Sister Svangerd and the Devil You Know (The Loyal Opposition Trilogy #2)

Chapter 1

“Go on up,” the clerk said, managing to keep a straight face. “She’s expecting you.”

No doubt. I’d been sent for. Not armed guards in the middle of the night – not this time, anyhow – but the verbal equivalent.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but almost certainly it wouldn’t be roses and my favourite honeycakes.

I looked up the staircase – one of those horrible narrow spirals, like a screw thread – to see if anyone was coming down.

You can’t pass someone on a stairway like that, one of you’s got to retrace his steps backwards.

“I’d get a move on if I were you,” the clerk said. “She hates being kept waiting.”

She in this context was Mother Tysapherna, abbess of the Flawless Diamond, senior archdeaconess of the Poor Sisters and the most senior female cleric in Holy Mother Church.

She’s a short woman, solidly built, maybe late fifties (I’m useless at women’s ages) and looks like somebody’s aunt.

Which is exactly what she is. Her nephew is the archduke, which is thirty per cent of why she hates me.

Just my luck, therefore, that Holy Mother Church had chosen to billet this terrifying creature on our monastery while she was in the neighbourhood heading a commission of enquiry into the activities of my boss, Abbot Simocatta.

I’ve only ever met him once, but I’m his deputy assistant red right hand in some of his more questionable dealings.

That would account for sixty-five of the remaining seventy per cent.

The balance is sheer personal antipathy.

Just in case you misunderstood; that pinhead Waltharius is the archduke simply and solely because he’s Tysapherna’s nephew. “You sent for me,” I said.

She looked up. “Oh, it’s you.”

There was only one chair in the room and she was sitting in it. I knew that room quite well, and there had always been four or five chairs in it, so she’d had the excess removed. “I’m going to ask you,” she said, “about your recent visit to Choris.”

Of course she was. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about that,” I said. “I promised His Holiness—”

That got me a look I could well have done without.

She pushed a piece of parchment across the desk at me.

At the bottom of it was a chunk of lead the size of a walnut, attached to the page by a bit of purple ribbon.

His Holiness Vitimer’s personal seal, and four lines of script in his own handwriting. I can read upside down. “Fine,” I said.

“You’re ordered to answer any question I care to ask,” she said. “Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

A big thank you to Vitimer, whose neck I saved in trying circumstances by staunchly refusing to murder him, but exactly what I’d expect of a man in his position.

Meanwhile, one thing I’ve never understood is why some people insist on asking you questions when they already know the answers.

It was obvious from what she asked that she already knew everything that had happened.

All the details – my battles with the Mesoge revenants, the events leading up to the canonisation of St Krimhild, my involvement with the demonic agency calling itself the Loyal Opposition; the whole nine yards.

Presumably she wanted me to admit it all out loud, by way of a confession, to be taken down in writing and used against me.

But why bother? If she wanted me dead or walled up in a dark cell for the rest of my life, all she had to do was say so and it’d be done.

Presumably, therefore, to incriminate or embarrass somebody else who’s not quite as disposable as me. Whatever. None of my beeswax.

“On balance,” she said, after she’d squeezed out of me every last drop of what she already knew, “I believe you acted responsibly, and in the best interests of the Church. I have decided, therefore, not to take disciplinary action against you at this time.”

Not what I’d been expecting to hear. “Thank you,” I said.

She didn’t want my thanks. “The same goes, provisionally, for your associate, Sister Svangerd, although I shall of course be questioning her myself. Mistakes were made, obviously, but since no lasting harm was done, there seems little point in punishing you both for doing what you thought was right, in difficult circumstances. Accordingly, in my report I will give it as my opinion that, regardless of the damage done, neither of you is legally culpable.”

She paused, waiting for something. Abject gratitude? Why would she want that, from someone as insignificant as me? I realised that I was being tested, or maybe interviewed for a job. If so, it was a job I definitely didn’t want. Oddly enough, those are the jobs I always seem to get.

“You’re absolutely right about Sister Svangerd,” I said. “She played everything absolutely straight. Her only concern was obeying orders. And carrying out St Krimhild’s dying wishes. If any rules were broken, that would be my fault.”

