A Mighty Fortress (90 page)

“I’ve thought about that,” Duchairn admitted. “I’m not sure it could be ‘im mensely worse.’ For that matter, I’m not sure it could be
worse,
at all. But I can’t know that it wouldn’t be, either. And I have to admit that at this moment, I don’t see anybody who could possibly stand up to the Inquisition and the hysteria Zhaspahr’s created. Without something, anything, with a realistic hope of actually
stopping
him—and we both know he’d have to be stopped by force at this point—
trying
to stop him would only make things worse. I know that. Which is the reason I
haven’t
tried. The reason I’m not planning on trying.”

“But—” Trynair began. “I won’t try to stop him, but I’m not going to give him the imprimatur of my support, either. Maybe it’s sanctimonious, but I’m not going to attend these ghastly murder fests of his. I’m not going to sign any warrants of execution. Not going to approve the murders of any children or give him one single ounce of cover or justification he can’t create for himself. He’s the Grand Inquisitor. Can you even begin to
count
the number of times he’s told us that? All right, let him
be
the Grand Inquisitor. Let him take the responsibility—and claim the
credit,
if there is any—for defeating this vile effort to betray Mother Church to her enemies.”

Duchairn’s irony was withering, and Trynair frowned. “What are you saying you’re going to do, then, Rhobair?” he asked after a moment. “If you’re not going to oppose him, and you’re not going to support him . . . what? Are you planning on retiring to a monastery somewhere?”

“Oh, I’ve considered it,” Duchairn said very, very softly. “Believe me, Zahmsyn, you cannot
imagine
how I’ve considered doing exactly that. But I can’t. It would be running away, hiding from my own responsibilities.”

“Then tell me what you
are
going to do!” Trynair snapped, and his tone was so exasperated that Duchairn surprised them both with a twisted ghost of a smile.

“All right, I will.” He let his chair come forward again, folding his arms before him on the desk, leaning over them while he gazed up at Trynair. “I’m going to do my job as Mother Church’s Treasurer. I’m going to maintain her fiscal health—as well as I can, in the face of how much this insane war is costing. And somehow, at the same time, I’m going to see to it that the Bédardists, and the Pasqualates, and the other charitable orders actually get the funding and support they’re
supposed
to have. I’m going to see to it, next winter, that there are soup kitchens all over Zion, Zahmsyn. I’m going to throw up barracks for the poor to survive the snow and the ice outside our front door. I’m going to build hospitals to care for all of the maimed this war is going to produce, and orphanages to care for all of the orphans it’s going to leave. I am finally going to use my position as a vicar of the Church of God Awaiting to do exactly what Maikel Staynair and Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk have accused us—rightly—of
not
doing.”

Trynair stared at him. Then he gave a sharp, barking crack of laughter. “What’s this, Rhobair? Trying to buy the Archangels’ forgiveness? Is this your bribe? What you’re promising God as compensation for your failure to oppose Zhaspahr’s ‘excesses’ openly?”

“In some ways, yes,” Duchairn said unflinchingly. “That’s one way to put it. Another way to put it would be that I’m going to accomplish all I can
despite
Zhaspahr’s ‘excesses,’ though, wouldn’t it? And since it would be so . . . inexpedient for you to allow me to disappear from the equation, you have my permission to present it to Zhaspahr in exactly those terms. Consider it my own personal bargain with Shan- wei.”

“What do you mean?” Trynair frowned, and Duchairn’s eyes glittered. “I thought it was clear enough.” He leaned back again, crossing his legs. “Go ahead, tell Zhaspahr you and I talked about this. Tell him I can’t support his decisions as Grand Inquisitor, but I recognize that they
are
his decisions as Grand Inquisitor. That I won’t openly oppose him, but that in return, he won’t stand in my way of seeing to it that the charitable orders—which come under the general control of the Exchequer, anyway—receive the support they require. Tell him you think it’s my way of buying off my own conscience. Langhorne, you might even be right! But I also suggest you remind him about the dragon drover who found out he needed a carrot to go with the stick. He can leave all that saccharine fawning, all that slobbering concern ‘for the masses,’ to me. Let me handle it—God knows I’ll be better at it than
he
ever would! And as long as I’m still a member of the ‘Group of Four,’ it will be the ‘Group of Four’— including Zhaspahr—who get the credit. He’s proven he can terrorize people into obedience. Now all he has to do is let me
buy
their obedience, as well, and he’ll be happy, I’ll be . . . satisfied, and the end result will be to
strengthen
his position, not weaken it.”

