How firm a foundation

JULY, YEAR OF GOD 895

Hospice of the Holy Bedard and The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

“Langhorne bless you, Your Grace. Langhorne bless you!”

“Thank you, Father,” Rhobair Duchairn said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not as if I’ve been working as hard at this as you have. Or”-the vicar’s smile carried an odd edge of bitterness-“for as long, either.”

He laid a hand on Father Zytan Kwill’s frail shoulder. The Bedardist upper-priest was far into his eighties and growing increasingly fragile with age, yet he burned with an inner intensity Duchairn could only envy.

“That may be true, Your Grace,” Kwill replied, “but this winter…” He shook his head. “Do you realize we’ve had only thirty dead reported in the Hospice this winter from all causes? Only thirty! ”

“I know.” Duchairn nodded, although he also knew considerably more than thirty of Zion’s inhabitants had perished over the previous winter. Yet Kwill had a point. The Order of Bedard and the Order of Pasquale were responsible for caring for Zion’s poor and indigent. Well, technically all Mother Church’s orders had that duty, but the Bedardists and the Pasqualates had shouldered the primary responsibility centuries earlier. They jointly administered the soup kitchens and the shelters, and the Pasqualates provided the healers who were supposed to see that the most vulnerable of God’s children had the medical care to survive Zion’s icy cold.

The problem, of course, was that they hadn’t been doing that.

Duchairn looked out the window of Kwill’s spartan office. The Hospice of the Holy Bedard was in one of Zion’s older buildings, and the office had a spectacular view over the broad blue waters of Lake Pei, but it was as bare and sparsely furnished as an ascetic’s cell in one of the meditative monasteries. No doubt that reflected Father Zytan’s personality, but it was also because the priest had poured every mark he could lay hands on into his hopeless task for the last forty-seven years. With so many desperate needs, the thought of spending anything on himself would never even have crossed his mind.

And in all that time, Mother Church has never supported him the way she should have, the Treasurer thought grimly. Not once. Not a single time have we funded him and the others the way we ought to have .

The vicar crossed to the window, clasping his hands behind him, looking out at the leaves and blossoms which clothed the hills striding down from Zion to the huge lake. A cool breeze blew in through the opening, touching his face with gentle fingers, and the sails of small craft, barges, and larger merchant ships dotted the sparkling water under the sun’s warm rays. He could see fishing boats farther out, and perfectly formed mountains of cloud sailed across the heavens. On a day like this, it was easy even for Duchairn, who’d spent the last thirty years of his life in Zion, to forget how savage north central Haven’s winters truly were. To forget how the lake turned into a blue and gray sheet of ice, thick enough to support galleon-sized ice boats. To forget how snow drifted higher than a tall man’s head in the city’s streets. How some of those drifts, on the city’s outskirts, climbed as much as two or even three stories up the sides of buildings.

And it’s even easier for those of us who spend our winters in the Temple to forget that sort of unpleasantness, he acknowledged. We don’t have to deal with it, do we? We have our own little enclave, blessed by God, and we don’t venture out of it… except, perhaps, on the milder days when the wind doesn’t howl and fresh blizzards don’t go screaming around our sanctified ears.

He wanted to believe that was the reason for his own decades of inactivity. Wanted to think he’d been so busy, so focused on his manifold responsibilities that he’d simply gotten distracted. That he’d honestly forgotten to actually look out his window and see what was happening to those outside the Temple’s mystically heated and cooled environment because he’d been so preoccupied with his personal duties and obligations. Oh, how he wanted to think that!

You were “preoccupied,” all right, Rhobair, he told himself, filling his lungs with the cool air, inhaling the scent of the blossoms in the planter under Father Zytan’s window. You were preoccupied with fine wines, gourmet cooking, charming feminine companionship, and all the arduous tasks of counting coins and managing your alliances within the vicarate. Pity you didn’t stop to think about what the Archangels themselves told you were any priest’s true obligations and duties. If you had, Father Zytan might’ve had the money and the resources he needed to actually do something about those responsibilities.

“I’m overjoyed we lost so few… this winter, Father,” he said, not looking away from the window. “I only regret that we lost so many the winter before, and the winter before that.”

Kwill looked at the vicar’s back, silhouetted against the bright window, and wondered if Duchairn realized how much pain rested like an anchor in the depths of his own voice. The vicar was a Chihirite, like the majority of Mother Church’s administrators, without the trained insight into feelings and emotional processes that Kwill’s own order taught. Perhaps he truly didn’t understand his own feelings… or how clearly his tone communicated them, at any rate.

Or how dangerous they could be to him under the present circumstances.

“Your Grace,” the upper-priest said, “I’ve spent considerably better than half my life feeling exactly that same regret every spring.” Duchairn turned his head to look at him, and Kwill smiled sadly. “I suppose we should grow inured to it when it happens again and again, but every body we find buried in the snow, every child who becomes an orphan, every soul we can’t somehow cram into the Hospice or one of the other shelters when the temperature drops and the wind comes screaming in off the lake-every single one of those deaths takes its own tiny piece of my soul with it. I’ve never learned to accept it, but I’ve had to learn to deal with it. To admit to myself that I truly did do everything I could to minimize those deaths… and to absolve myself of the guilt for them. It isn’t easy to do that. No matter how much I’ve done, I’m always convinced I could-that I should -have done still more. I can know here”-he touched his temple gently-“that I truly did all I could, but it’s hard to accept that here.”

He touched his chest, and his sad smile grew gentler.

“I’ve had more practice trying to do that than you have, Your Grace. Partly because I’m the next best thing to thirty-five years older than you are. And I realize most people here in Zion and even in my own order seem to think I’ve been doing what I do since the Creation itself. The truth is, though, I was past forty before it even occurred to me that this should be my life’s work. That it was what God had in mind for me to do.” He shook his head. “Don’t think for a moment all the years I wasted before I heard His voice don’t come back to haunt me every winter, reminding me of all those earlier winters when I did nothing at all. I realize there are those who think of me as some sort of saintly paragon-those that don’t think I’m an ornery old crackpot, at any rate!-but I was a much duller student than those people think. We hear Him when we hear Him, and it’s up to Him to judge us. It’s not up to others, and our own judgment is sometimes the least reliable of all, especially where our own actions are concerned.”

