Midst Toil and Tribulation Read online

But it wasn’t visions of Zion Merlin Athrawes truly wanted, and he knew it. What he wanted was to bring Zhaspahr Clyntahn and his fellows into his own reach for one, fleeting moment, and he wanted it with an intensity he knew had come to border all too nearly upon madness. He’d found himself thinking about Commodore Pei more and more frequently as the brutal winter of western Siddarmark grew steadily more and more savage. The Commodore had walked into Eric Langhorne’s headquarters with a vest-pocket nuke; Merlin Athrawes could easily have carried a multimegaton city-burner into Zion and destroyed not simply the Group of Four but the entire Temple in a single cataclysmic blast. The death toll would have been hideous, but could it possibly be worse than what he was watching happen inch by agonizing inch in Siddarmark? Than the deaths this war had already cost Charis and its allies? Than the deaths it would cost in the months and years ahead?

  And would it not be worth it to cleanse himself of the blood guilt for starting it by ending his life—if life it truly was—like the biblical Samson, bringing down his enemies in his own destruction?

  Oh, stop it! he told himself harshly. You know it was only a matter of time before that lunatic Clyntahn would’ve unleashed the Inquisition on Charis even without your intervention. And do you really think for a moment he would ever have stopped again, once he’d tasted that much blood? Of course he wouldn’t have! You may be partly—even largely—to blame for where and when the bloodletting started, but you aren’t responsible for what was already driving it. And without your interference, Clyntahn would already’ve won.

  It was true, and in his saner moments—the moments when he didn’t sit in a darkened room watching the carnage, tasting the hate behind it—he knew it was true. Just as he knew the Church had to be destroyed if humanity was going to survive its inevitable second meeting with the genocidal Gbaba. But truth … truth was cold and bitter bread, laced with arsenic and poisoned with guilt, at times like this.

  That’s enough, a voice which sounded remarkably like Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s said in the back of his electronic brain. That’s enough. You’ve seen what you told Owl to show you. Don’t sit here and beat yourself to death over things you can’t change, anyway. Besides, Cayleb’s just likely to check with Owl and find out you stayed up late … again.

  Despite himself, his lips twitched and a spurt of gentle amusement flowed through his rage, blunting the sharp edges of his self-hatred, as he pictured Cayleb Ahrmahk’s reaction if he did discover Merlin’s infraction. It wasn’t as if Cayleb or Sharleyan thought for a moment that even an emperor’s wrath could make any impression on Merlin Athrawes if he chose to ignore it, but that wasn’t the reason Cayleb had issued his edict, nor was it the reason he would have pitched a truly imperial tantrum over its violation. No, he would have berated Merlin with every … colorful phrase he could come up with because he knew how much Merlin needed that. How much the PICA “seijin warrior” of myth and legend needed to be treated as if he truly were still a human being.

  And perhaps—who knew?—Merlin truly was still human on some elemental level that went beyond fleshly envelopes and heartbeats and blood. Perhaps he wasn’t, too. Perhaps in the end it didn’t matter how much blood guilt he took upon his soul because perhaps Maikel Staynair was wrong. Perhaps Nimue Alban truly was as dead as the Terran Federation—perhaps Merlin Athrawes truly was no more than an electronic echo with no soul to lose.

  There were times he hoped that wasn’t so, and other times—when he thought of blood and pain, of thin-faced, starving children shivering in mountain snow—when he prayed it was.

  My, you are feeling morbid tonight, aren’t you? he asked himself tartly. Maybe Cayleb’s even righter than you thought to insist you get that downtime of his. And maybe you need to get up in the morning and drop by the imperial nursery to hug that goddaughter of yours and remember what this is all really about.

  He smiled more naturally, dreams of guilt and bloodshed softened by the memory of that laughing, wiggling small body in his arms like God’s own promise the future would, indeed, somehow be worth its cost in the fullness of time.

  And it will, he thought softly, prepping the commands which would switch him to standby mode. When you look down at that little girl and realize why you’re doing all this—realize how much you love her—you know it will.

  .III.

  The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

  “I hope you still think this was worth it, Zhaspahr,” Vicar Rhobair Duchairn said grimly, looking across the conference table at the jowly Grand Inquisitor.

