A few minutes after Thea left, Antonio shouldered open the door, a thick volume of scripture cradled in one arm. He was a man of perhaps forty, his complexion faintly swarthy, heavy iron shackles dragging at his ankles.
He had no sooner stepped inside than his brow furrowed. The blood sprayed across the wall, the gentleman crumpled on the floor — his frown drew tighter still.
Behind him, the boy in the black robe followed in and went wide-eyed. "Mister Marne is dead?!" he gasped. "Could it have been an assassin from the Holy Church?"
Antonio crossed to the body and crouched, pressing his fingers to the wound at the throat. The blood was still warm. He had not been dead long.
He touched a fingertip to it, brought it to his lips, and his frown deepened.
"Mercy's Blade," he said. "To kill Marne without a sound — the Sequence couldn't be low. But since when does Avengarde keep a Blade of that caliber? Or was this the Suppression Bureau's doing?"
He rose and strode quickly from the office, the boy trotting close at his heels.
"Lexius," he ordered without turning his head, "begin your preparations at once. I'll keep Canthus occupied. Before the sun rises tomorrow, you must raze the Cathedral of Our Lady to the ground — so that the Source may descend in full glory."
The boy's voice shook with dread. "But — but, Bishop, our conditions aren't ready, the ritual is still missing its critical step—"
"It doesn't matter. Even if we fail, there will be those who come after to finish what we began. Drive this nail into history — that, too, is part of the ritual."
"Did the ritual succeed?"
Before the altar of the Cathedral of Our Lady, the knight-captain stood facing Bishop Canthus, who was conducting his working beneath the statue of the Holy Mother. The question came out impatient, unable to wait.
Bishop Canthus had reached the dusk of his years, yet even past sixty he carried himself with undimmed vigor. He leaned upon his staff and spoke slowly.
"The purification rite against the plague is fully laid out. That nest of cultists is a cautious lot — we watch them, and they watch us. But there's one thing that surprised me."
"Something that surprises you, Bishop?" The knight-captain's expression shifted. He knew well that the man before him was already a Sequence Five Holy Grail Bishop, a cardinal-in-waiting — and that with a little luck and another decade of life, he might well stand for the office of Pope.
Rank and prospects aside, the man's Transcendent power alone commanded reverence. By his single will Canthus sustained a purification working that blanketed both North Harbor and Great Harbor — and for every day he stood upon that altar, all the evil in those two districts lay bare and exposed beneath the light.
What manner of thing could surprise a Bishop like that?
Canthus stepped down from the altar, and the knight-captain hurried forward to steady him. The old man went on. "It's that cultist stronghold your people already located. Just now — someone broke into it. And walked back out again without a scratch."
The knight-captain could not help his own start of alarm. That stronghold housed several Transcendents, and its leader was suspected to have crossed into Sequence Five.
Canthus made to say something more, but the moment his foot touched the floor below the altar he felt it again — that same power that had broken into the cultists' nest.
No—
A moment ago Canthus's attention had been wholly consumed by the hundred-odd nodes of his ritual; he had paid the power little heed. Only now, as it drew nearer to him, did the recognition surface:
This seems to be a ritual? Which one was it again — something to do with the Dive, or with spirit-creatures...
Canthus could not help a rueful smile at the way age had begun to gnaw at his memory.
When the kindly old man had drunk a little water and recovered his strength, the knight-captain said with feeling, "If only we could recruit whoever broke into that nest."
"It's not so simple." Canthus smiled. "I don't need rest now. Take me outside — I'd like to look around. By my reckoning, little Isa should be back from her assignment soon."
Outside the Cathedral of Our Lady, the carriage rolled to a smooth stop.
Ten seconds before they reached the cathedral, Thea had at last pinpointed the freighter. The ship carried a great store of nitrocellulose and cyclonite — by rights it should have docked at the cargo quay in Great Harbor, but for some reason it had moored in North Harbor instead.
