By Heresies Distressed (4 page)

Such as they were, and what there was of them
, Lakyr thought.

Sunlight streamed in through the open gun ports, illuminating what was almost certainly normally a gloomy cavern. Or perhaps not all
that
gloomy, he reflected, as he and the lieutenant passed through a brilliantly lit, rectangular pool of light, streaming down through the long, narrow grating of the spar deck main hatch. The smell of burned gunpowder hovered faintly about him, despite the meticulously clean deck, scrubbed bulkheads, and canvas windscoops rigged to ventilate the ship. The smell was barely there, hovering at the backs of his nostrils, like something suspected more than actually experienced.

Or perhaps it was the scent of a more mundane smoke, he reflected. After all, there was a large enough cloud of that hovering black and dense above the city he'd been charged to protect. Even though the breeze was blowing towards shore, not away from it, the smell of burning wood had accompanied him aboard
Destroyer
. Clinging to the folds of his own clothing, no doubt.

They reached a closed door in a light bulkhead which was obviously designed to be taken down when the ship cleared for action. A uniformed Marine stood guard outside it with a bayoneted musket, and the lieutenant reached past him to rap sharply on the door with his knuckles.

“Yes?” a deep voice responded.

“Sir Vyk Lakyr is here, My Lord,” the lieutenant said.

“Then please ask him to come in, Styvyn,” the deep voice replied.

“Of course, My Lord,” the lieutenant replied, then opened the door and stepped courteously aside.

“My Lord,” he murmured, and waved gracefully at the doorway.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Lakyr replied, and stepped past him.

Lakyr had expected to find his “host” waiting directly on the other side of that door, but his expectation was disappointed. The lieutenant followed him through the door, managing somehow—Lakyr was never certain afterward just how the young man accomplished it—to steer the visitor while still following a respectful half-pace behind him.

Thus steered, Lakyr found himself leading the way across the cabin towards a second door. His eyes were busy, absorbing the furnishings about him: a woman's portrait, smiling at any visitor as he entered; armchairs, a short sofa, a waxed and gleaming dining table with half a dozen chairs; a handsome ivory-faced clock ticking away; a polished wine rack made out of some dark, exotic tropical wood; a glass-fronted cabinet filled with crystal decanters and tulip-shaped glasses. They created a comfortable, welcoming space which only made the intrusion of the massive, carefully secured thirty-eight-pounder crouching with its muzzle touching a closed gun port an even greater contrast.

The lieutenant followed him through the second door, and Lakyr paused just inside it as he caught sight of the ship's great stern windows. He'd seen them from the boat rowing across the harbor, so he'd already known—intellectually, at least—that they stretched the full width of
Destroyer
's stern. That wasn't quite the same thing as seeing them from the inside, however, he discovered. Glass doors at the center of that vast expanse of windows gave access to a sternwalk which, like the windows themselves, ran the full width of the warship's stern. Indeed, although he couldn't see it from where he stood, the sternwalk wrapped around
Destroyer
's quarter galleys, as well.

The cabin into which he had just stepped was awash with light, bouncing up and through those windows as it reflected from the harbor's wind-flurried surface, and the man waiting for him was a black silhouette against that brightness.

“Sir Vyk Lakyr, My Lord,” the lieutenant murmured.

“Thank you, Styvyn,” the dark silhouette said, and stepped forward. There was something awkward about his gait. Lakyr couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, until the other man stepped clear of the windows' brightness and he saw the wooden peg which had replaced Admiral Rock Point's lower right leg.

“Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said.

“My Lord.” Lakyr bowed slightly, and what might have been the ghost of a smile flickered across Rock Point's mouth. Frankly, Lakyr doubted that was what it had been. Not given the vigor with which Rock Point had executed the orders he'd been given by Emperor Cayleb where Lakyr's city was concerned.

“I invited you aboard for a brief conversation before we return to Charis,” Rock Point told him.

“Return, My Lord?” Lakyr asked politely.

“Come now, Sir Vyk.” Rock Point shook his head, and this time his smile was more evident. “We never had any intention of
staying
, you know. Nor,” his smile disappeared, “is there anything worth staying here to keep, is there?”

“Not any longer, My Lord.” Lakyr couldn't quite keep the grimness—and the anger—out of his tone, and Rock Point cocked his head to one side.

