Revenge is Mine, saith the Lord.
Bear used to remind me of that, every now and then. I used to remind him that the Bible does not add, "and it's never, ever for the likes of you, Joshua Grayling."—Gray
Gray sat, quietly, cross-legged, on the cold stones, the Khan, still sheathed, across his lap. Prayer hadn't helped; meditation wasn't of any more use.
The Khan spoke to him, begging, pleading, promising.
Kill them, kill them all, he said.
Kill who? How?
Everybody. Anybody. You believe your God will sort out the righteous. Let Him do his job, let you and me do ours. It's one thing that you're very good at, Gray. Better than anybody who has carried me before. It's what you and I do, Gray—and we're better than Alexander, even, no matter what they say about him and the Sandoval.
No.
He became aware that Cully had been standing in front of him, silently watching him.
Moonlight shattered on the waters below, and the wind had changed, now carrying the smell of smoke away. Off in the distance, a gull screeched in triumph or frustration, or perhaps both. Gray was beyond frustration now, and perhaps beyond anger. He just felt cold and empty.
"Feeling better, now?" Cully asked, leaning on his staff. "Or has the Khan persuaded you that killing everybody at hand is still and always the best and only solution to any problem?" His face was pale and ashen in the moonlight, but his voice was calm and level, as always.
"How is the boy?" Gray asked, not because he particularly cared, but to change the subject. Gray had to live with the Khan; he didn't have to talk about him.
"Asleep. Bear not quite forced half a bottle of wine down his throat; the surgeon had it spiked with some concoction or other—probably laudanum, although he didn't say. It seems to have worked." He smiled. "It worked on Bear, too; I had him drink the rest of it. He's going to need his sleep. As will you."
"Yes." Gray nodded. "Much to do, come morning. Too much to do."
"First things first, Gray," Cully said. "We still don't know near enough—"
"We know that somebody murdered those three people. And for all we know, they died unconfessed, in sin, sent straight to hell without having had the wit about them to make a final act of contrition." He shook his head. Horrible.
"As could be." Cully nodded. "And if you believe that sitting here on the cold stones, letting the Khan stoke your anger, would cool those fires, then sit here and commune with him. Failing that, get to your feet and come with me." He rapped his staff on the stones. "Now, if you please."
"Give me a few moments."
"I've given you several hours, and I've come to the conclusion that you're just letting yourself go because I'm here. If it was just you and Bear, you'd have attended to necessary matters yourself, and not left them to an old man."
"Could you please—"
Cully slapped him across the face, hard enough to make the lights dance in Gray's head.
"Enough," he said. "If you don't care to be treated like a wilfull boy, then act like a man, Joshua."
Kill him, the Khan said.
No.
Cully struck down at him again, but Gray caught his wrist easily, and fastened his fingers around it.
The wrist felt bonier than it should have, and when Cully tried to pull away, Gray was more than strong enough to hold him in place, and Cully just stopped pulling. When had he gotten so feeble?
Gray could have snapped the old man like a twig, but he just let the wrist drop, and stood.
"Very well, Father Cully—"
"Just—"
"—and if you're going to treat me like a stripling, shaved-headed novice boy, by God you'll stop your endless complaining about me calling you Father, or we'll have that out, right here, right now, you and me, Cully."
Yes.
Oh, shut up.
He untied his sash and set his swords down on the cold stone, then turned to face Cully.
Cully's smile was ghostly and ghastly in the moonlight. "As you wish. It seems strange that you'll tolerate me slapping you about, but not correcting your misstatements—but leave it be, leave it be. Call me whatever you wish," he said, raising his hands in surrender.
"And that goes for Bear, too. Enough of this playing at being a shepherd."
"Very, very well—have it your way. Just understand, if you please, that I'm surrendering to the intensity of your feeling, and not for any other reason. I won't say I'm not afraid of you, Joshua, but I will say that I don't let fear rule me. As you well know."
For a moment, the smile dropped, and Gray remembered that this was still Cully, after all, with all the relentlessness of a saint, if little of the equanimity that supposedly came with a saintly personality.
Cully dropped his hands and squatted to pick up his stick. "Now, if you're quite done with your tantrum, would you pick up your swords and come with me . . . ?"
Gray nodded.
Cully led him down the stone path, toward the shore.
The bodies were still there, but now they lay wrapped in shrouds. Two of the marines, each with a lantern set nearby on the stone, stood watch over the bodies, from a respectful distance away.
Cully gave him a look. "Somebody had to attend to the necessary."
