Spring 49
Cecille woke to new troubles.
First, some mealy-mouthed rag ran slights against her name. Claimed that she abducted children in the night and vanished those who displeased her into the basement of 1540 Conclave Square.
While technically correct by the letter, that gave no right for rabble to camp outside her door! She required three full hours to corral the constables into clearing the miscreants from the street!
Do you lot have nothing better to do? ‘Toil girds the soul.’ Bend yourself before a plow!
She dreamed of assigning them to the ashen mines.
The constables that dragged their heels to see to her needs could supervise.
Margaret would have cleared the rabble with two shots of her pistol and a glare.
Yet Margaret now languished in a Waves penitentiary, awaiting the inevitable outcome of a show trial. As though the laws of Azure heretics held any sway!
Angela spared a moment of pride that, according to her spies, Margaret showed no sign of compliance to such idolatrous falsities.
Let her return to the Fire with head held high and soul clean!
In replacement, what did Angela receive? A gaggle of undisciplined, surly, disorderly, visionless constable chieftains!
Constables – the boot of Ruhum. Useful but crude. They do not understand how to respect their superiors.
She would meet with her Inquisitors this afternoon and schedule a few conspicuous disappearances. Let the boot realize that it could be replaced at will.
Only faith and adherence mattered. Whether betrayal arose from a House, a merchant, a constable, or even a deacon was immaterial. Admittedly, certain targets were harder to wrangle, but in time…
On that thought, she arrived quite late to 1540 Conclave Square to find the lobby spilling over with pilgrims. Scowling, she glanced back into the square at the carnival of faith now squatting around the Conclave itself. Though she could not fault their devotion, that caterwauling display only reaffirmed an obvious truth: the flock required a strong guiding hand.
Conveniently enough, her hand was the perfect size for that glove.
That reminds me. I must fetch a list of the ringleaders for those armbands. Yet another duty Margaret would have accomplished without requiring the order!
Shoving through the crowds before the bathrooms, Angela secured the elevator and rode to her office. Alas, here she found more unpleasant surprises.
Father Maxwell of the Penitents waited outside her door, his eyes glazed over with exhilaration.
“Is there aught you require, Father?”
Tired of living in a hovel, perhaps? Hungering for more than bread and water? Such an example you are. How you strive to prove yourself superior to your predecessors.
Those prior deacons had flagellated themselves upon the steps by day and retired to their manors by evening to enjoy the same wine as their fellows. The simple, two-faced nature of such politicians made them clay in Angela’s hands. Shark among minnows, she had winnowed their ranks one morsel at a time…
Now only this fool stands between me and the collapse of the Penitents.
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With the pigs on the top floor soon to follow.
“My, what a marvelously murderous expression you wear this day,” Maxwell remarked. “If there is one thing I have never doubted, it is that the Flame beats strong in your heart, your Grace!”
“The Flame must be tended,” she agreed, shouldering past him into her office. “…lest we mistake its use for our own pleasure.”
You masochistic madman.
Maxwell followed her to the desk, hands folded behind his back. “I have always considered us quite alike, Angela. We both seek to embrace the Fire in totality – never flinching from its touch.”
“Touching.”
“Alas, I fear you do not feel the same.”
Angela reached for her tea, but there was none. Margaret would never prepare it again. She masked this thought by idly dusting the desk and coolly asked, “Do you have your hand in those armbands spreading around the square today?”
Maxwell grinned. “I can claim no credit, not even in jest! Ah, but you should surrender this mountain and join us! The energy, Angela! The country is waking up, my dear! Sparks fly heart to heart, and all the world stirs before a great song of righteousness!”
“Then why are you here, Maxwell, instead of enjoying your festivities below?”
Sighing, the Penitent spread his hands. “The Holy Receivership answers to you, Angela. We all know it.”
“Is that so?”
He pressed. “I want permission to give my account of the vision seen above Sevensborough to the Houses.”
“Nonsense!” the Grand Inquisitor snapped. “You may claim in the privacy of your home to see as many dragons over the borough as you wish…” For now. “…but we will not put forward children’s rumors before that august body!”
“We saw it, Angela! The Purifier called to us all!” Maxwell shivered. “Every true believer hears his call in our bones.”
Scowling, Angela squeezed her hands together. “You stand in the office of the one who defines a ‘true believer’, Maxwell.”
“You might bludgeon fat deacons with your extortions, Angela, but I am more than my vices! Strip me of my money and my title and I shall shout on the street corner in the name of God!”
Her barbed tongue, used to the Houses and their double-speak, suggested the retort: ‘I would never stand in the way of God’s messengers – should I find one.’
Her internal Inquisitor counseled: Feed a masochist punishment, and it will only engorge him. Let him shrivel up in a corner and blow away on the wind.
After her morning, though, Angela let slip a curt, “Oh, do shut up, Maxwell!”
Maxwell was ready for venomous compliments, and this blunt honesty flabbergasted him a moment.
Having broken the floodgates, she vented. “I can summon a hundred men to show me a thousand ways to command a phoenix and a serpent. Ten thousand dregs of Lumia to tell me every toad-licking secret of the cosmos. Yet you have the gall to march into the office of the Grand Inquisitor to inform her that the Wyrm rose once more in the borough – and only your Penitents and a handful of drunkards saw him?!”
“What of the destruction in the pipes? The–”
“We have a foreign tyrant stomping across every border!” the Inquisitor shouted. “Perhaps the Tempest has taken an interest in civil engineering!”
Actually, she rather relished the moment of disbelief across his sallow face.
“The Conclave must be led back to the Fire!” Maxwell insisted at last. “You know the depths to which they sink!”
“The Inquisition knows that it is our duty to separate the wheat from the chaff; the true from the fever dream!” she retorted.
“By having your goons follow my brothers home like an out-borough gangster!”
“While you fools moaned over candles in the basements, my men have put hand to steel against the rot of Ruhum!”
And when the right moment arrives
They will come for you
“The Purifier stirs,” the Penitent intoned. “He whispers in our dreams. The end of days is here, Angela. Not next year; not next season; now.”
“Then let him show up at my office and speak his mind,” she hissed. “Until then, stay out of my God-damned way!”
Maxwell bowed stiffly and marched from the room.
Angela imagined picking up her butter knife and burying it between his shoulder blades.
Patience! It is as he said. The Holy Receivership answers to the Holy; the council of deacons look to a rising star; and the Houses…
The Houses had signed their own doom, and now she simply let them stew in the realization of the dagger now revealed upon their floor. Their letters already clogged her desk, each offering secret alliance in service to the destruction of their rivals…
She ignored them, letting the Houses sweat.
To realize their doom at her hand.
The end of days? Such foolishness.
The end of days had been sixteen years ago, and the world had been cold and gray and ash ever since.
***
Late that day, the Holy Receivership announced a leave of absence to commune the faith. Already retreated into their factions, the Houses thus lost their quorum, and the Spring Conclave ended without so much as a gavel.
Shortly thereafter, the evening news to the faithful announced a formal investigation into the House Mishkan on charges of substantive aid given to the pursuit of heresy both at home and abroad. Such an investigation held the potential to see the House dissolved, and the Lady Mishkan would be wise to present herself to the Conclave for a speedy pursuit of justice!