  Zhaspahr Clyntahn looked back with a face of bland, expressionless iron, and the Church of God Awaiting’s treasurer managed—somehow—not to snarl. It wasn’t easy, given the reports pouring in from Siddarmark, and he knew as surely as he was sitting there that the reports they were receiving understated the destruction and death.

  “I don’t understand why you seem to think all this is somehow my fault,” Clyntahn said in a flat voice. “I’m not the one who decided when and where it was going to happen—you can thank that bastard Stohnar for that!”

  Duchairn’s lips parted but he stopped the fatal words before they emerged. He couldn’t do much about the contempt and anger in his eyes, but at least he managed to refrain from what he truly wanted to say.

  “Forgive me if I seem a bit obtuse,” he said instead, “but all the reports I’ve seen—including Archbishop Wyllym’s—seem to indicate the Inquisition is leading the … resistance to the Lord Protector. And”—his eyes swiveled to Allayn Maigwair, the Temple’s captain general—“that somehow quite a few Temple Guard ‘advisors’ wound up assigned to the men who launched this ‘spontaneous uprising.’ Under the circumstances, I’m sure you can understand why it might seem to me you were a bit more directly involved in events there than anyone else in this council chamber.”

  “Of course I was.” Clyntahn’s lip curled disdainfully. “I’m Mother Church’s Grand Inquisitor, Rhobair! As such, I’m personally answerable to the Archangels and to God Himself for her safety. I didn’t want to create this situation in Siddarmark. You and Zhasyn made your … reasoning for keeping the traitorous bastards’ economy intact amply clear, and however little I liked your logic, I couldn’t really dispute it. But that didn’t absolve me from my responsibility—mine and my inquisitors’—to watch Stohnar and his cronies. If it came down to a choice between making sure marks continued to flow into the Treasury and letting the entire Republic fall into the hands of Shan-wei and those fucking Charisian heretics, there was only one decision I could make, and I’m not about to apologize for having made it when my hand was forced!”

  “Forced?” Zahmsyn Trynair, the Church’s chancellor was obviously unhappy to be siding even partially with Duchairn, but he arched his eyebrows at Clyntahn. “Forgive me, Zhaspahr, but while you may not have intended for events to take the course they did, there seems little doubt that your ‘Sword of Schueler’ got out of hand and initiated the violent confrontation.”

  “I’ve told you and told you,” Clyntahn shot back with an air of dangerous, put-upon patience. “If I was going to have a weapon ready to hand when I needed it, I could hardly wait to start sharpening the blade until after Stohnar had already struck, could I? Obviously a certain degree of preparation was necessary if the true sons of Mother Church were to be organized and ready to move when they were most sorely required. Yes, it’s entirely possible a few of my inquisitors honed the Sword to a keener edge than I’d intended. And I won’t pretend I wasn’t more than a little taken aback by the … enthusiasm with which Mother Church’s children sprang to her defense. But the truth is that it’s a good thing Wyllym and I had started making preparations, and the proof is right there in the reports before you.”

  He jabbed a thick forefinger at the folders on the conference table. Duchairn had already forced himself to read the contents fully and completely, and he wondered what would have happened to Mother Church long since if his Treasury reports had borne so little resemblance to t
he truth. There were mountains of facts in those reports—facts which he had no doubt at all were true. But the very best way to lie was to assemble carefully chosen “truths” into the mask you wanted reality to wear, and Wyllym Rayno, the Archbishop of Chiang-wu, was a master at doing just that.

  It’s to be hoped he does at least a little better job of telling Zhaspahr the truth, Duchairn thought bitterly. Or is it? For that matter, could Zhaspahr even recognize the truth if someone dared to tell it to him these days?!

  “You’ve got the figures, Zhasyn,” Clyntahn went on sharply. “Those bastards in Siddar City were buying three times as many rifles as they told us they were! Just who in Shan-wei d’you think they were stockpiling them against? Could it possibly have been the people—us, Mother Church—Stohnar was lying to about the numbers he was buying? I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any other reason for him to hide them from us!”

  The Grand Inquisitor glared at Trynair, and the chancellor glanced uneasily at the treasurer from the corner of one eye. Duchairn could see what little backbone Trynair might still possess oozing out of him, but there wasn’t a great deal he could do about that. Especially not when he strongly suspected that even though Rayno had inflated the figures grossly, Stohnar had been stockpiling weapons as quietly and secretly as he could.

