It doesn’t mean the city’s entire population’s caught up in it, Wyllym, he told himself. How many people does it take to kill eighteen men, especially when they’re caught alone or with only a single companion to help them? It could be no more than a handful of malcontents! So Zhaspahr’s right. The attacks don’t prove the … disaffection is general.
No, it didn’t conclusively prove anything of the sort. But Wyllym Rayno had been an agent inquisitor—and a prosecutor inquisitor—in his day. He couldn’t have begun to count the number of cases he’d made on far flimsier evidence than the seventeen bodies in the Inquisition’s morgue.
And now Wynchystair couldn’t even be bothered to keep his appointment! Well, he was going to get an earful when he did arrive, and—
“Excuse me, Your Eminence.”
Rayno turned from the window. The under-priest was back, and his face was pale, his expression visibly shaken.
“What?” the archbishop demanded, fighting a sudden sinking sensation.
“Father Allayn—” The under-priest swallowed. “Father Allayn is dead, Your Eminence. He and Father Zhaksyn, Father Paiair, and Father Kwynlyn … they’re all dead.”
“All of them?!” Rayno stared at the aide.
“All of them,” the under-priest confirmed. “I just heard from Father Allayn’s secretary. He says … he says Father Allayn had summoned the others to an early meeting—over breakfast, I think—to hear their reports before his meeting with you. Someone threw a hand-bomb through the breakfast parlor window.”
“Schueler,” Rayno whispered. He stared at the under-priest for several seconds, then shook himself. “Tell Bishop Markys I want to see him immediately!” he snapped.
* * *
“That doesn’t sound good,” Father Elaiys Makrakton observed, his expression uneasy. The under-priest glanced at his assistant, Brother Riely Stahrns, then looked at the Temple Guard sergeant in command of the squad assigned to support them.
“Don’t ask me, Father,” the sergeant said edgily, head cocked as he listened to the shouts coming around the corner ahead of them.
“Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Makrakton said, his tone considerably heartier than he actually felt.
“If you say so, Father.”
The sergeant sounded as doubtful as Makrakton truly felt, but he jerked his head at his men.
“You heard the Father. Look sharp!”
Heads nodded, and Makrakton tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed the bayonets being fixed on the Guardsmen’s rifles. Then he drew a deep breath and nodded to Stahrns.
The daily briefing had all sounded so … routine this morning. It wasn’t a duty anyone wanted, of course, but someone had to go tear down the blasphemous broadsheets that went up every night, and today it was their turn. Makrakton had done his share of avoiding it any way he could. There was something about just touching the things, about coming into contact with something so obviously unclean. And even if they were torn down, they only reappeared the next morning. Never in exactly the same place, but there were parts of town—stretches like Zheppsyn Avenue—where they always appeared. They might be on a different building—on St. Nysbet’s today and on the Zheppsyn Avenue Library tomorrow—but they were always here. Anyone willing to believe their lies, could always find a fresh load of them on Zheppsyn.
He led the way around the corner, turning into the avenue, and his jaw tightened as he saw the crowd standing around the message board outside St. Nysbet’s. That was where the parish priest posted the day’s scripture every morning, but that wasn’t what they were reading today, and he felt beads of sweat under his priest’s cap as he realized how big the crowd was. There had to be fifty or sixty men standing around the message board, voices raised in an indistinct but angry surf of sound, and even as he watched, more trotted down the street, heading for the crowd.
Well, they couldn’t have that, now could they?
“Follow me,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth and went striding towards the growing knot of men.
“Here, now!” he shouted. “What’s all this, then?! You people know better than to believe the sorts of lies in those things!” He jabbed an accusatory finger at the broadsheets he could now see tacked to the message board. “Move along! Go about your business before I have to start taking names and—”
“No more lies!”
Makrakton’s head jerked up as the shout rang out. He didn’t know exactly where it had come from. It didn’t seem to have come from the men around the message board, but he couldn’t be certain. What he was certain of was that the entire crowd had turned to face him.
“I said—” he began again.
“No more lies and no more murders!” the same voice shouted. “The broadsheets are right, lads! Show Clyntahn what we really think of him!”
Makrakton couldn’t believe his ears. Sheer shock held him motionless for a moment, and that was one moment too long.
The crowd surged suddenly, but not to disperse. No, it surged towards Makrakton and his escort.
“What do you think you’re—?” He heard Brother Riely begin, but then the lay brother’s voice chopped off as a hurled cobblestone struck him squarely in the face.
Stahrns went down with a strangled scream, clutching at his ruined face, and the sergeant was suddenly shouting orders. The squad’s rifles came down, leveled, and a sheet of smoky fire lashed out across Zheppsyn Avenue. There were screams from the other side of that smoke, but the single, rushed volley didn’t stop the oncoming Zionites. They came out of the smoke, at least a quarter of them with cobblestones or other improvised weapons in their hands, and hurled themselves straight at the Guardsmen.
“Kill the bastards!” someone bellowed.
“No more murders!” someone else shouted, and then—
“Death to the Grand Fornicator!”
The enraged mob rolled over the Guard squad. Two or three of them went down on the Guardsmen’s bayonets, but the squad was too shaken, too taken aback. It wasn’t a disciplined force; it was simply a group of confused, disbelieving men with rifles in their hands, and they never had a chance.
Makrakton had a momentary glimpse of a stolen rifle butt coming at his face, swung like a baseball bat by a burly civilian in a bricklayer’s apron. It was only a blur, then it smashed into his jaw and he went down, three-quarters stunned.
The boots were waiting.
* * *
Zheppsyn Avenue was not unique.
The broadsheets had, indeed, gone up again the night before, the way they always did. But these broadsheets were different. For months—years—they’d appeared, morning after morning, and all they’d ever done was to report news. At first, they’d been dismissed by every loyal son or daughter of Mother Church as the lies they obviously were. But over time, five-day-by-five-day, month-by-month, the citizens of Zion and the Temple Lands—of Harchong, and Desnair, and Dohlar—had realized they weren’t lies. They were truth, and yet that was all they’d been. They’d never called for action, never urged anyone to rebel. In fact, they’d gone out of their way to avoid anything of the sort.