The gates of the temple compound were open today, and people had already arrived to get a good position from which to view the proceedings. Abel walked through and made his way past the armory to the main courtyard, surrounded by the Temple of Zentrum on the eastern side, and the temple offices to the west. The temple smith shop stood silent, dark, its fires banked. It seemed almost an edifice in shame.
Behind and to the north of the offices was the nishterlaub storehouse where the prisoner was being held. There was now a company of ten guards at the door-more to keep anything from happening to the prisoner before the appointed time than to keep the disgraced priest from escaping.
Abel was about to find his own place among the spectators, when a figure beckoned him from the entrance veranda of the temple offices. It was Prelate Zilkovsky, standing alone. Abel walked over to join him.
“Hello, Dashian,” said the prelate.
“Your Excellency,” answered Abel. “It’s early yet.”
“Yes,” said Zilkovsky. “I wanted to come and test myself.”
“Sir?”
“To see if I can bear it.” He nodded toward the great heaping bonfire built in the courtyard center, the huge post-perhaps the largest willow trunk Abel had ever seen-rising in its center. “They’ll chain him to the post. Has to be metal bindings. Rope would burn. He showed the underpriests how to forge them himself.”
Abel shook his head in wonder. “Golitsin is a funny man.”
“He was like a son to me,” said Zilkovsky. “He was out of the orphanage in Mims, where I was subaltern to old Chang. Just a servant, but he impressed me. So bright. I found him a place in the letters class, and he took to it, like I knew he would.”
“He told me had been an orphan.”
“I don’t know about that,” Zilkovsky said. “His parents are probably still running around somewhere if the ague or the carnadons haven’t gotten them. Most of those orphans were simply abandoned. Someone gave up on them.” Zilkovsky took the hem of his robe, touched an eye. “Now yet another parent is giving up on him.”
“So free him, Prelate,” Abel said. “You know he’s not a bad man.”
“I cannot,” Zilkovsky said. “I was told to do this, in no uncertain terms.”
“By Zentrum himself,” Abel said. It was not a question. “Praise Law and Land,” he added perfunctorily.
“Yes,” answered Zilkovsky. “There was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer, to change things.”
Abel looked at the priest. His corpulent body was shaking like a bowl of gelled sweetmeat. After a moment, he got his sobs under control.
“Your father and I have been talking,” Zilkovsky said after a moment. “Treville is very dangerous for you now.”
“How do you mean?”
“You are a victim of your own success, my friend,” said the prelate. “One misstep, and it could be you up there.” He nodded toward the prepared bonfire. “Those breechlock muskets were very clever. I know Golitsin was brilliant, but I do not think he discovered their principle alone.”
“Perhaps not,” Abel said.
“I have shielded this knowledge carefully in my mind,” said Zilkovsky.
“Thank you.”
“Joab and I think that now is the time for you to be reassigned,” the priest continued. “Away from here. Away from trouble for a while.”
This was news to Abel. It took a moment for the import to hit him. “To another Scout regiment? Where?”
“Not the Scouts,” Zilkovsky answered. “It’s time you moved past that.”
“I’ll always be a Scout.”
“Be that as it may, the assignment will be in Lindron.”
“The district?”
“The city.”
There were no Scouts within the city of Lindron. Then Abel realized what Zilkovsky was implying. “You’ve found me a place at the temple?”
“Yes. You are to take a cadet position in the Academy of the Guardians.”
“The Academy?” Abel said. “But that’s for…second sons of First Families.”
“Your mother was a Klopsaddle.”
“But I hardly know that side of my family.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Zilkovsky. “You are more than qualified.” He stiffened, turned his face away from Abel. “You will leave immediately after the execution,” he said.
“But…my Scouts,” Abel said.
“They got along pretty well before you came along,” Zilkovsky said. “They’ll get along without you now. Besides, Joab will still be here. He’ll find a suitable commander.”
Abel could not argue with this point. Everything had seemingly been arranged. Still, there was the doubt.
“Why?” he asked. “You admitted it yourself. It could just as easily have been me on that stake. Aren’t you afraid of spreading heresy to the very heart of the Land by sending me?”
Zilkovsky did not look at Abel, and Abel only saw his great, jowly profile. But he believed he detected the trace of smile spread upon the older man’s face. “Afraid of it?” Zilkovsky said in a low voice. “I’m counting on it.” He nodded toward the bonfire stake. “You’re my revenge.”
Observe:
Center once again split Abel’s awareness and provided a bird’s eye view of the scene. Abel, not for the last time, wished he was not capable of viewing such a perspective. But since he was, he knew he could not resist and look away. He saw it all.
Late morning, and the sun had risen full over the Land. It was a hot day, fifty days after first harvest and getting toward second planting. The Blaskoye, which had been all that could be talked of or thought of days before, seemed almost a distant memory.
The Land abided. It was ever thus.
But today there was to be something different, and it was the sight of a lifetime.
The burning of a heretic.
The temple courtyard was packed. Men had brought their wives and children. There were water sellers and bread vendors milling about in the crowd.
But when they brought out the disgraced priest, there was a gasp. They had bound him in chains, metal chains.
He was the very embodiment of nishterlaub, and the crowd instinctively drew back.
Which gave Abel a chance to push through and find a place in the front row. When someone frowned at him for stealing his place, Abel turned and spat at his feet, giving his best scowl in return. He felt like fighting. He would have welcomed a fight. But the other backed down.
Drums were beating. The Regulars were putting on quite a show at Joab’s command.
“If we’re going to do this, let’s consult the Protocols and do it right,” Joab had told his commanders.
All had a place in the proceedings-all except Scouts. They were exempt, and most were needed on the Escarpment anyway for guard duty.
It took a long time to properly chain Golitsin to the stake. Two iron rings had been driven into it, probably at Golitsin’s suggestion, but the guards fumbled with the chains, unused to the feel of metal in their hands. They’d had to climb up on the pile on a wooden siege ladder commandeered for this new purpose, and that had proved difficult for Golitsin, who had no use of his hands for balance. Finally, one of the guards-Haywood, Abel thought it was-had bodily lifted the priest and nimbly carried him up the propped ladder.
The setting of the fire was done with pitch torches. The ten guards had circled the bonfire and held them ready.
That was when Zilkovsky appeared. He and a retinue of priests approached the bonfire and stood looking up at the staked man.
Zilkovsky spoke a familiar Thursday school litany of invocation, then shouted up to Golitsin. “Do you recant, heretic?”
Golitsin just smiled.