“You’re probably right, Father,” Duchairn said after a long, silent moment, “yet if we don’t judge ourselves, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable, we turn our backs not just on our responsibilities but on ourselves. I’ve discovered guilt makes a bitter seasoning, but without it it’s too easy to lose ourselves.”

“Of course it is, Your Grace,” Kwill said simply. “But if God says He’s willing to forgive us when we recognize our faults and genuinely seek to amend our lives, then shouldn’t we be willing to do the same thing?”

“You truly are a Bedardist, aren’t you, Father?” Duchairn shook his head wryly. “And I’ll try to bear your advice in mind. But the Writ says we’re supposed to make recompense, to the best of our ability, to those we realize we’ve wronged. I’m afraid it’s going to take me a while to accomplish that.”

Kwill crossed the office to stand beside him at the window, but the priest didn’t look out across the lake. Instead, he stood for several seconds regarding the vicar intently, gazing into his eyes. Then he reached out and laid a hand thinned by a lifetime’s labors on Duchairn’s chest.

“I think this is in a better state and far, far deeper than even you realize, Your Grace,” he said softly. “But be careful. Even the greatest of hearts can accomplish nothing in this world after it ceases to beat.”

Duchairn laid his hand across the priest’s for a moment and inclined his head in what might have been agreement or simple acknowledgment. Then he inhaled deeply and stepped back.

“As always, Father Zytan, it’s been both a joy and a privilege,” he said more briskly. “And I’m pleased with your report, especially since I’ve managed to free up the funding to acquire or build additional shelters for the coming winter. Depending on where we place them, it would probably be cheaper to purchase and refurbish existing structures, and if we’re going to be forced to build, it would be a good idea to get started as quickly as possible. So please give some thought to where the housing will be most urgently required. I’d like to have your recommendations for three or four new sites within the next couple of five-days.”

“Of course, Your Grace. And thank you.” Kwill smiled broadly. “We can always use additional roofs when the snow flies.”

“I’ll do my best, Father. Just as I’ll do my best to bear your advice in mind.” Duchairn extended his hand, and Kwill bent to brush his ring of office with his lips, then straightened. “Until next time, Father.”

“May the Holy Bedard bless and keep you, Your Grace,” Kwill murmured in response.

Duchairn nodded and left the office. His escort of Temple Guardsmen was waiting for him, of course. They didn’t like letting him out of their sight even for his meetings with Father Zytan, and despite their discipline, it showed in their expressions.

Of course, there’s more than one reason for that unhappiness at having me off doing Langhorne knows what, Duchairn thought with bitter amusement.

“Where to now, Your Grace?” the officer in command of his personal security detachment inquired politely.

“Back to the Temple, Major Phandys,” Duchairn said to the man Zhaspahr Clyntahn and Allayn Maigwair had personally selected as his keeper. Their eyes met, and the vicar smiled thinly. “Back to the Temple,” he repeated.

“Major Phandys is here, Your Eminence.”

“Thank you, Father. Send him in.”

“Of course, Your Eminence.”

The secretary bowed and withdrew. A moment later, Major Khanstahnzo Phandys entered Wyllym Rayno’s office. He crossed to the archbishop and bent over his extended hand to kiss his ring.

“You sent for me, Your Eminence?” the major said as he straightened.

Technically, as a Temple Guardsman, he ought to have saluted instead of kissing Rayno’s ring. Since the botched arrest of the Wylsynn brothers, however, Major Phandys had become considerably more than a simple Guardsman. It was scarcely his fault that arrest had gone so radically wrong, and the Inquisition had always had a keen eye for talent that could be co-opted without officially becoming part of the Order of Schueler.

“Yes, I did, Major.” Rayno sat back down behind his desk, tipped his chair back, and surveyed Phandys thoughtfully. “I’ve read your latest report. As always, it was complete, concise, and to the point. I could wish more of the reports which crossed my desk were like it.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence,” Phandys murmured when the archbishop paused, obviously expecting some response. “I strive to offer Mother Church-and the Inquisition-my best effort.”

“Indeed you do, Major.” Rayno smiled with unusual warmth. “In fact, I’ve been considering whether or not I might be able to find an even more effective use for a man of your talents and piety.”

“I’m always prepared to serve wherever Mother Church can best make use of me, Your Eminence,” Phandys replied. “Have you someone in mind for my current responsibilities?”

“No, not really.” Rayno’s smile faded. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, Major. That’s one reason I called you in. Can you think of anyone else in the Guard suitable for the position?”

Phandys frowned for several seconds, hands clasped respectfully behind him while he considered.

“Off the top of my head, no, I’m afraid, Your Eminence.” He shook his head regretfully. “I can think of several whose loyalty and devotion would make them suitable, but none who have the rank to serve as Vicar Rhobair’s senior Guardsman. Of those who do have the rank, I’m afraid I’d have… reservations about recommending most of them. There might be one or two of sufficient rank and seniority, but none who could be assigned to him without a series of transfers to make them the logical choices. I can give you their names, if you like, Your Eminence, although I’d strongly recommend you interview them personally before you consider them for my current assignment.”

“Your reasons?” Rayno’s tone was honestly curious, and Phandys shrugged.

“I’d hesitate to recommend anyone I don’t know personally and reasonably well, Your Eminence, but I doubt anyone ever knows someone as well as he thinks he does. And the fact that most of them are friends, or at least close acquaintances, would tend to make me suspect my own judgment. I’d simply feel more comfortable if someone with a more… detached perspective decided whether or not they’d be suitable for the duty.”

“I see.”

