Hell's Foundations Quiver (4 page)

“But according to his journal, not all the
seijins
fought under Chihiro and Schueler's banner, whatever
The Testimonies
might tell us today. Some fought for the Fallen, instead. They were called demons by the Archangels and by Mother Church, but Kohdy had met them sword-to-sword. He'd come to doubt their demonhood even before one of them defeated him, and his doubt grew still stronger after the ‘demon' not only spared his life but revealed a totally different truth to him. I don't know exactly what that truth was—it was shortly after that point he began writing portions of his journal in ‘Español'—but it made him question which side he was on. It took time for those questions to ripen, and by the time they did, the War Against the Fallen was almost over. The rebellious lesser angels had almost all been hunted down and destroyed. The servitors who'd fought for the Archangels had largely withdrawn to the Dawn Star, the last of the ‘demons' fighting for the Fallen had been driven back to their final fastness in the Desolation Mountains, and the Archangels must have been preparing their final assault.

“And that's where the journal ends.”

Merlin stared at her.

“That's where
it ends?
”

“Yes,” she sighed. “He never wrote down his intentions—unless he did it in Español—but the Sisters' tradition is that he'd decided to take his questions directly to the Archangel Schueler, the Archangel he most trusted to answer him fully. Whether that's true or not, he made a final trip to Zion … and died there.”

“How did he die?” Merlin asked softly, and Nynian shook her head.

“We don't know. The Order of Saint Kohdy—the Sisterhood's parent order—was formed when his body was returned to his family. It was created and charged with preparing and maintaining his tomb, just as other orders had been charged to do for many of the other fallen
seijins
, and it was granted a benefaction for that purpose. I suspect if he hadn't fought so strongly, been in the forefront of the battle against the Fallen for so long, the Sisterhood would never have been formed at all. As it was, the Sisters quickly found themselves pushed to one side, largely ignored by the rest of the Church. This was in the period immediately after the Fallen's final defeat, you understand, after Schueler and Chihiro had departed in victory—the period in which I think the remaining Angels were waiting for the last Adams and Eves to die before purging
The Testimonies
.

“During that interval, the Sisters' original benefaction was exhausted, and the Church ignored or misfiled—intentionally, I'm sure—their requests for additional funds. So, left to their own devices, they solicited voluntary contributions, largely from members of their own families to begin with, and invested them. By the time
The Testimonies
were edited, their investments were returning an income comfortably greater than the Order required to maintain itself and Saint Kohdy's tomb.

“The Mother Abbess of the Order had realized Kohdy was going to be cast from Mother Church's canon of saints well before it actually happened, however. According to the Sisterhood's records, her brother was a vicar, as their father had been before him, and it would appear, even though she was careful not to say so in so many words, that her family's connections warned her of what was coming.

“She was very old by then, almost a hundred years old, and she was no Eve. Her health was poor, but that wasn't the reason she died when the Order was officially … disbanded.”

Nynian's voice had gone very low, very quiet, soft enough a normal human ear would have had difficulty hearing her over the sound of the blizzard beyond the embassy's walls. But Merlin Athrawes had a PICA's ears. He heard the ancient grief—and the anger—in those words all too clearly.

She sat silent for endless seconds, staring down into the fire's incandescent heart once more, then shook herself and looked back up at him.

“Not all of the Sisters were prepared to abandon Saint Kohdy, even at Mother Church's command. They might have accepted the decree if any of the Archangels had issued it, but only the last of the lesser angels remained, and the Mother Abbess had known Kohdy, just as she'd known—had spoken with—both Schueler and Chihiro when she was a very young woman, before their departure. Neither of
them
had ever cast doubt upon Kohdy's sanctity, and that was enough for her. So she refused the decree, she and her sisters, and that,
Seijin
Merlin, is the reason there's no Abbey of Saint Kohdy today. And why no one ever bothered to officially proscribe the Order. When the Sisters proved … intransigent, the abbey—and everyone in it—was destroyed in the middle of the night in a ‘blast of holy fury,' the last Rakurai of the War Against the Fallen. A blast which, strangely, was never recorded in any of Mother Church's official records.”

