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“Sir, please.  This is a place of peace.”

“And there’s no reason it can’t remain such,” Colonel Ravoud said in the tone of stern and implacable calm he had perfected during his years in the city’s military police.  Then as now, it helped to be backed up by a squad of soldiers—even if the Holy Legionaries in their elaborate armor and polearms were obviously more ceremonial than combat-ready.  “The investigation we require should be minimally disruptive.  At this season, surely even your gardens don’t demand much attention.”

“Excuse me, but with the greatest respect, friend, you ‘require’ nothing here,” replied the monk.  He, too, had the knack of projecting implacable calm—weighted more toward the “calm” part in his case, but he remained planted in the gateway to his temple grounds like a living barricade.  “This is a house of Omnu.  You have neither legal nor religious authority to impose your presence.”

“Are Omnu’s temples not open to all comers?”

“All who come in need,” the monk replied, his serenity backed up by his own support: three more robed monks stood behind him, hands folded and faces impassive.  Four Omnist monks were enough to deter most interlopers who didn’t come carrying lightning wands.  “Should you find yourself hungry or homeless, you may find refuge here.  As you come in force with clearly hostile intent, you are denied entry.”

“You may be assured that the Universal Church means no harm to Omnu’s faithful, or anyone.  The Archpope simply requires—”

“Nothing,” the monk interrupted, smiling beatifically.  He was almost as good at that as Justinian himself.  “As you have been told.”

“These are dangerous times, friend, and what we do is for the benefit of all.  That is the Church’s historic role.”

“Perhaps you have not heard,” the monk rejoined, still unruffled.  “Omnu’s faithful do not acknowledge the authority of the Universal Church, thanks to the actions of your Archpope, and will not until he steps down from his role.  You are not coming in, and I am content to stand here until the military police arrive to express the Emperor’s opinion of Justinian attempting to throw around brute force in Tiraas.”

“The brute force his Holiness is capable of ‘throwing around,’ as you call it, is not represented by me,” Ravoud said, deliberately keeping his own voice low and calm.  “This is a conciliatory offer, brother monk.  Everyone would prefer to keep this discussion perfectly civil.”

“So!  Tell me, apprentice, what our boy here has done correctly.”

At the voice which rung out across the street, all four monks shifted their focus, as did most of the armored Holy Legionaries and the steadily increasing crowd of onlookers.  Nassir Ravoud instinctively went rigid.  He knew that voice.  Slowly, he turned, one hand drifting toward his sidearm.

On the other side of the street stood two women, surrounded by a wide berth of space despite the general press of onlookers; the effect was like a school of fish parting around a shark.  One was a half-elf: slim, blonde, ears pointed but shorter than a true elf’s and with that distinctively ageless face of someone who might be between twenty and two hundred.  She was idly rolling a doubloon across the backs of her fingers.

“He’s applying pressure to a weak point,” said the other woman with her, who looked barely twenty if that.  Both of them had pitched their voices loud enough that it was obvious they were making a deliberate show for the whole street despite the pantomime of conversing with each other.  “Justinian wants to lean on the paladins, but they’d kick the ass of anyone he sent at them, so he’s threatening their families.  But Arquin’s family all live in Veilgrad with that scary warlock girl, and Avelea was raised by the Sisterhood…’nuff said, there.  So he’s reduced to harassing the temple where Caine grew up.”

“Precisely!  That’s my girl,” Grip said, grinning with approval.  “Soldier boy there shows a solid grasp of enforcer strategy.  He might’ve done well in the Guild.”

Ravoud bristled so hard he failed even to notice the monks behind him quietly pushing the temple’s iron gates shut.

“Tell me, then, what he is doing wrong.”

“He’s…making a fool of himself, strutting around like that,” Jenell said with a bit less confidence, studying Ravoud and his Legionaries more pensively.  “A show of force that has no force behind it is pointless.  All he can do is stand out here making noise until the police arrive.”

“Incorrect,” Grip snapped, causing her apprentice to wince.  “You never directly or overtly threaten the weak or the innocent, apprentice.  That’s a crime, and more importantly it is immoral—according to both conventional and Eserite ethics.  Further, it’s bad technique; behavior like that rouses anger and tends to provoke retaliation, both from your intended target any any bystanders who happen to see you at it.  Don’t ever let me catch you doing such a thing, girl.”

Jenell ducked her head, grimacing.