The moment she found it, she'd sent the spirit-creature to hide beneath the water, directly below the freighter's hull. Flint, striker, everything was ready. A single spark, and she could take the whole ship and the dock with it.
She surfaced from the vision just as the Sister led the three of them down from the carriage and made straight for the cathedral's nave.
Bishop Canthus was already waiting outside the doors. At the sight of the Sister he smiled with relief. "Well done."
Then the old man's gaze swept over Thea, Vera, and the rest — and the infant cradled in Thea's arms. He sighed. "You've had a hard road of it. I've heard all about your circumstances from the knights. While there's still time, I must see what can be done to heal this little one. The clerics and Sisters from Silverkeep are all here, and in the arts of saving the wounded and dying they are far more learned than this old wreck of a man."
Bishop Canthus gathered little Vera into his arms and teased the small thing with one finger. But little Vera plainly did not appreciate it. She clawed about in fright, seized a fistful of the old Bishop's beard, and yanked — which only set him shaking his head with laughter.
He told the Sister to take the others off to rest; a medical Sister would come shortly to examine them all.
But just as they were leaving, the old Bishop called Thea back. "Sophia — it is Sophia, isn't it? Child, come with me. I have a favor I'd like to ask of you."
Thea was thoroughly bewildered, but the Bishop had asked, and she could only follow.
Canthus carried little Vera into the sanctuary, up a long flight of stairs, around behind the great statue, until they reached a small door.
"I noticed you earlier, child," he said. "You aren't from these parts, are you?"
Thea scratched her head. "We aren't, that's true. We're from abroad—"
"No. That's not what I mean. I mean — you aren't people of this history, are you?"
Thea's step caught.
Bishop Canthus smiled. "There's no need for fear. I've no intention of stopping you from completing your advancement. I only felt a certain wonder at it — that I, too, had become part of the Nightmare. Tell me — what becomes of me, afterward?"
"You die in the Great Plague. Half a year later, Bishop Marshall comes down from the northwest mountains to take up your post." Thea hid nothing, laying out the old man's future plainly. Then, puzzled: "How did you see through it, Bishop?"
"I saw your blood, and I saw your spirit." Canthus said. "Flesh is the substance of the spirit; the eyes are its window. I saw the power of Sequence Nine wound about your body — but through your eyes, the soul within is purer than anything, scarcely stained by Transcendent corruption at all. Were the soul within filthy, one might still blame the work of some evil spirit. But a soul so pure as this — what could it be, save one of the advancement-bound, sheltered by the Seven Gods?"
Canthus bounced little Vera in his arms, chuckling and teasing the child like any grandfather next door.
The old man looked up at Thea, smiling, his certainty complete. "So I'd like to ask you a favor — one only you can do. This old wreck hasn't long to live; I can offer no payment, so let it be a debt for now. Shall I write you an IOU?"
Thea sighed helplessly. "...Just say it outright, please. Even if you wrote me one, I'd have no way to collect."
Canthus burst into hearty laughter and shook his head.
"I'd like you to light the freighter in North Harbor — and raise a fire of countless sins."
"Prepare the ritual! Prepare the ritual!"
Through the chemical works, the boy in the black robe ran from place to place.
By the time he returned to the office, Antonio had already donned his sacrificial vestments and stood watching the boy with a severe gaze.
"From here on, the entire ritual rests on you. You'd do well to take the lessons of Marne and White Dove to heart — and of that arrogant Grew Lawrence besides. The ritual hasn't even begun, and already two Transcendents are lost, while the two alchemists we were meant to hunt down have walked away untouched. Lexius — both you and I ought to reflect long and hard on this. It was our overweening pride that made us underestimate the enemy's strength, and that very underestimation will send our brothers and sisters to die at outsiders' hands. We cannot afford recklessness again. I will keep that old wreck Canthus locked inside the Cathedral of Our Lady forever."
Antonio took down a jewel-studded staff from the wall, and the black-robed boy Lexius dropped at once to one knee. The staff touched lightly upon his shoulder.
