Otherwise . . . . .
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How did they do it? Rayno’s brain demanded of itself. How could they do it?
He never doubted that it had to have been the false seijins — no, the demons who pretended to be seijins! — but how?
There’s nothing like this in the records — not in The Testimonies, not in the Book of Chihiro, and not in the Inquisition’s secret files. Nothing! Never. Not at Shan-wei’s hands or during the War Against the Fallen. Not even they accomplished anything like this after their fall!
He tried to push that thought from him, to concentrate on how the Inquisition must deal with this. At least it had happened at St. Thyrmyn’s. With only a little good fortune, they could conceal it from the rest of Mother Church and her children, at least for a time. Pretend it had never happened — deny it had, if the false seijins and their allies spread the story. But he knew, and the Grand Inquisitor knew, and eventually more and more of their inquisitors would hear whispers, rumors, about what had truly happened. St. Thyrmyn’s was too central to the Inquisition, too vital a nexus for its operations, for the secret not to leak at least among the senior members of their own order. And once that happened, it would inevitably spread still farther. When it did, when they could no longer simply deny it, how did they address it, explain it?
He had no idea, but worrying about that was vastly preferable to facing the far more terrifying question beating in the back of his brain.
If the heretics’ demon allies could do this, what else could they do?
