The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(57)

Of the two Moulton’s was the more famous representation, which was why it was in the IAI whilst Pritof’s sculpture existed in relative exile at the Interdependent Church’s cathedral in ?umadija, Pritof’s home habitat. But Korbijn didn’t care for it. Archbishop and effective head of the church though she was, blank-faced iconography gave Korbijn the willies. It depersonalized Rachela and made her less human, and more inevitable. And while it suited the Interdependent Church to give itself an air of inevitability—it suited nearly all churches to do that—Korbijn, who by profession and inclination was a student of its history, knew that there was nothing inevitable about it at all.

The famous assembly both works of art memorialized, for example: The politicians and captains of industry had not stared, stunned into amazement, at Rachela. They had laughed and jeered at her foolishness. Certainly they had not walked out of the room and lined up to create the Interdependency. It took years and countless backroom deals for that, with details a great deal more profane than exalted. Moulton’s painting was after-the-fact propaganda, commissioned by one of Korbijn’s long-dead predecessors as archbishop of Xi’an. The real story of the assembly was not stricken from the historical record, of course, but people liked Moulton’s version better. To the extent that anyone thought of Rachela at the Assembly at all, the vast majority of them pictured it like Moulton had.

And this is why Korbijn liked the sculpture better. She suspected Rachela’s actual expression during the assembly was far closer to what Pritof had depicted than what Moulton had. Not for the first time, Korbijn wished that Rachela had actually been something more divine than human, because at least then she could summon her and ask her what the hell she was actually thinking when she chose to speak to those politicians and businesspeople—what her “prophecies” really were and to what extent they should have ever guided the church that Korbijn had now given close to forty years of her life to.

Barring that she wished that she could be the emperox for a day. It was an open secret that the emperoxs were all embedded with a technology denied to every other subject of the Interdependency, one that recorded their every thought and then on death reconstituted them to advise their successor. There was a room in the imperial palace dedicated to it. Korbijn didn’t know if this recording scheme went all the way back to Rachela, but if it did, Korbijn would have some pointed questions for her digital ghost.

If Rachela’s memory is in there, then surely Grayland has asked her the same questions I would, Korbijn thought.

And that was why Korbijn was thinking of Pritof’s sculpture in the first place. Because like Rachela, Grayland II was going to address an assembly.

Nominally she was going to be addressing the Parliament of the Interdependency, a body that she as emperox was officially a member of as the simple and sole representative of the Xi’an habitat, although by tradition the emperox neither attended nor voted.

But the audience would not be merely the parliament. The gallery of the parliament had become the hottest ticket in Xi’an, with members of the great houses of the Interdependency fighting each other for seats. Korbijn would not have to fight for a seat—she had been invited to offer a formal benediction prior to the emperox speaking, and she had accepted—but other bishops and officers of the church were in the same seating scrum as the great houses. At the end of the day all the major powers of the Interdependency—political, commercial and ecclesiastical—would be there.

Whenever it would be, Korbijn amended in her head. It was common knowledge that the emperox would make an address, but she hadn’t quite set a date; all that came from her press minister was “imminently.” Grayland was waiting for something, although what that something could be was a matter of intense speculation.

Unlike Rachela, when Grayland II addressed her assembly, she would already be emperox, and nominally at least the most powerful person in the known universe. Korbijn was not entirely sure this was the advantage it might seem to be. Rachela might have been seen as a charismatic crank when she addressed her skeptics. Grayland was seen as a danger. Korbijn was well aware of the rumors that Grayland intended to use the address as an announcement of martial law, under the rationale that the closing of the Flow streams would require a higher level of order. Then under writ of martial law, Grayland would go about dispatching her enemies, just as she had done with Nadashe Nohamapetan.

Korbijn had rolled her eyes when she was told of this particular rumor, but stopped rolling them when she accepted a rush meeting from Tinda Louentintu. The chief of staff to the Countess Nohamapetan arrived in a startling manner, looking like her face had been used to stop weights. When Korbijn asked her if she was all right, Louentintu gave some excuse about tripping over her balcony door sill, which Korbijn immediately intuited to be entirely bullshit, but which Louentintu was making clear she didn’t want to address any further, in part by suggesting that Korbijn consider a schism in the Interdependent Church.

“On what grounds would I do that?” Korbijn asked, instead of immediately charging Louentintu with blasphemy, which was her right as an ecclesiastical officer of the church but which was very rarely done and would needlessly complicate matters in any event.

“For the continuation of the church, of course,” Louentintu said. “The countess knows you recently convened your bishops to talk about the emperox and her visions and what they have meant to your control of the Interdependent Church. She knows not a few of them advocated for a schism, to preserve the integrity of the church.”