A waaaaay out of order snippet

Kakai wrote:

Randomiser wrote:It would be an unhappy option, but actually poisoning them might well be doable. Rayno already appreciates that the Inquisition may well have been penetrated and worries about how deeply. Fist of God agents are known to take poison to evade capture alive. If they die of poison in captivity then 'Some traitor slipped it to them, right under our noses' is a much more rational explanation than 'demonic intervention'. It's not as if the Inquisition have CCTV they can check over to prove nobody gave it to them. To outsiders 'Demonic intervention' will just look like the Inquisition trying to cover their own posteriors, unless said outsiders are so tied to the Temple POV that the facts are irrelevant anyway.

That is a good point, especially if Merlin managed to give the sisters the same poison they were carrying in their necklaces. The problem, however, is that the sisters are more likely than not to be held in the Temple proper, which is a place SNARC remotes can't enter. Poisoning would only be possible if Merlin was quick enough to serve the poison to the sisters in the narrow window between their capture and their imprisonment in the Temple. As this is happenning in Zion, he might not learn about the whole thing until either one of the remotes leaves the city to send in a report, or Nynian gets information from her spies.

Yes, a whole lot depends on context which RFC is carefully not giving us. OTOH Merlin's rules of engagement do seem to be reviewable from time to time and may well be conditioned by the risk involved in not intervening. The Temple have never captured anyone who could give away such core secrets before, assuming they have Mistress Marzho and not just her assistant.

Why are we assuming it is a sister in Zion?

What we have are two women being spoken to by the inquisition one of whom is a Sister of Saint Kody.
As to the “So we’ve netted a rather bigger fish than I’d expected,” he murmured, closing his fist around the locket and sliding it into his coat pocket. “Oh, I’ve wanted to meet one of you for a long, long time.”
well that could be just that the Inquisitor thinks she is part of the "Fist of Ka un (sic?)"

Yes someone got captured, but we have no idea where they are just that there is another priest and a Schulerite monk with guards handy. Mistress Marvo would have been in her shop, so unlikely to be her. Sinve she would have been smart enough to avoid letting people get behind her.

Hello - long time lurker here, posting to make a possibly stupid suggestion.

Somebody from the Sisterhood has been captured, and she has a poison locket.

Ninian herself (known to have such a locket) did say that she might need to make a quick trip to Zion, back in LAMA. And Ninian is someone who the Inner Circle could not allow to be interrogated.

So, the possibly stupid suggestion. Is this snippet connected with the cover art? The cover art that appears to show one of the assault shuttles somewhere outside Zion, with soldiers attacking it? Because Merlin and Nimue can't go in to Zion itself to rescue anyone - but they could land an assault shuttle at a safe distance and send, oh, say, a company of scout-sniper volunteers in to the Inquisition's interrogation building to either rescue the captives or mercifully destroy the building and everyone in it.

As a set up for this, I'd point out that RFC has already had someone being rescued from Zion by aircraft; the Sisterhood of St Kody has seemingly made Merlin and Nimue aware that they can 'explain' aircraft as a seijin's miraculous Kyousei hi. That suggests that they can 'explain' to the volunteers that they are about to be 'miraculously' transported to Zion (and back) using the kyousi hi of the seijins.

I'm thinking Ninian because the capture and interrogation of one of the Inner Circle would be utter disaster at a point when the Charisian Empire is likely to win the war - and I can't see that the war has yet reached the point where the Empire would willingly risk a raid on Zion. Unless it was to stave off such a disaster...

Bluesqueak wrote:Hello - long time lurker here, posting to make a possibly stupid suggestion.

Somebody from the Sisterhood has been captured, and she has a poison locket.

Ninian herself (known to have such a locket) did say that she might need to make a quick trip to Zion, back in LAMA. And Ninian is someone who the Inner Circle could not allow to be interrogated.

(snip)

Hi, Bluesqueak, and welcome to the forum! Feel free to help yourself with a virtual drink at the virtual bar.

Regarding your suggestion, this is a distinct possibility, especially in the light of what you've just noted. The possible "good" - well, relatively good compared to other member of Saint Kody's being captured - thing about this turn of events is that as a member of the Inner Circle, Nynian likely has nanites in her bloodstream, which means that if push comes to shove, killing her would be as easy as sending a kill-signal to the nanites.

A bad thing about this turn of events would be that nanites' presence in her body could alert whatever monitoring system the Temple has, which could... considerably hasten the timeline of events, to say the least.

I didn't think about the connection between this and the cover art, but that would be way cool (and it would mark the important moment of the first time a Safehold cover matches the events in the book). The downside, however, would be that you'd have to explain to the volunteers why the seijins cannot enter the Temple with them. Surely an agent of God could safely walk into the world's most holy place, right?

But if such a raid would happen, seeing this from "native" perspective would be an absolutely fascinating read.

Welcome indeed Bluesqueak, that's a particularly nasty suggestion you have there and nothing in the snippet to disprove it.

It seems likely the locket contains poison and thus identifies the wearer as a member of the Fist of God in the inquisitor's mind. We are all jumping at it possibly being Mistress Marzho, because the only Ahlahna we know in Zion works in her shop and Mistress Marzho was the worst case scenario, or so we thought.

I don't really buy your scenario about the Scout snipers though, even if it could bear some resemblance to the cover art (But only vaguely, what is depicted there is not an undercover raid sneaking in to rescue someone without alerting the majority of the forces in Zion.) I don't think RFS let alone Merlin would spin the story you suggest.

If Merlin has let Nynian go back to Zion you can bet the farm that she is under observation by SNARCs, though.

