The Heretic Kings Read Online Free PDF

different from Sastro’s own, but the shock of straw-coloured hair which topped his burly frame would always mark him out as a foreigner.
    “His Holiness the High Pontiff was obviously pressed for time,” Presbyter Quirion said. He had a voice like a saw. “What is important is that the seal and signature are genuine. What say you, Sastro?”
    “Undoubtedly,” Sastro agreed, playing with the hooked end of his beard. His temples throbbed damnably, but his face was impassive. “Abeleyn is king no more; every law of Church and State militates against him. Gentlemen, we have just been recognized by the holy Church as the legitimate rulers of Hebrion, and a heavy burden it is—but we must endeavour to bear it as best we may.”
    “Indeed,” Quirion said approvingly. “This changes matters entirely. We must get this document to General Mercado and Admiral Rovero at once; they will see the legitimacy of our position and the untenable nature of their own. The army and the fleet will finally repent of this foolish stubbornness, this misplaced loyalty to a king who is no more. Do you agree, Freiss?”
    Colonel Freiss grimaced. “In principle, yes. But these two men, Mercado and Rovero, are of the old school. They are pious, no doubt of that, but they have a soldier’s loyalty towards their sovereign, as have the common troops. I think it will be no easy task to overturn that attachment, Pontifical bull or no.”
    “And what happened to your soldier’s loyalty, Freiss?” Sastro asked, smiling unpleasantly.
    The Finnmarkan flushed. “My faith and my eternal soul are more important. I swore an oath to the King of Hebrion, but that king is no more my sovereign now than a Merduk shahr. My conscience is clear, my lord.”
    Sastro bowed slightly in his chair, still smiling. Quirion flapped one blunt hand impatiently.
    “We are not here to spar with one another. Colonel Freiss, your convictions do you credit. Lord Carrera, I suggest you could exercise your wit more profitably in consideration of our changed circumstances.”
    Sastro raised an eyebrow. “Our circumstances have changed? I thought the bull merely confirmed what was already reality. This council rules Hebrion.”
    “For the moment, yes, but the legal position is unclear.”
    “What do you mean?” Astolvo asked, wheezing. He seemed faintly alarmed.
    “What I mean,” Quirion said carefully, “is that the situation is without precedent. We rule here, in the name of the Blessed Saint and the High Pontiff, but is that a permanent state of affairs? Now that Abeleyn is finished, and is without issue, who wears the Hebrian crown? Do we continue to rule as we have done these past weeks, or are we to cast about for a legitimate claimant to the throne, one nearest the Royal line?”
    The man has a conscience, Sastro marvelled to himself. He had never heard an Inceptine cleric talk about legality before when it might undermine his own authority. It was a revelation which did away with his headache and set the wheels turning furiously in his skull.
    “Is it one of our tasks, then, to hunt out a successor to our heretical monarch?” he asked incredulously.
    “Perhaps,” Quirion grunted. “It depends on what my superiors in the order have to say. No doubt the High Pontiff will have a more detailed set of commands on its way to us already.”
    “If we put it that way, it may make clerical rule easier to swallow for the soldiery,” Freiss said. “The men are not happy at the thought of being ruled by priests.”
    Quirion’s gimlet eyes flashed deep in their sockets. “The soldiery will do as they are told, or they will find pyres awaiting them on Abrusio Hill along with the Dweomer-folk.”
    “Of course,” Freiss went on hastily. “I only point out that fighting men prefer to see a king at their head. It is what they are used to, after all, and soldiers are nothing if not conservative.”
    Quirion rapped the table, setting the decanters dancing. “Very well