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“Brother Lynkyn’s about the farthest thing from an idiot you’re likely to meet, too,” Duchairn continued. “That means he’s staying as far away as possible from offering the Inquisition an excuse to ‘discipline’ him again . . . which isn’t all that easy, now that I think about it, given what he’s doing for the Jihad.” The treasurer’s lips twisted bitterly for a moment, then he shook himself and looked Maigwair in the eye. “Which brings me to why you’ve sent him off on an errand any one of his clerks could have discharged equally well. Should I assume it has something to do with St. Thyrmyn’s? Or, rather, with the obviously utterly baseless rumors about St. Thyrmyn’s which are currently swirling about the Temple’s rarefied heights?”
“You should, indeed,” Maigwair said grimly, and in a considerably lower voice. He twitched his head, inviting Duchairn to join him once again by the window . . . which happened to be the farthest point in the office from its door and whose frosty panes happened to let them see if anyone’s ear just happened to be pressed against them.
“Have you heard anything beyond rumors?” Duchairn asked, equally quietly, his shoulder less than two inches from his fellow vicar’s.
“No.” Maigwair shook his head. “But they’re so damnably persistent I’m positive there’s at least something to them. And Tobys agrees; he’s been making some very quiet inquiries of his own, and the very things his sources in the Inquisition aren’t telling him convinces him that something — something serious, Rhobair — went wrong at the prison.”
