sigh of relief. But then he frowned. He’d expected to find at least one of the men he’d sent ahead waiting to guide them to the others. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if the bodyguards surrounding him and Clyntahn weren’t fully capable of finding their own way up the stairs. Besides—

They reached the head of the stairs, emerged into the early afternoon sunlight, and froze.

At least they knew why there hadn’t been anyone waiting for them at the tunnel exit, a tiny corner of Wyllym Rayno’s mind thought numbly.

All seventy of the men he’d sent ahead lay scattered about. Or he thought they were all there, anyway. It was hard to be certain, given all the blood and body parts, and he felt his gorge rise. Everywhere he looked, there was more blood, more carnage.

There’s not even one intact body, he thought, staring at corpses which had lost heads, or arms, or legs, or some hideous combination of all three. And standing there, amid the butchery, were two people.

Only two.

His heart froze and his breathing stopped as he realized who—or at least what—those people were. The Inquisition’s entire intelligence apparatus reported directly to him. He’d seen more than one sketch of a so-called seijin, and especially of the two most infamous false seijins of them all: Merlin Athrawes and Nimue Chwaeriau. But neither of these were Athrawes or Chwaeriau. He didn’t know who the shorter, female seijin was, but he’d seen at least one sketch of her taller companion.

Dialydd Mab, the seijin who’d made the destruction of the Inquisition and all its works his personal crusade.

“Don’t just stand there!” Clyntahn bellowed. “Take them!”

If their escort had been given time to think about it, they might not have obeyed that thunderous order. They might have paused, looked upon the bodies of their fellows, reflected that they might fare no better, and considered an alternative reponse. But they weren’t given that time, and the reflexes of their training took over.

They charged the two seijins, half of them shouting war cries, and the seijins came to meet them.

The seijins didn’t charge. Neither did they shout. They simply walked into the agents inquisitor, and if the fact that they were outnumbered fifteen-to-one concerned them, they showed no sign of it.

Then the charging agents inquisitor were upon them, and the carnage began.

Rayno’s eyes bulged in stunned disbelief. He’d read report after report about the seijins—especially about Athrawes—and their incomparable lethality, and he’d rejected them as the obvious exaggerations they were.

But they hadn’t been exaggerations after all.

The seijins’ swords moved so swiftly they weren’t even blurs, and they struck with deadly accuracy. They truly were capable—even the woman, despite her smaller, more delicate frame—of decapitating a man with a one-hand blow. That was one of the things Rayno had refused to believe, but he could disbelieve no longer as heads and limbs and blood exploded away from those deadly swords.

It was over in a bare handful of seconds, before Rayno could have poured himself a cup of tea. And the only reason it had taken even that long, he realized, was because the killers had had to wait for the falling bodies to get out of the way.

They walked out the other side of thirty fresh corpses, and Rayno swallowed sickly as he realized they’d never even broken stride.

“Archbishop Wyllym and Vicar Zhaspahr, I believe.” Mab’s deep voice was colder than a Zion winter, and his smile was even colder as blood ran down his sword blade and pearled from its chisel-like tip. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Please,” Rayno heard someone whimper, and realized it was him. “Please, I don’t—I mean—”

“What’s this?” Mab arched one eyebrow. “You’re not prepared to die for your faith after all, Your Eminence? I’m shocked.”

“I…” The archbishop shook his head and held out his hands pleadingly. “I don’t want to—”

He rose on his toes, his mouth opening in a perfect circle of agony, as the dagger drove into his back. He went to his knees, reaching back with both hands, trying in vain to reach the wound, and looked back over his shoulder with a fresh gasp of pain as Zhaspahr Clyntahn wrenched the dagger from his flesh.

“Traitor!” the Grand Inquisitor hissed. “You can at least die like a servant of God, you miserable, fucking excuse for an inquisitor!”

Rayno’s mouth worked, then he collapsed forward, quivered once, and lay still.

“That’s one sort of retirement package, I suppose,” Mab said thoughtfully, gazing down at the body. Then he raised his arctic eyes to Clyntahn. “And about the kind of loyalty I’d have expected out of you, Your Grace.”

“Go to hell,” Clyntahn said almost conversationally, and pressed the bloody dagger to the side of his own throat. “You’re not taking me anywhere! Unlike that miserable bastard, I’m not—”

His eyes were on Mab, not that it mattered very much. Even if he’d been watching her, he couldn’t have reacted before Gwyliwir Hwylio moved.

He cried out, in shock as much as in pain, as a small, impossibly strong hand locked on his wrist. It twisted, and his cry of shock became a squeal of anguish as his wrist snapped and the dagger fell from his hand. He struck at her with the other hand, beating at her in clumsy panic, but her forearm batted his punch effortlessly aside, and he cried out again as three of his fingers shattered as easily as his wrist. Then he was on his knees, staring up at her in horrified disbelief, terrified by the raw demonic strength of her, and she smiled.

She smiled.

“I’m sure Merlin would have preferred to be here in person,” Mab said as his companion held the Grand Inquisitor effortlessly, “but not even a seijin can be in two places at once. Don’t worry, though. You’ll get your opportunity to meet him.”

Clyntahn’s mouth worked, and Mab nodded to the woman. She lifted the taller, far heavier vicar to his feet as if he’d been a sack of feathers.

“I’m sure you’ll be brokenhearted to hear that Vicar Rhobair and Vicar Allayn have pledged us their word to try you within Mother Church and sentence you to whatever punishment Church law decrees for your offenses. Unless I’m very much mistaken, that would mean the Punishment … as a minimum.”

Clyntahn swallowed hard, and Mab shook his head.

“Don’t worry, Your Grace. There’s been a small change of plan. You don’t have to worry about Mother Church at all, because you’ll be facing a rather different venue. There’s an Imperial Charisian Navy ship waiting off the mouth of the Zion River. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be aboard her. And you’ll stay there, until she reaches Siddar City.”

Clyntahn’s normally florid face was pasty with combined shock, pain … and fear, and Mab’s smile was a razor of ice.

“I hope you enjoy the voyage, Your Grace.”