"Thank you, Father," he said, accepting the reproof.
"You there—Sterling is it?—I'll need your lantern, again." The marine, a compact sort of man with a bristle of a mustache, stalked over and handed Cully the lantern, then returned to his post.
"Look here," Cully said, unwrapping one of the bundles.
Gray put his hand on the Khan's hilt to calm himself. Death and mutilation didn't bother the Khan at all, and the emotion, or lack of it, was infectious. Carrying the Khan was, all in all, more of a burden than a blessing, but that didn't mean that there weren't some benefits.
It was the body of a girl, of perhaps twelve, thirteen or so. She had probably been pretty in life, in the olive-skinned Mediterranean sort of way, although it was hard to tell. There were dark, gaping holes where her eyes should have been, and all of the left breast and most of the right had been cut entirely away. Cully started to pull the blanket past her waist, but stopped himself.
"Torture," Cully said, his voice low and even, too low and even. "Same with the younger one. Bodies stiffened up, but haven't started to loosen yet—figure they're dead at least a day, but not much more."
So while the Wellesley had been bobbing around at anchor, somebody had been hacking little girls' breasts off in front of their grandfather.
Gray knelt and covered her face up. Even with his right hand on the Khan, it was difficult; the fingers of his left hand couldn't stop trembling, even when he fastened them on his belt for support.
We will avenge them, the Khan said.
Yes.
There were many times that Gray had wished he had been picked to carry a sword less dark than the Khan, but this wasn't one of them.
I've never wanted affection. Respect, yes; blood, more often. Affection is for women.
"And the grandfather?" Gray asked. "Should I look at his body, as well?"
"I see no need. He had some scratches and bruises, and then a slit throat." Cully shook his head. "Very unsystematic, the lot of it. Not the Inquisition or the Caliphate's style at all."
Which didn't mean much of anything. The Congregation of the Defense of the Faith was not what it once had been, what with the power and reach of Byzantium a remnant of what it had been at the height of the Church's power; although the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue was, if anything, more of a force in the Caliphate than it had ever been.
But centuries of virtual stalemate among the Crown, Empire, and the Caliphate had taught the agents of the Caliphate even more of the subtlety that seemed to come naturally in the Levant, and those of the Empire had always been so, both in history and in legend, from before the time of Mordred the First, Arthur the Tyrant, and the beginning of the Age.
"It looks piratical," Cully said. "Not exactly unusual for Seeproosh pirates to torture his children in front of a man to extract his secret cache, and they're a remarkably clumsy lot." He shrugged. "But I doubt that we'd have pirates in these waters without them having struck somewhere nearby first."
Gray nodded. Pironesia didn't produce much. Fish, some wine—particularly on the larger islands—and the mutton and wool, as well as the olives. Neither fish nor mutton traveled particularly well, and better wine, although not cheaper, was available just across the Channel from England, although certainly both fish and sheep helped to feed the Malta fleet. And while olives were tasty, certainly, and traveled well after being pickled, they were, after all, only olives.
Pironesia had nothing like the wealth that poured out of Inja or New England. Which made them a relatively unattractive target, what with Antalya, Kizmir, and Koosh closer to hand, and if not much richer, at least much more vulnerable. With the Caliphate controlling the south, the Crown the north and east, and the Byzantines the north and west, there were still ample uncivilized regions along the ragged ex-Turkish boundaries for those pirates who didn't want to sneak past Gibby and go out to sea, traveling for months to get into the rich pickings of the Kareeb, some never to return.
Besides, while the old man wouldn't be of much value to pirates, it would take some serious motivation for a pirate to kill a couple of young girls who could easily be sold for good money on any beach in Suryah, or more likely auctioned off in the markets of Aladikyah.
Of course, a live sword would have been more than sufficient motivation for a raid into Pironesia, and more—if they believed that the old man was hiding one.
Alexander was living like a king in Qabilyah, at last report, at least whenever he and the Sandoval weren't off running bloody errands for the Caliph. The docents of the Royal College didn't have a high opinion of their equivalents in the Caliphate, but there was no reason at all to believe that a Caliphate wizard was no more incapable of joining a live sword to live man than a Royal Wizard was; of a certainty they were every bit as capable of producing cursed weapons, although nothing as powerful as the live swords.
Fastening a curse or a blessing on a sword was difficult, yes; and while Gray didn't know much about the details, and wished he knew less, he knew creating a live sword was another order of difficulty entirely, and that the doing of it entailed serious risks for all involved. Since the end of the Age, it was supposed to have grown more difficult, year by year, to create such a focus of power, and even She couldn't do so, not anymore.