“No, on the contrary,” Grip continued, staring directly at Ravoud now, “that part of his performance is spot on.  It’s precisely how enforcers lean on someone: find a perfectly innocuous excuse to show up at other places in your target’s life, places they should feel safe, and scrupulously mind your manners.  It’s a gentle reminder: ‘I know where you live, and who else lives there.’  Nah, the boy’s got talent.  He really could’ve made it in the Guild, with some proper training.”

Ravoud forcefully marshaled his restraint.  He had not been personally threatened by Grip during the Guild’s campaign of pressure against his old barracks over the Lor’naris matter, but she’d gone after several of his men, and he had caught the tail end of several of her appearances.  For the sake of his men, he maintained his outward composure, but couldn’t help the sinking feeling that grew ever stronger as he failed to come up with a way to turn this back around.  With a few sentences she’d turned his entire mission back on him, and now?  Attacking Guild enforcers directly—even verbally—was a terrible idea, and if he retreated from her it would undercut his whole purpose here.  It was not in Ravoud’s nature to retreat from opposition, especially when his Holiness was counting on him, but he had the terrible feeling he had lost this one as soon as this bitch had shown up.

“His failure is twofold,” Grip lectured.  Despite still ostensibly instructing her apprentice, she continued to stare right at Ravoud with an unsettling little grin, and now actually stepped forward into the street, ambling toward him at a deceptively aimless pace.  He held one hand to the side, quelling the forward movement a few of his men started to shift with their halberds.  “First, on the moral level: however indirectly, bullying the weak is a bad look.  When we Eserites employ that tactic, it is strictly against an enemy whose comeuppance is an urgent moral necessity.  And sure, maybe Justinian and his camp see the paladins that way.  But all they’ve been doing is rushing around protecting the innocent from monsters, while pointing the finger at him as the reason they had to.  Any Eserite would know better than to lash out in a predicament like this.  Poor form.  Just for starters, counting on a crowd of random onlookers to spread the rumor and spook the intended targets is a bad idea, when you consider that Tobias Caine and Gabriel Arquin grew up in this neighborhood.”

He carefully did not look around, but even from peripheral vision he could see expressions darkening, posture shifting toward the aggressive.  None of these civilians were likely to try anything aggressive with his soldiers, but…  Damn it all, he’d been coasting on shock and ambiguity to sow confusion and defray any hostility, and then she had to spell it all out at the top of her voice.

“Second,” Grip continued far too loudly and with increasingly open relish, having now sauntered nearly into halberd range, “and far worse, he is revealing weakness. You were dangerously off target, apprentice, but your first thought wasn’t without merit.  It’s not that this little gaggle of gussied-up cadets is functionally helpless—though they are—but that attempting to pick on the weakest link in the paladins’ network of contacts is pathetic. And when your gaggle of trussed-up cadets is functionally helpless, it is a bad idea to piss off a crowd while broadcasting that your patron is both a bullying asshole and lacks the muscle to back you up.”

Ravoud drew his wand, the motion deliberate and controlled; the muttering that had begun to rise from the onlookers during her speech quieted noticeably, and people began drifting back.  Most of them.  A few, looking particularly angry, actually started shuffling forward.  There were always a few.

“You’re careful enough not to bust out an overt threat, but not enough that I can’t press you for incitement, Quintessa.”

She grinned, taking the last step until she was close enough to reach out and snatch for his wand.  Which she didn’t.

“You’re not pressing for jack shit, Nassir.  The Army kicked your ass out, remember?  Go right ahead and complain to the Imperials.  I’m sure they’re feeling real sympathetic to the Archpope’s lackeys right now.”

“It’s the most Eserite thing I can imagine,” he snapped, “to assume someone is weak because they refrain from threatening and abusing people.  The Church is the only thing protecting everyone during this crisis.  Our Angelus Knights—”

“My apprentice and I held the line against demons at Ninkabi,” she interrupted, her grin having stretched to a disturbing rictus that he knew had to have been practiced.  “We witnessed Elilial’s surrender with our own four eyes.  Your entire arsenal is an itemized list of shit that does not scare us.  Funny…  I don’t remember seeing any of you fancy lads there.”

Colonel Ravoud stared into her ostentatiously psychotic smile, then glanced about.  Noting the overt hostility of the still-growing crowd…and the shut gates of the Omnist temple he had been sent to investigate.

Those damned kids.  They didn’t even have to be here to turn everything into a disaster.

***

“Disappeared?”