She was looking at me, trying to decide whether or not I was fit for her to eat. “You would say that, of course,” she said. “You may care to remember that the sin of lust is particularly aggravated when the guilty party is a monk, and the object is a nun.”

Ah, I thought, it’s going to be one of those conversations.

Fine. “I confess the sin,” I said. “Though properly speaking it isn’t lust, more like romantic love.

Well, infatuation. A soppy sort of crush.

But that’s clearly a sin, too, of which I would very much like to be absolved. Naturally I pray about it. A lot.”

She frowned. “You’re an atheist.”

Ouch. “Oddly enough, that doesn’t stop me praying. And lately, I have to say, I’ve been veering towards a sort of cautious agnosticism.”

“Ever since you met the devil.”

“His self-appointed deputies,” I pointed out, “not the Man himself. Actually, no, I don’t believe in any of it, you’re quite right about that.” I paused. “And yet,” I went on, “here I still am. Shouldn’t I be a heap of ash under the charred stump of a stake by now?”

I think she was impressed. “No, you’re too useful. Actually, you and I aren’t quite as different as you might imagine.”

“With respect,” I said, “I think we are.”

That actually made her laugh. “I think I understand you fairly well,” she said.

“You’re a coward by nature, but after what you went through in Choris, someone like me – well, I can’t really compare with the Undead, or the incarnate forces of Evil.

The worst I could do to you is have you thrown out of the Order. ”

“That would be pretty bad,” I said.

“Actually,” she said, “I could have Sister Svangerd thrown out of the Order. She wouldn’t like that at all. Neither would you.”

Quite. Svangerd is your actual true believer. She’d much, much, much rather die in a cellarful of rats than be chucked out, because, with her past, that would mean eternal damnation for her immortal soul. “Excuse me,” I said. “Since we appear to be speaking freely.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you bothering to threaten me? You’re the holy mother and I’m pond life. Shouldn’t you save the threats until after I’ve refused to obey a direct order?”

She nodded, an action which creased her collection of chins in a way that made it hard not to stare. “You’re quite right,” she said, “I’m getting ahead of myself. But you will refuse to obey, so you will need to be threatened. I suppose I’m just saving time.”

“Try me,” I said. “You’d be amazed at what I’m prepared to do if I have absolutely no choice.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Very well, then. I need you to tell lies to a king in order to get access to his treasury and copy out a book without him knowing.”

“No problem,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

“And very well, too,” she said. “If you’re caught, of course, you’ll be tortured and burned at the stake.”

I shrugged. Another day at the office.

“But that’s not the reason why you’ll refuse,” she went on. “The reason is the book I want copied.”

Oh, I thought. That book.

It’s dawned on me – not the sharpest knife in the drawer – that you don’t necessarily know the first thing about me, or what I do. And why the hell should you, after all? At the very most I’m a tiny footnote to the history of my times, written in invisible ink.

First, I’m a monk, assigned to the Golden Star monastery in Leerstad.

I belong to the Mission Militant rather than the contemplative side of things.

I got shoved into the Mission because I’m six foot three of mostly muscle, I’m originally from the Mesoge (so everybody assumes I’m uncouth, stupid and incorrigibly violent) and – most of all – I can copy any manuscript you put in front of me legibly and at great speed.

I can also read and write most of the languages in the known world, alive or dead; added to which, I’m one of the best forgers in Holy Mother Church.

Give me a scrap of the right parchment and a few tools and ingredients, and I can whip you up a thousand-year-old Mezentine illuminated missal that’s better than, not just as good as, the original.

Actually, it needs to be better, or it won’t convince anybody.

Which is, incidentally, the first law of my profession.

In the good old days, I used to work for the archduke – not that clown Waltharius, his predecessor – which is where I honed my rare and highly specialised skills.

The archduke’s passion was collecting books.

Not the fancy stuff, the heartbreakingly beautiful illuminations or bling-encrusted triumphs of vulgarity that most collectors go for; what His Grace was into was rarities, books of which only one copy is known to exist. If they could be stolen, he had his people steal them for him.

But if they couldn’t, he sent for me (and my invaluable partner and colleague, Sister Svangerd).

We’d find a way of sneaking into wherever the target book was kept, and we’d make a copy.