He would have said that it was impossible, until just a few days before.
"What are you thinking?" Cully asked.
"I'm thinking that we'd have heard of pirates, or Caliphate raiders, or anybody else out of place in these waters," Gray said.
"Probably. Almost certainly. All those half-pay officers in the islands?"
Gray nodded. "Which means that whoever did this is somebody who belongs here."
"A local?"
"Possibly. Or a trader, more likely." Guild traders, whose only homes were their boats, plied the Mediterranean from end to end, just as they did the European coast, protected here more by the fear that local authorities would lose trade if they were interfered with than with the Navy or the Caliphate's protection—although that was scant protection from the Seeproosh pirates, or the Barbaries.
The richer clans of the remnants of the ancient Hanseatics had taken up the newer routes to New England and Darmosh Kowayes, some for pure trade, and some others for whaling, competing with the New England industry, although avoiding sailing too close to any of the colonies; it was best, for a trader, to avoid the obvious conflict.
The Atlantic was much harder on ships than the Mediterranean, and more than a few ships simply disappeared—there was more profit to be had, but more risk in the taking of it. Much safer to trade in the Med, where there were dozens of established routes, bringing spices or gold or cedar from here to trade for fish or wool or wine from there, those to be traded for something else somewhere else, the route established by custom and need as well as opportunity. Gray had always thought that direct trade, from point to point, made more sense, all in all, but the world seemed to work in ways that Gray found sensible only by accident, if at all.
"Somebody who heard about the sword in Pironesia," he said, idly, "or somebody who heard something from somebody who heard something. Or one of Niko's neighbors?"
Neighborliness was of high value in the islands, as it was in many places, but the thought of what a live sword would go for, from the Caliphate or the Empire, if one were to ignore the law, would be a huge temptation, no matter how neighborly one was.
But that was the sort of secret that couldn't be kept, not long. Somebody would talk to somebody, no matter how insular the island families were.
If, of course, they'd gotten a live sword.
If there had been another.
If—
Cully shook his head. "If there was, the boy doesn't know about it, and his story made sense to me," he said, answering Gray's thoughts, instead of his words. "It's possible, I suppose, that what they found was a cache of these, instead of the single one that they said had been swept up in the nets, but I think not. Not everybody betrays everybody else, Gray, and the boy seemed genuinely surprised at the amount of the reward—wouldn't he have said something if there were more here?"
"If he knew. If his grandfather wasn't hiding something from him. If he isn't being duplicitous. Hard to tell." He was fairly sure that Niko was as ignorant as he seemed to be, but Gray would very much have liked to take the measure of his grandfather for himself.
"So you'll want to keep him nearby?" Cully asked.
"That seems sensible, no matter what I believe." Gray shrugged. "But if it was a Guild ship, that speaks of some foreknowledge—risky thing, isn't it?"
Cully nodded. "Yes, it would be, at that. Be interesting to take a look at the records and reports in Pironesia, and see what ship hasn't shown up that should have."
Gray nodded. Pity that it was just him and Bear and Cully—pouring over records was the sort of thing that Brother Linsen doted on. While the loss of his left arm had barely slowed him down, the age and feebleness that went with it had made Linsen give up the Goatboy five years before, accompanied by the traditional and suitably hypocritical protestations that it was more in relief than regret, despite it being a White Sword.
But Linsen had been and still was a Knight of the Order, by the grace of God; and a Knight of the Order of Crown, Shield, and Dragon could still practice service, honor, faith, and obedience from a chair in a library as much as from the back of a horse or the deck of a ship, as long as his mind was clear.
"We might make a guess as to where they'd head," Gray said. "Wellesley's a fast ship. Make at least twice a fat-bellied merchantman's speed, better in a stiff wind—"
"Which is just fine when you know where you're going. Useless if you're just picking a direction. Doubly useless if you don't even know what you're chasing."
"Maybe not." The fastest way to get away from anywhere on the open sea was to put the wind at your back. "East, with the wind at our back—"
"—and if whoever it was took flight that way, but headed just a point or two off the wind? With a day's head start?" Cully shrugged. "If you had three or four fast sloops to spare, maybe. But Wellesley and the cutter? How quickly do you give up?"
Well, if they were both wrong—Gray agreed with Cully—there would soon be somebody missing from the islands, or some ship that had been plying the trade routes having disappeared. That part of it could be left to the Administration in Pironesia. Halloran seemed to be a capable enough man, and the capable surrounded themselves with the equally capable.