“Utterly, your Holiness.”  Bishop Varanus’s voice was a barely-restrained growl.  “Shamans have sent spirit hawks to scout.  The trucks are still there—abandoned beside the road, and being investigated by local police when they were spotted.  Of the Wild Hunt there is no sign.  None.  Even the snow is undisturbed.  Far too undisturbed, considering the weather; it is as if it had been brushed smooth.  Hjarst is consulting his spirit guides to learn more.  At the time I left the lodge, he attested that some of our hunters are alive, and some…are not.  More than that he has not yet seen, and did not expect to.”

“I foresaw opposition, not…”

“Your Holiness, this is not Ingvar’s doing,” Andros said with pure certainty.  “If attacked, he would fight like a man, and train his followers to do likewise.  Whatever he has learned and however he has changed, his actions against us have been driven by principle, and were set in motion by the call of Shaath.  That he remains so committed tells me he would not resort to…cruelty.”

“Cruelty,” Justinian repeated softly, nodding once.  “Then you see it too.”

Andros nodded in return, his expression behind his unkempt beard bitter and pained.  “No man fears the dark; men fear what they do not know may be lurking in it.  This…silence.  The mystery, the lack even of acknowledgment?  This is designed to instill terror. Even men who would clamor for revenge against a victorious enemy will quail at the thought of vanishing without a whisper into the unknown.  I know who among the Wild Hunt’s intended prey would plan such a thing, and it is not Ingvar.”

“I cannot imagine morale is high among the Huntsmen.  You are right, my friend, but even so I expect at least some of your brothers must be angrier than they are frightened.”

“The Grandmaster is keeping order as best he can,” Andros growled.  “You speak truth, your Holiness.  The men of Shaath do not show fear even when they feel it—even when it is the obvious and sensible reaction.  Perhaps especially then.  Some, even, bury it too deeply, express too much fury instead.  I think it will be a challenge to maintain control in the coming days.”

“I have confidence in you, Andros, and in Veisroi.  Any aid I may lend is yours, you have only to ask.  It is paramount that no more loyal Huntsmen be squandered.  I never imagined that by aiding the Wild Hunt I would be sending them into such peril.”

“None are to blame but the guilty, your Holiness.  Not even a Wild Hunt is knowingly sent to harry prey we know cannot be brought down.  We are not Avenists.  What befell was the intervention of an unexpected foe, with unexpected resources.  And a streak of…extremely canny sadism.”

“Indeed.”  Justinian frowned, staring at the wall above the Bishop’s head.  “We…  I have badly misstepped.  What I had taken for an opportunistic dilettante with powerful friends, even until…  Well.  I see that I must begin taking Duchess Ravana seriously.”

The door to the private chapel burst inward so hard that both rebounded off the walls.  Andros whirled to confront the intruder, then froze.

Arachne Tellwyrn marched into the room, leaving behind her an open doorway displaying half a dozen Holy Legionaries slumped to the ground in the hall outside.

“Professor,” Justinian said mildly, “this is an unexpected pleasure.”

She snorted, not slowing.  Indeed, she was marching straight at him.

“Andros, please,” the Archpope said as the Bishop moved to bar her way.  “Let us not be discourteous to a guest in these sacred halls.  How may I help you, Professor Tellwyrn?”

The archmage didn’t even slow; she just went right past him, and began bounding up the tall staircase to the altar high above.  “How do you open this?”

“Open what?” he asked with a pleasant smile, turning to watch her.

“That’s right, boy, try my patience.  I have so very much of it left.  You have to realize how very easy it would be for me to just smash everything up here until the hole is revealed.”

“That would not be in your nature,” Justinian replied, proceeding after her at a more sedate pace.  “Despite the reputation you have so meticulously cultivated.  Oh, a wall you might smash, to be sure.  But that is masterwork stained glass.  Four hundred years old, and originally installed in the chapel of the Heroes Guild, retrieved with vast difficulty and lovingly reconstituted by the greatest artisans of a generation.  You appreciate craftsmanship, do you not?  To say nothing of history.”

“Ah, well, doesn’t really matter.  Sometimes simple tricks are the best tricks.”

Having arrived at the top, she stood before the altar, peering critically around at the towering backlit glass windows depicting Avei, Omnu, and Vidius, as they had been envisioned by artists of centuries past—recognizable to modern eyes, if varying noticeably in the details.  Tellwyrn waved one hand, and there was a sudden spike in the air pressure in the room, causing both humans’ ears to pop.  Following it was a thin, piercing whine just at the highest edge of hearing.  Andros braced himself to charge, but the noise faded almost immediately, as did the sense of pressure.

“Ah, there we go,” Tellwyrn said with audible satisfaction, reaching unerringly for the hidden switch.  The central panel swung outward on its silent hinges, revealing the concealed stairwell which led to the Chamber of Truth.  Without pausing for a moment, the elf marched right in.