Rayno considered that for a moment. For a rather long moment, in fact. As he’d already suggested, the Inquisition always had far too many demands for men of talent and ability, and that was especially so these days. Phandys was already young for his current rank, but Rayno could easily have him promoted to colonel or even brigadier. Yet deciding whether or not to do that represented something of a balancing act. While the higher rank would give him greater seniority and authority, it would also make him even more of a marked man among his fellows. It was sadly true that the more closely identified with the Inquisition an officer became, the less his fellows tended to confide in him. Besides…

“Please do provide me with those recommendations, Major,” he said at length. “Even if I decide to leave you in your present assignment, it never hurts for the Inquisition to know where to lay its hand on Mother Church’s dutiful sons when she needs them worst.”

“Of course, Your Eminence.” Phandys bowed slightly. “I’ll have them for you by tomorrow afternoon, if that will be soon enough?”

“That will be fine, Major,” Rayno said, and waved one hand in dismissal.

“Well?” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said as Wyllym Rayno entered his office. “What’s our good friend Rhobair been up to lately?”

“According to all my sources, Your Grace, he’s been doing precisely what he said he was going to do. He paid another visit to Father Zytan yesterday, and he’s scheduled a meeting next five-day with the senior Pasqualates from all five major hospitals to discuss the coordination of healers with his shelters and soup kitchens for next winter.” The archbishop shrugged. “Apparently he wants to be better organized than he was this winter.”

Clyntahn rolled his eyes. He didn’t have anything against a practical, reasonable level of charitable works, but the vicars of Mother Church weren’t supposed to allow themselves to be distracted from their own responsibilities. At a time like this, the Church’s chief financial officer had dozens of concerns upon which he might more profitably spend his time than worrying about a winter which was still months away.

The Grand Inquisitor leaned back, the fingers of his right hand drumming an irritated tattoo on his desk. Duchairn’s excessive, gushy piety was becoming more and more exasperating, yet all the old arguments against allowing the Group of Four’s potential enemies to suspect a genuine division in their ranks remained, although those arguments were growing weaker as the example he’d made of the Wylsynns’ circle of pro-Reformist traitors sank fully home. If not for that, he’d cheerfully contemplate jettisoning Duchairn. Unfortunately, if he purged Duchairn, he’d have to come up with someone else to do the man’s job, and the unpalatable fact was that no one else could do it as well as he did. That consideration was especially pointed given Mother Church’s current straitened financial condition.

No, he concluded yet again, regretfully, he couldn’t get rid of Duchairn yet, however much the man’s softhearted, mushy-brained sanctimony sickened him. Of course, the reasons he couldn’t-those same straitened financial conditions-only made the other vicar’s obsession with “providing for the poor” even more maddening. Still, if Clyntahn had no choice anyway, he might as well look at the bright side. Judging by the tenor of his own agents’ reports, Duchairn’s demand that the Group of Four show a “kinder, gentler face” truly was helping to bolster morale here in Zion. That sort of bought-and-paid-for “loyalty” was always a perishable commodity, far less reliable than the instant obedience instilled by the Inquisition’s discipline, but it was probably useful in the short term, at least.

“What about Phandys?” he asked, and Rayno considered his response carefully.

The major had become one of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s favorites, although that outcome might not have been assured, given the way he’d deprived the Grand Inquisitor of one of his most anticipated prizes. Even Clyntahn had accepted that that was scarcely his fault when he’d found himself face-to-face with Hauwerd Wylsynn in personal combat, however, and without Phandys, the Wylsynns might actually have managed to get out of Zion. They wouldn’t have gotten far, but the fact that they’d had the chance to run at all would have undermined the Inquisition’s aura of invincibility. The Grand Inquisitor had chosen to look on the bright side, which explained how Captain Phandys had become Major Phandys.

“I understand your desire to make the best and fullest use of Major Phandys, Your Grace,” the archbishop said after a moment. “And I’m looking into possible replacements for him in his current assignment. With all due respect, however, at this time I think it would be wisest to leave him where he is.”

“Why?” Clyntahn asked tersely, and Rayno shrugged.

“As the Major himself pointed out to me this afternoon, Your Grace, finding someone equally reliable to replace him as Vicar Rhobair’s chief guardian would be difficult. He’s prepared to recommend some potential candidates, but Vicar Allayn would be forced to juggle assignments rather obviously to put one of them into Major Phandys’ present position. And, to be totally honest, the more I’ve thought about it the more convinced I am that we really do need to keep one of our best and most observant people in charge of Vicar Rhobair’s security.”

The Grand Inquisitor scowled, yet the point about keeping an eye on Duchairn was well taken, at least until they could find someone to replace him as Treasurer. Duchairn clearly knew Phandys was spying on him for the Inquisition, but he seemed resigned to the fact, and the major had demonstrated a surprising degree of tact. He went out of his way to avoid stepping on Duchairn’s toes, and it was always possible the Treasurer actually appreciated his courtesy. As for Rayno’s other argument, personally, Clyntahn wouldn’t have given a damn if Maigwair had to rearrange assignments to put someone else into Phandys’ position, but there was still that pestiferous, irritating need to preserve the fiction that the Group of Four remained fully united. If it became too obvious Clyntahn and Maigwair were assigning their own men to spy on Duchairn and Trynair, some of the currently cowed vicars might find themselves dangerously-or at least inconveniently-emboldened. And truth to tell, Duchairn was less predictable in many ways than Trynair, given the Chancellor’s predictable-and manipulable-pragmatism and self-interest.

Rayno was right, he decided. Better to keep one of their best men right where he was until the time finally came to be shut of Duchairn entirely.

“All right,” he growled. “I hate wasting someone of his abilities as a glorified nursemaid, but I suppose you have a point.”

He frowned for another few seconds, then shrugged.

“All right,” he said again, in a very different tone, changing subjects with his accustomed abruptness. “What’s this we hear from Corisande?”

