She slapped her thigh angrily. “Now, that is a lie, and you know it! If our people . . . my people . . . lack creativity, then from whence comes our art, our music, our literature, our architecture? Why, the very palace in which you sit slandering us is new. Demetrios had most of it built just before you barbarians invaded. Don’t misunderstand me, I bear little love for Church or Eeyehrefsee—the black-robed vultures! Do you know how they ‘test’ a suspected Undying? They lop off a hand or a foot and plunge the stump into boiling pitch. Then they throw the unfortunate wretch into a dungeon for a couple of months to see if it grows back. No, I wouldn’t care if you had every Eeyehrefs in the Confederation roasted alive, but I won’t have my people defamed!”
“Mara,” he went on doggedly, “your anger is unworthy of the fine woman I know you are. Stop thinking like an Ehleen and open your mind. Think, Mara, thinfcl Your artistics are all nobles, which class is infamously irreligious. No, it is the poor and the oppressed who are your most religious; your peasants, the khpreekoee, they are the actual strength of the Church. When did one of them ever come up with something new and different—a labor-saving device, for instance, something great grandpa didn’t have?”
He paused, awaiting her answer, but she only sat in sullen silence.
“What would happen if a khoreefcos devised and fabricated a simple, mule-drawn appartus that could reap a field of rye in less time than twenty scythe-men? Well, Mara,” he prodded, “what would be the fate of that agrarian genius? Would he be lauded for his innovative ability? Would his peers beat a path to his door, that he might show them how to build and use his invention? Answer me, wife!”
“Oh, you know damned well what would happen to the poor dumb bastard, Milo!” snapped Mara. “The Eeyehrefsee would see him tortured until he admitted to transactions with Satan … or died; then they’d see him and his invention burned together.”
“Precisely.” He nodded. “Which certainly rather discourages any original thought on the part of the land slaves, doesn’t it? But the priests don’t intimidate me. I have devised and am going to introduce just such a machine at the next harvest time.”
“Oh, Milo, Milo!” Mara pled. “Please don’t stir up any more trouble with the Church. You know what they did to that water-powered mill you had built while yon were gone last summer. And they’d have seen the millers all slain, too, had my guards not gotten there in time.”
“So they sought my millers out in their homes and butchered them before their families,” stated Milo grimly. “You didn’t know of it because the widows were too terrified to speak until I returned, since the damned Ehpohteesee had borne their husbands’ mutilated bodies away and promised to come back and do the same to them and their children if they said aught of the murders.”
Mara had paled. “The Knights of the Saints?” she breathed.
He nodded, tight-lipped. “Yes, the Church’s secret terror squads. But the bastards aren’t secret any longer; they’re all either dead or incarcerated in the old fortress at Goohm.”
“But . . .” she stammered, “but how did you find out who they are?”
Milo showed his teeth in a wolf-like grin. “As you said earlier, it’s been a busy six weeks for me. I had old Hreesos, the Metropolitan, arrested on a trumped-up charge and immured in the deepest tier of the City Prison, naked, to contemplate upon his sins. After a week, he was brought up, washed, shorn, shaved, and garbed in a death-robe. Then he was left alone for a few minutes, long enough for him to look out the window and see the Chief Executioner sitting on the block and thumbing the edge of his great sword. Mara, you have never heard such moaning and praying,” Milo chuckled.
“The old scoundrel went to his knees, wet his red robe down the front, and started going over his life and his more questionable activities in his mind. Of course, he has no mindshield, and I was behind a false wall with two of the prairie cats; Mara, some of the things that swine has done or had done in the name of religion would curl your hair. I’d originally intended fining him and freeing him after I’d picked his mind, but after I found out just what a merciless monster he is, I had him heaved back in his cell. He’s far too dangerous to be out of a cage!”