Trynair frowned, once again taken by surprise by Duchairn’s political perspicacity. That was precisely the right way to present the Treasurer’s argument to the Grand Inquisitor. Not only that, it actually made sense.

He considered the other man narrowly, wondering exactly what had changed inside Rhobair Duchairn. There was something, he could
sense
it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. It wasn’t that any of the Treasurer’s reborn faith had disappeared. Not that he was suddenly comfortable with Clyntahn’s brutality. Not even that he’d made his peace with it. It was something... else.

Maybe it’s just that Zhaspahr’s finally
proven
he can’t be controlled. Maybe it’s just a dose of realism, acceptance tempering all that idealism of his. And maybe it isn’t, either. Maybe it’s something else entirely. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the best way to sell it to Zhaspahr. And there’s no
way
he’s wrong about the importance of finding some motivator besides simple terror, either! That’s always been Zhaspahr’s blind spot. If I can only convince him to let Rhobair be our . . . our kinder, gentler face, then maybe I can actually undo some of the damage he’s busy doing.

He gazed into Duchairn’s eyes once more, then, finally, he shrugged. “All right, Rhobair. If my brokering some kind of deal between you and Zhaspahr will satisfy you, if you’ll give Zhaspahr your assurance you’ll leave inquisitorial matters up to the Inquisition if he’ll give you free rein where your charitable activities are concerned, I’ll try. And I think I’ll probably succeed . . . as long as you’re serious about this. But don’t lie to me. If this will satisfy you, I’ll do my damnedest to sell it to Zhaspahr. But if I ever find out later that you aren’t prepared to live up to your end of the . . . understanding, I’ll wash my hands of what ever finally becomes of you. Is that understood?”

“Of course it is,” Duchairn said, and surprised Trynair yet again—this time with an oddly gentle smile. “You know, in many ways, Zhaspahr’s always been his own worst enemy. And one reason is that he’s forgotten—and I have to admit, I’d forgotten the same thing—that sometimes kindness, gentleness, is just as strong a weapon as any terror or punishment. Of course, it’s not the sort of weapon he’s constitutionally suited to wielding, I suppose. So I’m sure it will be best for us—for
all
of us—if he lets me take care of it for him.”

Father Paityr Wylsynn’s Office,

Gold Mark Street,

City of Tellesberg,

Kingdom of Old Charis

Father Paityr Wylsynn stared sightlessly out his office windows.

The Tellesberg sun was bright, shining down on the broad street beyond the deep, green shade of the trees growing around the ex- Exchequer building in which that office was housed. It was late morning, and, as always, Tellesberg was a bustling stir of energy. Wylsynn’s office was far enough from the harbor and the ware house district which served it for the local traffic to be relatively free of the heavy freight wagons which spent so much time rumbling through much of the rest of the city. This was primarily a financial district, home to bankers and law masters, stock traders and counting houses, and aside from the regularly scheduled lizard- drawn trolleys, most of the traffic here consisted of pedestrians interspersed with only an occasional carriage or horse man. A few sidewalk vendors were spotted about, their carts and small wagons shaded by colorful awnings. Most of them were food sellers, serving the office workers employed in the vicinity, and an occasional tantalizing wisp of aroma drifted through his open windows.

Wylsynn didn’t notice. Not any more than he noticed the contrast between brilliant sunlight and dark shade, or than he heard the vendors’ raised voices, or actually saw the passing pedestrians. No. His attention was elsewhere, focused on the remembered words of the letter which lay folded on the desk before him.

So it’s finally happened.
He felt a fresh burning sensation at the backs of his blue eyes.
After all these years.