“Obviously our latest information is sadly out-of-date, as always, Your Grace,” Rayno said a bit cautiously, “but according to my current reports, all of those arrested last year have now been tried. Formal sentencing is awaiting the arrival of either Cayleb or Sharleyan-probably Sharleyan-but all indications are that the overwhelming majority of those arrested”-even the redoubtable Rayno paused almost imperceptibly to brace himself-“have been found guilty.”

Clyntahn’s expression hardened and his jowls darkened, yet that was all. Some people might have been relieved by his apparent lack of reaction, but Rayno knew the Grand Inquisitor better than that.

“I don’t suppose,” Clyntahn said in an icy tone, “that anyone in that traitorous bastard Gairlyng’s ‘Church’ raised a single voice in protest?”

“So far as I know, no, Your Grace.” Rayno cleared his throat. “According to our sources, Gairlyng appointed clerics to the courts hearing the accusations as part of the farce that all the required legal procedures had been followed.”

“Of course he did.” Clyntahn’s jaw muscles quivered for a moment. “We already knew that son-of-a-bitch Anvil Rock and his catamite Tartarian were willing to whore for Cayleb and his bitch any way they asked. So of course the ‘Church of Charis’ is going to just stand by and watch the judicial murder of Mother Church’s loyal sons and daughters! What else could we expect?”

His face darkened steadily, and Rayno braced himself. But then, to the archbishop’s surprise, the Grand Inquisitor wrapped his hands tightly together on his desk, hunched his shoulders, and visibly fought his rage back under control. It didn’t come easily, and he didn’t manage it quickly, but he did manage it in the end.

“You say formal announcement of the verdicts is awaiting Sharleyan’s arrival?” he asked at last in a hard, tight voice.

“Yes, Your Grace. In fact, if she’s kept to the schedule which was reported to us, she’s already there. She may actually be ready to depart by now.”

“So what you’re saying is that they have been announced by now. And, presumably, carried out, as well.” Clyntahn bared his teeth. “The bitch isn’t going to leave without the satisfaction of seeing them all killed, now is she?”

“Presumably not, Your Grace.”

“Do we have any indication of how the population in general’s responding to all of this?”

“Not… really, Your Grace.” Rayno twitched his shoulders unhappily. “So far there haven’t been any indications of organized protest or outrage, but, again, all our reports are months out of date by the time they get here. It’s always possible people have been waiting for confirmation of the verdicts before they reacted.”

“And it’s always possible they’re just going to sit on their asses and let it happen, too,” Clyntahn said flatly.

“I’m afraid so,” Rayno admitted.

“Then it may be time to stiffen their spines.” Clyntahn’s expression was ugly. “What’s the situation with Coris?”

“Nothing seems to have changed in that regard, Your Grace. As you know, I’ve got one of our best men planted on him, and Bishop Mytchail has his own agent in King Zhames’ household, as well. Both of them agree Coris is doing what he was told to do.”

“And that he will do what we need him to do?”

“Almost certainly, Your Grace.”

“Only almost? ” Clyntahn’s eyes narrowed.

“I doubt he’d hesitate for a moment, Your Grace, if it weren’t for the fact that everyone knows he was Hektor’s spymaster-the man who managed Hektor’s assassins, among other things. He has a reputation for personal ambition, and it might occur to him that if anyone was going to be blamed as Cayleb’s tool in Daivyn’s assassination, it would be him. Under the circumstances, I think he’d probably prefer not to give any additional credence to that kind of charge. That assessment is based at least in part on reports from Master Seablanket, our agent in his household.”

“Hmmmmm.” Clyntahn frowned, stroking his chin meditatively, eyes half-closed, for several seconds. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that might not be such a bad idea. Letting Coris carry the blame for it, I mean.” He smiled thinly. “He and Anvil Rock and Tartarian all worked together with Hektor, after all. Saddling him with responsibility-because he saw it as an opportunity to buy Cayleb’s favor the same way they have, no doubt-would smear the two of them by association, too, wouldn’t it?”

“It certainly might, Your Grace.”

“Do you think Seablanket could handle it?”

“I think he could, but I’d rather not use him, Your Grace.”

“Why not, especially if he’s already in position?”

“Because he’s too valuable, Your Grace. If I’m following your logic properly here, we need for the assassin-or for an assassin, at any rate-to be taken or killed after the boy is dead. Preferably killed, I should think, if we don’t want any inconvenient interrogations. I’d hesitate to use up someone as capable as Seablanket if we don’t absolutely have to.”

“So who would you use instead?”

“My thought at this moment is that we might use a team from the Rakurai candidates you approved but haven’t assigned, Your Grace. I’m sure we could select men who would be prepared to see to it that they weren’t taken alive. In fact, we have several more native-born Charisians available.”

Clyntahn cocked his head, then nodded slowly.

“That would be a nice touch, wouldn’t it?” He smiled unpleasantly. “Of course, it would tend to direct suspicion away from Coris.”

“Only in the sense that it wasn’t actually his hand on the dagger, Your Grace,” Rayno pointed out. “As you suggested, even if he didn’t strike the blow himself, he might have connived with Cayleb. In fact, we might be able to help that perception along a little bit. At the appropriate time, we could instruct him to… creatively weaken Daivyn’s security to let our assassins in. Seablanket’s in a perfect position to pass him the message when we need to, and it won’t hurt a thing at that point for Coris to realize we’ve been watching him more closely than he thought. And after the fact, if we decide to throw Coris to the slash lizard, the fact that he did let the assassins-the Charisian-born assassins-into Daivyn’s presence would be the crowning touch. And if we decided not to throw him to the slash lizard after all, we simply wouldn’t have to mention what he did.”

“I like it.” Clyntahn nodded. “All right, pick your team. We’ll see how public opinion in Corisande reacts to Sharleyan’s executions before we actually order them to proceed, but it won’t hurt to have the pieces in position when the time comes.” . II.

Twyngyth, Duchy of Malikai, Kingdom of Dohlar

Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s eyes opened as the hand shook his shoulder.