Kakai, actually the cover art for HFQ is pretty much accurate; Merlin wasn't nearly so close to the Skimmer destroying the NOG ship but that's reasonable artistic licence, and it used a bomb not guns to do it, but that is a relatively small error as these things go.

Kakai wrote: The downside, however, would be that you'd have to explain to the volunteers why the seijins cannot enter the Temple with them. Surely an agent of God could safely walk into the world's most holy place, right?.

Thanks for your welcome!

The easiest way to explain it would be to not explain it at all - because the seijins' part of the mission means that they aren't going to be in the Temple-entering group.

For example, part of the mission might be retrieving any Helm Cleaver agents now in danger - and obviously, the best person to do that will be the seijin who's been their previous contact.

A rescue mission needs transport, so someone needs to stay with the kyousi hi - and with no angels on hand, obviously only a seijin can operate such a holy craft.

That 'explains' why the two seijins with the mission aren't going near the Temple, without ever actually saying that they can't.

Randomiser wrote:Welcome indeed Bluesqueak, that's a particularly nasty suggestion you have there and nothing in the snippet to disprove it.

It seems likely the locket contains poison and thus identifies the wearer as a member of the Fist of God in the inquisitor's mind. We are all jumping at it possibly being Mistress Marzho, because the only Ahlahna we know in Zion works in her shop and Mistress Marzho was the worst case scenario, or so we thought.

I don't really buy your scenario about the Scout snipers though, even if it could bear some resemblance to the cover art (But only vaguely, what is depicted there is not an undercover raid sneaking in to rescue someone without alerting the majority of the forces in Zion.) I don't think RFS let alone Merlin would spin the story you suggest.

If Merlin has let Nynian go back to Zion you can bet the farm that she is under observation by SNARCs, though.

Kakai, actually the cover art for HFQ is pretty much accurate; Merlin wasn't nearly so close to the Skimmer destroying the NOG ship but that's reasonable artistic licence, and it used a bomb not guns to do it, but that is a relatively small error as these things go.

Thank you, Randomiser, for your kind words.

I agree that the snippet suggests the person captured was captured with Ahlahna - but the locket that keeps being mentioned is Ninian's locket. Working on the principle of Chekhov's Gun, if RFC keeps mentioning her poison filled locket, at some point the poison filled locket has to play an active part in the story.

It would indeed be deeply ironic if the active part is that it identifies Ninian as a Helm Cleaver agent.

Yes, it's the fact that the cover art for HFQ was reasonably accurate that makes me wonder if the cover art here is at least based on 'oh, an interesting scene would be the raid on the Temple'. As for undercover - dunno. Depends what else Merlin and Nimue need to do in Zion; they might need a big, noisy, shocking raid as a distraction for something equally important. Or it might just be that the artist decided a company of black clad troopers sneaking in to a dark temple on a dark night wasn't a very exciting picture.

Bluesqueak wrote:..snip..
Yes, it's the fact that the cover art for HFQ was reasonably accurate that makes me wonder if the cover art here is at least based on 'oh, an interesting scene would be the raid on the Temple'. As for undercover - dunno. Depends what else Merlin and Nimue need to do in Zion; they might need a big, noisy, shocking raid as a distraction for something equally important. Or it might just be that the artist decided a company of black clad troopers sneaking in to a dark temple on a dark night wasn't a very exciting picture.

Welcome to the forums!

We know the covers are done with some artistic freedom so it most likely depicts two connected events, for example Nimue and Merlin taking a shuttle to somewhere where an assault or raid will take place. I doubt that they would show a shuttle to people not in the inner circle.

And are we sure the cover depicts Zion or a temple? It looks more like a castle to me and I doubt Zion would need walls like those in the cover, but with artistic freedom it may well be a scene from Zion.

For reference, here is a link to a higher resolution image of the cover.

Joat42 wrote:And are we sure the cover depicts Zion or a temple? It looks more like a castle to me and I doubt Zion would need walls like those in the cover, but with artistic freedom it may well be a scene from Zion.

For reference, here is a link to a higher resolution image of the cover.

I don't think it actually is Zion. Those green fields don't exactly scream "middle of a giant city". The vehicle does look significantly bigger than two-men skimmer, though, which could suggest that we'll finally see some of those assault craft in action.

Bluesqueak wrote:The easiest way to explain it would be to not explain it at all - because the seijins' part of the mission means that they aren't going to be in the Temple-entering group.

(snip)

That 'explains' why the two seijins with the mission aren't going near the Temple, without ever actually saying that they can't.

This could work, but the more I think about it, the more questions the presence of kyousei hi would raise for the passengers. For one, it would confirm in their eyes that Merlin indeed is a seijin, which is something he's been trying to avoid. For other, if I were one of those guys, my first question would probably be "if you had this machine all along, why the hell didn't you fly to rescue Gwylym Manthyr and his men?!" There'd probably be more questions - basically, think of all the "why Merlin can't use his superior tech to do X or Y" threads on this forum. I don't think this can be circumvented without the entire strike team being induced into the Inner Circle.

Actually, now that I think about it, having such a "native" strike team pulled from all over the Empire and Siddarmark could be a pretty neat idea. It'd certainly make for an entertaining subplot.

Duckk wrote:The two Sisters who are the highest valued prisoners the Inquisition has, and they just happen to die despite being in perfect health and surrounded by guards? Clearly a sign of demonic intervention. And even if they could somehow pull it off, what then? They still have to get the body out of Zion (or even worse, the Temple), and you can be sure that the bodies will be very closely watched as they try to figure out what happened.

Demonic intervention or a means of suicide that they missed?

I do agree that getting the bodies out of Zion would be impossible. What if they have nannites with the stasis drug and it's triggered before they're taken to Zion, though?