Gray was about to say something to that effect when Cully beckoned to the nearer marine, who more marched than walked over. "What do you think?" Cully asked.
"Sir. It's not my place to listen in, nor to say, sir."
"Yes, but you have been listening," Gray said, "while trying to look like you haven't. Just stand easy and talk—" he beckoned to the other "—the both of you."
"Sir, I'm supposed to be on station."
"I'll square things with your corporal, if he comes by," Cully said. "Go ahead and smoke, if you'd like to. Flaherty, is it?"
He nodded. "Sir. Private Seamus Flaherty—" he dropped the brace at a gesture from the other marine. "I dunno, sir. I seen places that have been raided by pirates, and this just doesn't smell right for that." He reached for his belt pouch, presumably for his pipe, but desisted at a head-shake from the other.
Sterling nodded. "Yeah—Shim's got the right of it. Never knew a pirate to waste flesh, or leave anything that isn't nailed down, not even when there's more valuable stuff to be had. It's like . . ."
"Well, go ahead."
"It feels like somebody's trying to make me mad. I got kids myself, back home—a boy and a girl. Haven't seen them in better than a year, but the boy should be just about ready to make his mark and join the Fleet, and the girl's just about the age of the older one of those, by now." His face barely held a trace of any expression, but his voice had some heat in it. "What I want to do is find the bastards, no matter where the hunt'd take me. Me, I'd start with every fucking one of these little islands around here, and see who jumped when I said boo, and since everybody'd jump, I'd be chasing things down for a good time to come—which is why if it wasn't one of the natives what done it, whoever it was'd have plenty of time to put enough sea between himself and here to drown a fish, and be off to wherever the hell he thinks he's off to, if you get my meaning.
"Shit—me, I'd say that it smells of the Dar, say to hell with them all, and Shim 'nd me send the cutter to Pironesia, and have the Gov send one fast sloop to Malta and another to Gibby, telling the Pelican and the Refuge and the Ark to load up the King's Own, the Red Watch, and what they've got of the Scots Guard, and set sail with the rest of the Fleet around them, stop off on Seeproosh to put it to the torch from end to end, then put in at Aldikyah, burn that, and carve our way east all the way to M'dina." He smiled. "Which'd be a damn fool thing to try to do, I know, given the size of the Fleet and the size of the Dar and all, but I'm just a marine private, sir, and not no Admiral or General or Duke or the King—God save him, sir—which is why it's just as well that decisions about such things aren't made by the likes of Shim and me, but by you folks with the titles and the swords and the responsibilities, eh, Father? Begging your pardon, and all."
Gray nodded. "Somebody who didn't know better might think that a Knight of the Order would feel the same way."
Someone who didn't know any better, for that matter, might think that a Knight of the Order would have that kind of authority, which Gray certainly didn't, and no Knight of the Order had, during living memory. Gareth and Gaharis had been their half-brother's commanders in chief; Dinadan of the Isles had been first sea lord and Sir Alex the MacPhee field marshal to Good King John, true, but that was just history. Giving military commands to Knights of the Order had long become uncommon, and both military and nobility resented the Order Knights' authority and royal access enough as it was.
You heard mutterings around Court about how they were fine as bodyguards, but that they shouldn't make such a habit of overreaching themselves.
Gray thought that the mutterers had a point.
Getting the Wellesley seconded into their service had not been a battle only because Admiral Dougherty knew full well that Gray was utterly capable of doing as he threatened. Had Dougherty continued to delay, he knew that could have looked out his window to see Gray hopping into a jitney to ride across the city, and coming back with a letter from the King, or perhaps even the King himself.
At that, even after winning the concession on the Wellesley, Gray had had to threaten the direst consequences at Dougherty's attempt to strip off both the senior officers and the marine contingent and send the Wellesley out with a green crew of mainly landsmen and a training company of marine recruits, rather than its present master and seasoned sailing crew, along with the marine company from the Blue Watch that Gray had firmly insisted on.
"All that service, honor, and justice stuff, sir," Sterling said, "going for justice the way we marines go after blood. Instead of whatever you should be doing. Sir."
Cully nodded, and smiled approvingly. "One can always trust a marine to obey orders, even if the order's to be insolent, eh?"
"Yes, sir." Sterling drew himself up straight. "And you can count on this marine to take the consequences of overreaching himself, sir."