“I'm not surprised you find the consequences of our little visit less than palatable, Sir Vyk. On the other hand, given what happened here in August, I'd say my Emperor showed considerable restraint, wouldn't you?”

A hot, angry retort hovered on Lakyr's tongue, but he swallowed it unspoken. After all, he could hardly disagree.

Rock Point turned and looked back out the stern windows at the pall of smoke swelling above Ferayd. More than a third of the city's buildings had helped to feed that looming mushroom shape, but Rock Point had allowed Lakyr's surrendered troops to demolish a semicircular fire break around the portion of Ferayd he'd been ordered to destroy. Emperor Cayleb's instructions had specified that not a building was to be left standing within a two-mile radius of the Ferayd waterfront, and Rock Point had carried out his orders with precision.

And also, Lakyr admitted unwillingly, with compassion. He'd permitted civilians whose homes had lain within the decreed radius of destruction to take away their most prized possessions—assuming they were sufficiently portable—before the torch had been applied. And the Charisian admiral had permitted no excesses on the part of his troops. Which, given what had happened to the Charisian merchant crews who'd been slaughtered here in Ferayd when Vicar Zhaspahr had ordered their ships seized, was far better than anything for which Lakyr had dared to hope.

Of course
, he thought, regarding Rock Point steadily,
there's still that interesting little question about exactly what Rock Point's orders concerning the commander of the garrison who did the slaughtering might be
.

“I'm sure most of your citizens will be happy to see the last of us,” Rock Point continued. “I'd like to think that with the passage of time, they'll realize we at least tried to kill as few of them as possible. However, there was no way we could allow what happened here to pass unanswered.”

“I suppose not, My Lord,” Lakyr admitted, and braced himself. The admiral's last sentence suggested he was about to discover precisely what Charis had in mind for the officer whose troops had committed the atrocity which had brought Rock Point to Ferayd.

“The real reason I invited you aboard
Destroyer
, Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said, almost as if he had read the Delferahkan's mind, “was to deliver my Emperor's message to your king. This,” he gestured with one hand at the smoke-choked vista invisible through the stern windows, “—is a part of that message, of course, but it's scarcely all of it.”

He paused, waiting, and Lakyr's nostrils flared.

“And the rest of it is, My Lord?” he asked finally, obedient to the admiral's expectant silence.

“And the rest of it is, Sir Vyk, that we know who actually ordered the seizure of our ships. We know whose agents . . . oversaw that seizure. Neither my Emperor, nor Charis, is prepared to hold Delferahk blameless over the murder of so many Charisian subjects, hence this.” He waved at the rising smoke once more. “Should more of our subjects be murdered elsewhere, be assured Emperor Cayleb will respond equally forcefully there, as well. Nor will there be any peace between any who attack Charis, or Charisians, at the orders and behest of corrupt men like Clyntahn and the rest of the Group of Four. But our true quarrel lies with the men in Zion who choose to pervert and poison God's own Church. And that, Sir Vyk, is the real reason I asked you aboard. To tell you that although my Emperor must hold you, as any military commander, ultimately responsible for the actions of the men under your command, he understands that what happened here in Ferayd was neither of your seeking, nor what you intended. Which is why you will be returned ashore after our business this morning is concluded to deliver a written message from Emperor Cayleb to King Zhames.”

“Indeed, My Lord?” Lakyr couldn't quite keep the surprise—and the relief—out of his voice, and Rock Point snorted in amusement.

“No doubt I would have anticipated a rather more . . . unpleasant outcome of this interview if I'd been in your shoes,” he said. But then his expression hardened. “I'm afraid, however, that the unpleasantness isn't quite over yet. Come with me, Sir Vyk.”

Lakyr's nerves had tightened once again at Rock Point's ominous warning. He wanted to ask the Charisian admiral what he'd meant, but he strongly suspected that he would find out altogether too quickly, anyway, and so he followed Rock Point out of the cabin without speaking.

The admiral ascended the steep ladders to the upper deck with surprising nimbleness, despite his wooden leg. No doubt he'd had plenty of practice, Lakyr thought, following him up. But then the commander of Ferayd's defeated garrison found himself standing once again upon the spar deck, and any thought about Rock Point's agility disappeared abruptly.

