‘I think you’re lying.’
Shanti was a useless liar and he knew it. The Grand Bishop, on the other hand, must have been an astute judge of individuals after all his years of dealing with the town’s transgressors and ministering to his flock. There was no way to hide from the Grand Bishop’s questions or the way his eyes read the secret signals that Shanti couldn’t prevent his body from creating. But there was no way he could tell the truth now. Not until they tore it from him.
They would do so and it was only a matter of time. He would break and tell them everything he knew. He was not a strong man, there was no point pretending. He would take it as far as he could.
‘I don’t know him.’
The Grand Bishop looked up and out of the small window as if there was something out there more significant than a patch of cloud-obscured sky.
‘I notice you’re… how shall we say… a man of slight frame. But you’re not a poor man in this town. You don’t have the excuse of not being able to afford the flesh that God provides.’
‘I’m a runner. I run many miles every day. It keeps me thin.’
‘Emaciated, I’d have said.’
Shanti didn’t respond. The Grand Bishop continued.
‘I’ve heard it said that John Collins is similarly light of build. Do you suppose that’s just a coincidence?’
‘There are a lot of thin townsfolk.’
‘None of them have the kind of job you have, Shanti. Or the kind of job Collins had before he strayed from us. So I ask you again, why are you and he so… undernourished?’
‘All I know is that I burn off my fat every day. Collins I can’t speak for.’
The Grand Bishop glanced at his two Parsons and sighed.
‘Very soon I’m going to run out of patience and pleasant conversation.’
‘Very soon Rory Magnus is going to mutilate my family. He may already have done so. I don’t care about Collins or your questions. I don’t care that you say I’m not the man I think I am. All I care about is them. Help me to save them and I’ll do anything, tell you anything you want. But not right now. Let me go to them. Give me a chance to save them, I’m begging you.’
‘If I let you go, Magnus is going to ask you the exact same questions I’m asking and for the exact same reasons. He’s going to do to your family what he wants to do whether he’s satisfied with what you tell him or not. You can’t save them or yourself just by getting out of this room.’
‘No, but I can at least try. And they’ll know that when it mattered most, I didn’t abandon them. For God’s sake, show some mercy.’
‘Tell me where Collins and his followers are hiding and I’ll let you go.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Then your family is lost. I’m sorry.’
Shanti let his head drop into his hands in misery and desperation. He was out of options. When he looked up his face was wet, his eyes red.
‘He’s in the Derelict Quarter—’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, Shanti, or I’ll kill your daughters myself.’
‘Let me finish. It’s a long way in. Maybe a couple of miles. Beyond the blocks the ground slopes down, away from the town. At the bottom of that slope, somewhere near the centre of it, there’s an opening. It leads down into tunnels. That’s where they are. I couldn’t see where they took me. All I know is it’s deep – three levels down.’
The Grand Bishop seemed shocked to hear it. Not because they were there. To Shanti it seemed he was shocked that there were places in Abyrne he knew nothing about, realms where he had no authority.
‘How many of them are there?’
Shanti completed his betrayal.
‘Twenty-five, maybe thirty at most. Some women among them.’
The Grand Bishop laughed.
‘Thirty? John Collins thinks he can take control of Abyrne with thirty starveling cave-dwellers? I can’t wait for the Parsons to shut him down.’ He nodded to his two companions. ‘Take your best out there and finish this for me right now. Bring Collins back to me alive.’
‘What about this one?’
‘We’re going to let him go to Magnus. He can’t do any harm now. By the time Magnus gets the information out of him this nonsense with Collins will be over. We’ll show the town what happens to blasphemers. I think it’s time we put the Welfare back in charge of the Chosen and make their sacrifice to us a thing of Divinity once again.’
The two Parsons left.
The Grand Bishop looked into Shanti’s eyes.
‘If you live through this – whether you save the lives of your family or not – I’m going to find out the truth about you, Richard Shanti. For better or for worse. You are one individual I will not allow to run to the Derelict Quarter to live out their days in exile. I will find you no matter where you go.’ He looked back out of the window, perhaps finding nothing in the clouds. ‘Get going. Make your sacrifice. But be ready for me when you’re done.’
Without the pack to drag him down, Shanti sprinted.
He flew.
The Parsons were a hundred in number. They fanned out across the broken landscape of the Derelict Quarter like monks wearing robes of blood. Soon the hems of their raiment were grey with the dust of destruction. From every right hand hung a polished femur, each one engraved with a passage from the Book of Giving. They made ideal clubs; lightweight but strong and slightly flexible. The broadened end where the knee joint would once have been, acted as a natural haft that prevented the bone slipping out of the wielder’s hand. The hip end of the bone was part club, part blunt hook. The Parsons used them to trip, to block and to bludgeon and these Parsons were the best the Welfare possessed.
They walked warily, eyes flicking, heads scanning from side to side. The Derelict Quarter was a place the Parsons hated and feared. Here Abyrne ended and became a no man’s land where fugitives went to eke out their days in starved deprivation. What was safe and pious and lawful became wild and unpredictable. The Derelict Quarter was wrong. They all felt its malignancy to their core.
From time to time one of them would stumble on the jagged, unforgiving rubble. The sudden sound would make them all stop and spin towards the noise. Nervous guts rumbled. Damp palms left smudges on red velvet.
Parson James Jessup was the youngest and arguably the strongest of all of them. Beside his fear he felt a deep instinct to deal out pain and punishment to the Godless ones they’d been sent to find. Only Collins needed to return alive. The rest they could do what they wanted with. His excitement brought the taste of iron into his mouth and he savoured it. This was God’s iron that ran in his blood, in his very saliva. It would be his strength and with it he would cast the Godless down forever.
He walked near the front of the group so that, when the ambush came, he was one of the last to be aware of it. When he turned, his Parson brothers were already falling like the red leaves of autumn. Among them moved what appeared to be the shadows of slender men and women. They were dressed in rags; the sleeves and trouser legs tattered by the shard-like corners and projections that lay all around.
Parsons turned and hefted their femur-clubs in timeworn arcs: diagonally down, hooked from right to left and back, sweeping uppercuts. None of the blows landed. Cassocks billowed as the Parsons collapsed to the wounding ground.
They stopped him before he reached the front door. Men in long coats ran out from both sides of the driveway to tackle him. There was no need, he was giving himself to them. He made no attempt to resist.
‘I’m Richard Shanti,’ he said. ‘Magnus wants to see me.’
Inside the mansion, one man holding each of his arms as they marched him, Shanti’s breathing quickly returned to normal. Only his heart didn’t completely settle into its usually slow rhythm but not because he wasn’t fit. He’d come for his daughters.