“My parishioners in Glacierheart have forgiven me a great deal over the years, ‘Aivah,’” Zhasyn Cahnyr told her. “I’m sure they would have forgiven me that, as well. If anyone had even noticed a single lowly archbishop amongst all those vicars, that is.”
“They weren’t all venal and corrupt, Your Eminence,” she said softly, sadly. “And even a lot of the ones who were both those things were more guilty of complacency than anything else.”
“You don’t have to defend them to me, my dear.” He reached out to touch her forearm gently. “I knew them as well as you did, if not in precisely the same way.”
He smiled again, squeezed her arm, and released it, then gazed out the window at those distant, anchored ships once more. As he watched, a guard boat appeared, rowing in a steady circle around them, as if to protect them from some shore-based pestilence.
Or, perhaps, to protect the shore from some contagion they carried, he thought grimly.
“I knew them,” he repeated, “and too many of them are going to pay just as terrible a price as our friends before this is all ended.”
“You think so?” The woman now known as Aivah Pahrsahn turned to face him fully. “You think it’s going to come to that?”
“Of course it is,” he said sadly, “and you know it as well as I do. It’s inevitable that Clyntahn, at least, will find more enemies among the vicarate. Whether they’re really there or not is immaterial as far as that’s concerned! And”-his eyes narrowed as they gazed into hers-“you and I both know that what you and your agents are up to in the Temple Lands will only make that worse.”
“Do you think I’m wrong to do it, then?” she asked levelly, meeting his eyes without flinching.
“No,” he said after a moment, his voice even sadder. “I hate what it’s going to cost, and I have more than a few concerns for your immortal soul, my dear, but I don’t think you’re wrong. There’s a difference between not being wrong and being right, but I don’t think there is any ‘right’ choice for you, and the Writ tells us no true son or daughter of God can stand idle when His work needs to be done. And dreadful as I think some of the consequences of your efforts are likely to prove, I’m afraid what you’re set upon truly is God’s work.”
“I hope you’re right, Your Eminence. And I think you are, although I try to remember that that could be my own anger and my own hatred speaking, not God. Sometimes I don’t think there’s a difference anymore.”
“Which is why I have those concerns for your soul,” he said gently. “It’s always possible to do God’s work for the wrong reasons, just as it’s possible to do terrible things with the best of all possible motives. It would be a wonderful thing if He gave us the gift of fighting evil without learning to hate along the way, but I suspect only the greatest and brightest of souls ever manage that.”
“Then I hope I’ll have your prayers, Your Eminence.”
“My prayers for your soul and for your success, alike.” He smiled again, a bit crookedly. “It would be my pleasure, as well as my duty, to commend a soul such as yours to God under any circumstances. And given the debt I owe you, it would be downright churlish of me not to.”
“Oh, nonsense!” She struck him gently on the shoulder. “It was my pleasure. I only wish”-her expression darkened-“I’d been able to get more of the others out.”
“You snatched scores of innocent victims out of Clyntahn’s grasp,” he said, his tone suddenly sterner. “Women and children who would have been tortured and butchered in that parody of justice of his, be they ever so blameless and innocent! Langhorne said, ‘As you have done unto the least of God’s children, for good or ill, so you have done unto me.’ Remember that and never doubt for one moment that all that innocent blood will weigh heavily in your favor when the time comes for you to face him and God.”
“I try to remember that,” she half-whispered, turning back to the window and gazing sightlessly out across the bay. “I try. But then I think of all the ones we had to leave behind. Not just the Circle, Your Eminence, all of them.”
“God gave Man free will,” Cahnyr said. “That means some men will choose to do evil, and the innocent will suffer as a result. You can’t judge yourself guilty because you were unable to stop all the evil Clyntahn and others chose to do. You stopped all it was in your power to stop, and God can ask no more than that.”
She stared out the window for several more moments, then drew a deep breath and gave herself a visible shake.
“You’re probably right, Your Eminence, but I intend to do a great deal more to those bastards before I’m done.” She turned back from the window, and the steel behind her eyes was plain to see. “Not immediately, because it’s going to take time to put the pieces in place. But once they are, Zhaspahr Clyntahn may find wearing the Grand Inquisitor’s cap a lot less pleasant than he does today.”
Cahnyr regarded her with a distinct sense of trepidation. He knew very few details of her current activities, and he knew she intended to keep it that way. Not because she distrusted him, but because she was one of the most accomplished mistresses of intrigue in the history of Zion. That placed her in some select company. Indeed, she’d matched wits with the full suppressive power of the Office of Inquisition, and she’d won. Not everything she’d wanted, perhaps, and whatever she might say-or he might say to her-she would never truly forgive herself for the victims she hadn’t managed to save. Yet none of that changed the fact that she’d outmaneuvered the Grand Inquisitor on ground of his own choosing, from the very heart of his power and authority, and done it so adroitly and smoothly he still didn’t know what had hit him.
Or who.
The woman who’d contrived all of that, kept that many plots in the air simultaneously without any of them slipping, plucked so many souls-including Zhasyn Cahnyr’s-from the Inquisition’s clutches, wasn’t about to begin letting her right hand know what her left hand was doing now unless she absolutely had to. He didn’t resent her reticence, or think it indicated any mistrust in his own discretion. But he did worry about what she might be up to.
“Whatever your plans, my dear,” he said, “I’ll pray for their success.”
“Careful, Your Eminence!” Her smile turned suddenly roguish. “Remember my past vocation! You might not want to go around writing blank bank drafts like that!”
“Oh,” he reached out and touched her cheek lightly, “I think I’ll take my chances on that.”
“Madam Pahrsahn! How nice to see you again!”
The young man with auburn hair and gray eyes walked around his outsized desk to take his visitor’s subtly perfumed hand in both of his. He bent over it, pressing a kiss on its back, then tucked it into his elbow and escorted her across the large office to the armchairs facing one another across a low table of beaten copper.
“Thank you, Master Qwentyn,” she said as she seated herself.
A freshly fed fire crackled briskly in the grate to her right, noisily consuming gleaming coal which had probably come from Zhasyn Cahnyr’s archbishopric in Glacierheart, she thought. Owain Qwentyn sat in the chair facing hers and leaned forward to personally pour hot chocolate into a delicate cup and hand it to her. He poured more chocolate into a second cup, picked it up on its saucer, and leaned back in his chair, regarding her expectantly.
“I must say, I wasn’t certain you’d be coming today after all,” he said, waving his free hand at the office window. The previous day’s gray skies had made good on their wintry promise, and sleety rain pounded and rattled against the glass, sliding down it to gather in crusty waves in the corners of the panes. “I really would have preferred to stay home myself, all things considered,” he added.
“I’m afraid I didn’t have that option.” She smiled charmingly at him. “I’ve got quite a few things to do over the next few five-days. If I started letting my schedule slip, I’d never get them done.”
“I can believe that,” he said, and he meant it.