The Tears of the Sun Read Online Free Page A

done . . .”
    â€œIs more work, yes.”
    â€œIt seems the Association is providing generous assistance,” Dmwoski said, a slight dryness in his tone.
    â€œAs you see, rather too much so; that is why I picked this building, unused since the Change and obviously temporary. It would have been easier just to use the Lady Regent’s administrative apparatus . . .”
    â€œ. . . which would have meant a most unfortunate precedent, and all the other states would be justly terrified that the new kingdom is the Association in disguise, yes,” Dmwoski said.
    â€œYour lecture to the novices on that curious old concept of initial path dependency suddenly seems much more relevant,” Ignatius said.
    They shared a brief chuckle. The Order was a militant offshoot of the original Benedictine house at Mt. Angel; that mutation had been a necessity of survival in the terrible years, approved by the Church a decade later when contact had been restored with the new Pope and Curia in Badia. It had organized an enclave of survival, and it had played a significant role in the wars against the Association and Norman Arminger’s schismatic antipope Leo. In the years since the Order had helped bring civilization back to remote areas, spreading skills, teaching and guarding. That necessarily meant a fairly close acquaintance with politics, if only to protect their bailiwick around Mt. Angel and the daughter-houses.
    In all that time since the War of the Eye, Sandra Arminger had played the part of a loyal daughter of the Faith with smooth skill and used the Church in the PPA lands as an instrument of her rule whenever she could. The arrangement wasn’t completely one-sided; it had kept up and consolidated in less violent form the momentum of conversion that had started with Norman Arminger’s motto of kiss the cross or kiss the sword . The dangers were still all too apparent.
    They were both morally certain that she had had Leo assassinated, as well, during her housecleaning after Norman Arminger’s death. The timing of his mysterious collapse had simply been too convenient. That knowledge went silently between them in a glance, and Ignatius murmured: “When a man causes you a problem—”
    â€œâ€”remember, no man, no problem,” Dmwoski finished for him.
    â€œFortunately, our new High Queen will be quite a different type of ruler. And she is now very close indeed to her delayed majority. Early next year, in fact. That will make her Lady Protector of the Association as well as High Queen of Montival.”
    â€œYes,” Dmwoski said. “And she really is a loyal daughter of Holy Mother Church.”
    â€œWhich does not mean she will necessarily defer to a cleric’s political opinions, of course,” Ignatius said. “I know her, and believe me, that is the case.”
    â€œNor should she. However, she will not necessarily defer to her mother’s opinions, either, close as they are. Yet the Association’s apparatus is one designed by and loyal to her mother; even when Norman Arminger was Lord Protector she managed the detail work. It is a tool shaped and fitted to her hand. You do quite right to build anew, my son, even in these desperate circumstances. Institutional inertia is a very powerful force—which, as Catholic clerics and heirs to two thousand years of it, is something we should know down in our bones.”
    Ignatius nodded. “I am improvising, and pulling in whatever personnel I can from wherever I can get them, but there is method in my madness. It keeps things fluid. And every power in our new Montival is of course fully occupied with mobilization for the campaign to come, down to the littlest autonomous village. If it were not for the fact that all the other powers were jealous of the Association—”
    â€œAnd each other,” Dmwoski added.
    â€œâ€”and each other, and hence anxious to have their people involved, I could