…and the major stations are wasting all their time gawking at Lady Mishkan’s Conclave run yesterday! If the Lady booked from the Conclave like that, she probably had a pretty good reason!
Honestly, I’d probably flee those morons at top speed too.
Fact of the matter is, this is just a distraction. We have here inconvertible proof that Deacon Stillbarrow has hosted galas of such debauchery that Lumia rolls in its bed on church grounds! He calls himself a man of the cloth, but the only place his stole hangs is the bedpost!
Just in case anyone forgets, this is the same Deacon that claims that shadowy Azurites are corrupting our youth with belly dancing. Seems he’s well familiar with the act…
Spring 30
Alisandra approached 1540 Conclave Square by foot on that sunny morning, her halo still ringing from the morning’s diversion. Today had been a swarm with the dawn, vicious little creatures that latched on to drink blood and corrupt the flesh.
They bit off more than they could chew with me.
Tempest and janitor.
When the morning drums began, she had fantasized about ignoring them. Perhaps mortal men would remember to thank their protector when what she considered ‘little biters’ tore a vessel in half.
Tempting but childish. Responsibility could not be shed so easily. They knew she could. If she did not, they would demand to know why – or worse, decide that she was angry and throw a fete!
Between terrified prostration and the monsters…
Endure a little longer, Ali, she consoled herself. There is always a spike when Spring turns. It will burn itself out in another few weeks. Even if this is an exceptionally bad year.
The worst on record, in fact. Just like last year…
Grinding her palm into the pommel of the Hand of God, she fought the temptation to say…
Just wake up already, you bastard
I am here and ready to put you deeper in your bed
But she was Archangel, guardian of this world, and all within were her charge. She could not let loose like a wild animal.
How many died in Lumia because of me?
It had been her hand that pounded on Time until the gears cracked; her hand that swept the Blade that carved land and sky…
Military men would label such things an inevitable byproduct: collateral damage.
She remembered Edmond Curia, killed by a simple brick to the head. Would he have proved himself more than a wolf pup if he had not been ‘collateral damage’?
Again, that tiny, seething voice added, What kind of wolf cannot even dodge a brick?
Alisandra shoved such thoughts away and focused on the morning crowd. On a bright day like this, the six skyscraper cage that ringed the Conclave shone in every direction. The blinding glare and heavy traffic were perfect for pickpockets, daring to ply their trade in the shadow of the seat of power.
Rather like the monsters darting just out of my sight.
Despite the pickpockets, she arrived at 1540 without incident and entered through its great glass doors. Chairs ringed the lobby, filled with petitioners awaiting their number, and a massive indoor fountain rippled in the center. Constables sat on stools in each corner. Two more waited by the hall from the lobby, guarding the elevators.
She approached the admissions clerk and stated her name.
He fiddled with papers like a nitwit for a full minute. Finally, he mumbled, “Our most humble apologies, Lady Mishkan, but the morning communion ran quite long…”
“My staff took great pains to emphasize the critical nature of this meeting,” Alisandra responded. Every moment is a risk. The drums sound, and this meeting slides another ten days. Hurry your pace!
“And we do offer our most humble–”
“Yes, please do.” She leaned across and plucked the elevator key from his desk.
“W-wait!”
The Archangel did not.
“You’re not allowed to…” the man squawked, rising to his feet. “Someone stop her!”
A few long strides took Alisandra to the elevator hallway. Both constable guards jumped from their stools, hands raised to bar her path.
She ducked under without slowing…
“Lady–”
…and slotted the elevator key. “Begone.”
Rushing after, one constable put his hand on her forearm. “We can’t let you just–”
A sudden burst of unseasonably frigid air blasted through the lobby, almost hurling the doors from their hinges, and Alisandra spoke calmly.
“Go on.”
Crackling ice danced up his fingertips.
“I am listening.”
His eyes grew wide; his pupils glinted with the sliver of Light atop her head.
Then his animal instincts prevailed. He tore his hand free with a snap of ice and fled.
The elevator dinged.
“Please inform Angela I will arrive momentarily.”
Closing the elevator on the other constable’s slack-jawed face, she punched the key for the top floor.
So many gaps on this panel, she thought, counting the missing floors. Symptoms of spreading rot.
When she was young, she had thought the Inquisition could only function in darkness. Yet this power was an open secret across the land, and what did the folk say? ‘Fine as long as they target the right sort of wrong people.’
The elevator admitted her to the top floor lounge, wide and plush, and she followed the placards towards a corner office.
The door was closed. She yanked it open and barged straight in.
Inside, Angela Cecille jerked to a stop mid-conversation with Margaret Dune.
