How Firm a Foundation (51 page)

He wanted to believe that was the reason for his own decades of inactivity. Wanted to think he’d been so busy, so focused on his manifold responsibilities that he’d simply gotten distracted. That he’d honestly forgotten to actually look out his window and see what was happening to those outside the Temple’s mystically heated and cooled environment because he’d been
so preoccupied with his personal duties and obligations. Oh,
how
he wanted to think that!

You were “preoccupied,” all right, Rhobair
, he told himself, filling his lungs with the cool air, inhaling the scent of the blossoms in the planter under Father Zytan’s window.
You were preoccupied with fine wines, gourmet cooking, charming feminine companionship, and all the arduous tasks of counting coins
and managing your alliances within the vicarate. Pity you didn’t stop to think about what the Archangels themselves told you were any priest’s true obligations and duties. If you had, Father Zytan might’ve had the money and the resources he needed to actually do something about
those
responsibilities.

“I’m overjoyed we lost so few …
this
winter, Father,” he said, not looking away from the window.
“I only regret that we lost so many the winter before, and the winter before that.”

Kwill looked at the vicar’s back, silhouetted against the bright window, and wondered if Duchairn realized how much pain rested like an anchor in the depths of his own voice. The vicar was a Chihirite, like the majority of Mother Church’s administrators, without the trained insight into feelings and emotional
processes that Kwill’s own order taught. Perhaps he truly didn’t understand his own feelings … or how clearly his tone communicated them, at any rate.

Or how dangerous they could be to him under the present circumstances.

“Your Grace,” the upper-priest said, “I’ve spent considerably better than half my life feeling exactly that same regret every spring.” Duchairn turned his head to look at him,
and Kwill smiled sadly. “I suppose we should grow inured to it when it happens again and again, but every body we find buried in the snow, every child who becomes an orphan, every soul we can’t somehow cram into the Hospice or one of the other shelters when the temperature drops and the wind comes screaming in off the lake—every single one of those deaths takes its own tiny piece of my soul with
it. I’ve never learned to accept it, but I’ve had to learn to
deal
with it. To admit to myself that I truly did do everything I could to minimize those deaths … and to absolve myself of the guilt for them. It isn’t easy to do that. No matter how much I’ve done, I’m always convinced I could—that I
should
—have done still more. I can
know
here”—he touched his temple gently—“that I truly did all I
could, but it’s hard to
accept
that here.”

He touched his chest, and his sad smile grew gentler.

“I’ve had more practice trying to do that than you have, Your Grace. Partly because I’m the next best thing to thirty-five years older than you are. And I realize most people here in Zion and even in my own order seem to think I’ve been doing what I do since the Creation itself. The truth is, though,
I was past forty before it even occurred to me that this should be my life’s work. That it was what God had in mind for me to do.” He shook his head. “Don’t think for a moment all the years I wasted before I heard His voice don’t come back to haunt me every winter, reminding me of all those earlier winters when I did nothing at all. I realize there are those who think of me as some sort of saintly
paragon—those that don’t think I’m an ornery old crackpot, at any rate!—but I was a much duller student than those people think. We hear Him when we hear Him, and it’s up to Him to judge us. It’s not up to others, and our own judgment is sometimes the least reliable of all, especially where our own actions are concerned.”

“You’re probably right, Father,” Duchairn said after a long, silent moment,
“yet if we
don’t
judge ourselves, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable, we turn our backs not just on our responsibilities but on ourselves. I’ve discovered guilt makes a bitter seasoning, but without it it’s too easy to lose ourselves.”

“Of course it is, Your Grace,” Kwill said simply. “But if God says
He’s
willing to forgive us when we recognize our faults and genuinely seek to amend our
lives, then shouldn’t
we
be willing to do the same thing?”

“You truly are a Bédardist, aren’t you, Father?” Duchairn shook his head wryly. “And I’ll try to bear your advice in mind. But the
Writ
says we’re supposed to make recompense, to the best of our ability, to those we realize we’ve wronged. I’m afraid it’s going to take me a while to accomplish that.”

