“All of them.”
32
ABBESS GLASS
THE EMPIRE HAD always rested against the Sea of Marn. The roots of its origin lay tangled as much in myth as in history, but most scholars agreed that from tough and independent fisherfolk a tightly knit confederation of ports and coastal towns had grown. The midst of this proto-state had spawned the founder of the empire. That man, Golamal Entsis, had forged eastward, overland, despite his naval power and the saltwater in his veins. In fact, apart from short-lived strongholds established at vast cost on the Durnish shores and never held for more than a generation, the empire’s history had always been one of driving east along the Corridor.
At its height the empire stretched seven hundred miles east, through all of what later became Scithrowl, and deep into the Alden, the federation of city-states that was now the Kingdom of Ald. The reversal had been swift. In the space of forty years and six weak emperors the border had fallen back against the rocky spine of the Grampains, and there it stayed, immovable.
Some now declared “empire” too grand a name for the territory currently held, and “emperor” too lofty a title for the men and women who took its highest seat. To Abbess Glass’s mind, both titles had been earned through centuries of greatness. Even so, she had to agree that when the Corridor wind picked up its feet and raced eastward then the empire could be crossed at such a speed that it really did feel quite small. Brother Pelter exchanged the carriage horses at various stops and had them driven hard. Along the spine of the empire lay metalled roads, built in the reign of Golamal the Fifth for swift movement of troops in time of war. They had been well-maintained ever since. Along such routes the carriage devoured the miles before it. Twice they took to the rivers, pressed upstream by the wind’s hand, swapping to new carriages at the Patience Monastery and at the estate of the newest archon, Hedda. Glass felt at each stage as though they were fleeing something rather than just hastening towards Sherzal’s palace. Perhaps Pelter worried that Red Sisters were in hot pursuit, bent on freeing his prisoner. No such rescue would come, though. Glass had forbidden it and, though she might never quite understand why, the loyalty that had grown around her came coupled with an obedience that was just as deep and enduring.
During the long days of travel Glass made conversation, or at least one half of it, and slowly the boredom, and the pressure of questions unanswered, eased Brother Pelter into supplying the other half. Glass sensed that the Inquisition guards, Melkir and Sera, who rotated from duty atop the carriage to duty beside her, would have liked to join in too. But Brother Pelter, whilst not following the stricture himself, had made it clear that nobody was to talk to the prisoner. And so Glass was left with only Brother Pelter to speak to.
She found the man to be almost exactly what her research had indicated him to be: ambitious, focused, easily flattered, and whilst deeply versed in the points of heresy on which most Inquisition trials hinge, his knowledge of the faith in a broader sense would not compete with that of any novice that Sister Wheel had passed as fit to move up to Grey Class.
“Do you know who the Inquisition’s prime instigator was when I was high inquisitor, brother?” Glass lifted her voice above the clatter of the wheels and the drumming of rain on the carriage roof.
“No.” The inquisitor frowned as if his ignorance on the matter bothered him.
“There wasn’t one,” Glass said. “The last holder of the office was Juticar, cousin to our current emperor’s grandfather. Juticar died holding the title. According to Inquisition records he attended three meetings in thirty-six years, although he was quite a regular at executions.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Pelter fixed Glass with those eyes of his, perhaps his greatest asset, holding as they did something truly chilling, usually only to be found in the reflection of a brittle blue sky in deep ice.
Glass shrugged. “By my reckoning we’ll be at Sherzal’s palace sometime the day after tomorrow. So the office of prime instigator seems at least topical. It was a paper title, you see, an invention to please some emperor of long ago, an office meant for royalty, so that the Crown could feel . . . if not a sense of ownership . . . at least some illusion of control of the Inquisition and some more solid feeling that it could not be wielded against them. The raft of regulations protecting emperors and their siblings from the sharp edge of the Inquisition was part and parcel of it. Similar to those laws protecting high inquisitors.”
“And former high inquisitors.” Brother Pelter took on a sour look, reminded of the fact that such details had him crossing half the empire rather than hauling the abbess the five miles from Sweet Mercy to the Tower of Inquiry.
“Well, we can hardly make such a fuss about heresy, which is after all the business of following the details of the faith, if we’re not prepared to follow our own rules elsewhere, can we, brother?” Glass smiled. “If you’re happy to set hot irons to a man to establish the degree of his piety then at least you can endure a few days’ ride to ensure you yourself follow the letter of the law.”
“You’d do well to practise your penitence, abbess.” In the light slanting through the carriage shutters Pelter’s pockmarked face took on a somewhat monstrous aspect. “It’s over for you and your convent. The Lansis will have what they want. You should apply yourself to the question of what state you will be in at the end of it. Ashes perhaps. Sherzal is fond