Though Angela scowled at the intrusion, Margaret rose to intercept. “This is a private meeting.”
“You are free to leave,” Alisandra responded.
The constable snarled like an old dog.
Angela adjusted quickly. She swept some papers from her desk with one hand, leaned back in her chair, and waved a hand. “Never mind Lady Mishkan’s manners, Margaret. Alisandra must be feeling desperate.”
“I value my time,” the angel replied, claiming the sole chair before the desk.
“Then by all means. How have you been? I don’t think we have talked since…”
“Last Harvest gala. On the veranda over brandy.”
She smiled. “Your memory is as keen as ever, Lady Mishkan! I’m afraid mine goes to cheese until my second cup of coffee these days.”
Must we indulge this patter? Her halo itched, dreading the pounding drums.
“And I see you remain an iconoclast,” the Inquisitor hummed. “An interesting look. Very hard-edged. I have not ever met a woman who could pull off teal hair.”
“I did not choose this hair for fashion.”
“Not all are so brave to flirt with such colors.”
“I was unaware the color blue was heretical.”
Angela lectured as if to a child. “Oh, it is not! Merely the implication…well, we might look askance at a man wearing Jungle reed skirts to a formal dinner…”
“Feel free to ask my clerks for an accounting of my faith,” Alisandra stated, two fingers drumming on the chair. “I assure you that my charity is effusive.”
Well aware that direct assault on House Mishkan would lead nowhere, Angela smiled. “Of course. We must lead by example if we are to guide the flock.”
“To hold them tight as the Holy Receivership to your bosom?”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Do I detect a complaint?” Angela hummed. “I seem to recall your own House held a single vote two decades ago. Now how many do you hold? Thirty?”
Alisandra shrugged.
“The Holy Receivership is no different. Both are mechanisms to tend the flock for those who no longer can.”
“You speak of a flock but count cattle.”
Angela offered a moue. “No reason to be crass, Alisandra.”
“There was no reason to drive Father Lucas from his position either.”
The Grand Inquisitor leaned back, digesting the implications of that comment. Of what it meant Alisandra knew. Then, deciding on her course, she feigned concern. “By all rights Lucas should have retired by now. He deserves a rest.”
“Strange. You seem to have replaced his most prominent friends as well. Some of whom were no older than I.”
Through all this, Margaret glowered into Alisandra’s hair. Now, accepting a discrete signal from Angela, she stepped away to brew tea in the far corner.
Lowering her voice, Angela whispered like an old school friend. “Father Lucas and I spoke many times, of course. Reform, usually. He was quite in love with the notion; veritably overflowing with suggestions! For thirty years, Alisandra. Thirty years of poetic waxing and nothing to show for it.”
“So you took upon yourself the burden of purging him?” Alisandra snorted.
“He could have been a deacon a decade ago, you know. Could have been the Keeper of the Flame today.” Angela’s thin smile faltered. “If he ever stepped off his pulpit to join the rest of us.”
The same could be said for certain Houses
The angel shrugged. “There could be a Keeper tomorrow should the church present a candidate to the Conclave.”
“You are savagely misinformed on the state of our faith. Perhaps you might ask a priest to review.”
Alisandra smirked. “I understand they are too busy praying away the stains in the pipes beneath the square.”
Angela sucked air through her teeth.
“Good. I finally have your attention.” Alisandra planted her elbows on Angela’s desk, pressing her advantage. “Angela, I have known of your hobby since before the Wyrm. Have you never wondered why House Mishkan tolerated your ambitions?”
The Inquisitor clasped her hands together to still the angry shake at the word ‘tolerated’.
“Because I hoped that you would remember the brutality and callousness which the Houses treated to you and your sisters in your hour of need. That the pain you suffered would help you bring humility and grace to this experiment in flame. That the child who could no longer become a Lady would choose to strive for a world where a girl did not need to be a Lady to know prosperity.”
“Humility and grace?!” repeated the Inquisitor, aghast. “Where in the last fifteen years of deprivation and treachery do you find the gall to call for humility and grace?!”
“Treachery? Amusing! How many people do you vanish into your basements a year now?”
“Do not speak of tolerance from your gilded tower, Lady Mishkan!” Angela spat. “My tolerance overflows! Your servants parade their heresy at our festivals, do they not? Your money sways our fickle merchants, does it not? Your precious mayor remains a free man, does he not?!”
“Again, you gracefully accept the burden? That you alone should separate the wheat and the chaff, Angela?”
Angela surged to her feet. “Icy hells and darkness, someone must!”
A tiny shiver ran up the Hand of God.
Anticipation.
