Blood of the Faithful by Michael Wallace

them. And if we looked at them, our eyes wouldn’t burn.”
    “What are you saying?” Smoot said.
    “I’m saying we should find out if they’re in the temple. If our greatest weapons are at hand to face the enemy. Would it hurt us to open the box and have a look?”
    There was a moment of dumbfounded silence at this.
    “You’re not even on the Quorum,” his father said at last. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near the Holy of Holies.”
    “But you and Elder Young here could do it. Then tell us what you see.”
    “I don’t know,” Smoot said. He turned to Stephen Paul. “Well?”
    “I’d only consider it if everyone else agrees,” Stephen Paul said. “Even then, I’d need to pray about it. But . . . maybe.”
    “Let’s be clear,” Rebecca said. “You want the elders to look, only? Not touch?”
    “That’s right,” Ezekiel said.
    “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to find out,” Rebecca said. “What do you think, Miriam?”
    What she thought was that it was beginning to seem like a conspiracy. Maybe a well-meaning conspiracy, with people who thought they were acting in the best interests of the community. They were people who loved their prophet, but thought he needed to be harder, to make difficult decisions. But it was still a conspiracy.
    And already she could see errors in judgment. Stephen Paul should have ridden off with his wife and Peter Potts. Instead, he’d told Elder Smoot and his son about the missing food from their silos. If Jacob had wanted them to know, he wouldn’t have gone sneaking onto Smoot’s property in the first place. So that was a betrayal of trust. Miriam was disappointed in Stephen Paul.
    You came too. You prayed about it and decided to obey the summons.
    Maybe so, but not so she could betray Jacob. She would never do that. A misguided conspiracy had destroyed the Zarahemla church that had first drawn her to the saints. Why would she tread that same wicked path?
    Unless you can do more good on the inside than the outside.
    Yes, that was it. If she’d stomped out with Carol Young and Peter Potts, she’d be blissfully riding down the highway with no knowledge of the stolen food, no idea that these others meant to sneak into the Holy of Holies to see if the sword and breastplate were still there.
    “I think,” Miriam began slowly, “that the two elders should enter the Holy of Holies together. Open the chest and see what they find.”
    “Then it’s settled,” Ezekiel said.
    “Not yet,” Rebecca said.
    Everyone looked to Elder Smoot. He was wavering. Miriam could almost read his thoughts. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to look, he was thinking. Not to touch, no. But only to look.
    “It . . . worries me,” Smoot said at last. “I’ve never touched that chest, never been tempted to sneak a peek. It’s like looking into the face of the Lord. If you are not prepared, you will be destroyed.”
    “You’re only destroyed if you touch the contents,” Ezekiel said. “Not if you look inside.”
    “Will you stop talking like you know something?” his father said. “You don’t.”
    “But, Father—”
    Smoot’s face hardened. “No, I won’t be a party to it.”
    “Wait, are you saying no?” Stephen Paul asked.
    “That’s right. I won’t open the chest, and I won’t agree to any plan that has someone else doing it either.”
    And that proved the end of it. Ezekiel tried a few more times to change his father’s mind, but Stephen Paul’s interest seemed to fade once his companion on the Quorum had decided. Then Rebecca said she’d go along with Stephen Paul. As for Miriam, she was curious, and since she’d never heard explicitly that opening the chest in the Holy of Holies would lead to certain death, she dismissed this as superstition.
    But to her mind this business with the breastplate and the sword was tangential to the real discovery of the night: someone was stealing their food. While Ezekiel fought a losing battle to convince his father that something