“Andros, please check on the men outside.  I will attend to this.”

“Your Holiness—”

“I assure you I am in no danger.  I cannot with certainty say the same of anyone else in her presence, even here in the Cathedral.  Go, please.  I will not risk you, not here and now.”

Bishop Varanus grimaced bitterly, but bowed and turned to stride out into the hall.  Justinian did not see him go, already having followed Tellwyrn into the stairwell.  Whatever she was up to, every second she was at it unsupervised was a potential disaster.

That she had made it even this far was a surprise.  Justinian remained confident in the protections over himself—to say nothing of the divine power he could wield at need, the auspices of the Pantheon directly shielded him from any attack, all the more so now that he had far more conscious control of them than any of his predecessors.  However, an individual as powerful as she, who had clearly come here with hostile intent, should not have been able to proceed unopposed this deep into the Grand Cathedral.  In the catacombs below he had additional security that would have posed a hazard even to Tellwyrn; up here the protections were more subtle, but they too owed their strength to the Pantheon’s own oversight.  That was not something she could have pushed past with brute force.

It was not news that Tellwyrn had resources and strategies beyond her famous face-first explosive bull rushing, but seeing the evidence of it in person was a sobering experience.  Especially with her in this kind of mood.

Justinian arrived in the chamber where the Church stored its priceless collection of oracular resources to find Tellwyrn muttering to herself as she made her way down one row of shelves, picking up the irreplaceable treasures one at a time and making them vanish, presumably into her own dimensional storage.

“…didn’t know any of these were still intact, nifty.  Pedestrian, weak, tacky… Oh, this is rather nice, Direstaan used to have one like it.  This is mine, dammit!  I’ve been wondering where—just because I take a thirty-year walk in the woods does not mean everybody can help themselves to my stuff!  Ooh, Zanza’s always wanted one of these.  Wonder what he’ll give me for it.”

Justinian cleared his throat.  “I would be glad to discuss your concerns, Professor, but I must insist that you cease—”

“Shut up, boy, I am busy.”

Well, reasoned discussion was by far the preferable outcome, but that had always been a rather forlorn hope.

Archpope Justinian summoned in one impossible torrent the entirety of divine power at his command.  It welled up and surged, a quantity of energy that would instantly incinerate any mortal cleric, sparing him that fate only thanks to his privileged status under the Pantheon’s aegis.

The working he unleashed should have filled the chamber with implacable weight, seizing and stilling any within—not by any mere physical force, but with the actual will of the gods themselves.  It should have been instantaneous, effective against any rival power here in the Cathedral.  An instant victory.

He blinked, watching the glow of searing divine light suspended barely beyond the reach of his own aura.

No, on closer inspection, not quite suspended.  It was moving, but so impossibly slowly that it would take hours to extend another inch.  That wave of energy was traveling at the speed of light itself—or should be.

Time magic.  He only know what had happened because he could sense it directly.  Here, immersed in the power of the gods, any action which fell under their purview was an open book to him.  However, he should be the only person who had this kind of direct control over the domain of Vemnesthis.  Not even other Archpopes had achieved such a thing.  There was no way he understood that it could be possible for anyone else.

Tellwyrn gave him a single, scornful look, and went back to sorting through the oracular devices.

He watched as she systematically looted the place bare, stepping out of his own time-bound spell to better see without the glow in his eyes.  That was, of course, not by any means his only trick.  It was the mere fact that she had so effortlessly countered it that stayed his hand.  Archpopes of the past had vanquished archmages and worse; Justinian was confident that, should he press the issue, he would prevail.  However…

This woman had some kind of counter to his direct influence over a god.  Could she be where Tobias had…?  No, that was not something she would teach a student, but a card she would hold in reserve for a time such as now.  The danger was that forcing her to engage him in a battle of divine influence risked everything.  There was a very real chance she could pierce his protections long enough to force the Pantheon to observe the confrontation consciously.  If they were allowed to understand what he had done, how he had achieved control over them…and if their lucidity were enforced long enough for them to act…

Everything would be lost.  Everything he had done, sacrificed, the sins he had added to his conscience.  All would be for nothing.

So he stood, hands folded, watching, in silence.  They were too close to the end, now.  Sacrifices could be accepted.

“Hmf.”  She tucked away the final object, a crystal globe of the world, and turned her back on the bare shelves.  “Never just jam stuff into a holding space without sorting it into the proper categories; it’s a much bigger pain to re-organize it all later.  Learned that the hard way, early on in my adventuring career.  All this, though!”

