"Ear ... plug?" he got out, and Ohlyvya astonished herself with a soft, weeping laugh.

"Oh, Nahrmahn!" She cupped the uninjured side of his face with her free hand. "Oh, my love, who but you would worry about that at a time like this?!"

He said nothing, but there was a flicker of something almost like amusement under the pain and the drug clouds in his eye, and she shook her head.

"I don't know what happened to your earplug," she told him. "No one found anything when the healers examined you, anyway. Maybe they just had other things on their mind than looking in your ears. I don't know."

"Make ... sure, later," he whispered.

"I will," she promised. "I will. Now hush, my love. Don't worry about anything, not now."

"Love ... you," he said. "Always have. Never ... told you so ... enough."

"You think I didn't know?" She smoothed hair from his brow. "I knew. I always knew. And you saved me today, Nahrmahn." She managed a wavering smile. "I know you've never thought you were a properly heroic figure, but you were always hero enough for me. And never more than today."

His answering smile was heartbreaking but his eye slipped slowly shut once more, and her grip on his hand tightened. Had he heard her? Did he understand? Her ankle was broken, the left side of her face was one enormous bruise, and it had taken fourteen stitches to close the gash on her left shoulder, but not a single member of their escort had survived. Neither had the coachmen. And if Nahrmahn hadn't protected her with his own body, she would be dead or dying, too. It was important that he know that, and- She heard a foot on the marble bedchamber floor behind her, and her head jerked up, her eyes flashing with sudden, grief-fueled fury as she wheeled.

"How dare you intrude-?!" she began, then stopped abruptly.

"I came as soon as I could, Ohlyvya," Merlin Athrawes said. "I couldn't risk it before dark, and getting away from Tellesberg under the circumstances...."

He shrugged, crossing to the bed, and sank to one knee beside her chair. He held out his arms to her, and she threw herself into them, weeping on his mailed shoulder as she'd refused to let anyone else see her weep.

"Take him to your cave, Merlin!" she sobbed. "Take him to your cave! Let Owl save him!"

"I can't," Merlin whispered into her ear, stroking her hair with a sinewy hand. "I can't. There's not enough time. We'd lose him before I ever got him there."

"No!" She struggled against his embrace, striking his unyielding cuirass with her fists. It was as if his arrival had offered her the hope of a last-minute reprieve and the destruction of that hope was more than she could bear. "No!"

"Maybe, if I'd been able to get here sooner, then ... maybe," Merlin said, holding her with implacable strength. "But I couldn't. And Owl's been monitoring, Ohlyvya. I don't think we would've been able to save him even if I had been able to get here sooner. It's only the nanotech keeping him alive now, and it's burning out, using itself up."

"Then why are you here?" she demanded, furious in her sorrow. "Why are you even here?"

"Because Sharleyan and Cayleb and I love you," he said. "And because I can at least give you this."

She stared at him as he put his hands on her shoulders and very gently settled her back into her chair before he stood once more. He reached into his belt pouch and extracted a lightweight headset of silvery wire and gently adjusted it on Nahrmahn's head. Nothing happened for a moment, but then the eye which had closed opened once more.

"Merlin?" Nahrmahn's voice was stronger than it had been, clearer, and Merlin nodded.

"More of your magic?" Nahrmahn asked.

"No more 'magic' than the rest of me, Nahrmahn," Merlin told him. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner."

"I guess ... when you're a thousand years old ... you tend to ... lose track of time," Nahrmahn managed, and Ohlyvya laughed through her tears, covering her mouth with both hands.

"It's not much," Merlin told her, his sapphire eyes deeper and darker than the sea, "but it's all I can do right now."

"What-?"

"The headset will keep his mind clear, and I programmed it to shut down the pain centers." Merlin managed a smile of his own. "I don't think you have much time, Ohlyvya, but the time you do have will be clear ... and it will be yours."

He touched her face very gently, then looked back down at Nahrmahn.

"It's been an interesting trip, Nahrmahn," he said, laying his hand on the dying prince's shoulder. "And it's been a privilege working with you. Thank you for everything you've done. But now, I think I'll leave you with your wife. God bless, Nahrmahn. Hopefully we'll have a chance to talk again someday."

