“You think my entrusting you with such orders doesn’t show trust?” he asks archly.

“Not the orders, the why. Why are the orders necessary? Orholam gave me the mind he did. When I stand before him for the judgment, I cannot tell him in good conscience that I didn’t ask why one of his innocent children deserved death. That a church father told me to won’t be sufficient. He hasn’t given me such blind faith.”

He exudes an air of deep sadness. “I’m not sure you’re ready for that knowledge yet.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this action yet,” I say. I hurry to add, “Big brother.” But I may have been just a little too glib. Too smart.

He looks at me sharply, and something in that gaze reminds me that here is a man willing to sign a secret death sentence. I may not fear death, but I have no wish to die, and this man could not only order my death, he could—quite openly—send me to some living hell. There are always more luxiats needed to minister to leper colonies, to evangelize the Angari (and be martyred doing it), to take the news of Orholam’s love beyond the Cracked Lands. But he doesn’t look like he wants to throw away a perfectly good tool at the first difficulty in its use.

He says, “There is a holy relic that the High Magisterium has been entrusted with since the days of Karris Shadowblinder. During the False Prism’s War, Andross Guile seized it from us. He then claimed to have lost it, and accused us of stealing it from him, but we know this to be a lie. Andross Guile is an atheist, and a devious one at that. You must understand, I’m already telling you too much.” His voice is low and thready. I could swear there’s real fear in it.

“How do we know he was lying?” I ask. I want to ask what the relic is, but I can tell he won’t divulge any more than he must.

Big Brother Tawleb chews his lip. “Though they pretend to be at each other’s throats, Gavin Guile is still the Prism. He wouldn’t be if Andross really opposed him.”

“So this relic is necessary to keep power?”

Brother Tawleb blanches momentarily. Guessed it. Or he’s a better liar than I’d thought.

Orholam have mercy, what am I doing?

“That’s more than you need to know, and let me enjoin you never to speak of this with anyone, until you sit on the High Magisterium yourself. You understand?”

I do. Orholam’s tears, until I sit on the High Magisterium?! He says this not like it’s bait to tempt me, but as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I nod.

“The High Magisterium was … content to let this travesty pass.” He grimaces, and I can tell there’s a whole lot more to it than that. “Because the High Lord Prism has been a very reasonable friend and ally to us, despite his hidden alliance with his father. And because he has at most five years left. His father, our real enemy, has less time. We can deal patiently with provocation and take back what is ours after he dies, without any disruption among the faithful.”

The relic has been gone for at least sixteen years, and you haven’t tried to do anything to get it back? I don’t believe it. You all must have failed, spectacularly, and been warned that another attempt would mean some great vengeance. The Magisterium is patient, but it isn’t that patient.

Orholam, he’s lying to me. Easily. In multiple ways. How can a High Luxiat lie so blithely?

“But there’s a young man who just came to the Chromeria, Kip Guile. At first, they claimed he was a bastard, and High—we—thought…” He’s almost given away whoever it is who agrees with him in the High Magisterium. “We naively thought that might be the end of it. The Guiles have no heirs, nor does Gavin seem interested in producing any. We thought perhaps we could do nothing, and the relic would revert to our care still. But now they’ve named him a legitimate son. A lie, no doubt, but it means he will inherit. Kip’s appearance takes the theft of our relic from being an insult that we knew would be remedied to being the prospect of our prerogative lost and the Magisterium marginalized, forever.”

So this artifact is something on which the Magisterium thinks all of its power rests.

I say, “But the boy himself, he may be amenable to reason. He might give it over. He’s an innocent.”

“This is war; innocents die for the sins of the powerful.”

Brother Tawleb thought he meant the sins of Andross Guile, but I’m not so sure he’s right. That innocents die in war is a fact. It is unavoidable that when siege engines obliterate a city wall, the children in the houses beyond it often die.

But targeting children is something else altogether.

He continues, “When the Magisterium is weakened, everything every luxiat does is weakened. We minister to the refugees of war, but without power, how can we get the funds we need from the Spectrum to pay to send luxiats to give succor to those refugees? We feed the poor. We treat lepers. We heal the sick. Most of the money comes from alms, but there are times when alms can’t arrive fast enough. Can you imagine if we were faced with a flood on the coastal plains of Paria, and we had to wait until all seven satrapies heard about it, donated, and shipped their gifts here, then we bought the necessary supplies and sent the luxiats there? It would be months. Months in which how many innocents would die? Without the power to do good, what good can we do?”

Pray. The glib answer is also the scriptural one, the one every luxiat has been taught for hundreds of years. It is not by our power that Orholam’s will is accomplished, but by his. What are our black robes but a constant reminder of our own emptiness, our own need for Orholam’s light? And our need for his power.

In pursuing Orholam’s business, Brother Tawleb has forgotten Orholam himself.

“This is very troubling, big brother, but I hear the ring of truth in your words.” I bow my head. “I will pray for his soul. And deliver your message.”

“I don’t want you to deliver a message, Quentin Naheed.”

“Pardon?”

“I want you to deliver a bullet.”

Chapter 61

Kip came back from training to find his room trashed. His mirror was broken. The legs of his chair were broken. His pillow was slashed open. His mattress was slashed open. The coin purse with his wages he kept hidden on a roof beam had been stolen. His desk’s surface had been scored with a knife, his inkwell upended all over it. His chamber pot had been filled by whoever had done this, and had been emptied in the middle of his bed. A note, carefully tented on heavy wood pulp paper, sat on the desk, slowly wicking up ink.

“I’m done playing games. Come see me immediately. —T.G.”

T.G. The Guile. Because that’s how Andross sees himself. Not as Andross, not as the Red, not even as the promachos, but as the representative of all that is this family. That was the most important thing, to Andross Guile.

The urine was incredibly pungent.

Ugh. Someone’s not drinking enough water.

And to think of that first, someone’s been training with the Blackguard too much.

But aside from that wry thought, Kip was oddly unmoved. So his stuff had been smashed. So what? He’d had less in the past. So his money had been stolen. So what? He didn’t need money. He had friends now, and work to do, things to accomplish. That was infinitely more precious, wasn’t it?