A Mighty Fortress (57 page)

“I was discussing this five- day’s sermon with Zhaif Laityr.”

“Swilling down beer with Zhaif Laityr until all hours, don’t you mean?” she demanded.

“We might, perhaps, have partaken of a tankard or two. Strictly as a source of desperately needed sustenance while we contemplated weighty matters of theology,” he replied with im mense dignity, and the corners of her mouth twitched. It was barely a shadow of the broad grin he would normally have seen at this point in their familiar, well- worn exchange, yet his heart eased—a little, at least—when he saw it.

Father Zhaif Laityr was the senior priest at the Church of the Holy Archangels Triumphant in Gray Lizard Square, two parishes over from Hahskans’ own Saint Kathryn’s, and the two of them had been friends for many years. Despite the fact that Hahskans was a Bédardist while Laityr was a Pasqualate, they saw eye to eye on quite a few issues . . . including several they’d both been forbidden to speak about.

Which was why Dailohrs’ eyes were worried and she found it so difficult to smile.

“Desperately needed sustenance, is it?” She cocked her head, deliberately seeking the reassurance of comforting routine. “Should I assume from the fact that you were forced to resort to
liquid
sustenance that Mistress Dahnzai was somehow incapable of providing you and your crony with sandwiches?”

Lyzbyt Dahnzai had been the house keeper in charge of Holy Archangels Triumphant’s rectory even longer than Ezmelda Dobyns had held the same post at Saint Kathryn’s. Over the years, she’d become adroit at the care and feeding of Father Zhaif, and probably almost as good at bullying him into taking care of himself as Dailohrs and Mistress Dobyns were at chivying Hahskans into doing the same thing.

“As a matter of fact, we did supplement our liquid intake with a wyvern breast sandwich or two,” Hahskans acknowledged.

“Good. In that case perhaps the two of you stayed sober enough to actually get something worthwhile done,” his wife observed, and he chuckled as he climbed the stairs and folded her into his arms.

She was stiff, for just a moment, and he felt another spasm of sorrow as he recognized the tension which had tightened her muscles. Then she relaxed, leaning her cheek against his chest and putting her arms around him in a tight hug whose strength said all the things she hadn’t allowed herself to voice.

He bent over her, tucking the top of her head under his chin and raising his right hand to stroke her hair ever so gently. After so long together, he knew there was no need for him to apologize or explain—that she knew exactly what had impelled him,
driven
him, to the stance he’d taken. She didn’t like it. In fact, she’d argued with him when he’d first told her he intended to acknowledge Archbishop Klairmant’s and Bishop Kaisi’s authority. Not because she’d had any great love for Manchyr’s previous bishop or for Bishop Executor Thomys, because she hadn’t. But she
had
been afraid of where Hahskans’ inner anger at the Church’s corruption was likely to take him. And she’d been more than a little afraid his decision would find him branded a traitor to Corisande as well as to Mother Church.

Yet despite her concerns, despite her very real fear for the husband she loved, she’d argued neither long nor hard. Perhaps that had been because she’d recognized argument was futile. That, in the end, he was going to do what faith and conscience demanded of him, no matter what. He thought it was more than that, though. Her concern was for his safety, not the product of any rejection of his beliefs, for she shared those beliefs. She might be less passionate than he, more willing to work by increments rather than confront the whole mass of the Church’s corruption head- on, but she
recognized
that corruption. She knew as well as he did what a travesty of God’s original intent the Church had become.

Which didn’t make her one bit happier at the thought that he and Zhaif Laityr, whose Reformist zeal was every bit as deep as his own, had been coordinating their sermons for the coming Wednesday.

“I’m sorry, love,” he murmured into her ear now, and her embrace tightened further. “I don’t mean to distress you, but—”

“But you’re a stubborn, determined, passionate, pigheaded lunatic of a Bédardist,” she interrupted, never lifting her cheek from his chest, and produced a laugh that was only slightly wavery around the edges. She stayed where she was for another moment or two, then leaned back just far enough to rise on her toes and kiss his bearded cheek.

“I can’t pretend I didn’t know that when you proposed. Although, now that I think about it, the pigheadedness, at least, has probably gotten a bit more pronounced over the last few de cades.”

“I imagine it has,” he said softly, his lively brown eyes warm with affectionate gratitude.

“Oh, I’m
sure
it has!” She looked back at him, gave him one last, affectionate squeeze, and then let him go. “I assume that despite your present drink-befuddled condition you’ll want to transcribe your sermon notes before you come to bed?”

“I’m afraid so,” he agreed. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. And Ezmelda left a plate of ham sandwiches in your study. Just in case hunger should threaten to overcome you again, you understand.”

“And a tankard of beer to go with it?” he asked hopefully, eyes laughing at her.

“And a pitcher of cold
water
to go with it,” she responded severely. “She and I were of the opinion that you’d probably have had sufficient beer while ‘contemplating weighty matters of theology’ with Zhaif.”

“Alas, you were probably right,” he told her, reaching out to touch her cheek lightly.

“Then go—go!” She made shooing motions with both hands. “And don’t stay up all night,” she admonished as he started down the stairs once more.