On the face of it, it was ridiculous that such a gentle summons could rouse him. Over the last five-day and a half, he’d learned to sleep despite the bone-jarring, jouncing, swaying, rumbling, grating progress of their mobile prison. Just the mind-numbing sound of steel-shod wooden wheels grinding over the hard surface of the royal high road should have been enough to make anything like sleep impossible, but Manthyr was a lifelong seaman. He’d learned to steal precious moments of sleep even in the teeth of a howling gale, and sheer exhaustion made it easier than it might have been otherwise. He’d never been so tired, so worn to the bone, in his entire life, and he knew it was even worse for many of his men.

He looked up into Naiklos Vahlain’s face and opened his mouth, but he had to stop and swallow twice before he could moisten his vocal cords enough to speak.

“What is it, Naiklos?”

“Begging your pardon, Sir, but we’re coming into a town. A big one. I think it’s Twyngyth.”

“I see.” Manthyr lay still for another moment, then reached up and grabbed one of the wagon’s iron bars and used it to haul himself to his feet. He balanced there, despite the shock waves which exploded up his legs and jolted painfully in his spine with the wagon’s motion.

It was odd, a corner of his mind thought. Charis’ highways were adequate to the kingdom’s needs, but nothing like most of the mainland realms boasted. The reason for that, of course, was Howell Bay. Charis didn’t need the sort of road network the mainlanders required, because water transport was always available and far more economical and speedy than even the best of road systems. Despite himself, Manthyr had been impressed by the sheer engineering ability and years of labor it must have taken to build the Dohlaran royal high roads, and their surfaces were hard and smooth, made of multiple layers of tamped gravel rolled out and then covered with slabs of cement.

And that was what was odd. One wouldn’t have thought a surface that smooth could still be uneven, yet judging from the prison wagon’s painful progress, it obviously could.

He rubbed his aching, gummy eyes and peered through the bars.

Naiklos was right; they were approaching a sizable town or city. Once upon a time, Manthyr had been accustomed to judging the size of the cities he encountered by comparison to Tellesberg, yet he’d discovered there were others which were larger still. Cherayth, in Chisholm, for example, or Gorath here in Dohlar. This town was much smaller than that-barely a third the size of Tellesberg-but it boasted fortified, bastioned walls at least twenty or thirty feet tall, and there was obviously artillery atop those walls, which argued for a certain importance. And if Manthyr’s memory of the maps of Dohlar were correct (which it might well not be, since he’d been primarily interested in Dohlar’s coasts), this almost certainly was Twyngyth.

And won’t that be fun, he thought grimly, knees flexing as his weary body anticipated the jolts. It wasn’t like being at sea, but there were some similarities. You had to go and help His Majesty kill that asshole Duke Malikai off Armageddon Reef, didn’t you, Gwylym? I’ll bet his loving family’s been just praying for the opportunity to entertain you on your way through.

“Keep the crowd moving, Captain,” Father Vyktyr Tahrlsahn said. “I’m sure everyone wants to see these bastards, and I want to make sure everyone gets to see them, too. See them from close enough they can smell the vermin’s stink!”

“Aye, Sir.” Captain Walysh Zhu touched his breastplate in salute, but behind that facade of stolid acknowledgment, his brain was busy.

Over the last several days, Zhu had realized Tahrlsahn was even more… zealous than the captain had originally thought. Zhu was as orthodox and conservative as only a Harchongese could be, and he saw no reason heretics should be accorded the protections of honorable prisoners of war. Anyone who gave his allegiance to Shan-wei deserved whatever came his way, after all. On the other hand, Zhu took no particular pleasure from seeing them abused without some specific reason. He’d ordered his Guardsmen to show them why they’d be wise to cooperate that very first day, but there’d been a purpose to that beating, a way to establish discipline without actually killing anyone. And, if he was going to be honest, there had been a certain personal satisfaction in it, as well. Payback for what their bastard friends had done to the Navy of God and the Imperial Harchongese Navy in the Markovian Sea, if nothing else.

But Tahrlsahn sometimes seemed to have trouble remembering they were supposed to deliver their prisoners intact to the Temple. Personally, Zhu estimated they were likely to lose perhaps one in five from sheer exhaustion and privation even under the best of conditions. But they weren’t getting the best of conditions, were they? They’d been scrawny as skinned wyverns when he’d collected them from the prison hulks in Gorath, and Tahrlsahn wasn’t going out of his way to fatten them up since. Zhu suspected there was sickness among them, as well, helping to gnaw away at their reserves of strength, but Tahrlsahn had endorsed Bishop Executor Wylsynn’s ban on providing the “malingering bastards” with healers. And the prison wagons’ jarring ride was far more debilitating than Tahrlsahn seemed to realize.

Now they were coming into Twyngyth, the biggest city they’d passed through yet, and Tahrlsahn’s instructions made him a little nervous. It had been bad enough in some of the other villages and small towns. Zhu remembered the village where twenty or thirty men and adolescent boys had jogged along beside the prison wagons, pelting the Charisians with stones picked up from the roadside. At least one prisoner had lost an eye, and another had gone down unconscious when a rock hit him in the head. Zhu didn’t know how much the blow to his skull had to do with it, but the same man had gone berserk the next afternoon and attacked a Guardsman with his bare hands when he and his fellows were released from their wagon for a latrine break. Tahrlsahn would just as soon have left them to foul the wagons with their own wastes, but Father Myrtan, his second-in-command, had convinced him that at least the rudiments of Pasquale’s laws of hygiene had to be observed if they didn’t want the Guardsmen to come under the Archangel’s curse, as well.

Zhu didn’t know about that, but he had a pretty fair notion how foul the prison wagons would smell to anyone unfortunate enough to be escorting them from downwind. That was more than enough to put him on Father Myrtan’s side of that debate, although Tahrlsahn had almost changed his mind and prohibited the stops after all when the screaming Charisian got both hands around a Guardsman’s throat and started beating the man’s head on the ground. Three more Charisians had turned on their captors, as well-less from any real hope of achieving anything, Zhu thought, than out of pure instinct to aid their fellow-and despite the prisoners’ half-starved condition, it had taken over forty guardsmen to subdue the single unlocked wagon’s twenty Charisians.