While the two of them had been below, in Rock Point's cabin,
Destroyer
's crew had been rigging halters from the ship's yardarms. There were six of them, one dangling from either end of the lowest yard on each of the ship's three masts.

As Lakyr watched in stunned disbelief, deep-throated drums began to rumble like distant thunder echoing across mountain peaks. Bare feet pattered and boots clattered and thudded as seamen and Marines poured onto their ships' upper decks in answer to that rolling summons, and then six men in priests' cassocks badged with the purple sword and flame of the Order of Schueler were dragged across the deck towards the waiting nooses.

“My Lord—!” Lakyr began, but Rock Point waved his right hand. The gesture was sharp, abrupt, the first truly angry thing Lakyr had seen out of the Charisian, and it decapitated his nascent protest as cleanly as any sword.

“No, Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said harshly. “
This
is the rest of my Emperor's message—not just to King Zhames, but to those bastards in Zion. We know who provoked this massacre, and we know who ordered it
knowing
his minions would do precisely what they in fact did. And those who murder Charisian subjects will answer to Charisian justice . . . whoever they may be.”

Lakyr swallowed hard, feeling the sweat suddenly beading his hairline.

I never even dreamed of this
, he thought.
It never even crossed my mind! Those men are
priests—
consecrated priests, servants of Mother Church! They can't just
—

But the Charisians not only could, they were actually doing it. And despite his horror at the impiety of what was happening, a part of Sir Vyk Lakyr discovered that he couldn't blame them for it.

He saw Father Styvyn Graivyr, Bishop Ernyst Jynkyns' intendant, the Office of Inquisition's senior priest in Ferayd, among the prisoners. Graivyr looked stunned, white-faced . . . horrified. His hands were bound behind him, as were those of the other five inquisitors with him, and his shoulders twisted as his wrists fought against their bonds. He seemed almost unaware of his struggle against the cords as his eyes clung to the waiting noose, and he moved like a man trapped in the bowels of a nightmare.

He
never dreamed it might come to this, either
, Lakyr realized, and yet another emotion flickered through him. He was still too stunned himself to think clearly, but if he hadn't been, he might have been shocked to realize that at least part of what he was feeling was . . . satisfaction.

Graivyr wasn't the only inquisitor who seemed unable to believe, even now, that this could possibly be happening to them. One of them resisted far more frantically than Graivyr, flinging himself against the iron grip of the stone-faced Marines dragging him towards the waiting rope, babbling protests. And as Lakyr stared at the unbelievable events unfolding before him, he heard the rumble of other drums coming from other ships.

He wrenched his eyes away from
Destroyer
's deck, and his face tightened as he saw more ropes hanging from other ships' yardarms. He didn't try to count them. His shocked mind probably wouldn't have been up to the task, anyway.

“We interviewed all of the survivors before my Emperor gave us our orders, Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said, his harsh voice yanking Lakyr's attention back to him. “Before we ever sailed for Ferayd, we knew whose voices were shouting ‘Holy Langhorne and no quarter!' when your men came aboard our people's ships. But we didn't rely solely on that testimony when we tried the guilty. It never even crossed Graivyr's mind that anyone else, anyone outside the Office of Inquisition itself, would ever read his secret files. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong. These men were convicted not on the basis of any Charisian's testimony, but on the basis of their own written statements and reports. Statements and reports in which they proudly reported,
bragged
about, the zeal with which they went about exhorting your troops to ‘Kill the heretics!' ”

The Charisian's eyes were colder than northern ice, and Lakyr could physically feel the rage within him . . . and the iron will which kept that rage leashed and controlled.

“Copies of those statements and reports will be provided to King Zhames—and to the Council of Vicars in Zion,” Rock Point continued coldly. “The originals will be returning to Tellesberg with me, so that we can be certain they won't mysteriously disappear, but King Zhames will receive Graivyr's own file copies. What
he
does with them, whether to publish them abroad, destroy them, or hand them back over to Clyntahn, is his business, his decision. But whatever he may do,
we
will do nothing in darkness, unseen by the eyes of men. We will, most assuredly, publish the evidence, and unlike the men and women—and children—they had murdered, Sir Vyk, every one of
these
men was offered the benefit of clergy after he was sentenced. And unlike the children who were slaughtered here on their own ships with their parents, there isn't one of them who doesn't understand exactly why he's about to hang.”