"Whether you succeed or fail," Antonio told him gravely, "you may take a ship back to the Hand of Transmutation."
With that, he lifted the medallion from his own breast and pinned it to the black-robed boy's robe.
Lexius started in delighted shock. "B-Bishop?"
"That's right."
"Me?"
"Stop asking." Antonio waved a hand and walked out the door, his ankle-chains clattering and clanking after him.
The black-robed boy was still drowning in the joy of his sudden promotion.
Mister Marne, the one who'd seemed like that Iris-Blossom gentleman; Lady White Dove, who'd died strung up on the gallows; or that old scoundrel Grew Lawrence — Lexius was certain he would never repeat their mistakes.
The first two had died because of a Suppression Bureau assassin out of nowhere and Church knights; the last was pure arrogance and stupidity.
This time, with Antonio out front pinning Canthus in place, the Church knights would find themselves in an impossible bind the instant they moved. Storm the chemical works, and the enemy would slip a blade clean into the soft underbelly of the Cathedral of Our Lady; defend the cathedral, and they would lack the hands to break into the dragon's pool and tiger's den that was the works.
And this time, with considerable care, Lexius had stationed three Sequence Seven Transcendents around the factory's perimeter, laying down a string of detection and protection rituals to see the coming ritual safely through.
As for the ritual itself, it was this:
Wreck the nodes of Canthus's purification working, spread the Foul Blood plague out from the two districts to the whole of Nuremport — and then, with Nuremport as the node, draw spirit from the flesh and blood of a million souls, and lay an altar for the descent of the Source.
Elsewhere, in Great Harbor District.
With a thunderous roar, several sewer shafts blew apart one after another — a thing neither Church nor constabulary had foreseen.
Rats and roaches came swarming up out of the gutters and went tearing through the streets without the least restraint.
The Foul Blood could spread through animal hosts, and the eruption caught the Church flat-footed. But before the clerics could move, someone noticed that here and there among the rats moved black-robed figures up to no good. Each carried a crude, single-shot fowling rifle.
They got only a shot or two against the police, and against the clerics they didn't live long enough to fire at all — yet swarming together, fearless of death, the lot of them still inflicted no small toll on Church and constabulary alike.
Antonio appeared behind the rat-swarm, leaning on his staff. He skewered a rat through the spine and, unhurried, sent his cultists pressing on toward the Cathedral of Our Lady.
The templar-knights who'd been preparing to march on the North Harbor chemical works found themselves in difficulty, just as planned.
They knew full well these rats were the cultists' doing, knew this was a ploy to tie them down.
The trouble was — there really was nothing to be done.
The knight-captain's head ached over it. All he could do was order the templar-knights to swap their primary weapons for flamethrowers and prioritize clearing the streets of the rats and the maddening cultists.
Then he hurried off to find Bishop Canthus.
In the cathedral's confessional, Canthus had just set a simple Sequence Six purification rite upon little Vera.
He shook his head and smiled. "Antonio means to stake everything on a final throw. If nothing goes amiss, I'll die here. I'll be the one to tie Antonio down. Since he's begun to move — best start evacuating the nearby residents."
"That Sequence Five cultist is coming in person?" the knight-captain seethed. "To hell with the cultists. They mean to drive us to the wall — and at this rate, I say we just have the Royal Navy come and blow North Harbor and Great Harbor flat!"
At those words, a flicker of astonishment crossed Bishop Canthus's face.
In a certain sense, the knight-captain's mind ran to wild places — just get the Royal Navy moving, and it's solved.
But the thing was flatly impossible. The Navy and Parliament would never permit it; the Crown's assent wouldn't be enough either. Fire the guns today, and tomorrow the sitting cabinet might as well prepare its letters of resignation.
Which was precisely why Canthus, finding no other way, had chosen a road destined to drag sin behind it.
In a daze, the old man found himself thinking again of his conversation not long ago with that “Miss Thea Sorelle." He looked at the knight-captain. "And if it truly were flattened — what then?"