He didn’t know how the letter had reached him. Oh, he was sure he could have tracked it back through at least the last two or three sets of hands, but after that, it would have disappeared untraceably into the anonymity its sender had required, and he was glad it was so.

He leaned his head against the tall back of his chair, closing his eyes, and remembered every step of the journey which had carried him to this office, on this street. He remembered his own realization that he had a true vocation as a priest. He remembered choosing to follow his father into the Order of Schueler because that was what Wylsynns did, and because he shared his father’s commitment to reforming what that order had become. And he remembered the day his father had urged him to take the position as Archbishop Erayk Dynnys’ intendant.

“Clyntahn’s becoming obsessed with the Charisians,” his father had told him somberly, a vicar speaking to a young priest he trusted as much as a father speaking to a son. “They desperately need an
honest
intendant, someone who’ll apply the Proscriptions fairly and not pander to Clyntahn’s paranoia. And, frankly,” the father had come to the fore, “I want you out of Zion. I don’t like the direction things are heading, and you’ve already made yourself just a bit too visible for my peace of mind.”

Paityr had felt his eyebrows rising, and his father had snorted harshly. “Oh, I know. I know! The pot and the kettle and all that. But at least I’m a senior vicar, not a mere upper- priest! Besides—”

He’d started to say something else, then stopped and simply shaken his head. But Paityr had understood what his father
hadn’t
said, as well. If Samyl Wylsynn didn’t “like the direction things were heading,” then at least part of the reason he wanted Paityr in Tellesberg was to get him as close to out of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s reach as was physically possible.

In the long run, it probably wouldn’t make any difference. When it came down to it, no place on Safehold was truly beyond Clyntahn’s reach, for the Grand Inquisitor’s reach was that of Mother Church herself. But Paityr had understood the logic, and however little he’d liked the thought of “deserting” his father and the rest of Samyl Wylsynn’s circle of reformers, he’d realized his father was also right about the Charisians’ need for an honest intendant. And honest intendants, unfortunately, were an ever- scarcer commodity.

And so he’d taken his father’s advice and accepted the post.

In the years since, he’d been glad he had. He’d understood exactly why Charisians would have alarmed and infuriated someone like Clyntahn, yet the better he’d come to know them, the more groundless he’d realized Clyntahn’s fears were. Perhaps Charisians were more innovative than they ought to be, but there was no taint of the Dark among them. He was certain of that. And none of the innovations he’d been called upon to evaluate had even approached an actual violation of the Proscriptions. But Clyntahn had been unprepared to accept that conclusion—not because he had any concrete evidence to the contrary, but because any hint of “unorthodoxy” among the citizens of Charis was an offense against his own power as God’s enforcer. Worse, it potentially threatened the Inquisition’s cozy little empire.

Even so, Paityr had been unprepared for the sudden eruption of outright warfare between the Kingdom of Charis and “the Knights of the Temple Lands.” The abrupt escalation had taken him as much by surprise as anyone else, and he’d found himself forced to choose between his vows of obedience to the Grand Inquisitor who headed the Order of Schueler and his vows of obedience to God.

In the end, it had been no contest. He couldn’t pretend he’d been comfortable—that he was truly comfortable, even now, for that matter—with his current position. He’d agreed to serve Maikel Staynair as
his
intendant, yet he hadn’t expected to end up running the new Royal and then Imperial Patent Office! He was no longer simply making certain new innovations didn’t violate the Proscriptions. Oh, no! Now he was involved in actively
encouraging
innovations . . .
as long as
they didn’t violate the Proscriptions.

As he’d feared from the beginning, the tension between those two sets of responsibilities was pushing him steadily farther and farther into a “Charisian” mindset. He was moving from an understanding that they
had
to innovate if they were going to survive the attack upon them to regarding innovation as a worthy end in itself. That was a dangerous perspective for any man, but especially for the priest charged with protecting the Proscriptions. Still, he’d managed to live with that . . . so far, at least. It had helped that he’d come so deeply to admire Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan and—especially—Maikel Staynair. The “heretical” Archbishop of Charis was as godly as any man Paityr Wylsynn had ever known, including any of his father’s colleagues, and Paityr had become deeply and personally devoted to his new archbishop.