.XII.

Alyksberg, Cliff Peak Province, and Lake City, Tarikah Province, Republic of Siddarmark

Alyksberg was dying.

Sir Rainos Ahlverez stood at the fly of his command tent, watching the clouds turn the color of blood above the burning roofs of the fortress city his guns had set afire, and listened to the sounds of musketry. His tent was five thousand yards from the walls, and he couldn’t hear the screams from here, but he knew they were there, and he bared his teeth.

The city had held out for five days and, frankly, he’d expected it to hold far longer. But that had been true only until the spy reached him with the news that the garrison commander had deserted his post before Ahlverez’ army ever reached it.

Fury snarled inside him at the thought of the four entire days he’d wasted preparing a formal siege of the fortress. And wasted was exactly the right word, he thought grimly. Clyftyn Sumyrs, the apostate Siddarmarkian general who’d held the city for the excommunicate Stohnar, was a man of no birth, and he’d proven it by abandoning his command. He’d run for his own life, like the cur he was, but before he had, he’d asked for volunteers to man the walls and the artillery to deceive Ahlverez into believing the city was still garrisoned and cover his own craven flight. According to the spy’s report, almost a quarter of his entire force actually had volunteered, too, despite the welcome they knew the Inquisition held in store for them.

Ahlverez took that particular part of the report with a large grain of salt, but true or not, Sumyrs had been forced to choose who stayed, and—once more according to the spy—he’d chosen primarily the sick and the weak, men who couldn’t have kept up with his retreating column anyway. And then he’d slipped away, like a thief creeping away in the night, leaving them to delay Ahlverez until the remainder of his force was safely beyond pursuit … which was exactly what the bastards had done.

And much joy may they have of it, he thought venomously, watching the flash of matchlocks and slow-firing, old-style artillery on the parapets, listening to the sounds as his assaulting troops swarmed forward, going up the scaling ladders in scores of places simultaneously. Whole stretches of the wall were falling silent as his men swarmed over the defenders who’d manned them, and he smiled grimly.

I knew they couldn’t have the men to hold the wall against a general assault! Now that we’re over it, we’ll swamp the bastards, and Father Sulyvyn will see to it they answer for their heresy. And Sumyrs wouldn’t have cut and run in the first place if he’d thought there was anywhere else he could hold short of St. Alyk’s Abbey. He may have slowed us up long enough to save his own worthless arse—for now, at least—but he did it by handing over the key to Cliff Peak’s front door! Once Alyskberg goes down, we’ll march straight through and—

The night turned suddenly to day, and Sir Rainos Ahlverez staggered backwards, hands rising instinctively to cover his head despite his distance from the city, as the fortress’ main magazine erupted. More explosions rumbled, rolling along the walls, flashing and bellowing as if Shan-wei had stolen Langhorne’s own Rakurai, as the burning fuses reached the waiting charges. The sound was an echoing, deafening roar as the waves of overpressure beat on him like the fury of some unseen, storm-lashed sea, and he saw flaming chunks of wreckage—all too many of which, he knew, must be the bodies of his own assaulting infantry—arcing across the fire-sick night.

His jaw tightened as he realized what had happened, and then he swore savagely. He didn’t know whose hand had lit the fuse, and he never would, but the son of a whore had timed it with Kau-yung’s own cunning! And that rolling avalanche of smaller explosions told him it had been no hastily improvised act. The motherless bastards had planned it this way—planned it from the very beginning! They’d known they couldn’t hold, so they’d found a way to escape the Punishment and simultaneously cost him more men than they could ever have killed in a conventional defense!

He watched the blazing debris reach the top of its trajectory, come plunging back to earth, and knowing the heretics who’d set those explosions had just hastened their own journeys to hell failed to make him feel one bit better. He had the key to Cliff Peak, all right … and Langhorne only knew how many men he’d just paid to gain it.

*   *   *

“I assume this … request is necessary, Father?” Arthyn Zagyrsk said in a careful tone.

“I’m afraid so, Your Eminence.” Ignaz Aimaiyr, Zagyrsk noticed with a sense of bitter satisfaction, didn’t sound any happier than his archbishop. “The instruction”—he emphasized the noun very slightly, not that he seemed to want to—“carries Bishop Wylbyr’s personal signature.”

“I see.”

Zagyrsk remained where he was, hands folded behind him, gazing out his office window across Lake City’s roofs until he was confident he had his expression back under control. Aimaiyr was right, he thought; it wasn’t a request, it was an order. It took him a moment, but then he nodded, without turning back to face the intendant. It wasn’t Aimaiyr’s fault, yet just at that moment, he really didn’t want to look at anyone in a Schuelerite’s purple cassock.

“Very well, Father. Tell Father Avry I’ve approved the Inquisitor General’s ‘instructions.’”

He heard the quotation marks in his own voice and knew they were dangerous, but he couldn’t help it.

“Thank you, Your Eminence.”

Aimaiyr’s quiet voice was no happier than it had been, and Zagyrsk heard his office door close as the younger man silently departed without kissing his ring. Technically, that was a serious violation of Mother Church’s etiquette; at the moment, Zagyrsk was simply grateful the Schuelerite had been wise enough to spare them both.

And that Father Ignaz was too good a man to comment on those dangerous quotation marks.

He felt his shoulders sag now that he was alone, and he leaned forward, hanging his head and bracing himself on the windowsill with both hands as he tried not to feel like a coward.

I should have the courage to protest. At the very least to protest using my people for this, even if I dared not protest anything else, he thought wretchedly. I should. But … I don’t.

Not that it would have done any good. If he’d thought it might, if he’d believed it could, he might have protested anyway. But Wylbyr Edwyrds was the Grand Inquisitor’s own choice. No argument from a mere archbishop was going to lead Zhaspahr Clyntahn to rein him in—not when he was doing exactly what he’d been ordered to do.

And maybe they’re actually right to do it, the archbishop told himself. The Book of Schueler’s plain enough, and the Grand Inquisitor’s right when he points out that Schueler himself said misplaced mercy to the heretic only robs him of his opportunity to expiate his sin and return to God even on the lip of hell itself. But—

He thought about that “request” from Edwyrds, the order to find another thousand laborers to send forward to help construct the camps in which the accused were to be held until the Inquisition got around to sifting them and sending them to the Punishment as they deserved, and closed his eyes in pain. Bad enough that those camps were being built in such numbers; even worse that his people had to be a part of it.

At least he’d saved his own archbishopric from that poisonous stew of denunciation, condemnation, and savage, punitive bloodshed … for now, at any rate. He’d managed that much, if nothing more, and he tried not to think about the cold, biting tone of Clyntahn’s grudging agreement to exempt Tarikah from Edwyrds’ sphere of authority.

If I had protested what Edwyrds is doing in Hildermoss and New Northland, Clyntahn would have removed me by now, and he’d be doing exactly the same thing right here in Tarikah, Zagyrsk thought, and even the knowledge that it was nothing but the truth couldn’t make him feel one bit less unclean.

He looked out the window, but his eyes were unseeing, and his lips moved in silent prayer as he raised one hand to grip his pectoral scepter.