“Then why is the chapel in such bad shape?” asked Adam. They’d arrived onto the waterfront, and he could see in the distance the structure in question. It looked smaller even than where they stayed in Gautama, more shrine than a church, but at least it seemed of solid construction. Whatever it was made of appeared to be the same substance used to fashion the walls and temple, though dulled, like a great gray tooth in a slobbery wooden maw. And it only grew shabbier as they passed by peddlers, taverns, and titanic merchant ships with colored sails and colored sailors—perhaps pirates or else privateers. These men did not turn away their noses but called after them with breath heavy with brandy and rum, opium and hash. That caught the bishop’s attention, and for a fist of drakes—and a pocket of drug—they sold their camels and finished the trek on foot.
“What desecration is this?” muttered Jordan at the foot of the chapel stairs. At first, Adam thought he meant the unusual construction. The architecture was queer: an open rotunda, seven pillars, and a dome; no pews or lamps or braziers. Then he took stock of the occupants. The pastor’s son would recognize converts, and these men were not. They dressed like merchants, though they had no wares about them, just ledgers and scales and boxes brimming with coins of a dozen kind.
Ba’al laughed, “Looks like your chapel’s been commandeered. Good riddance, it’s probably a rat nest anyway.”
The Messiah leaned heavily upon his spear.
Zachariah sighed. “I was afraid of this. Someone must have made an appeal.” He sighed again, then spoke briefly with the Tsaazaari apostles, then to Jordan whose gaze was fixed. “Do not be angry with the heathens, my Lord. This is my sin. When I left, I left this place without an envoy. The missionary with whom I served warned me that he would return to Pareo if I abandoned him, and so it seems he did. This is my fault.”
Maqsood and Ramses did not agree. Their dark eyes became the black of shade; they dropped their sacks, checked their knives, and readied their bident spears. But they were only followers, Jordan their leader in wrath and disgust. His olive skin with its glow of bronze had turned the red-brown burnish of the half-blood. His lips lay taught and twisted on his mouth. The tension in his muscles threatened to tear them out from his body; and yet, it was the Messiah himself who signed for his apostles to stand down.
Clearing the demon toad from his throat, he spoke, “Our brother Zachariah is right. They know not what they do, blaspheming this house hallowed in the name of the Lord God Ventus. And though it is true that I have come to bring a sword to the serpents infesting our mother church, so too is it true that I have come to right the scales unbalanced by man.” He reversed his weapon so the butt-end loomed overhead. “And so I have died a lamb and returned a judge. That judgement I cast now: with mercy temper justice. Their blood shall not be spilt, yet this blasphemy cannot go on.”
“Then what should be done?” asked the reluctant apostle-scholar.
Jordan advanced on the defiled chapel. “I shall run them out myself!”
“Fucking lunatics!” spat the bishop. He was already backpedaling, calling for the others to follow. Lilum and Adam joined him at once, but the half-blood stayed.
“Go on without me,” he said. “I want to watch this.”
“Idiot,” Ba’al grumbled, starting back for Adnihilo who stood entranced by the violence.
Inside the open air chapel, Jordan raised a storm of thunder and lightning and hail. Voices boomed in pain and in anger, tables and coffers flew through the air as the Messiah swung the blunt end of his spear at any and every blasphemous thing: boxes smashed to bits, minted metals a mess on the floor or else pelting the heathens as they screamed, their fingers like burned sausages upon being bashed under the shaft of the Messiah’s spear. “Out! Out!” he shouted, his voice loud as the blast of a war horn—louder, even, than the calls for the guards—and those, there were plenty.
The bishop cursed; it was worse than he feared. The commotion caught the attention of everyone within earshot, and now they were crowding around, a thousand of them—a dozen Royal Swordsmen. It would be impossible to run.
Ba’al seized the devilish engine from his bag, filled his teeth sticks of incense, and lighting them, grunted. “Swords down! I’m going to try to talk our way out. If we’re lucky, then mayhap—”
A Tsaazaari threat shot from the chapel side. The riverwyrm hunters. Zachariah tried but failed to pacify their native tempers, and all the while the King’s Sons surrounded. “Give up!” one of them demanded in rough Messaii. He dressed unlike his cohorts in a garnet coat and with a red tassel sprouting from the peak of his helm. His sword already drawn, the broad cleaver end rested on his shoulder. “Face justice before the court of King Solomon, or face it now before his sons.”
A cry emanated from inside the chapel. The red Swordsman nodded, and two of his men started toward Jordan, weapons brandished. Maqsood and Ramses met them half way—a second’s standstill.
Ba’al leveled his engine at the commander’s head. “We’re not with those religious maniacs. Just looking for a place to spend the night and a ship for the morning.”
The Swordsman shook his