"Oh, be still." Cully snorted. "The only consequence you've got to worry about is me asking you some other time what you think; I told you to speak your mind, so drop the brace and relax, man."
There was another player in this game—at least one. Gray didn't believe in coincidences—somebody had gone to some trouble to turn darklings loose in Pironesia.
And now this? Coincidence? No.
"Yes," Cully said, "Private Sterling has a point. Let the governor and the Navy handle whatever happened here. If there was another sword here, let him try to find out where it's gone. It's our job to find out where it came from."
Gray nodded. Our job, eh?
He smells blood, he does.The Khan was amused, and, for a change, Gray shared his amusement.
"And how exactly do you propose we do that?" he asked.
Cully shrugged. "Well, we know it's a live sword, and we know it's new—finding anything else out from it requires more magic than holiness. Nearest place to find that, in more supply than I like to think about, is you-know-where."
Gray nodded. "Pantelleria?" He wasn't afraid to speak its name; in the old days, Cully wouldn't have been, either. Too much time among superstitious Pironesians, Gray supposed. Not that there wasn't reason enough to be nervous about Pantelleria.
"Yes. Likely a wizard or two on Malta, but nothing like what we'd find you-know-where."
"More reliability, though."
"Gray, you're thoroughly reliable, and I trust your considered opinion completely—what do you make of the sword?"
"Nothing. I don't know enough."
"My point precisely."
There was that. "Very well."
Sterling made a face, then resumed his blank expression. "By your leave, sir?"
"Carry on, Private."
Niko went along without protest. He didn't have a choice, and it was hard to care, and impossible to try.
He just went along, whether it was having the ship's tailor fit him out with more of these strange-looking outlander clothes—which, bizarrely, included clothes that he was expected to wear under his clothes—and the cobbler and his assistant busy at work on not just one but two pairs of boots, each of which would have done justice to a wealthy trader.
He just went along. He had donned the under-clothes, and the blouse, and then the heavy but elegant jacket and trousers that he had been given—just like the officers' and mid-ship-men's clothes, save for the lack of decoration on the sleeves—and he padded barefoot up the ladder to the quarterdeck behind Bear and Cully, as he had been told to do. If he was to be outfitted with strange clothes, he would have preferred the looser and more clearly comfortable tunic, trousers, and robes of the knights, but nobody was asking him, and walking about the deck in these garments, as though he had any business wearing them, was more than enough pretentiousness, at that.
"The matter that we need to decide," Cully said, "is precisely what to do with you."
Niko shrugged. "I should just take the skiff and go home."
"That would not be possible, I'm afraid," Cully said, shaking his head. "At least, at the moment. But, after we're done with you, if you want to return to the islands, it can be arranged. You'd have your choice of families to marry into, what with the gold, and all. I'm sure that Stavros could use another hand, and, if not, arrangements can be made."
"I can help with that," Bear said. "A word or two—"
"I just want to go home."
Bear's eyes widened at the interruption, which had surprised Niko probably even more than it had surprised the big knight.
But instead of cuffing him for the impertinence, as Niko no doubt deserved, Bear just nodded. "Understandable, at that."
"Whether it's understandable or not," Cully went on, "as I said, it's not possible, not at the moment. In due course, perhaps. Or you might want to try life in Pironesia, at least for a while."
"He's more than old enough to interest the Press, Father," Bear said. "No, Niko, I'm not threatening you—it's just a matter that has to be handled. A letter from Gray or me can give him immunity—with a note that a copy has been filed with the Governor to remove any temptation from the press gangs to lose the letter." He turned to Niko. "If you're accosted, you'd just need to be sure that they see the letter. Not that the Navy's a bad life, mind."
"Not when seen from guest quarters," Cully said. "It's somewhat a different thing when seen from the aft hold. Well, as the Founder said, 'when you don't know what to do, do what you know how to do.' "
"Train him? I don't see much point, Father."
Train him to do what? Niko's brow hurt from all the furrowing.
"I don't see any harm, and for a fact I'm finding his constant cringing around everybody a little irritating." Cully's smile took some of the sting out of the words. "Bruises heal, and giving one good hit on a breastplate can have a boy walking about as though he thinks he's ten feet tall, as you might remember. It's been some years since I faced a novice on a training square, but I think I can remember how, eh?"
Both of the knights smiled at that.
"You and Gray might as well do the formal part," Cully went on. "Start him on first position in the morning—the Wellington sequence, not the Cumberland, I think. See if Lieutenant Haversham has any objection to him drilling with the marines in the afternoon."