Kwill crossed the office to stand
beside him at the window, but the priest didn’t look out across the lake. Instead, he stood for several seconds regarding the vicar intently, gazing into his eyes. Then he reached out and laid a hand thinned by a lifetime’s labors on Duchairn’s chest.

“I think this is in a better state and far, far deeper than even you realize, Your Grace,” he said softly. “But be careful. Even the greatest of
hearts can accomplish nothing in this world after it ceases to beat.”

Duchairn laid his hand across the priest’s for a moment and inclined his head in what might have been agreement or simple acknowledgment. Then he inhaled deeply and stepped back.

“As always, Father Zytan, it’s been both a joy and a privilege,” he said more briskly. “And I’m pleased with your report, especially since I’ve managed
to free up the funding to acquire or build additional shelters for the coming winter. Depending on where we place them, it would probably be cheaper to purchase and refurbish existing structures, and if we’re going to be forced to build, it would be a good idea to get started as quickly as possible. So please give some thought to where the housing will be most urgently required. I’d like to
have your recommendations for three or four new sites within the next couple of five-days.”

“Of course, Your Grace. And thank you.” Kwill smiled broadly. “We can always use additional roofs when the snow flies.”

“I’ll do my best, Father. Just as I’ll do my best to bear your advice in mind.” Duchairn extended his hand, and Kwill bent to brush his ring of office with his lips, then straightened.
“Until next time, Father.”

“May the Holy Bédard bless and keep you, Your Grace,” Kwill murmured in response.

Duchairn nodded and left the office. His escort of Temple Guardsmen was waiting for him, of course. They didn’t like letting him out of their sight even for his meetings with Father Zytan, and despite their discipline, it showed in their expressions.

Of course, there’s more than one
reason for that unhappiness at having me off doing Langhorne knows what,
Duchairn thought with bitter amusement.

“Where to now, Your Grace?” the officer in command of his personal security detachment inquired politely.

“Back to the Temple, Major Phandys,” Duchairn said to the man Zhaspahr Clyntahn and Allayn Maigwair had personally selected as his keeper. Their eyes met, and the vicar smiled
thinly. “Back to the Temple,” he repeated.

*   *   *

“Major Phandys is here, Your Eminence.”

“Thank you, Father. Send him in.”

“Of course, Your Eminence.”

The secretary bowed and withdrew. A moment later, Major Khanstahnzo Phandys entered Wyllym Rayno’s office. He crossed to the archbishop and bent over his extended hand to kiss his ring.

“You sent for me, Your Eminence?” the major said
as he straightened.

Technically, as a Temple Guardsman, he ought to have saluted instead of kissing Rayno’s ring. Since the botched arrest of the Wylsynn brothers, however, Major Phandys had become considerably more than a simple Guardsman. It was scarcely his fault that arrest had gone so radically wrong, and the Inquisition had always had a keen eye for talent that could be co-opted without
officially
becoming part of the Order of Schueler.

“Yes, I did, Major.” Rayno sat back down behind his desk, tipped his chair back, and surveyed Phandys thoughtfully. “I’ve read your latest report. As always, it was complete, concise, and to the point. I could wish more of the reports which crossed my desk were like it.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence,” Phandys murmured when the archbishop paused,
obviously expecting some response. “I strive to offer Mother Church—and the Inquisition—my best effort.”

“Indeed you do, Major.” Rayno smiled with unusual warmth. “In fact, I’ve been considering whether or not I might be able to find an even more effective use for a man of your talents and piety.”

“I’m always prepared to serve wherever Mother Church can best make use of me, Your Eminence,” Phandys
replied. “Have you someone in mind for my current responsibilities?”

“No, not really.” Rayno’s smile faded. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, Major. That’s one reason I called you in. Can you think of anyone else in the Guard suitable for the position?”

Phandys frowned for several seconds, hands clasped respectfully behind him while he considered.