Merlin stood very still, looking down at her, and her nostrils flared.

“But the fact that there's no
Abbey
of Saint Kohdy doesn't mean there's no
Tomb
of Saint Kohdy,” she said quietly. “The Mother Abbess had moved the saint's body to a secret tomb well before the abbey's destruction, just as she'd moved duplicates of the Sisterhood's records … and Saint Kohdy's journal. And she'd taken advantage of the way in which she and her immediate predecessor had been forced to find alternate funding. A core of the Sisterhood was established in the secret abbey she'd created, and she'd divested the Order of a third of its investments. Those investments—and the income from them—were outside Mother Church's records, and they provided the surviving Sisters with the funds they required after the rest of their Sisters had been blotted away without warning or any opportunity to argue their case.

“They were made of stern stuff, those Sisters, and what had happened to the rest of their Order convinced them their Mother Abbess had been right to set a new path for their Order. It's followed that path to this day, with its Sisters individually members of Mother Church and yet apart from her. The Sisterhood's done a great deal of good over the centuries of its existence,
Seijin
Merlin, but always from the shadows, never admitting its existence.”

“And today?” Merlin asked when she paused, and she smiled again, even more crookedly than before.

“Sister Klairah didn't recruit me simply because I wanted Mother Church to be what she's charged by God to be, Merlin. Many of the Sisters—most of them, really—have been called over the years for the same reason so many of my classmates were sent to Saint Ahnzhelyk's: because they were rebels. Because they had not simply the faith or the skills the Sisterhood needed, but because they had the fire, the need to
do
something with that rebellion—that touch of the
anshinritsumei
that comes down to us from Saint Kohdy. And in my case,” her smile turned almost impish, “there was even more of that fire than I think Sister Klairah realized. I'm afraid I was never the most … dutiful of daughters, whether of my father or of Mother Church. And then, too,” the smile vanished, “I had the example of my own father and of what was happening inside the vicarate.

“I knew better than most what had really happened to Saint Evyrahard, and I'd come to the conclusion there was precious little chance of the vicarate's ever reforming itself. The rot was too deep, the momentum building too steadily, for that to happen. Not without a little … push, at least. Which is why I became what I became. Oh, I'll freely admit I took a certain pleasure out of outraging my father and his family connections, especially since he couldn't openly object without admitting he
was
my father. But I also knew no one could possibly be in a better position to acquire the sort of … leverage that might inspire better behavior out of the worst of vicars than a courtesan—and later a madame—serving the most rarified heights of the episcopacy.

“Then I became aware of what Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn were trying to accomplish.” She shook her head sadly, eyes darkening once more. “At first, I avoided them, since the last thing I wanted was for any of the vicars to see me coming and I was afraid an association with the Wylsynn family might come to light. But then it looked as if Samyl had a genuine chance of becoming Grand Inquisitor, and he was such a
good
man, and Adorai was already part of his circle. So I made myself a member as well, but only
as
myself, without ever acknowledging the Sisterhood's existence to anyone, even Adorai. Only he lost the election—almost certainly because Rayno manipulated the vote, though I could never prove that—and you know what happened from there.”

She fell silent, and Merlin stood for several minutes, considering all she'd said.

“I assume the Sisterhood's secret investments explain where Ahnzhelyk Phonda found the capital she used to build that empire of hers in Zion? And the one here in Siddarmark, as well?” he asked then.

“You assume correctly,” she acknowledged. “Except that the initial investments in Siddarmark are much older than I am. The Sisterhood's managed its portfolio well over the centuries, and until very recently its core expenses have been quite low. We've been active in charitable work for a long, long time, although we've had to be very careful about how we funded them without anyone's noticing us. The experience we gained in doing that for several hundred years was very useful when we started funding more … proactive endeavors.”

