Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

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 of burnings. Not as a spectacle, but as a neat end to problems.”

“Does High Inquisitor Gemon know what you’ve done yet, brother?” Glass ignored the threat. “Did any part of this come from his desk? Does the Tower even know where you’re headed? Or was this all Sherzal’s bidding? The prime instigator . . . the office is well named for her.”

“I’ve indulged you on this journey, abbess, but you will speak of the emperor’s sister with respect! Hers is the voice the Inquisition listens to. Gemon’s time is coming to an end.”

“He didn’t sanction my arrest, did he?”

“Sherzal’s sanction is sufficient.”

“So . . . Gemon hasn’t sent any senior inquisitors for this trial I’m supposed to have? There should be three judges. I hope you’re not thinking to adjudicate, brother? You’re neither senior, nor threefold . . .”

“Sherzal isn’t about to let Gemon send his favourites.” Pelter smoothed down the grey tufts of his hair, a nervous habit. “We will recruit inquisitors of the required rank and number from the environs.”

“Environs?” Glass asked.

Brother Pelter glowered at her.

“Oh,” Glass said. “You mean you’ll be picking my jury up along the way?”

Pelter gripped the seat, thrusting his face towards her. “We will present ourselves to the honourable Sherzal with a trio of senior inquisitors, abbess, and when they put you to the question it will be me who employs the iron, be it sharp, or hot, to discover the truth. So you would do well to rid yourself of any hint of mockery.”

Abbess Glass pressed herself back, away from the fierceness of the man’s face and the rank cloud of his breath. “Of course, brother.”

* * *

• • •

AS NIGHT FELL Pelter had the carriage put in at Treytown, a settlement of modest size, perhaps five hundred homes, many dependent upon the tin mines for a living. The place boasted a church of the Ancestor considerably larger than most such towns could afford and was able to provide lodgings for the inquisitor and his guards, along with a penitent’s cell for the abbess.

Come morning the local priest unlocked Glass’s door and she bore his disapproval as the yawning guards escorted her to the carriage.

“We’re making a diversion today.” Brother Pelter handed her the prisoner-ration, a brick of black bread that was supposed to last the day.

“Indeed?” Glass accepted the bread into her chained hands. She had been tightening the rope on her habit daily. If the journey had been all the way to the empire’s old boundary out in the Alden she might have arrived with the figure she’d had at twenty, though she wouldn’t have counted it a good exchange for all those hungry days. “Where to?”

“The shrine at Penrast,” Pelter said. “I had Melkir and Sera do a little investigating around town last night. It seems that the Inquisition is following reports of heresy at the shrine. An investigation led by senior inquisitors . . .”

“Who will be useful in judging at my trial,” Glass supplied.

“As I said, from the environs.” Pelter nodded.

“And who is leading this inquiry?”

“Brother Seldom and Sister Agika. Friends of yours, I believe?” Pelter allowed himself a narrow smile.

Abbess Glass folded her hands across her diminished belly and pressed her lips into a thin line. Seldom and Agika had been trusted subordinates during most of her tenure in the Inquisition’s highest seat, but the estrangement that had preceded the announcement of her departure had been the talk of the tower, and famously bitter. “It’s when your power is taken, or given, away that you discover who your friends are, brother. There’s a lesson for us all in that.”

* * *

• • •

THEY REACHED THE shrine by noon. From a distance Penrast looked like a toy discarded by some lordling child. A silver cylinder rising from the broken hilltop at a drunken angle, thirty yards tall, maybe twenty yards across. Its walls were a yard thick, a weight of silver-steel that to purchase would beggar empires greater than the one it stood in. Except no fire could melt the stuff, no blade could cut it. Abbess Glass had it on good account that an Ark-steel blade couldn’t scratch the mirrored surface. And so, by having the properties so valued in Ark-steel, but to an even greater degree, the thing moved from priceless resource to worthless curiosity.