"Well, there's enough practice swords aboard, and leather enough, but he'll need both sword and dagger for the Wellington."
"The armorer will have ample spares—make sure he's given good steel, not some Bombay pot metal."
"One advantage to seconding a taut ship like the Wellesley, Father, is that one doesn't have to worry about such things. Nor about some lazy armorer not properly fitting grips to the hand." Cully started to say something, and Bear raised his palms in surrender. "But I'll see to it, Father."
Niko's fingers clenched on the rail, and the pouch beneath his kirtle was cold and leaden. He had been staring off into the distance so long that it took him a while to realize that both Father Cully and Sir Bear had stopped talking to each other, and were just looking at him.
"Lust is a sin, Niko," Bear said, gently, "whether it's lusting after flesh or anything else—gold, or vengeance. It's also pointless, as Saint Paul says."
"It's also incomplete, Bear," Cully said. "You know the previous verse, as well?"
"Previous verse?"
"You were about to quote from Romans 22—'Vengeance is mine,' no? You do know what comes before and after it, don't you?"
"Of course. 'If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.' Then: 'My loved ones, never seek for vengeance for yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' "
"I never much cared for that letter to the Romans," Cully said. "Saint Paul was too flexible."
"That's not a common criticism of him."
"No, it's not." Cully shrugged. "But it's mine—too much of the if-it's-possible, and if-you-can, and such. You do remember the next verse?"
"Yes. 'But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.' " Sir Bear patted at the sword at his waist. "But one has to find the wrongdoer, first, and be sure that he is a wrongdoer, and be sure that one is serving God."
Cully nodded. "Standard, sound doctrine, that. The devil is, of course, in the details." He jerked his chin toward the shoreline. "But if it is sound doctrine, would you explain Gray to me?"
Bear shrugged. "There's logical reasons for it—there's always reasons for what he does. If there is another sword hidden somewhere on the island, it's best that it not be left for easy discovery, and important enough that he draw the Khan to make that so."
"But he could have left a dozen marines to search for it, along with one of the bigger launches to bring them back to Pironesia, in success or failure."
Bear smiled. "I'm not saying that he's being reasonable, just logical."
"I'm thinking that the Khan wants to destroy something, anything, and that Gray's letting him."
"There is that, too, I expect." He turned to face the shore, although Niko couldn't say what he was looking at, what signal he'd seen.
But there must have been one.
Without warning, without lightning or thunder to presage it, the island burst into flame, drawing incoherent gasps from Niko's throat.
The night flashed into an awful red brightness. Fire roared, and the wind brought more than a trace of sulfur with it. Even from this distance, Niko could feel the heat on his face. Sparks flew up into the air.
The sailors had apparently been warned of that—buckets of water were already being hauled up on ropes to wet the sails, accompanied by imprecations from the bosuns.
The launch was cast off, and rowed swiftly toward the cloud of smoke and steam that covered where the island was. Had been. Rocks still remained, but they were just rocks, and no longer the home to any living thing.
"I would hope he gave them a proper, Christian burial first," Sir Bear said, making the One True Church gesture over his massive chest.
"Shh. Of course he did."
The island seemed to collapse in on itself, in a fountain of fire—and steam, as the melted rock hit the water.
"The Injans used to talk about Shiva, God of Destruction," Cully said. "Probably still do. Probably talking about somebody a lot like Gray."
"Blasphemous, too many of the Injans," Bear said. "They worship Christ out of one side of their mouths, and then turn around and pray to the rest of their absurd pantheon out of the rest, with their filthy fakirs encouraging them the moment that the Church turns its back."
"And what would you do to stop that, Bear? Turn the Order into the Inquisition? Turn the whole Church into the Inquisition?"
"No." Niko had never seen Bear angry before. "No, Father, I would do no such thing, as you should know. For my part, I would preach to them. With the Gospels under one arm, and the Analects of the Order under the other, with no sword at my waist, and with no shoes on my feet."
"You would preach peace, and love, and turning the other cheek, as He did?"
"Yes; although He preached that and more, as I would. And if you wish to remind me how He died—"
"No. I'll not tempt you to martyrdom, David. You already are far too tempted in that direction." Cully gestured to where the launch had emerged from the cloud of smoke and steam. Gray stood at the bow, as though attached there, not wavering for a moment as the bow rose and fell in the swells, not even as he sheathed his sword, and replaced the sheath in his belt. "No. I'd say this: preach to Gray first."
Bear nodded. "As you wish, Father Cully."