“Off the top of my head, no, I’m afraid, Your Eminence.”
He shook his head regretfully. “I can think of several whose loyalty and devotion would make them suitable, but none who have the rank to serve as Vicar Rhobair’s senior Guardsman. Of those who do have the rank, I’m afraid I’d have … reservations about recommending most of them. There
might
be one or two of sufficient rank and seniority, but none who could be assigned to him without a series of
transfers to make them the logical choices. I can give you their names, if you like, Your Eminence, although I’d strongly recommend you interview them personally before you consider them for my current assignment.”

“Your reasons?” Rayno’s tone was honestly curious, and Phandys shrugged.

“I’d hesitate to recommend anyone I don’t know personally and reasonably well, Your Eminence, but I doubt
anyone ever knows someone as well as he thinks he does. And the fact that most of them are friends, or at least close acquaintances, would tend to make me suspect my own judgment. I’d simply feel more comfortable if someone with a more … detached perspective decided whether or not they’d be suitable for the duty.”

“I see.”

Rayno considered that for a moment. For a rather long moment, in fact.
As he’d already suggested, the Inquisition always had far too many demands for men of talent and ability, and that was especially so these days. Phandys was already young for his current rank, but Rayno could easily have him promoted to colonel or even brigadier. Yet deciding whether or not to do that represented something of a balancing act. While the higher rank would give him greater seniority
and authority, it would also make him even more of a marked man among his fellows. It was sadly true that the more closely identified with the Inquisition an officer became, the less his fellows tended to confide in him. Besides.…

“Please do provide me with those recommendations, Major,” he said at length. “Even if I decide to leave you in your present assignment, it never hurts for the Inquisition
to know where to lay its hand on Mother Church’s dutiful sons when she needs them worst.”

“Of course, Your Eminence.” Phandys bowed slightly. “I’ll have them for you by tomorrow afternoon, if that will be soon enough?”

“That will be fine, Major,” Rayno said, and waved one hand in dismissal.

*   *   *

“Well?” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said as Wyllym Rayno entered his office. “What’s our good friend
Rhobair been up to lately?”

“According to all my sources, Your Grace, he’s been doing precisely what he said he was going to do. He paid another visit to Father Zytan yesterday, and he’s scheduled a meeting next five-day with the senior Pasqualates from all five major hospitals to discuss the coordination of healers with his shelters and soup kitchens for next winter.” The archbishop shrugged.
“Apparently he wants to be better organized than he was this winter.”

Clyntahn rolled his eyes. He didn’t have anything against a practical, reasonable level of charitable works, but the vicars of Mother Church weren’t supposed to allow themselves to be distracted from their own responsibilities. At a time like this, the Church’s chief financial officer had dozens of concerns upon which he might
more profitably spend his time than worrying about a winter which was still months away.

The Grand Inquisitor leaned back, the fingers of his right hand drumming an irritated tattoo on his desk. Duchairn’s excessive, gushy piety was becoming more and more exasperating, yet all the old arguments against allowing the Group of Four’s potential enemies to suspect a genuine division in their ranks
remained, although those arguments were growing weaker as the example he’d made of the Wylsynns’ circle of pro-Reformist traitors sank fully home. If not for that, he’d cheerfully contemplate jettisoning Duchairn. Unfortunately, if he purged Duchairn, he’d have to come up with someone else to do the man’s job, and the unpalatable fact was that no one else could do it as well as he did. That consideration
was especially pointed given Mother Church’s current straitened financial condition.

No, he concluded yet again, regretfully, he couldn’t get rid of Duchairn yet, however much the man’s softhearted, mushy-brained sanctimony sickened him. Of course, the
reasons
he couldn’t—those same straitened financial conditions—only made the other vicar’s obsession with “providing for the poor” even more maddening.
Still, if Clyntahn had no choice anyway, he might as well look at the bright side. Judging by the tenor of his own agents’ reports, Duchairn’s demand that the Group of Four show a “kinder, gentler face” truly was helping to bolster morale here in Zion. That sort of bought-and-paid-for “loyalty” was always a perishable commodity, far less reliable than the instant obedience instilled by the
Inquisition’s discipline, but it was probably useful in the short term, at least.

“What about Phandys?” he asked, and Rayno considered his response carefully.