He squeezed Nahrmahn's shoulder and looked at Ohlyvya.

"I'll be out in the garden, listening, if you should need me," he said gently, and vanished back through the window by which he'd arrived.

Ohlyvya Baytz looked after him for a moment, tearful eyes shining with gratitude, and then she turned back to her husband and reached for his hand once more.

.V.

Plaza of Martyrs, The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands "Rhobair, you have to come," Zahmsyn Trynair said flatly.

"No, Zahmsyn. Actually, I don't."

Rhobair Duchairn looked steadily back at the Chancellor. Trynair's expression was an odd mixture of anxiety, frustration, distaste for what he himself was saying, and anger, but the Treasurer's face was calm, his eyes almost-not quite, but almost-tranquil.

"This is not a time to be suggesting there's division between us, Rhobair," Trynair said.

"Anybody who's worrying about whether or not there's 'division' between me and Zhaspahr Clyntahn on this issue has either already figured out there is one, or he's such a drooling idiot he probably can't put on his own shoes without assistance!" Duchairn replied. "And, frankly, if someone does realize I'm ... at odds, let's say, with Zhaspahr Clyntahn over this ... this ritualized butchery of his, that's fine with me. Even The Book of Schueler reserves the full Punishment for genuine, unrepentant heretics, Zhamsyn-not for people who simply happen to have pissed Zhaspahr off by having the audacity to survive when he ordered them to lie down and die!"

He'd been wrong, Trynair realized. Duchairn's eyes weren't tranquil; they were those of a man who didn't care any longer. A chill went through the Chancellor as he realized that, and he felt something altogether too much like panic fluttering somewhere inside his chest.

"You told Zhaspahr-and me-you wouldn't oppose him on this if we wouldn't oppose you on the matters that were important to you," he said carefully.

"And I have no intention, to my shame, of openly opposing him. There are, however, limits to the stains I'm prepared to accept upon my soul. This is one of them. You and I both know any 'confessions' of heresy or blasphemy or-God help us all!-Shan-wei worship were gotten out of those men only by torture, and eight in ten of them died rather than perjure themselves to suit Zhaspahr's purposes. Do you truly have any concept at all of the courage it took to defy that kind of savagery?! They may be schismatics, but they are not blasphemers, idolaters, or demon-worshippers, and they damned well haven't sacrificed any children to Shan-wei, and you know that as well as I do! So if my refusal to participate in his vengeance upon men whose only true crime was to defeat his unprovoked attack on their families and their homeland incenses him so completely that he chooses to make our breach public, so be it."

"Rhobair, you can't survive if that happens. If he openly turns against you, denounces you, you'll go exactly the same way these Charisians are about to!"

"I could be in worse company," Duchairn said flatly, his voice cold. "In fact, I'm inclined to think I couldn't be in better company. Unfortunately, I'm no longer as certain as I once was that my eternal destination is going to be the same as theirs. I can only pray it will."

Trynair's blood ran cold. He'd known Duchairn was becoming ever more embittered, ever more sickened, by Clyntahn's policies, but this was the harshest, most unyielding denunciation of the Grand Inquisitor Duchairn had dared to voice even to him. And if the Treasurer really pushed this, if it did result in an open break between him and the Grand Inquisitor, Trynair knew which of them would survive. In some ways, that might almost be a relief, yet with Duchairn gone, the Chancellor would be alone against Clyntahn with only the effective nonentity of Allayn Maigwair as a potential ally. Which meant....

"Don't say things like that!" he pled, waving both hands in calming motions. "I know you're angry, and I know this whole thing makes you sick at heart, but if you push Zhaspahr far enough and you go down, there'll be nobody left to oppose him even slightly." The Chancellor grimaced, his expression more than half-ashamed. "I won't be able to, and I know it. Not now."