Alisandra dropped a hand to its pommel, soothing it. “I once knew an Angela Cecille who rolled her eyes at the depths of the doctrine. Faithful, surely, but not blinded. Where has that girl gone?”
“Cold and buried in the ground with my sisters and my child!” snarled the Inquisitor. “Buried beneath beds of ash we cannot even excavate and consecrated by a profane shrine that was once our hope and pride! Yet your filthy pets take pilgrimage to our greatest shame, there to pray before a goddess of serpents, while her Tempest tramples our treaties and spits upon our sovereignty Tell me why I should heed the word of the greatest viper we yet harbor – a heretic flaunting her hair for the Conclave! Where were you when the Wyrm came to bring judgement on our sins?!”
By raw willpower, Alisandra smothered the words: Staring down his maw.
She kept a firm grip now on the Hand of God.
“You wish to speak openly? Very well. Your House funds convicted witches in Highbranch – the very same sisters Erudite sentenced by Conclave decree! – to operate a country-wide smuggling ring. You fund sedition, encourage depravity, and carry on the legacy of the blighted House Visage with your nose held high in the air like you were the rightful queen!”
And would you rather bow to a Queen Mishkan?
“You were there that day,” Alisandra reasoned. One final try. “You know the Stormmother never meant for Lumia to suffer.”
“And now you speak for divinity!” roared Angela, slamming her hand on her desk. “Who in the bloody hells are you to – no! Please, Alisandra! Declare yourself her scion at last and save us the tedium of breaking your petty alliance one House at a time!”
“Have we learned nothing from Charlotte Broadleaf?” the angel wondered softly.
“On the contrary! I learned that there is no redemption to be found!”
No going back
No salvation
“We transgressed, and we have been branded. We will not suffer the same again!” Shaking, Angela smoothed back her hair. She swore twice under her breath, took her seat, and reapplied her thin smile. “Father Lucas talked. Oh, how he talked. He chased his beloved consensus and called it wisdom…”
Margaret provided tea.
Angela sipped it.
“He was easy to remove. Liked by everyone, but championed by none. You would do well to learn from his mistake and fly south where you belong.”
“Then you will not rest until Ruhum matches your vision of purity?”
“It must be difficult for you to understand faith,” the Inquisitor sniffed.
Oh, very much so. Bound and awed before an empty altar; does it never worry you that God never deigns to answer back?
“When the Wyrm returns,” Alisandra offered, “he will laugh at your faith. Aure is gone. Time is limited.”
How would you react if I took you to the dead deserts? Would your faith break open and let you see? I doubt it.
“The mountains belch, and the center frays. I…” She corrected herself. “The Stormmother can offer you shelter.”
Angela scowled. “If only you would speak so candidly on the record so everyone might see the real you.”
“Ruhum alone remains in the past!” Alisandra growled. “Everyone else looks to a united future. Everywhere but my home!”
As the words flew from her lips, she knew them for a lie.
An empty manor where wilted flowers and simple headstones marked the last memory of her birth parents. A museum stuffed full of history and left to mildew.
“Father would have wanted us to find a way through together,” Alisandra said.
The Inquisitor offered an icy stare. “Better that he should not see what you make of his legacy.”
The Hand of God throbbed in Alisandra’s palm.
Ready and willing.
Instead, Alisandra rose to her feet. Her halo throbbed furiously, a crown demanding respect…
The angel offered a bow, one general to another.
“Thank you for your candor, Angela. Until we meet again.”
On the field of battle.
***
The Inquisitor’s office fell deathly silent after that heretic’s departure.
Angela finished her tea, the cup rattling in her palms.
“I managed to record a little,” Margaret confirmed, revealing a bulky device hidden with the tea. “Enough for an offensive.”
“She came here intending to provoke a fight,” sighed Angela. “We both know House Mishkan is still too strong.”
Yet Alisandra’s outburst belied her narrowing options. The Lady sensed Angela’s hand at work in the shadows.
With Lucas removed, the Psalms crumbled. Well-prepared, Angela claimed the lion’s share of the spoils.
One or two more moves like that, and she would have what she needed.
Finishing the tea, Angela considered the field before her.
“How proceed the evictions?”
“I have begun applying the usual pressures on Fifthborough.”
“Excellent. I want the borough emptied by the end of the season. The outer aldersmen?”
“We have evidence of infidelity on two of the Sixborough aldersmen. Enough to destroy them.”
“You see? Evil cannot help but find its own demise,” Angela hummed. “Sevensborough?”
Angela shook her head. “Deeply hostile territory.”
“A pity. But we are making inroads, yes?”
“At great cost. Gold is the only motivator that kind knows.”
“Well, gold we have. What of the Wavespeaker’s whelp?”