When it ended, two Guardsmen were seriously injured and the first Charisian and one of his companions were dead. Two more had died over the next day and a half, and six more had received broken bones… not all of them before they were subdued. Sergeant Zhadahng came from the Empire’s Bedard Province in far western West Haven. Nobody was more orthodox than someone from Bedard, especially someone who’d been born a serf like Zhadahng. And no one was more accustomed to receiving-and meting out-brutality than a Bedard serf. There was no doubt in Zhu’s mind that Zhadahng had seen to the administration of a little additional “discipline” on his own initiative.

The captain had chosen not to make an issue out of it in this instance. First, because a little extra emphasis for the prisoners probably wouldn’t hurt anything… except the prisoners, who were heretics and deserved it anyway. And, second (and more to the point), because he had no doubt Tahrlsahn would have supported the sergeant’s actions. He’d certainly brushed aside Father Myrtan’s earlier efforts to convince him to make at least some improvements in the prisoners’ condition. The argument had become heated-dangerously so, Zhu thought-before Father Vyktyr sharply ordered Father Myrtan to be silent. He was hardly likely to support Zhu if he disciplined Zhadahng for something as minor as beating a heretic or two to death. And Tahrlsahn was one of the Grand Inquisitor’s favorites.

Yet what worried him at the moment was less what Zhadahng or his own men might do than what the good citizens of Twyngyth might take it into their minds to do. The convoy’s progress was slow-deliberately so, to make sure there was time for crowds to gather properly in the towns along its route-and that meant there was plenty of time for broadsheets and posters to go up along the way. Literacy was much more common in Dohlar than in Harchong, and even the most ill-educated villager could always find someone to read the latest broadsheet to him. Which meant there’d also been ample opportunity for everyone along the route to discuss all the inequities of the Charisian heretics about to be found-briefly-in their midst. And as they’d drawn gradually closer to Twyngyth, Zhu had noticed a steadily rising level of vituperation and hatred in the broadsheets nailed to the milestones they’d passed along the way.

I wonder how much of that is the Ahlverez family’s doing? he thought. From everything I’ve heard, they wanted the Dohlarans to string these bastards up for what happened to Duke Malikai at Rock Point! And they know we’ve got our hands on “Emperor” C ayleb’s flag captain from that battle, too. I’ll bet they really want to get their hands on him! Stupid of them, of course-nothing they could do to him would be a patch on what the Inquisition’s got waiting in Zion. But none of these damned Dohlarans seem overly blessed with logic.

On the other hand, the Inquisition wanted to make sure it got its hands on Gwylym Manthyr. It wouldn’t thank Tahrlsahn-or Captain Walysh Zhu-if it didn’t, and Zhu rather suspected the Grand Inquisitor himself would make his displeasure known if that happened, even if Tahrlsahn was one of his favorites.

“Forgive me, Father Vyktyr,” he said after a moment, “but I’m a little concerned over the prisoners’ security.” He’d started to use the word “safety” but stopped himself in time.

“What do you mean?” Tahrlsahn’s eyes narrowed.

“Twyngyth is a larger city than any we’ve stopped in so far, Father,” Zhu said in his calmest, most reasonable tone. “The crowds will be a lot thicker, and we’ll be inside the city proper, surrounded by buildings and narrow streets.”

“And your point is, Captain?” Tahrlsahn prompted impatiently.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, Father, the natural anger heresy always arouses seems to be burning especially high here in Malikai. I imagine that has a lot to do with what happened to Duke Malikai at the Battle of Rock Point. What I’m afraid of is that someone carried away by that anger might feel compelled to take God’s justice into his own hands.”

“What do you mean ‘carried away’? Carried away how?”

Zhu wasn’t even tempted to roll his eyes, but he found himself wishing-for far from the first time-that Father Myrtan was in command of the convoy. Tahrlsahn’s burning hatred for any heretic seemed to get in the way of his logical processes from time to time.

Like every time he thinks about them at all! the captain thought dryly.

“Father, it’s my understanding that we’re supposed to deliver the heretics alive and intact to the Inquisition in Zion.” Zhu’s rising inflection and raised eyebrows made the statement a politely phrased question, and Tahrlsahn nodded impatiently.

“What I’m afraid of, Father, is that feelings are running so high here in Twyngyth that someone’s likely to stick a knife into one of them if he gets the opportunity. And in a built-up area like a city, there’s a lot better chance that if some kind of mob mentality builds, they’d be able to rush my men and get through to the heretics. In that case, we could lose dozens of them, Father, in addition to the ones we’re losing from… natural attrition. We’ve already lost eight since leaving Gorath; at that rate, we’ll be lucky to get twenty of them as far as Zion to face the Inquisition.” Zhu was afraid he might be being dangerously blunt, but he saw no other option. “I simply don’t want to lose any of them here by allowing the crowds to get too dense or too close to the wagons.”

Tahrlsahn glared at him for a moment, but then his eyes narrowed, and Zhu could almost see the wheels inside his brain beginning to turn at last. Apparently the captain had finally found an argument Father Myrtan’s appeals to The Book of Pasquale and the Holy Writ had failed to present.

“Very well, Captain Zhu,” the upper-priest finally said. “I’ll leave the security arrangements in your hands. Mind you, I want the Dohlarans to have ample opportunity to bear witness to what happens to heretics! I’m firm on that point. But you’re probably right that letting them too close to the wagons would constitute an unnecessary additional risk. I’ll send a messenger ahead to tell the city authorities we need to clear one of their larger market squares as a place to bivouac overnight. Then we’ll set up a perimeter of-What? Fifteen yards? Twenty?-around the wagons themselves.”

“With your approval, Father, I’d feel more comfortable with twenty.”