“And your current Mother Abbess doesn't object to your more … secular activities, shall we say?” he asked, and she chuckled throatily.

“I'm afraid you don't quite have it straight yet,” she told him. “The Sisters don't have a Mother Abbess anymore. We have a Mother Superior. She's the one who determines what the Sisters as a whole do in the world, and, no, she doesn't object to my ‘more secular activities,' as you put it. That would be rather difficult for her to do, actually … since for the last twenty years or so, I've
been
the Mother Superior.”

*   *   *

“Trust me,” Merlin Athrawes told the senior members of the inner circle as his attention returned to the com conversation. “Domynyk never said a truer thing in his entire life. Whatever else we may do, we
don't
want to turn this woman into our enemy.”

 

.III.

HMS
Chihiro
, 50, Gorath Bay, Kingdom of Dohlar, and HMS
Destroyer
, 54, Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis, Empire of Charis

“Is that
confirmed
, My Lord?”

Commander Ahlvyn Khapahr sounded very much as if he hoped it wasn't, and Lywys Gardynyr, the Earl of Thirsk and the Kingdom of Dohlar's senior fleet commander, didn't blame him one bit.

“I'm afraid it is,” he told the man who would have been called his chief of staff in Charisian service, and saw Khapahr's face tighten. He glanced around his day cabin and saw much the same reaction out of everyone else, as well.

Not surprisingly.

He pushed back his chair, rose, and crossed to the open quarter windows, looking out across the waters of Gorath Bay at the golden stone walls of the city of Gorath with his hands clasped behind his back. The late-afternoon sun hung barely above the western horizon, its rays slanting across the battlements and parapets, painting them with a deeper, more lustrous gold, and the kingdom's banners flew bravely above them.

Gorath Bay's temperature seldom fell below freezing, yet it could be bitterly cold in winter, especially for anyone out on its waters. The bay's cold snaps, with their raw, biting chill, might last for five-days, despite its southern location. That was what had caused so much sickness among Gwylym Manthyr's half-starved, half-naked crews when they were confined in the prison hulks.

Oh, yes
, Thirsk thought.
The bay can be cruel, especially when human spite sees a chance to make it worse.

His jaw tightened as he remembered that winter, remembered his shame and the way the Inquisition had countermanded his orders to provide his prisoners—
his
prisoners—with food and healers. That wind-polished sheet of pitiless winter water danced before his eyes again, and he felt the helplessness he'd felt then. Oh, how he'd
hated
Gorath Bay throughout that cold, bitter winter.

But not today. He squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to step back from the familiar rage, and looked out at the capital of his kingdom.

Although it was the middle of winter, the breeze whipping across the bay today was little worse than chilly, cold but not cutting, and the darkening sky was cloudless for the first time in several days. People in the city were enjoying the last minutes of that sunlight, he thought, possibly doing a little shopping as they hurried home. And the painters were probably out along the Gorath River with their easels, catching that golden light across the river that flowed through the heart of the city as the sun gilded the Cathedral's scepters. He wondered how many of those people had heard the news? If they hadn't heard yet, they would soon enough, even if Duke Salthar and Bishop Executor Wylsynn attempted to conceal it. That would be not only futile but particularly stupid, in Thirsk's opinion, yet he'd seen ample examples of Wylsynn Lainyr's doing equally stupid things. Salthar was probably smart enough to argue against it, but in this case Thirsk could count on his own service superior, Duke Thorast, to support any effort to hide the truth for as long as he possibly could.

Although not, of course, for all the same reasons as Lainyr.

“Do we know how it happened, My Lord?” Stywyrt Baiket,
Chihiro
's CO and Thirsk's flag captain, asked quietly. “I mean, they had over two hundred thousand men and Eastshare had less than
twenty
thousand!”