“I cannot,” Zilkovsky said. “I was told to do this, in no uncertain terms.”
“By Zentrum himself,” Abel said. It was not a question. “Praise Law and Land,” he added perfunctorily.
“Yes,” answered Zilkovsky. “There was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer, to change things.”
Abel looked at the priest. His corpulent body was shaking like a bowl of gelled sweetmeat. After a moment, he got his sobs under control.
“Your father and I have been talking,” Zilkovsky said after a moment. “Treville is very dangerous for you now.”
“How do you mean?”
“You are a victim of your own success, my friend,” said the prelate. “One misstep, and it could be you up there.” He nodded toward the prepared bonfire. “Those breechlock muskets were very clever. I know Golitsin was brilliant, but I do not think he discovered their principle alone.”
“Perhaps not,” Abel said.
“I have shielded this knowledge carefully in my mind,” said Zilkovsky.
“Thank you.”
“Joab and I think that now is the time for you to be reassigned,” the priest continued. “Away from here. Away from trouble for a while.”
This was news to Abel. It took a moment for the import to hit him. “To another Scout regiment? Where?”
“Not the Scouts,” Zilkovsky answered. “It’s time you moved past that.”
“I’ll always be a Scout.”
“Be that as it may, the assignment will be in Lindron.”
“The district?”
“The city.”
There were no Scouts within the city of Lindron. Then Abel realized what Zilkovsky was implying. “You’ve found me a place at the temple?”
“Yes. You are to take a cadet position in the Academy of the Guardians.”
“The Academy?” Abel said. “But that’s for…second sons of First Families.”
“Your mother was a Klopsaddle.”
“But I hardly know that side of my family.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Zilkovsky. “You are more than qualified.” He stiffened, turned his face away from Abel. “You will leave immediately after the execution,” he said.
“But…my Scouts,” Abel said.
“They got along pretty well before you came along,” Zilkovsky said. “They’ll get along without you now. Besides, Joab will still be here. He’ll find a suitable commander.”
Abel could not argue with this point. Everything had seemingly been arranged. Still, there was the doubt.
“Why?” he asked. “You admitted it yourself. It could just as easily have been me on that stake. Aren’t you afraid of spreading heresy to the very heart of the Land by sending me?”
Zilkovsky did not look at Abel, and Abel only saw his great, jowly profile. But he believed he detected the trace of smile spread upon the older man’s face. “Afraid of it?” Zilkovsky said in a low voice. “I’m counting on it.” He nodded toward the bonfire stake. “You’re my revenge.”
Observe:
Center once again split Abel’s awareness and provided a bird’s eye view of the scene. Abel, not for the last time, wished he was not capable of viewing such a perspective. But since he was, he knew he could not resist and look away. He saw it all.
Late morning, and the sun had risen full over the Land. It was a hot day, fifty days after first harvest and getting toward second planting. The Blaskoye, which had been all that could be talked of or thought of days before, seemed almost a distant memory.
The Land abided. It was ever thus.
But today there was to be something different, and it was the sight of a lifetime.
The burning of a heretic.
The temple courtyard was packed. Men had brought their wives and children. There were water sellers and bread vendors milling about in the crowd.
But when they brought out the disgraced priest, there was a gasp. They had bound him in chains, metal chains.
He was the very embodiment of nishterlaub, and the crowd instinctively drew back.
Which gave Abel a chance to push through and find a place in the front row. When someone frowned at him for stealing his place, Abel turned and spat at his feet, giving his best scowl in return. He felt like fighting. He would have welcomed a fight. But the other backed down.
Drums were beating. The Regulars were putting on quite a show at Joab’s command.
“If we’re going to do this, let’s consult the Protocols and do it right,” Joab had told his commanders.
All had a place in the proceedings-all except Scouts. They were exempt, and most were needed on the Escarpment anyway for guard duty.
It took a long time to properly chain Golitsin to the stake. Two iron rings had been driven into it, probably at Golitsin’s suggestion, but the guards fumbled with the chains, unused to the feel of metal in their hands. They’d had to climb up on the pile on a wooden siege ladder commandeered for this new purpose, and that had proved difficult for Golitsin, who had no use of his hands for balance. Finally, one of the guards-Haywood, Abel thought it was-had bodily lifted the priest and nimbly carried him up the propped ladder.
The setting of the fire was done with pitch torches. The ten guards had circled the bonfire and held them ready.
That was when Zilkovsky appeared. He and a retinue of priests approached the bonfire and stood looking up at the staked man.
Zilkovsky spoke a familiar Thursday school litany of invocation, then shouted up to Golitsin. “Do you recant, heretic?”
Golitsin just smiled.
“I ask you again,” shouted Zilkovsky. “Do you recant?”
Golitsin said nothing.
“For the sake of your soul, that it may fly to Zentrum and seek forgiveness and not be relegated to the realm of the thrice-damned of the Outer Dark forever, I ask you for the final time: do you recant, heretic?”
Golitsin gazed down at the prelate. A tender expression came over his face. “I recant,” he said. He raised his head and shouted to the crowd. “I recant all! Zentrum forgive me! I recant! Alaha Zentrum! I recant!”
“Very well,” Zilkovsky said. “May Zentrum have mercy upon your soul.”
The prelate signaled to the guards, then turned his back. He quickly walked away, back down the path that had been cleared through the crowd, the train of his heavy priestly garment dragging through the dust behind him, obliterating his footprints, making it appear, to Abel’s Scout’s eye, as if no man had walked this path at all. Or at least, a man who did not wish to be found out.
Then the crackle of the fire as the torches caught at the kindling caught Abel’s attention, and he turned back. The fire grew away from the spots the torches had been laid, and soon the entire base of the bonfire took on the red crackle of flames, visible now even in direct sunlight.
Abel watched. Minutes passed. The fire grew unquenchable.
The stocks of the muskets began to blacken.
The crowd gasped and stifled screams when two of the rifles went off.
Finally, Abel could stand it no longer, and looked up at the staked man.
Golitsin had picked him out in the crowd and was staring straight down at him.
Golitsin smiled when he saw Abel was looking at him. He called out over the fires. “At least we had The Boat on the Water, didn’t we Dashian?”