“Oh, very well!” Tahrlsahn waved an obviously irritated hand. “Make it twenty, if you think that’s necessary. And remember what I said about keeping the crowd moving, so everyone gets his chance to see them!”

“Of course, Father. I assure you that everyone in Twyngyth will have ample opportunity to see what happens to the defilers of Mother Church.” . III.

HMS Destiny, 54, and HMS Destroyer, 54, King’s Harbor, Helen Island, Kingdom of Old Charis

“’Vast heaving! Avast heaving!” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk shouted, and the capstan stopped turning instantly.

The new-model kraken hung suspended above HMS Destiny ’s deck, gleaming in the sunlight, and its shadow fell across the youthful ensign. He stepped across the bar taut fall leading back through the deck-level snatch block to the capstan, then stood, hands on hips, and glared up at the three-ton hammer of the gun tube suspended from the mainmast pendant and the forecourse’s yardarm. He stood that way for several seconds before he shook his head and turned to the boatswain’s mate who’d been supervising the operation with a disgusted expression.

“Get that gun back down on the dock and rig that sling properly, Selkyr!” he snapped, raising his right hand and jabbing an index finger skyward.

The boatswain’s mate in question was at least twice Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s age, but he looked up, following the ensign’s pointing finger, then cringed. The rope cradle secured around the gun’s trunnions had managed to slip badly off-center. The iron tube had begun to twist sideways, pulling hard against the steadying line rigged from its cascabel to the hook of the winding-tackle’s lower block and threatening to slide completely free of the sling.

“Aye, aye, Sir!” he replied. “Sorry, Sir. Don’t know how that happened.”

“Just get it back down and straighten it out,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said in calmer tones. Then he grinned. “Somehow I don’t think the Captain would thank us for dropping that thing down the main hatch and out the bottom when the dockyard still hasn’t turned us loose!”

“No, Sir, that he wouldn’t,” Selkyr agreed fervently.

“Then see to it,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. “Because he’s not going to be very happy if we don’t get finished on time, either.”

“Aye, Sir.” Selkyr saluted in acknowledgment and turned back to his working party.

Aplyn-Ahrmahk stood back, watching as the men on the capstan began cautiously turning it the other way, leaning back against the capstan bars now to brake its motion as they slackened the fall. The hands tending the guidelines and manning the forebraces swung the yardarm back outboard, and the gun descended once more to the dock beside which Destiny lay moored.

Selkyr was an unhappy man, and he made his displeasure known to the working party as it set about rerigging the sling properly, yet there was a certain restraint in his manner, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk gave a mental nod of approval. The boatswain’s mate was clearly more concerned with seeing to it that his men got the problem fixed and learned not to let it happen again than with pounding whoever had made the mistake this time. A good petty officer-and Ahntahn Selkyr was just that-preferred correction to punishment whenever possible, and that was especially important given the number of green hands currently diluting Destiny ’s normally proficient and well-trained company.

The ship had been required to give up a sizable draft of experienced seamen and petty officers during her stint in dockyard hands. In fact, she’d been raided even more heavily than many of the other ships which were losing trained personnel to form the cadres of new ships’ companies. Aplyn-Ahrmahk suspected Destiny ’s crew quality had something to do with the reason she’d been forced to give up so many more of her people than those other ships had, and he couldn’t help resenting it more than a little.

They probably figure the Captain can always train more, he thought sourly. And I guess it’s a compliment, in a backhanded sort of way. They need good people, and the Captain produces good people… so obviously the thing to do is reward him by taking them all away from him and making him go produce still more of them! It’s just harvesting the natural increase.

He was being unfair to the Navy, and in his calmer moments he knew it. He understood the frantic efforts the Navy was making to man its recently acquired galleons, and he couldn’t quibble with the need to provide the most experienced possible cadres for the newly inducted men going into their crews. The Imperial Charisian Navy had consisted of just over ninety galleons prior to the Battle of the Markovian Sea; now it had over two hundred, courtesy of its construction programs… and the Navy of God and the Imperial Harchongese Navy. Manning even half those new prizes had required an enormous increase in manpower, and manpower was the Empire of Charis’ greatest weakness in its confrontation with the Church of God Awaiting and the huge populations of the mainland realms. It simply didn’t have enough warm bodies to go around.

For the first time in its history, Old Charis faced the threat of being forced to resort to the sort of impressment other navies had routinely employed for centuries. The Crown had always had the authority to impress seamen, but the House of Ahrmahk had been careful not to use it, and for good reason. The fact that the Royal Charisian Navy’s galleys had been manned solely by volunteers built around solid cores of long-service, highly experienced regulars had been its most telling advantage, and they’d been willing to accept a smaller fleet than they could have built in order to maintain that qualitative edge.

With every mainland realm united against the Empire, however, that was a luxury the Imperial Charisian Navy couldn’t afford. It needed as many hulls as it could get, and while galleons didn’t require the hundreds of rowers galleys did, they were far bigger than even Charisian galleys had been and much more heavily armed. Providing them with gun crews and enough trained seamen to manage their powerful sail plans drove the size of their companies up rapidly, and completely filling the “establishment” crew for a galleon like Destiny required approximately four hundred men. With the prizes being put into commission, the Navy’s galleon strength would rise to two hundred and eleven… which would require over eighty-four thousand men. And that didn’t even consider all of the schooners, brigs, and other light warships and dispatch vessels. Or the competition for the strength to man the Navy’s shoreside establishments. Or the requirements of the Marine Corps, or the Imperial Army. Or the fishing fleet. Or the merchant marine upon which the Empire’s prosperity and very survival depended. And while the Crown was finding-somehow-all the men it needed for those requirements, the manufactories producing both the sinews of war and the goods fueling the steadily growing economy-not to mention the farms feeding the Empire’s subjects-still had to be provided for somehow.