“The Penitents have given up the chase; the constables have lost interest. However, Aldersman Lee may prove useful – he desires her head and can yet move freely in the borough. Speaking of the Wavespeaker, however, Belle Osh has visited Oshton’s diner twice.”
“Then no doubt remains. Mishkan and her pets have the girl stowed somewhere.”
Perhaps they set her against Lee in the first place.
Margaret shook her head. “We cannot move. Can’t take two steps in that fetid slum without the rats going to ground.”
“Then we’ll just have to ask our new little friends to help out.”
Rats to kill rats
“Put them on watch at the borough edges and Oshton’s diner,” the Grand Inquisitor ordered.
“As you wish.”
One or two more moves…
Then Angela could put everything she learned from Charlotte Broadleaf to a better use.
***
As a matter of course, the Penitents eavesdropped on the Inquisitors. A few hours’ warning of an inspection or an arrest could make the difference between victory and banishment.
Years ago, the Penitent deacon of the time had bribed maintenance to install a secondary turn to the vent into the woman’s office. Now, a Penitent with a leaf of paper sat by the outlet in a utility closet whenever the Inquisitor occupied her office.
That day’s unlucky scribe frantically recorded the argument and its aftermath. When Angela left for lunch, he hurried from his hole, across the Conclave square, and to the third floor of another skyscraper where his order held sway.
He found the office already abuzz with an earlier event. Lady Mishkan had set a man to madness with a word in the atrium! The poor constable had abandoned his duty and fled like a guilty child, and the clerks hurried searched for any hints of corruption or shame in the man’s background.
None were found, not even a heretical ancestor. The only answer was southern witchcraft!
The scribe added his report to the pile. To his surprise, he was immediately admitted to see Maxwell for a full report!
Entering Maxwell’s office, he compared it against his own reeking utility closet and fought the sudden temptation of ambition.
Burn the empty self, he recited. Leave only the gold of refinement.
This was what the Deacons and Inquisitors failed to understand. While they argued over the largest, highest offices of the biggest skyscrapers, the Penitents turned their eyes to the true salvation of penance!
“Go ahead,” Maxwell said, his hands busy with a black stone.
The young Penitent gave his report, eyes repeatedly drifting to that stone.
Could that be one of…
Armed only with rumor and faith, he dared not ask.
Maxwell dismissed him back to his closet, and the Penitent sat back down in the dim light with his paper to await Angela’s next appointment.
Sitting in the dark, he kept thinking about the cruel glint of that black stone.
About the Penitents dispatched near and far, departing by dead of night, returning with wrapped and precious cargo…
“Focus!” he exhorted himself. “We all have our role to play, and I must mind the Inquisition!”
He settled himself, reaffirming his faith.
What is the truth of Lumia?
Lesser minds flinch from these facts
First, God had empowered the Keeper of the Flame in his name.
Second, the last Keeper of the Flame had been an usurper of wanton corruption.
God had seen fit that she was cast down in the Conclave itself.
There were reports that she had wielded the tools of Aure himself, but they had never been found. Just her corpse.
Though the foul Keeper had met justice, the mountains stirred. Lava had cracked the earth in Mel to ring the Conclave, and the first ashfall of the modern world had begun.
Soon, a creature of Fire and ash had appeared over Waves.
Crossing the world, this Wyrm had smote both Waves and Lumia – both centers of depravity!
Lumia had been cursed, its land tainted beyond saving.
These facts were all public knowledge, even if fools could not connect them.
The next pieces were mysteries granted only to the few worthy.
For the Tempest too seeks the black Keys, bending her unholy power to the search
She slaughters all who would dare take this power
For she jealously seeks to claim them one and all
The Azure temple claimed that the shards were a dangerous magic and that the Tempest strove to preserve peace for mankind.
“Laughable!” the Penitent reaffirmed. Since when did the holy accept Wave’s word?
Truth was clear and plain to the faithful mind.
God had sent the Wyrm to punish their wickedness.
Ash and suffering would continue until man once more stepped onto the righteous path.
The young man drooped on his hard stool. His mind wandered over the arguments, prying at corners.
A noble car roaring like a bat out of the hells through flames; a horde of women with the same face managing the evacuation; stricken men reporting the grinding of vast, unfathomable gears through their very marrow?
They all had to add up to something…right?
Nearly asleep, he wondered, What if all the lines did not connect? What if there is no Grand Design?
Then Angela returned from lunch, and he shook himself upright. Such doubts were irrelevant! All that mattered were the two sacred Acts.
First, to shoulder penance on behalf of mankind with every word and deed.
Second, to devote oneself to the completion of God’s demand.
To summon the Wyrm.