“Yes, Your Majesty. I would.”
“The most remarkable thing about Cayleb Ahrmahk,” she said, “is that he doesn’t think he’s remarkable at all. He’s never flinched, never even considered turning aside, even when Charis faced the entire world alone … and he thinks anyone would have done the same things he’s done in his place.”
“Then I’d say you’re well matched, Your Majesty,” Stohnar said. She looked at him and she shrugged. “You didn’t do very much flinching either, from what I’ve seen. Like that business in Chisholm.”
Sharleyan’s smile faded, and he felt a stab of remorse for having reminded her of where she’d been only three five-days ago, before Gwyllym Manthyr had borne her and her husband from Cherayth to Siddar City for tomorrow’s grim duty.
The last of the convicted traitors had faced the headsman a month ago, and Sharleyan and Cayleb had been present for every execution. Some might believe they’d been there because Sharleyan wanted to see those traitors pay for their treason, but those people were fools. Sharleyan Tayt Ahrmahk hadn’t wanted to see anyone die, but her presence had been the final facet of the lesson she’d taught her nobles: she would never flinch from the harsh responsibilities of her crown … and she would never hide behind her ministers.
That lesson had gone home this time. All Stohnar’s sources agreed on that.
“Forgive me,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t take my brain anywhere it wouldn’t have gone anyway, My Lord.” She shook her head quickly and smiled once more. “And Cayleb and I really have accomplished a bit more than just keeping the imperial headsmen busy!”
“That’s one way to describe redrawing the map of the entire world,” Stohnar said dryly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say we’ve gone quite that far, My Lord.” Sharleyan’s lips twitched. “Most of the borders are still where they were, after all.”
“Oh? Would that include Tarot, Emerald, Zebediah, and Corisande?”
“Their borders are still exactly what they were. They’ve simply been integrated into something even larger. Actually,” her expression turned thoughtful, “you’re probably in a better position than most to understand that. The Republic’s provinces have always enjoyed a lot of local autonomy, yet they’re part of a single whole. We’re a lot alike that way.”
“You may have a point,” he agreed. “And if Grand Vicar Rhobair has his way, I suspect the Temple Lands will be a lot more like us, too.”
“We’ll have to see how that works out.” Sharleyan’s expression was doubtful, but then she shrugged. “If anyone can make it work, it’s probably him, but he’s taken on an awfully ambitious task.”
“I hadn’t realized what a gift for understatement you have, Your Majesty,” Stohnar said dryly.
Grand Vicar Rhobair was clearly determined to restore order—and decency—to the Church of God Awaiting. And, as Sharleyan had suggested, he had his work cut out for him.
Between Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s purges and the Fist of God, the vicarate had been reduced by more than a third since the Armageddon Reef campaign, and well over a quarter of the survivors had retired to private life, mostly to avoid lengthy imprisonments, over the past few months. Forty-two of their fellows hadn’t been given that option. Much of the evidence against what had come to be known as “the Forty-Two” had been assembled over decades of patient effort by the murdered Wylsynn brothers and their allies, and Grand Vicar Rhobair had pressed their prosecutions relentlessly. Thirty-four had already been sentenced—eighteen of them to death—and the remaining eight trials were in their closing stages. Acquittal was … unlikely, and Stohnar suspected the Grand Vicar had been motivated almost as much by his debt to the Wylsynns as by the need to see justice done.
Yet justice must be done—not only done, but seen to be done—if anyone was ever to trust the Temple again. The man Zion called the Good Shepherd understood that the Church of God Awaiting must be cleansed, restored and—especially—reformed as transparently as possible. That was one reason he’d refused to fill the vacancies in the vicarate by appointment. That had been the grand vicar’s prerogative under church law that went back over five centuries, but these vacancies would be filled by election by their fellow vicars.
Not that he wasn’t prepared to use his prerogatives ruthlessly where he deemed necessary.
The Temple Lands were in the process of a major political reorganization. Stohnar suspected the Grand Vicar would have preferred to shift from direct ecclesiastic rule to some form of secular government. That clearly wasn’t going to happen, but he had managed to end the practice which had developed over the last two hundred years of appointing vicars to govern the episcopates. Instead, they’d become what they’d been originally: archbishoprics, governed by prelates appointed by the Grand Vicar with the advice and consent of the vicarate. He’d also abolished the Knights of the Temple Lands and eliminated the special privileges and exemptions of the Temple Lands’ clerical administrators. And, for good measure, he’d decreed that henceforth Mother Church’s archbishops would follow the Charisian model and spend a minimum of eight months out of every year in their archbishoprics, not Zion.
He’d overhauled the system of ecclesiastic courts just as completely as the vicarate and the episcopate. They’d been removed from the Order of Schueler’s jurisdiction and restored to the Order of Langhorne. The office of Grand Inquisitor had been abolished and a new Adjutant, Archbishop Ignaz Aimaiyr, had been appointed to oversee the Inquisition’s complete reform. Aimaiyr was about as popular a choice as anyone could have been … which, admittedly, wasn’t saying a great deal at the moment.
The Grand Vicar had come under enormous pressure to push even farther and simply abolish the Punishment, or, at least, to renounce its use as the Church of Charis had, but he’d refused. Horrible as the Punishment was, it was too deeply established within the Holy Writ to abolish it without fundamentally rewriting the Writ, and that was farther than a man like Rhobair Duchairn was prepared to go. Yet he’d taken steps to prevent the way in which it had been abused and perverted.
To insure there would be no more Zhaspahr Clyntahns, he’d replaced the office of Grand Inquisitor with a new three-vicar Court of Inquisition with its members drawn from the Orders of Langhorne, Bédard, and Pasquale; the Order of Schueler was specifically denied a seat. The Grand Vicar would formulate policy for the Inquisition; the adjutant would administer it; and the Court would determine who had—or hadn’t—violated fundamental doctrine. Never again would a single vicar possess the authority to condemn even a single child of God, far less entire realms, for heresy. Moreover, any conviction for heresy by the Court of Inquisition could be appealed to the vicarate as a whole, and the Punishment of Schueler could be inflicted only after the sentence had been confirmed by a majority vote of the entire vicarate and the Grand Vicar.
The Punishment would remain … but whether it would ever again be applied was another matter entirely, given the restrictions with which Grand Vicar Rhobair had hedged it about.
There were some—including Greyghor Stohnar—who had mixed feelings about that. The Lord Protector could think of at least two dozen Inquisitors who’d thoroughly earned their own Punishment. But if they’d escaped the Punishment, they hadn’t escaped punishment. The Grand Vicar had promised justice as the critical component of the minimum peace terms the Allies would accept, and he was keeping that promise. Over three hundred ex-Inquisitors, most of them from the concentration camps, had been stripped of their priestly office so that they might be arraigned before secular Siddarmarkian courts for crimes which ran the gamut from theft and extortion to rape, torture, and murder.