Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

36

ABBESS GLASS

BROTHER PELTER’S RAPID success in acquiring the services of senior inquisitors Seldom and Agika had been followed by frustration. Pelter chased one report of Inquisition activity after another, only to find the operations completed, the inquisitors departed, or the report exaggerated and the investigation lacking sufficient importance to have a senior inquisitor in attendance.

On their infrequent returns to the swift toll-roads, the paved thoroughfares that constituted the empire’s spine, Glass had seen an unusual number of grand carriages hastening east. Great wheeled confections of ebony and silver thundered by, the devices of many of the greatest Sis families blazoned on their sides. On several occasions the abbess had managed to catch a good look at the coat of arms flying past her window slats. Black axes crossed before a red sun: the ancient house Rolsis, the tower and quill of House Jotsis, and the hangman’s noose of the Galamsis, swift climbers and relative newcomers to the highest circle.

They had travelled on, ever east. From her carriage window Abbess Glass had seen more of the empire in that space of days than she had seen in the last fifteen years. She had always maintained good lines of information, from the Grey Sisters and the Red, but also from a dozen and more old contacts, people who had been her eyes and ears when she sat in the highest chair at the Tower of Inquiry. The tower overtopped all of Verity’s spires and the view was a commanding one, but its mistress had needed to see further still. Even so, the carriage journey had reminded Glass that nothing beats seeing and hearing it for yourself. The gossip of trader and merchant, farmer and soldier, even subdued by the sight of Inquisition robes, offered up the pulse of the empire.

“We’ll soon be there, abbess.” Brother Pelter had taken to repeating the reassurance with greater frequency as the delays mounted. The white peaks of the Grampains dominated the skyline, lending weight to Pelter’s claim. He sat between the senior inquisitors Agika and Seldom on the bench opposite Glass, no kindness in his smile. “Soon be there.”

Pelter thought he was threatening her but Glass now hoped with all her heart that their hunt would end soon. The world held many kinds of magic but the greatest of them, it seemed to Glass, was timing.

“Do you think that Sherzal coming to power would be a good thing, brother?” Glass asked.

“She has already come into power,” Pelter said. “And it is good for those who support her.”

“Sherzal is hunting more than a seat at her brother’s table. She’s collecting shiphearts. The harm she could do—”

“To others!” Pelter snapped. “The harm she could do to others! Wisdom in such times lies in knowing who to follow when things fall apart. You, abbess, have been unwise.”

“Wisdom lies in not allowing things to fall apart, brother.” Glass’s gaze flitted from Seldom to Agika. “We are all part of the Ancestor’s tree. A twig that breaks free will, however advantageous the wind, fall and wither in time.”

* * *

• • •

PELTER CALLED A stop in the village of Bru, at a ramshackle tavern named the Elusive Pig. He commanded that lunch be served for his party and placed another brick of penitent’s bread before Glass. She sat, chewing the coarse slice that Sera, applying her guards’ sword to the purpose, had cut for her. And while Pelter asked after Senior Inquisitor Hames, who supposedly was investigating the heretical reinvention of some would-be lordling’s family tree, Glass listened to the chat at neighbouring tables.

Individuals, families, and whole clans had arrived in Bru, and in-lying villages all along the Corridor, in past months. All of them displaced from the margins by the advancing ice.

“More came in last night.” The speaker two tables away had a rumbling voice that slid under the general chatter. Each word like a boulder rolled out for inspection.

“They says as how these beggars are coming in from the margins.” A narrow-faced merchant opposite Rumbler, dark complexioned and sour. “They says it wrong though. We’re the margins now!”

“We’d better toughen up then and protect what’s ours,” Rumbler said. “Harder than nails these frost-farmers are, poorer than Hope Church mice. What they going to do when they get hungry?”

“They’re hungry now!”

“Well they won’t starve quietly in the road. I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

At the table behind Glass the patrons were, with voices amplified by ale, discussing both the Scithrowl threat and the Durns.

“Piss drown the Durns. What do we care about empire ports three hundred miles west of us? They’re closer to Durnland than they are to us! Let them fight it out on the beaches. Durns and their little boats!” The speaker spat mightily, giving her companion a chance to break in and air his opinions.

“Jace Leaner hunts white lion up on the east slopes. You want to listen to that man. See clear across the border from those slopes, you can. He says you can’t hardly spot the ground in Scithrowl, there’s that many battle-tribes gathered. Adoma’ll have them over the passes before the year’s out, mark me. Like a tide. A red tide. Beggars off the margins won’t matter then. Durns won’t matter then.”

“She wants the Ark, they say.” A third voice. An old man, Glass thought. “That’s what the battle-queen wants.”

“That’s what they say. It’s always about the Ark. Me, I think it’s about land. They want acres. They want our acres, and they’re happy to water them with our blood. Once they’ve got the land they won’t give three whistles for Crucical peering out of the Ark at them.”

Glass sat back, her gaze on the table, immune to the malice in Pelter’s glances, listening. Perhaps five minutes later the sea of voices, from which she fished her gossip, fell to near-silence. Glass lifted her gaze and turned, like almost everyone else, to see three large men in furs and iron come through the inn’s main door. Juregs. Like the Pelarthi in the north, in the south the Juregs reigned largely unchallenged as the fiercest and most feared of the tribes that stalked the ice margins. Unlike the ice-tribes, they did not want to live out on the sheets nor could they survive there long. But they could certainly retreat ten or twenty miles onto the ice when empire troops threatened, then march east or west to reappear unannounced, weaving down between the crevasses on a glacier’s back and abseiling from the heights where the moon’s focus sheared off the ice’s snout.

The Juregs scanned the crowded taproom, wolves eyeing the flock.

To either side of Glass, Pelter’s guards, Melkir and Sera, quietly slipped hands to sword hilts. Agika and Seldom exchanged glances. Juregs were known for taking clergy for ransom. Even if a packed inn discouraged them from immediate action the chances were that they would follow the carriage when it left.

The Juregs ignored both bar and fire-pit, plotting a straight line for the inquisitors. The crowd of villagers, farmhands, and travellers standing in the main room melted out of the men’s path. Melkir made to stand but found his chair wedged beneath his legs by that of a portly cloth merchant behind him.

The largest and eldest of the trio, a solid six and a half foot tall, broad in the chest and sporting a wild beard shot with grey, offered them a discoloured grin. “You’re claimed. Come.” He gestured to his companions, possibly twin sons. “Leave your guard and we won’t hurt him.”