The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(58)

Korbijn remembered the hours-long debate/shouting match Louentintu was referring to and was annoyed that one of her bishops had chosen to leak about it. She would deal with whomever that was later. “I suppose a few did,” Korbijn said. “But I’d caution you that the meeting was understood to be a free intellectual exercise. No policy was intended to come out of it, or will come out of it.”

“Of course not. But there could.”

“Please come to your point, Lady Louentintu.”

“I am saying that if you were to advocate a schism, you would find that you have allies.”

“With all due respect to the Countess Nohamapetan, the church does not need to be seen to have allies like her.”

“As unfortunate as your statement is, I understand why you say it. So you’ll be glad to know that you will not have to be seen with us. Other, more substantial allies will stand with you.”

“And by ‘stand with us,’ you mean what, exactly?”

“I would imagine it would mean financial and material support for the new church to keep the real estate holdings of the previous church, for a start.”

“So not really a schism, merely a coup.”

“It wouldn’t even have to be that. But a great many people—in the parliament, in the great houses and, yes, in the church—are beginning to see the necessity of inviting this emperox off the throne.”

“‘Inviting,’” Korbijn said. “What a polite word for it.”

“It doesn’t have to be violent,” Louentintu said. “The Countess Nohamapetan understands better than almost anyone else at this point the futility of violence against this emperox. She has felt the cost of it more than anyone else, including the emperox herself. Two dead children and the third at End, where she will never see him again. But violence can be avoided, if enough pressure is brought to bear. At the right time. And the right place.”

A dawning realization came over Korbijn. “The emperox’s address to parliament. You’re planning something.”

“We’re not planning it,” Louentintu said. “But it is being planned.”

“You’re running a huge risk telling me this,” Korbijn said. “I am on the executive committee. And I’m close to this emperox.”

“You are close to her, yes. And it is a risk. But then you could have had me arrested for blasphemy several minutes ago. You are also a power in your own right, Archbishop. Your church owes little to this emperox. And when there is a new emperox, he, or she, might decide to formally separate the office of emperox from the church and to raise the current archbishop of Xi’an to be the new cardinal of Xi’an and Hub.”

“You have it planned that far out.”

“Again, not the House of Nohamapetan. But we know there are plans.”

“And yet it’s you who have come to try to tempt me, Lady Louentintu.”

“I’m not here to tempt you, Archbishop. I am only making you aware of possibilities. And to appeal to your better angels. We are in turbulent times, and with the collapse of the Flow streams things will only get more uncertain. We are—we all are—assuredly heading into dark times. The emperox means well, but she isn’t the one to lead us through what comes next for the Interdependency. Someone else will have to do it. And it’s better for everyone to have that decided sooner than later.”

Korbijn smiled. “It’s funny. You sound very much like someone of my acquaintance who came to see me recently on the same subject.”

“Talk to them again. Maybe they’ll tell you the same thing.”

“I can’t. He just died.”

It took Louentintu a minute to get it, but she got it. “That’s unfortunate.”

“It certainly was for him,” Korbijn said.

“Be thinking about what I’ve talked to you about here, Archbishop,” Louentintu said. “Many things are coming. The church will have a role in those things. But what that role is and what its future will be are going to be up to you. The emperox will make her address soon. And on the day she does, time’s up.”

Well, Korbijn thought, after Louentintu had gone, that went almost exactly like Grayland said it would.

“They’re going to be coming to you soon, you know,” Grayland had said to her, when Korbijn had visited her to discuss what had befallen Teran Assan. They had briefly discussed Assan’s fate, and what it would mean to the functioning of the executive committee, and then Korbijn had broached the conversation she and Assan had had about her upcoming address, and how it had prompted her into meeting with her bishops. Grayland had nodded to all of that and made that cryptic pronouncement.

“They?” Korbijn had asked.

“I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial. On the other hand, Lord Teran is newly dead trying to rescue Nadashe Nohamapetan. I expect the Countess Nohamapetan to deny that she or her house had anything to do with it, of course. But Lord Teran, whatever his other qualities, was not someone to do things freelance.”

“You think this was part of something bigger.”

“I think I have spooked a great number of powers with my talk of visions,” Grayland said. “Which is not a surprise. Visions are unsettling and they disrupt order, and no one in power wants order messed with. They don’t understand that disruption is coming whether they want it or not. My visions disrupt order now to prevent chaos later. But that’s not useful for them. So they’re planning something to preserve the order they know.”