The knight-captain's voice stuck in his throat. Then he heard Canthus sigh. "Kill one to save ten thousand; kill ten thousand to save a million. Do you call that justice?"
The knight-captain's expression went taut. He realized the old Bishop did not seem to be joking. He weighed it a long while, then said with a furrowed brow, "Bishop — whatever comes, we hold ever to the way of the Grail. We swear to light the path ahead. We swear to illuminate and drive back the dark. We swear to refuse mercy. We swear to give of ourselves, to light the road for the willing and the unwilling alike."
"Sometimes it's a measure forced upon us." Canthus shook his head with a bitter smile. "I put that same question to someone else, just now. Her answer came with none of your hesitation — she was rather brutally decisive about it."
"...I'd hear it, if you'd tell me."
"She said I was an idiot, and everyone with me was an idiot too."
The knight-captain's face froze.
"She agreed to my request. But before she left, she said this to me: Sacrifice may be necessary — but every sacrifice that appears is only proof of our own incompetence."
"How long do we have?"
"Twelve hours. The flames will rise, centered on the emptied port, and spread outward. Within a day it will take the better part of North Harbor. I'll remain here. My death, too, is part of the ritual."
The knight-captain stood silent a moment, then turned and left to arrange the emergency evacuation of the two districts.
In truth the evacuation had begun long before. That afternoon Canthus had come to him about relocating the civilians of North Harbor, but because it was being done in secret, the progress was slow.
Organizing an evacuation looked simple, but in practice it was an enormous headache — packing great crowds together meant the Foul Blood would spread all the faster.
And the worse trouble: the lords of the Clocktower and King's districts would never in a thousand years allow such a plague-bearing mob to cross the cordon, which meant deploying a contingent of templar-knights to teach them their place with steel and powder.
Bishop Canthus said no more. He only gazed up at the statue of the Holy Mother on the wall and let out a long sigh.
As for Thea — by now she had no leisure to wonder what was going on in that complicated old Bishop's head.
She had just withdrawn from the spirit-creature's point and sat on a bench, giving a small gesture to Vera, who panted nervously beside her.
The pendulum clock at the front went tick, tick, tick, and had crept around to six in the evening.
By the rules of the advancement ritual, surviving until tomorrow's fire arrived counted as a pass.
Vera held the child close and asked in a low voice, "You really mean to set the freighter alight?"
"Or watch this city die." Thea gave a helpless shrug.
"A couple of days ago Canthus caught wind of the ritual the cultists were running. The Holy Church had assumed it was just a natural plague — but it never occurred to them the plague was the opening of another ritual. From the very start of the outbreak, every move and arrangement the authorities made was already known to the cultists."
"Are the parliament lords up in Silverkeep all morons?"
"Normal. They've always been like this." Thea said. "Though Canthus did try to contact the authorities — and found every message blocked. That's what drove him to the last resort of burning the freighter. It's absurd."
Vera's scalp prickled. If information like this could ever be made public in the real world, a fair number of people would be hauled off in irons. "So what's your plan?"
"Somebody has to go and help light the freighter, when all's said and done," Thea said.
In the real Nuremport Fire, there'd been no one to help him — so the Church had had to charge in and light the freighter by force, which was likely one reason the civilians weren't evacuated in time and so many died.
"You'll go?"
"Of course."
"And if it doesn't work? If you die?"
"Worst case, the advancement just fails, doesn't it?"
Thea rose to her feet and looked at the child in Vera's arms. The little one had only just been purged of the Foul Blood, and the working had plainly overdrawn some of her bodily strength; she was terribly weak.
She fed little Vera another draught of the Blood of the Grail, intoning, "I make you steadfast; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with the hand of My righteousness."
Then she pinched Vera's cheek — the grown one.
This time Vera didn't dodge. She only asked, "For a thousand points?"
"For love and justice."
Thea let go, turned, and walked out of the rest-room. As she pushed the door open, she added over her shoulder:
"The sun rises the same as always, tomorrow."