But these broadsheets weren’t like that. These broadsheets were written in fire and quenched in rage. They recounted the hideous casualty totals from the front. They enumerated the millions of Siddarmarkians who’d died in the Inquisition’s holding camps, listing the grim total camp-by-camp. They gave the totals for the numbers of Zionites who’d simply disappeared in every borough of the city … and broadsheets in each borough gave the names of the agents inquisitor responsible for that borough’s disappearances. The broadsheets nearest the Temple listed all of the vicars and bishops and priests Zhaspahr Clyntahn had purged. The broadsheets nearest the Plaza of Martyrs gave the numbers for how many people had been tortured and burned to death as the Punishment decreed. The broadsheets on individual church doors gave the names of Inquisition informants, parish-by-parish.
And this time, they didn’t simply give information.
Children of God!
The day has come to retake God’s Church from the evil men who make a mockery of God’s law and His love for His children! Zhaspahr Clyntahn is no servant of God. He is evil and corruption, and he is death! Death for any who oppose him—who oppose him, not God! Death for your sons and fathers and brothers fighting not for God, but for Clyntahn the Corrupt! Death for children and infants in arms in the camps of Siddarmark! Death for your children, for anyone who dares to question the monster he’s made of the Inquisition! And death for Mother Church herself if no one stops him before he transforms her forever into an image of his own cruelty and vile ambition!
Strike! Strike now! Strike hard! Take back your Church in the name of God and the Archangels!
Death to the Inquisition! Death to Zhaspahr Clyntahn!
And this time members of Helm Cleaver—and the hidden audio remotes of an electronic being named Owl—were scattered about the city in strategic locations to be the voices of rage … and the sparks of holocaust.
* * *
No one had seen it coming.
Perhaps they should have, but they’d been the forces of Mother Church for so long, spoken with the full authority of the Holy Writ, of the Book of Schueler and the Proscriptions. They’d spoken for God, and who would dare to argue with Him?
They’d never been able to eradicate the accursed broadsheets, but they’d become accustomed to them. They’d hated them, feared them, understood the way in which the truth they proclaimed gnawed away at the Inquisition’s narrative, but that was all they’d done. It had never occurred to them that one day that might change. Nor had they realized the way in which those broadsheets’ proven veracity, the fact that they’d never—not once—been caught in a lie, would validate them on the day they did change.
A third of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s agents inquisitor disappeared in the first two hours. Most of them suffered the same fate as Elaiys Makrakton and Riely Stahrns. Some were less fortunate and spent far longer dying. And some—either out of simple prudence or because some deep-seated part of them had always known those broadsheets spoke the truth—simply stripped away the purple badges of the Order of Schueler, discarded their cassocks, and vanished into the streets of the city.
* * *
“What should we do, Father?”
Father Zytan Kwill stood on the mounting block before the gate of the Hospice of the Holy Bédard, the largest homeless shelter in the city of Zion, and stared at the vast crowd filling the square before him.
“What should we do, Father?!”
The question went up again, and Kwill drew a deep breath. He would never see ninety again, and the frailty of age had wrapped itself about him, but in that moment, with every eye—every heart—in that enormous crowd focused upon him, he was a giant. A giant who knew at last exactly what to say.
“My children—God’s children—you know what to do! The Writ itself tells you! Remember the words of the Archangel Chihiro!
“‘In the day of wickedness, be not wanting. In the day of corruption, be not afraid. In the day of evil, stay not your hand. When Darkness comes before you, pretending to be Light, when those who should be your shepherds become slash lizards devouring the sheep, when darkest night consumes the sun, cling to God with all your might and all your strength, and know that He will send you the true shepherd, the good shepherd! Find that shepherd. Seek him out, for you will know him by his works. Trust him who leads you to Light. Follow him, fight for him, bear him up and do not let him fail, for the good shepherd loves the flock. The good shepherd nurtures the flock. And the good shepherd dies for the flock. Be you also good shepherds. Face those who would do evil in God’s name, and cut them from you forever!’”
There was silence for a moment—a moment in which he could hear the distant roar of the furious city. In which he could hear distance-faint screams, occasional shots, and over all of it the sigh of God’s own wind filled with the bright, clean sunlight of summer.
“You know who the false shepherd is, my children,” Zytan Kwill said then. “You know him by his works, by his darkness, by his destruction. And you also know the good shepherd! The good shepherd who’s been here for you—for all of you—and who you know will lay down his life for you if God wills it! Go! Find him! Fight for him! Be you also good shepherds and do what God has called you to do this day!”
Another moment of stillness, and then—
“Death to the Inquisition!”
* * *
The column of dragoons trotted down the avenue. The horses seemed uneasy—probably from the smell of smoke—and their riders were grim faced. But they rode in disciplined silence, accompanied only by the sound of shod hooves on cobbles, the jingle and rattle of tack and weapons.
“Thank God,” Father Zhordyn Rahlstyn murmured fervently.
He and Brother Anthynee Ohrohrk crouched inside the deserted shopfront, peering through its windows into the street. They’d been fortunate Ohrohrk had remembered the shop had been closed ever since its owners had been taken into custody. They’d managed to get inside before anyone spotted them in the street, and they’d hidden there, wondering what to do next.
Given what they’d seen happen to half a dozen of their fellow agents inquisitor—and, for that matter, to the squad of Temple Guardsmen who’d been assigned to support them that morning—wandering around the streets struck them as a very bad idea. They were fortunate their Guardsmen had lasted long enough, drawn enough of the mob’s attention, for them to run, but they couldn’t count on that sort of good fortune lasting forever.
“I can’t believe this, Father,” Brother Anthynee said, hands still trembling as they watched the mounted column coming towards them. “I can’t believe it! How could they all turn on us like this?!”
“When Shan-wei’s loose in the world, anything can happen, Anthynee,” Rahlstyn replied almost absently. “And those eternally damned and accursed broadsheets—that’s what set them off! But don’t think they’ve turned all of Zion against us. Against God, I mean.” He shook his head. “God and the Archangels don’t desert their own! That’s why They’ve sent us this cavalry, and in the fullness of time, They’ll take back control of God’s city for His rightful servants.”