"He has rather saddled the whirlwind for all of us to ride, hasn't he?" Duchairn said sardonically. "Why did we let him get away with it, do you think?" His eyes suddenly stabbed the Chancellor to the heart. "Because the notion of doing what we knew was right didn't matter enough for us to bestir ourselves out of our luxurious little lives? Because we didn't give a single good goddamn about our responsibilities to Mother Church? Was that the reason, Zahmsyn?"

"Don't you dare try that with me!" Trynair snapped. "Maybe that was the reason, but you were right there in the middle of it with the rest of us, Rhobair! You could've said 'Stop!' anytime you wanted to. Maybe it wouldn't have accomplished anything, but you could have at least made the attempt, and you didn't, did you? You didn't even try! So now you've rediscovered your conscience. Fine! I'm happy for you! But don't you take your newfound piety and try to cram it down my throat! You're so fucking proud of how noble you've become? Well, that's fine. But if you think you're going to shame me into standing beside you when Zhaspahr decides to have you put to the Question to 'prove' you're just as heretical as Samyl Wylsynn ever was, you've got another think coming!"

"So you do have a little spine left," Duchairn said with a thin, cold smile. "Pity it didn't turn up earlier. And before you start in again, no, I'm not trying to pretend I wasn't just as spineless and just as blind to the consequences as you were when Zhaspahr launched us on this little disaster. I've never pretended I wasn't those things. The difference between us is that, yes, I am ashamed of myself, and there are limits to the additional complicity I'm willing to assume. And, frankly, I don't really care if the thought of finding yourself all alone with Zhaspahr after I'm gone makes you feel threatened. I'm not looking for martyrdom, Zahmsyn. It might be better for my soul if I were, but I'm not prepared to go that far ... yet, anyway. And I'm not going to have any public shouting matches with Zhaspahr. I undoubtedly should, but you and I both know it would be a futile gesture. So you just run along back to him and Allayn. The three of you go and eat your fried potato slices at the spectacle this afternoon. Drink your beer and enjoy the entertainment. But I'm not going to be there, because I've got something a lot more pressing to spend my time on. I'm sure that if Zhaspahr and that loathsome slime toad Rayno want to know where I am, they can ask Major Phandys. No doubt he'd be delighted to tell them. And if you want to tell him where I am, that's fine with me too, because where I'll be, Zahmsyn, is in the Temple praying for God's forgiveness for not being out in that plaza denouncing Zhaspahr Clyntahn for the foul, sadistic murdering bastard he is!"

Rhobair Duchairn gave the Chancellor of the Church of God Awaiting one more cold, stony glare and slammed out of the office. Trynair stared after him, shocked and stunned by the power of the Treasurer's denunciation, and listened to the boots of Duchairn's "personal guard," clattering down the hallway behind Major Khanstahnzo Phandys as the lot of them tried to keep up with the furiously striding Treasurer.

"Well, I see Zahmsyn has finally deigned to join us," Zhaspahr Clyntahn said, watching from the central platform as the Chancellor slipped unobtrusively into the silent, watching ranks of the Church's vicars. "Better late than never, I suppose. And where do you think our good friend Rhobair might be, Wyllym?"

"Somewhere else, Your Grace," Wyllym Rayno replied with a sigh. "I'm afraid his absence is going to be remarked upon."

"Of course it is." Clyntahn spoke from the corner of his mouth, lips scarcely moving as he looked out across the packed approaches to the Plaza of Martyrs. "That's why the bastard's doing it!"

"I agree, Your Grace, but I trust we're not going to make the mistake of underestimating him."

"Underestimate Rhobair Duchairn?" Clyntahn snorted. "That would be extraordinarily difficult to do, Wyllym! Oh, I'll grant you he's got more guts than Trynair, not to mention five or six times as much brains as Maigwair ever had. In fact, let's be honest-if there's one of the other three who'd ever have the courage and the willingness to speak out against the jihad, it would have to be Duchairn. But he's not ready for an open break. And the truth is that whatever he may think, he never will be."

"I'm ... inclined to agree with you in most regards, Your Grace," Rayno said, choosing his words with some care. "All the same, I can't help thinking Vicar Rhobair has ... changed a great deal over the last few years. I don't think we can afford to overlook the possibility that he may change still further."

