The Tears of the Sun Read Online Free

known, for no discernible reason, as a sneaker .
    She was also hard-working and efficient, and everyone was entitled to their foibles. Even if she was in her early thirties, scarcely older than he. Effectively they were as much Changelings as those born after that day in 1998.
    â€œYes, my lord Chancellor. The Liu children are expected momentarily.”
    â€œNotify me when they arrive.”
    I have been lurching from emergency to emergency all month. This lack of system wastes time, but there is no time to introduce a system! I must delegate more! But there is no time to test and come to know my subordinates. I must know more, I have been absent for two years, but there is scarcely a moment to spare to read, think or question people.
    She left and held the door for the next entrant; a clicking noise of counting-boards and scritch of pens came through from the open-plan spaces beyond, and the clatter and ring of typewriters and adding machines. Ignatius rose from behind his desk and advanced with a smile of relief. The man was in his sixties, twice Ignatius’ age, balding and white-haired with penetrating blue eyes under tufted brows, but likewise in the simple black Benedictine habit. Around his waist was a broad leather belt with a plain cross-hilted long sword, a dagger, a rosary and crucifix; the buckle bore a shield-and-raven badge that was the emblem of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict that he had founded.
    Don’t be excessive, Ignatius, he told himself. Yes, he is a very intelligent and holy man. But you are not the hero-worshipping novice Karl Bergfried anymore. You have your own tasks to do and cannot always run to the Reverend Father for reassurance.
    Dmwoski had been thicker-set than the younger man but was growing gaunt, and stooped a very little now. Ignatius bowed and kissed his bishop’s ring.
    â€œAre you well, Most Reverend Father in God?”
    Dmwoski shrugged. “At my age and in this world of ours, a man is either well, or dead, my son,” he said. “At present I am consumed with curiosity at this task you have for me. Curiosity and eagerness.”
    Ignatius indicated a chair and poured cool water before he resumed his seat behind the desk; the day was hot for Portland, probably over eighty. Dmwoski removed his sword belt and racked it beside Ignatius’ on the stand to the left of the door before he sat.
    â€œI ask you only because, Reverend Father, you are one of the few able men I know who is not impossibly busy. Merely very busy.”
    Dmwoski nodded. “The forces of the Order and of the lay militia of the Queen of Angels Commonwealth march even as we speak; the Abbey and its daughter-houses and the civil administration are functioning well.”
    â€œI expected nothing else,” Ignatius said. “It’s not the first time we’ve marched north towards Portland.”
    They both appreciated the irony of that; the last time it had been to fight the Association, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at the end of the War of the Eye.
    â€œAnd now . . .”
    He indicated his desk as he sat behind it. It wasn’t precisely cluttered; he was a man of painstaking neatness, the habits of a monk and a soldier and an engineer combined. But it was certainly crowded , and it also held a tray with the remains of a working lunch of bread, butter, cheese, sausage and a vegetable salad. The room was brightly lit by an overhead skylight, but the shabbiness of long disuse lingered in corners that had evaded a whirlwind of hasty patching and renovation.
    â€œI am in the midst of trying to erect the skeleton of an administrative structure to coordinate our efforts while His Majesty fights a major war. All in the course of a month and without a legal or constitutional framework as yet. Not to mention no source of funds once what we brought from Iowa runs out.”
    â€œI hope that is not self-pity I hear in your tone, my son. The reward for work well