  God knows I would’ve been stockpiling them like mad if I’d known Zhaspahr Clyntahn had decided it was only a matter of when—not if—he was going to bring my entire Republic down in fire and blood!

  “And when you add that to the way Stohnar, Maidyn, and Parkair’ve been coddling and protecting the Shan-wei-damned ‘Reformists’—not to mention entire communities of Charisians!—throughout the Republic, it’s obvious what they had in mind. As soon as they thought they had enough rifles for their immediate security, they were going to openly invite Charis into an alliance. Can you imagine what kind of reward they might’ve demanded from Cayleb and Sharleyan for giving them a foothold here on the mainland itself? Not to mention selling the entire Siddarmarkian army into their possession? Langhorne, Zahmsyn! We’d have had Charisian armies pouring across the Border States and into the Temple Lands themselves by summer, and you know it!”

  The Grand Inquisitor’s fire was directed at Trynair, but no one doubted its true target was Duchairn. The chancellor wilted visibly, and Duchairn knew the image of Siddarmarkian armies sweeping across the Border States had been one of Trynair’s darkest nightmares—however little chance there’d been of its ever actually happening—for years. The thought of those same armies equipped with Charisian weapons, allied to the monarchs who’d sworn to destroy the Group of Four forever, had to be the most terrifying thing the chancellor could imagine … short of finding himself face-to-face with the Inquisition as Clyntahn’s other enemies had, at any rate.

  “Father Zohannes and Father Saimyn had reports from reliable sources that the army was supposed to conduct an ‘exercise’ closing the frontier with the Border States as soon as the first snows fell,” Clyntahn continued. “An ‘exercise!’” He sneered and curled his lip. “One that would’ve just happened to put all of those rifles he wasn’t telling us he had on the frontier right across the shortest path from Zion to Siddar City … or from Siddar City to Zion. Obviously they had no choice but to act when they did, whether it was what any of us wanted or not!”

  Duchairn’s jaws ached from the pressure it took to keep his teeth closed on what he really wanted to say. Of course Zohannes Pahtkovair and Saimyn Airnhart had reported Stohnar intended to seal his borders! They were Clyntahn’s creatures, and they’d report whatever he needed them to!

  “No one could regret the loss of life more than I do,” Clyntahn said piously. “It’s not the fault of Mother Church, however—it’s the fault of her enemies. We had no choice but to act. If we’d hesitated for so much as five-day or two, Langhorne only knows how much worse it could’ve been! And if you expect me to shed any tears over what happened to heretics, blasphemers, and traitors or their lackeys, you’ll be a long time waiting, Zhasyn!” He slammed one beefy hand on the tabletop. “They brought whatever happened to them on themselves, and however bad that might have been in this world, it was only a foretaste of what awaits them in the next!”

  He glared around the chamber, nostrils flared, eyes flashing, and Duchairn marveled once again at the man’s ability to believe whatever he needed to believe at any given moment. Yet surely he had to realize he was lying this time … didn’t he? How could someone manipulate, twist, and pervert the truth that thoroughly if he didn’t know, somewhere deep inside, what the truth actually was? Or did he simply rely on his subordinates to tell him whatever “truth” he needed to know to suit his requirements?

  The treasurer’s stomach twisted with familiar nausea as he thought about the other reports, the ones Clyntahn hadn’t had time to “adjust.” The ones about the atrocities, the rapes, the murders not simply in the Republic’s communities of expatriate Charisians, but across its length and breadth. The churches burned with priests—even entire congregations—inside them because they carried the taint of “Reformism.” The food stores deliberately burned or contaminated—or outright poisoned—in the teeth of winter. The sabotage of canal locks, despite the Book of Langhorne’s specific prohibitions, to prevent the western harvests from being transported to the eastern cities. Clyntahn could pass all those off as “unfortunate excesses,” unintended but unhappily inevitable in the face of Mother Church’s loyal sons’ fully justified and understandable rage, but it had happened too broadly—and far too efficiently—not to have been carefully orchestrated by the same people who’d given the order for the uprisings in the first place.