Along the opposite wall were shelves containing books.  Tomes of prophecy, volumes containing imprisoned or willingly consigned familiar spirits, books whose contents changed depending on the reader, infinitely unrolling scrolls of history that extended forward as well as back…  Every possible kind of book which could be used to discern truth or gain a glimpse of the future.

Tellwyrn made a single gesture, and with an echoing pop the entire collection vanished at once, leaving both sides of the Chamber of Truth bare.

“I have a librarian to do that, fortunately,” she said with audible self-satisfaction.

“Some of those may have been acquired through less than reputable means,” he said evenly.  “Many—most, in fact—were gifted to the Church, or created for it specifically—”

“Do not mistake me for some kind of avenging crusader, Justinian,” the elf snorted, stalking over to the pool of water which occupied the far wall.  “I’m out of the world-saving business; I teach history, now.  Well, well. Gifted, eh?  Queen Takamatsu is going to be fascinated to learn what happened to her grandfather’s oracular koi.  On the bright side, your Church has no presence in Sifan, so nobody’s going to be exiled or executed over this.  I’d hesitate to assume she can’t make your operations difficult in other lands, however.”

A large sphere of rippling water rose from the surface of the pool, the shimmering fish swirling gracefully within it.  He took note of a stream of tiny bubbles rising constantly through the orb, oxygenating it so the fish wouldn’t drown.  Most people would not even think of that.

“No, this is not about justice or honor or whatever,” Tellwyrn said, turning to stride back toward him with the globe of water hovering over one hand.  “Remember I handled your previous poking and prodding with good humor.  However, one of those ludicrous chaos beasts of yours went right for my University, and I have deemed that the last straw.  You have pissed me off, boy, and I’m taking your stuff.  Don’t like it?  Do something about it.”

She came to a stop directly in front of him, staring him implacably in the eye.  He stood a head and a half taller than she and was at least twice as broad in the shoulders.  Never had it had so insignificant an effect.  Justinian just gazed back, not gracing her with a response, nor yielding so much as to portray the slightest discomfiture.

There were limits to her power, here.  They might be fewer than most people suffered, but they existed, and were beyond even her ability to transcend.  He might be unwilling to force a physical confrontation, but so, it seemed, was she.

“I once put a Hand of Avei over my knee, y’know,” she said after a few seconds of tense silence.  “Right in front of her own army.  Yanked down her trousers and paddled her ass purple.  I’ve humbled multiple gods, killed one of the bastards, and broke the back of Scyllith’s entire cult.  And you presumed to think that just because I can’t kill you, I couldn’t punish you?  Megalomaniacs scheming world domination…  Exactly the same, every one of you.  I have watched your kind come and go and I’ll see more long after you’re dust, you overweening mayfly.  You are not special.  You’re not even that interesting.  You won’t leave the world any differently than you found it.”

“I think you are mistaken about that,” he said gently.  “Of course, no doubt everyone else to whom you’ve made a similar speech thought the same.  We shall all learn together what tomorrow holds.”

“Mm.”  Her eyes flickered subtly behind her golden spectacles, taking in every minute feature of his face.  “Ravana Madouri is one of my students.  I hear she is hosting several others this winter—including those three paladins.  By all means, Justinian, test them: I heartily approve of that.  I’m not here to solve their problems for them any more than I care to insert myself into the fate of the world.  I advise you not to push them beyond their capacity, however.  If I have to intervene again, I am going to be altogether less amiable about it.”

“Unfortunately,” Justinian said with a serene smile and an apologetic semi-shrug, “you are the only one with the luxury of restricting your interests to the educational.  The rest of us are playing for higher stakes entirely, and have not the option of holding back.”

“That little problem is yours to worsen, son.  You’ve been warned.”

She vanished right before his eyes.  Not all the way; he could hear her feet ascending the stairwell behind him, stomping far harder than was typical for an elf, or necessary for anyone.  Apparently the Cathedral’s defenses limited her movements somewhat, at least.  Not enough to prevent her from neatly sidestepping the physical obstacles of his frozen stasis spell, and his own body.

Justinian turned to gaze thoughtfully through the haze of the Light at the doorway, his back to the painfully empty room.

The irony was that dealing with Ravana was going to be altogether more troublesome; there was too much about that girl he did not know.  The necessary plans to keep Tellwyrn occupied were fully assembled and waiting to deploy.  He had simply hoped he would not have to.

One more necessary crime he wished not to commit.  But what was one more?