"You mean grow big enough balls to consider an open confrontation with me?" Clyntahn asked calmly, turning to look directly at the Archbishop of Wu-shai for the first time. Rayno was obviously a bit nonplussed by the question, and the Grand Inquisitor chuckled coldly. "If it were just a matter of screwing up his nerve, he'd already have done it, Wyllym," he said flatly. "Whatever I may think of him, I'm willing to admit he's no coward. It's not fear holding him back-not anymore, anyway. And I don't need any spies to tell me he hates my guts, either. For that matter, I don't need any Bedardists to tell me that somewhere down inside he's come to hate himself, as well, for not 'standing up to me,' and that kind of hate can eat at a man until it finally drives him into doing something he'd never do otherwise. All of that's true, but he's still not going to push it to the point of an open break."

"May I ask why you're so certain of that, Your Grace?" Rayno asked cautiously.

"It's very simple, really." Clyntahn shrugged. "If he pushes me into having him ... removed, there won't be anyone left to argue with me. You think Trynair or Maigwair are going to draw any lines and dare me to step across them?" The Grand Inquisitor's laugh was a short, contemptuous bark. "Not in a thousand years, Wyllym. Not in a thousand years! And Rhobair knows that. He knows all his precious projects, all his 'kinder, gentler' plans and pious aspirations, any possibility of 'restraining my excesses,' will go straight into the crapper with him, and he's not going to let that happen. The way he sees it, the only chance he has for redemption is to do some good in the world to make up for all those years when he was just as committed as any of the rest of us to the practical side of maintaining Mother Church's authority. He can't do that if he's dead, and that, more than any fear of the Question or the Punishment, is what's going to stop him. He'll always be able to find some way to rationalize not coming directly at me because it's up to him to do whatever he can to minimize the 'damage' I'm doing."

Rayno simply looked at him. For once, even the Schuelerite adjutant was at a loss for words, and Clyntahn chuckled again, more naturally.

"Rhobair, unfortunately, is one of those people who believe man actually has a better nature. He genuinely thinks he can appeal to that 'kinder, gentler' side he's sure most everyone really has. He doesn't recognize that the reason God gave Schueler authority to decree the discipline of Mother Church is that, thanks to Shan-wei, man has no better nature. Not any longer, anyway. God and Langhorne tried Rhobair's idea of loving gentleness, of begging men to do the right thing, and mankind repaid them by embracing Shan-wei's foulness. What? Rhobair thinks he's greater than Holy Langhorne? Greater than God Himself? That mankind is going to suddenly discover a 'better nature' it hasn't had since the very dawn of Creation just because he, the great Rhobair Duchairn, is determined to appeal to it?"

The Grand Inquisitor's lips worked as if he wanted to spit on the ground, but he made himself draw a deep breath, nostrils flaring.

"Whatever may be going through his mind, he's simply incapable of understanding that man won't embrace God's will and accept God's authority without the iron rod of discipline. Humans have demonstrated again and again that unless they're made to do what they know God wants them to do, they won't do it. They have neither the wit, nor the will, nor the understanding to do it, and they're too dull-witted even to recognize their own stupidity without us to make God's will plain to them!

"That's why Rhobair doesn't understand the Inquisition's job, its responsibilities-its duty. He's not willing to admit what has to be done, so he pretends it doesn't have to be. He's willing to condemn us for doing it, as long as his hands are clean, and he genuinely believes we're unnecessarily harsh. That we could renounce that iron rod if we were only willing to. Well, we can't, unless we're prepared to see everything Mother Church stands for go down in ruin, but that's all right. Because as long as he believes he can continue to do things 'behind the scenes' to mitigate our 'excesses,' he'll go right on preserving his ability to do them. He'll make whatever compromises with his own soul he has to in order to accomplish that. And what that means, Wyllym, is that it would be almost impossible to drive him to a point where he decided he had nothing left to lose and came at us openly, because he'll go right on clinging to that responsibility to do good to offset our 'evil.'"