  And just what does Zhaspahr think is going to happen now? the treasurer asked himself bitterly. Siddarmarkian armies on the Border States’ frontier? A Charisian foothold on the mainland? Charisian weapons and gold pouring into Stohnar’s hands now that those hands have become Mother Church’s mortal enemy? He’s guaranteed all those things will happen unless, somehow, we can crush the Republic before Charis can come to its rescue! If he had to do this—if he simply had to unleash this bloodshed and barbarity—couldn’t he at least have done it effectively?

  And then there was the devastating financial consequence of the effective destruction of one of the only three mainland realms which had actually been managing to pay their tithes. How did Clyntahn expect the Treasury to magically conjure the needed funds out of thin air when the Inquisition was systematically destroying them at the source?

  But I can’t say that, can I? Not with Zahmsyn folding up like a pricked bladder and Allayn nodding in what has to be at least half-genuine agreement. And even if I said it, it wouldn’t make one damned bit of difference, because the blood’s already been spilled and the damage’s already been done. The best I can hope for is to find some way to mitigate at least the worst of the consequences. And maybe, just maybe, if this works out the way it could, then—

  He chopped that thought off, scarcely daring to voice it even to himself, and made himself admit the gall-bitter truth. However disastrous this might prove in the long term, in the short term it actually bolstered Clyntahn’s power. The dispatches coming in from Desnair, the Border States, the Temple Lands, even—especially!—the Harchong Empire made that clear. The vision of Siddarmark collapsing into ruin was terrifying enough to any mainland ruler; the mere possibility of Siddarmark becoming a portal for Charisian invasion was even worse. Those rulers didn’t care at this point whether Stohnar had truly been planning to betray them, as Clyntahn claimed. Not anymore. What mattered now was that Stohnar had no choice but to betray them if he wanted his nation to survive … and that every one of them scented the chance to scavenge his own pound or two of flesh from the Republic’s ravaged carcass. And with the hysteria in Siddarmark—the atrocities against Mother Church which Clyntahn’s atrocities were bound to provoke—the schism would be driven even deeper into the Church’s heart, which was exactly what Clyntahn wanted.
He wanted the polarization, the fear, the hatred, because that was what would give him the power to destroy his enemies forever and make Mother Church over into his own image of what she was supposed to be.

  “I have to agree with Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said. Duchairn eyed him with cold contempt, and the captain general flushed. “I’m not in a position to comment on or second-guess the Inquisition’s reports,” he went on defensively, “but the reports coming to me from Guardsmen in the Republic confirm that there really were a lot more muskets—almost certainly rifled muskets—in Siddar City than there ought to’ve been. Somebody was obviously stockpiling them. And it’s certainly fortunate”—his eyes cut sideways towards the Grand Inquisitor for just a moment—“that we’ll have had time to get the Guard fully recruited up to strength and equipped with more of the new muskets by the time the snow melts. At least half of them will be rifled, as well, and I understand”—this time he looked squarely at Clyntahn—“that your agents have managed to ferret out some of the information we most desperately need.”

  “The Inquisition has come into possession of quite a bit of information on the heretics’ weapons,” Clyntahn acknowledged. “We’re still in the process of determining what portions of that knowledge we may safely use without encroaching upon the Proscriptions, but I believe we’ve found ways to duplicate many of their weapons without dabbling in the demonic inspiration which led the blasphemers to them.”

  He looked admirably grave, Duchairn thought bitterly. Every inch the thoughtful Inquisitor General truly finding ways to guard Mother Church against contamination rather than planning how he would justify anything that needed justifying.

  “We’ve discovered how they make their round shot explode,” he continued, “and I have a pair of trusted ironmasters devising a way to duplicate the effect. It’s not simply a matter of making them hollow, and finding a way to accomplish it without resorting to proscribed knowledge has been tricky. There’s also the matter of how you detonate the ‘shells,’ as the heretics call them. It requires a carefully compounded form of gunpowder to make the ‘fuses’ function reliably. Fortunately, one of Mother Church’s most loyal sons managed to obtain that information for her—obtain it at the cost of his own life, I might add—and we should be able to begin making our own fuses within a month or two. By spring, you should have field artillery with its own exploding shells, Allayn.”