‘Makova, Patriarch of Coombe. He’s been more or less running things for the past year. Makova’s an ass, and he’s totally venal, but he’s an expert on Church Law, and he knows a hundred technicalities and loopholes.’

‘Is Annias attending the meetings?’

‘Most of the time, yes. He likes to keep a running count of the votes. He’s spending his spare time making offers to the neutral Patriarchs. Those nine men are very shrewd. They never come right out and openly accept his offers. They answer with their votes. Would you like to watch us play, little mother?’ Dolmant said it with a faint irony.

‘Thank you all the same, Dolmant,’ she declined, ‘but there are a goodly number of Elenes who are firmly convinced that if a Styric ever enters the Basilica, the dome will fall in on itself. I don’t enjoy being spat on all that much, so I think I’ll stay here, if I may.’

‘When have the meetings usually been commencing?’ Sparhawk asked the Patriarch.

‘It varies,’ Dolmant replied. ‘Makova holds the chair – that was a simple majority vote. He’s been playing with his authority. He calls the meetings on a whim, and the messengers delivering those calls somehow always seem to lose their way when they come looking for those of us who are opposed to Annias. I think Makova started out by trying to slip through a substantive vote while the rest of us were still in bed.’

‘What if he calls a vote in the middle of the night, Dolmant?’ Sephrenia asked.

‘He can’t,’ Dolmant explained. ‘Sometime in antiquity, some Patriarch with nothing better to do codified the rules dealing with meetings of the Hierocracy. History tells us that he was a tiresome old windbag with an obsession about meaningless detail. He was the one responsible for the absurd rule about the one hundred votes – or 60 per cent – on substantive matters. He also – probably out of pure whim – set down the rule that the Hierocracy could only deliberate during the hours of daylight. Many of his rules are stupid frivolities, but he talked for six straight weeks, and finally his brothers voted to accept his rules just to shut him up.’ Dolmant touched his cheek reflectively. ‘When this is all over, I may just nominate the silly ass for sainthood. Those petty, ridiculous rules of his may be all that’s keeping Annias off the throne now. At any rate, we’ve made a practice of all being in place at dawn, just to be safe. It’s a rather petty form of retaliation, actually. Makova’s not customarily an early riser, but he’s been greeting the sun with the rest of us for the past several weeks. If he’s not there, we can vote in a new chairman and proceed without him. All sorts of inconvenient votes could take place.’

‘Couldn’t he just have those votes repealed?’ she asked.