Rayno glanced away for a moment, looking up at the sky above Zion, touched with a colder, brighter autumn blue. The last blossoms had fallen from the elaborate gardens beyond the Plaza of Martyrs' elaborate fountains, and fall color was creeping into the foliage. It would be winter again all too soon, and snow and ice would close in around the Temple once more. He thought about that, then looked back at his superior.

"I hope you're right, Your Grace," he said.

There was an unusual edge of doubt in his voice, however. Not disagreement, simply a note of ... reservation. Clyntahn heard it, but he chose to let it pass. One of the things that made Rayno valuable to him was that the adjutant was perhaps the only person left who would argue with him if he thought Clyntahn was wrong.

"I am right," the Grand Inquisitor said instead. "And if I'm not, I've got you and Major Phandys keeping an eye on him, don't I? We'll know if he starts to become a genuine threat. As for his absence this afternoon, I'll let him have that much. It's not as if anyone else is going to ignore today's lesson, is it? Besides," Clyntahn smiled suddenly, the smile of a slash lizard scenting blood, "it's useful in its own way."

"I beg your pardon, Your Grace?"

"Wyllym, Wyllym!" Clyntahn shook his head, still smiling. "Think about it. First, he's such a convenient focus for anyone who might disagree with us. All we have to do is watch for anyone who seems inclined to suck up to him instead of to me and we'll know where the real weak links are. And, second, Trynair and Maigwair are so busy trying to stay out of the line of fire between me and Rhobair that neither one of them is even going to consider doing something to make me think they're choosing his side instead of mine. Oh, they may side with him over some purely technical issues, like how we balance the books and pay for the jihad, but not on anything fundamental. From that perspective, it's far better to have him right where he is, driving them into our arms in their desperation to make it clear they're not rushing into his."

Rayno was still thinking about that when the bells began to ring.

Sir Gwylym Manthyr could hardly stay on his own feet, yet he wrapped his right arm around the man beside him, draping the other Charisian's left arm across his own shoulders and somehow supporting the shambling, stumbling weight. The two of them staggered along, two more "penitents" in the rough, scratchy burlap robes that covered their savagely scarred, emaciated nakedness. For now, at least.

It was a beautiful day, Manthyr thought, listening to the magnificent, silver-throated bells of Zion as he looked around at the handful of his men who'd survived this long. There weren't many. He didn't have a definite count, but there couldn't be more than thirty, and he was amazed the number was that high.

Tough, those Charisian seamen, he thought. Too tough and too stupid for their own good. The smart ones gave up and died. But that's all right, because I'm not very smart either, I guess.

He knew every one of those thirty shambling, broken wrecks of human beings had been given the option: confess their heresy, admit their blasphemies and all of the hellish crimes to which they had set their hands in the service of their accursed emperor and empress, and they would face the garrotte, not the Punishment. Some of his men-a handful-had taken that offer, and Manthyr couldn't find it in his heart to condemn them for it. As he'd told Lainsair Svairsmahn a seeming eternity ago, there was only so much any man could endure, and there was no shame in breaking under the savagery of the Question.

But if there was no shame in breaking, there was pride in not breaking, and his heart swelled as he looked around at those stumbling, crippled, tormented ruins and knew exactly what they'd already endured without yielding. As long as one of them-one of them-was still on his feet, still defiant, Sir Gwylym Manthyr would stand beside him at the very gates of Hell. They were his, and he was theirs, and he would not-could not-break faith with them.

They marched across the plaza, and he saw the heaps of wood, the charred wooden posts arranged on the marble flags-many of them cracked now with the heat of past fires-between the fountains and the Temple's soaring colonnade. They marked where others of Clyntahn's victims had already died, those posts, and he watched his men being separated from one another, dragged to those heaps of wood, chained to those grim, scorched posts. He watched inquisitors coating their bodies with pitch that would take the flame and cling to them even as it offered their flesh a brief, transitory protection that would make their dying even longer and harder. He saw leather gloves, knuckles reinforced with steel studs, striking anyone who didn't move fast enough, who showed any trace of fight. They had to use those weighted fists quite often, he thought, watching, taking it all in. When it was his turn to appear before the Throne of God he wanted to be certain he had it all straight as he gave his testimony against the men who had twisted and perverted everything God stood for.