The better part of two hours later, Hahskans leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes lightly. Those eyes were no longer as young as they’d once been, and although Ezmelda Dobyns kept the lamps’ reflectors brightly polished, their illumination was a poor substitute for daylight.

And it’s not exactly as if you had the best handwriting in the world, either, Tymahn,
he reminded himself.

Which was true enough. Fortunately, he was just about finished. He wanted to let the thoughts roll around in his brain for another day or so before he put it into final form. And there were a couple of scriptural passages he needed to consider inserting. As a general rule, he tried to avoid weighting his sermons with too
much
scripture, yet—

His thoughts chopped off abruptly as the heavy cloth bag descended over his head from behind.

Total shock immobilized him for a single heartbeat . . . which was just long enough for whoever had managed to creep so silently into the study behind him that he’d never heard a thing to jerk the throat of the bag tight around his neck. He started to reach up and back, arching to fling himself out of the chair, then stopped as cold, sharp steel touched his throat just below the edge of the bag.

“Make one sound,” a voice hissed in his ear, “and I cut your fucking throat right now!”

He froze, heart racing, and someone laughed quietly. It was an ugly, hungry sound.

“Better,” the voice said, and he knew now that there were at least two of them, because it didn’t belong to the man who’d laughed. “Now you’re coming with us,” the voice continued.

“No.” Hahskans was surprised by how calmly, how firmly, the word came out. “Go ahead and cut, if that’s what you’re here to do,” he continued.

“If that’s what you want,” the voice said. “Of course, if that
is
what you want, we’ll have to cut the throat of that bitch upstairs, too, won’t we?”

Hahskans’ heart froze. “Didn’t think about
that,
did you?” the voice sneered. “Not so cocky now, are you, you fucking
traitor
?”

“I’ve been many things in my life,” Hahskans replied as levelly as he could with a knife at his throat and terror for his wife in his heart, “but never a traitor.”

“I see you’re a liar, too,” the voice grated. “Now
there’s
a surprise! But either way, you’re coming with us—now.” The knife pressed harder. “Aren’t you?”

Hahskans was silent for a moment, and then he made himself nod.

Tymahn Hahskans had no idea how long he’d sat bound to the chair.

He had only the vaguest notion of where he might be. They’d brought him here in a freighter’s cart, hidden under its canvas cover with the blinding bag still over his head. He didn’t think they’d hauled him around long enough to actually leave the city, although he couldn’t be certain of that. He’d thought about crying out, despite the fact that it was unlikely anyone would have been wandering about the capital’s streets to hear him at such a late hour, but his captors had gagged him after they’d bound him, and the voice with the knife had squatted beside his head the entire time.

From the sound the cart’s wheels had made when they finally reached their destination, and the noise of what had sounded like heavy sliding doors, he suspected he was in a ware house somewhere. There were enough of those still standing idle and empty in the wake of the Charisian siege, and this one had seemed quite large. Large enough, he felt confident, that no one outside its walls was likely to hear anything that went on
inside
it.

He’d spent his time silently reciting scripture. The familiar passages helped, yet not even they could dissolve the cold, frozen lump in his belly. The nature of his abduction, and the threat against Dailohrs, told him entirely too much about the men behind it, and he was only mortal. There were limits to the amount of fear even the strongest faith could nullify.

No doubt they were leaving him here, abandoned and alone, to let that fear work upon him. He wished he could say the strategy wasn’t working, but—

A door opened suddenly behind him. He stiffened, muscles tensing, then blinked painfully against the light as the bag was snatched off of his head at last.

The light, he realized a moment later, wasn’t actually as bright as it had seemed to his darkness- accustomed eyes. It took them a few seconds to adjust, and then his gaze focused on the wiry, brown- haired, brown- eyed man standing facing him with his forearms folded across his chest. The man was probably at least twenty years younger than Hahskans, with a severely scarred cheek. It looked like an old burn, and even now Hahskans felt a twinge of sympathy for what ever sort of injury could have produced that deep and disfiguring a scar.

“So,” the scar- faced man said, and Hahskans’ sympathy evaporated abruptly as he recognized the voice from his study, “have you been enjoying a quiet little meditation,
Father
?”

His sneer turned the clerical title into an obscenity, and Hahskans felt his own eyes hardening in response.

“As a matter of fact,” he forced himself to say calmly, “I have. You might try it someday yourself, my son.”

“I’m not
your
‘son,’ you fucking traitor!” the scar- faced man snarled. His arms unfolded abruptly, his right hand falling to the hilt of the ugly- looking knife sheathed at his belt.

“Perhaps not,” Hahskans said. “But any man is a son of Mother Church and God . . . unless he chooses not to be.”

“Like
you,
” the scar- faced man hissed. “I’ve chosen nothing of the sort.” Hahskans met the other man’s ugly, hating eyes as steadily as he could.

“Don’t lie to me, you bastard!” The scar- faced man drew a quarter inch of blade out of the sheath. “I’ve sat in your fucking church myself. I’ve
heard
you spewing filth against Mother Church! I’ve
seen
you licking the arse of the Shan- wei- damned Charisians and those gutless wonders on the ‘
Regency Council
’!”