Waiting for him to parade the god.
Neal Forn came up to Tephe, bearing two bags, and handed one to the captain. “Your coppers, captain.” Tephe nodded, and took the bag. Inside were coins, which he would throw to the crowds lining the streets as he passed them. They would reach for the coins with one hand and throw trash and rotten things at the passing god with the other, shouting as they did so.
“I remember being on the other end of this,” Forn said, and gestured to the west. “I was a child six streets from here. When these gates opened, wherever we were and whatever we were doing, we came running. The captains and their mates would toss their coins and we would fight for them, and then take what we had and buy bread. When we were older, we would buy drink.”
“You remember this fondly,” Tephe said.
Forn snorted. “No, captain, not fondly. A thrown copper was often the thing that decided for the day whether I ate new, warm bread or what I had scraped out of a barrel to throw at the god.” He jerked his head out toward the tenements. “This is not a place to grow well as a child, captain. I do not think half those I grew with made it to an age to leave, and most of those who grew to that age never left. I do not doubt I will see some of my childhood fellows down this street today, shouting pieties and hoping for copper.”
“Toss them a coin, then,” Tephe said. “They will praise you when they drink tonight.”
Forn shook his head, and then looked out to the street. “I throw to the children,” he said. “They need the coins better. And one of them might yet leave. As I did.” Then the first mate gave his captain a small, bitter smile and took some distance from him.
Tephe gave him his distance and instead looked back toward the god, secured in an ornate rolling cage whose iron bars were too thick to allow the god hope of escape, but wide enough to let through the trash flung at it. Surrounding the cage were a dozen of the godhold guard, dressed in livery of red, gold and black, holding pikes of second-made iron. The pikes were meant to be ceremonial but were nevertheless sharpened and balanced for attack and discipline. Gods were known to attempt escape on their brief journey to the godhold, or their few remaining worshippers to attempt to rescue their lords.
Where either the gods or their followers would go from there was another matter entirely. The inner city of Bishop’s Call was sealed by The Lord Himself, a mosaic ring of first-made iron circling it. No enslaved god, weakened and stripped of its native power, could hope to pass. Nor would The Lord’s followers approach the ring, although for another reason entirely. While even the smallest nugget of first-made iron could bring a man more copper than he might see in a year, stealing iron from the Sealing Ring condemned the thief to have his soul consumed. Death beyond death.
Tephe shuddered at the thought, and looked up to see the god, in its cage, staring directly at him.
Between Tephe and the god Priest Andso interposed himself. “Captain, we are ready,” he said. The priest was dressed in fine robes of green and gold and held a long prieststaff in his right hand. The priest, Tephe knew, would parade close enough to the cage of the god to imply it was he himself who caged and controlled it, but not so close that he would be struck by the trash thrown at it. “We are ready,” the priest said. “And it is a glorious day to parade!”
Tephe glanced at Forn, who discreetly rolled his eyes. They both turned back to the street, whose edges now swarmed with crowds, jeering and readying their refuse to hurl at the god as it passed by. The guards at the gate nodded to the captain; the gate was now fully open.
Tephe took a deep breath, jammed a hand into his bag of coppers, and stepped forward toward the street, and toward the godhold.
“Are you well, Captain Tephe?” asked Bishop Major Chawk. Chawk and two other bishops sat at a long, curved table of dark soapwood, sheaves of documents in front of each. Tephe stood in front of the desk, in a meeting room in the sprawling Bishopry, which in itself was nearly as large as the city which putatively contained it. “You appear distracted,” the Bishop said.
“My apologies, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I was recalling the parade upon our arrival.”
“Ah, yes,” Chawk said. “Did you enjoy it, Captain?”
“It is always an honor to show to the faithful the power of Our Lord, to whom even the gods submit,” Tephe said.
Chawk chuckled. “A very politic answer, Captain. But you do not need to be politic here.”
“Yes, Eminence,” Tephe said, and kept his true opinion about that statement to himself.
“We have read your report on the events surrounding your defeat at Ament Cour,” said another of the bishops, whom Tephe recognized as Stei Ero, the Bishopry’s Vicar of Archives, charged with intelligence gathering. “Also your late addition of the incident with the god. And it will come to you as no surprise that we have collected additional accounts of both incidents, both from your ship’s priest and from other sources.”
“You have a spy aboard the Righteous,” Tephe said.
“Does this offend you, Captain?” Ero asked.
“No, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I hide nothing from the Bishopry Militant, or the Bishopry in general. Your spy will not tell you anything I would not. Therefore he is no harm to me or to my ship.”
“You are indeed an honest captain,” murmured Ero, who patted his stack of documents. “If perhaps not always a wise one. We might have expected better from the captain of a ship of the line than your withdrawal at Ament Cour. What do you say to that, Captain Tephe.”
Tephe held himself very still. “I would say to you that we were engaged by three ships of equal strength to the Righteous, and at close quarters, and with a god who had lately brought us to Ament Cour and who was not at full strength, either to deflect attack or to aid us in escape,” he said. “Through the grace of Our Lord we were able to destroy one of those ships and disable a second, all the while drawing the ships away from the planet itself and giving the faithful there time to fortify themselves against attack, and to call for additional ships to defend them. We left Ament Cour space only when the Righteous’ wounds were too grave to sustain another attack, and even then our god had strength only to bring us as far as the outer planet in Ament Cour’s system. We hid in that planet’s rings, running dark and cold, until both ship and god were recovered well enough to travel once more.”
“You provide us with a rationalization for your failure,” Ero said.
“I provide you with an accounting, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I stand here for my choices and will suffer any judgment they provoke. I chose within my power the wisest course of action for my ship and for the people of Ament Cour. Perhaps another captain would have done other, and better. These were my choices.”
“Well said,” said Chawk. “And in all, well done. You defended your ship and the faithful as far as you were able, and better than most would have done. This is nevertheless of bitter comfort. Before more of our ships could drive off the one ship the Righteoushad been unable to defeat, it destroyed three cities on Ament Cour. Hundreds of thousands of souls lost in all.”
“They did not land troops?” Tephe said. “Nor raid the cities?”
“Such was not their goal,” Chawk said.
“What was their goal?” asked Tephe.
“Genocide!”
The word blasted from the third bishop, whom Tephe did not recognize. He did recognize the apprehension both Chawk and Ero formed on their faces when the third bishop spoke. Whomever he was, he outranked them both, and significantly.
“Yes, genocide,” continued the third bishop. “A systematic eradication of the faithful. Not to make it easier to steal things, or to barter hostages for money, or to loot and rape, but to destroy Our Lord by destroying that which sustains him!”