Then all of his men were chained, fastened atop their pyres, and there was only him. A pair of inquisitors started to drag him past his men, but he found the strength to shake off their hands and walk-slowly, but steadily, under his own power, making eye contact for one last time with every man he passed-towards the platform which had been reserved for him. The platform with the wheel and the rack, the white-hot irons waiting in their nests of glowing coals.

He longed for one final opportunity to defy the Inquisition, to speak for his men, to ridicule the charges against them, but they'd taken that from him when they cut out his tongue. He could still scream-they'd proven that to him-but they'd silenced his ability to deny the "confession" they were going to read and attribute to him. He'd held out, he'd never admitted or signed a single damned thing, but that wasn't the story they were going to tell. He knew that. They'd explained it to him in smirking detail in a last-ditch effort to break him into actually signing, and it grieved him that he could never set the record straight. Not so much for himself, but because it meant he couldn't speak out for his men, either.

It doesn't matter, he thought as he climbed the steps to the platform, eyes hard with hate and defiance as they met Zhaspahr Clyntahn's in person at last. Anybody who'd believe Clyntahn's lies in the first place would never believe anything I said. And anyone who knows the truth about Clyntahn already knows what I would have said if I could. Those people, my Emperor and my Empress and my Navy, they know, and the time will come when they will avenge every one of my men.

He saw the torches, flames pale in the cool autumn sunlight, as the inquisitors strode towards his chained and helpless men, and his belly tightened. They were going to burn the others first, let him listen to their screams and watch their agonizing deaths, before it was his turn. It was the kind of "refinement" he'd come to expect out of Zhaspahr Clyntahn's Inquisition.

Two more inquisitors seized his arms, stretching them out, chaining them to the rack, and Zhaspahr Clyntahn stepped closer to him. The Grand Inquisitor's face was studiously calm, set in stern lines of determination as he prepared to play out the final line of this carefully scripted farce.

"You have heard the judgment and sentence of holy Mother Church upon you for your blasphemy, your heresy, your wanton defiance of God and allegiance to Shan-wei, Gwylym Manthyr," he said, his voice carrying clearly. "Have you anything to say before that sentence is carried out?"

Clyntahn's eyes glittered with satisfaction as he asked the question he knew Manthyr couldn't answer. There was no way for his victim to voice his defiance, demonstrate his rejection of the judgment and sentence which had been pronounced upon him, yet there was also no way for anyone in that watching crowd to know his voice had been taken from him before the question was even asked. They would see only the terrified heretic, too cowed by the onrushing approach of the eternal damnation he'd earned to say a single word.

Sir Gwylym Manthyr looked back at the gloating Grand Inquisitor as Clyntahn savored his triumph ... and then he spat squarely into the vicar's face.

.VI.

Saint Bailair's Church and Madam Aivah Pahrsahn's Townhouse, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark "I don't like it, Father," Stahn Mahldan said unhappily as he knelt in the closed booth of the confessional. "I don't like it at all. Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know, Brother," Father Lharee Traighair, the rector of Saint Bailair's Church, replied, although he wasn't as sure of that as he would have liked.

"It's all so ... wrong," Mahldan said, his eyes anxious, and Traighair smiled affectionately at him.

Brother Stahn was in his late fifties, thinning hair going steadily white, and there wasn't a malicious bone in his entire body. There wasn't an ambitious one, either, as far as Traighair could tell, which probably explained why Brother Stahn was still only a sexton of the Order of the Quill at his age. It certainly wasn't because of lack of ability, faith, or industry!

A librarian by training and inclination alike, Mahldan was an absentminded, otherworldly sort who was always happiest puttering about in the histories he was responsible for maintaining and updating. He had a sharp, analytical brain, but one which was altogether too poorly suited for considering ugly truths outside the covers of his beloved histories. He was inclined to assume that since he wished ill to no one, no one could possibly wish ill to him, which, unfortunately, was no longer true even in the Republic, if it ever had been.

At least the old fellow's had the sense to keep his feelings mostly to himself, Traighair thought. Or I hope to Langhorne he has, at any rate!