Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead (Loyal Opposition #1)

Chapter 1

Every man has his price. Mine, as he’d correctly deduced, was a chance to attend the fifteenth ecumenical council, even if I had to murder some perfect stranger in order to get in.

I’m not actually a believer – a lifetime studying the scriptures is a straight-line route to atheism, in my experience – but I’m one of those people who can’t resist a good old-fashioned intellectual slugfest over the minutiae of dogma.

And since this council, convened by the patriarch in faraway Choris Anthropou, was intended to sort out once and for all the eternally vexed question of the dual procession of the Holy Spirit – well, there you go. Be there or be square.

Besides, I told myself as I finished up the copy I was making of Momius’ Analects, it’s not like I had a choice.

I did, after all, swear a solemn vow when I became a monk, twenty years ago.

It would be good for me to obey a direct order which I found distasteful and morally repugnant.

Especially if it meant I got to go to the party.