So far, enlistment was managing-barely-to meet demands, but an increasing percentage of the Navy’s strength was Emeraldian or Chisholmian, and even the native Old Charisians coming forward boasted a lower percentage of experienced seamen. From what Aplyn-Ahrmahk had seen, the basic quality of the new men was just fine; they were simply less well trained and hardened to the demands of life at sea than the Navy was accustomed to. And even with the newcomers, Destiny ’s official four-hundred-man company was forty-three men short.

Well, he thought, watching the gun begin to rise once more, I guess having too many ships and too few experienced men is a lot better problem to have than the other way around!

Sir Domynyk Staynair leaned back in the window seat, one arm stretched along the top of its cushioned back and his truncated right leg stretched out in front of him, the padded peg resting on a footstool. It was almost the turn of the watch, and the cabin’s skylight was open, admitting the sounds of King’s Harbor and the closer, quieter voices of the officer of the watch and his senior quartermaster as they discussed HMS Destroyer ’s log entry. The more distant cries of gulls and sea wyverns drifted down through it, as well, and wavery patterns of bright light reflected into the cabin through the quarter and stern windows, gleaming on polished bookshelves, sideboards, and tables. It sparkled from the cut crystal of decanters, sending rainbow ripples across the cabin as the galleon stirred gently, and the portraits of Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan faced each other across the deck’s thick carpets. Those carpets had been a gift from Empress Sharleyan, and their deep-toned color went just a bit oddly with the gayer fabric of the chair coverings Rock Point favored. The table at the center of the cabin was buried under charts, dividers, and compasses, and Zhastrow Tymkyn, his new secretary, sat at his small desk to one side, pen scratching as he annotated his minutes of the high admiral’s last conference.

The cabin door opened, and Rock Point’s even newer flag lieutenant ushered another officer through it.

Lieutenant Haarlahm Mahzyngail had stepped into Lieutenant Erayksyn’s position less than two five-days earlier, and he still seemed out of place aboard a Charisian warship. Not because of any lack of competency, but because his fair hair, blue eyes, and pronounced Chisholmian accent remained such a novelty here in Old Charis. They were becoming more commonplace, though, as more and more Chisholmians enlisted in the Navy. It was surprising, really. Given the Royal Army’s traditional prestige in Chisholm, Rock Point would have expected any adventurous young lad from that island to have been army mad, not drawn to a naval career. As things were working out, though, he’d actually received an only half-humorous protest from the Duke of Eastshare, the Imperial Army’s commander, about the Navy’s “poaching” on his private preserve.

Probably has something to do with the fact that we’ve kicked the Loyalists’ asses at sea every time we’ve crossed swords, he thought. Except, he corrected himself much more grimly, where Thirsk is concerned, of course.

That thought hit harder than usual as the overland convoy carrying Gwylym Manthyr and his men crept steadily towards Zion. Grief for a friend and anger at his own helplessness seethed just below the surface for a moment, but he made himself push those emotions back into the depths. It felt disloyal, yet there wasn’t anything he could do to change what was going to happen, and Gwylym wouldn’t have thanked him for letting friendship distract him from his own duties and responsibilities.

“Captain Yairley, High Admiral,” Mahzyngail announced, and Rock Point nodded. The young Chisholmian was still feeling his way into his duties, although one might not have supposed that from his confident demeanor. He wasn’t yet as familiar with his admiral’s professional and personal relationships as he might have been, however, and he’d decided-wisely, in Rock Point’s opinion-to err on the side of formality until he got them all straightened out in his own mind.

“So I see,” Rock Point said, and smiled at the young man. “For future reference, Haarlahm, Sir Dunkyn is an old acquaintance. I know him well. So be sure you keep an eye on the silverware when he’s around.”

Mahzyngail’s nod of acknowledgment bobbled noticeably on the last sentence. He froze for just a moment, then completed the movement.

“I’ll strive to bear that in mind, Sir,” he said, and Rock Point chuckled.

“See you do,” he said, then held out his right hand to Yairley. “I’m going to stay moored right where I am. Rank has its privileges and I’ll be damned if I’ll clump around when I don’t have to. Sit.”

He pointed with his left hand while the two of them clasped arms, and Yairley settled into the indicated chair with a small smile of his own. He was a naturally less demonstrative man than Rock Point, and more than one of his fellows had put him down as a dour, fussy worrier. There might actually be some accuracy in that, the high admiral thought, but only a very small accuracy.

“How’s Destiny coming?” he demanded, coming straight to the point.

“The dockyard says I can have her back Thursday.” Yairley shrugged. “I’ll believe that when I see it, but I think we probably will be able to warp her out to the roadstead sometime in the next five-day or so. We’re taking her gundeck guns back onboard this afternoon, the carronades will come back aboard tomorrow morning, and I’m reasonably satisfied with her repairs. The sail loft’s running behind, though. That’s why I’m doubtful about Thursday. Once they get the new canvas delivered, though, we’ll be in reasonably good shape.”

“Careless of you to break her that way in the first place,” Rock Point said with a broad smile, and Yairley smiled back with considerably less amusement.

“So you’ll be ready to take her back to sea before the end of the month?” the high admiral continued.

“I don’t think we’ll be anything like properly worked up by then, but, yes, Sir.” Yairley’s shoulders shrugged very slightly. “I’ve got a lot of inexperienced men and outright landsmen to turn into trained seamen somehow, and getting them to sea’s probably the best way to be about it.”

“You’re not the only one with that problem, believe me!” Rock Point said sourly. He looked out the quarter windows at the busy panorama of King’s Harbor. “The only thing worse than figuring out where to get the men we need is figuring out how to pay them once we’ve got them.” He grimaced. “I used to think it was funny watching Bryahn and Ironhill arm wrestling over the budget. Somehow it’s not so humorous anymore.”

He gazed at the anchorage for another moment, then turned back to Yairley.

“Did you go over those notes I sent you about Ahlfryd’s new ‘high-angle’ guns?”

“Yes, Sir. Very interesting stuff, although I was a bit at a loss as to why you were telling me about them.” Rock Point raised an eyebrow and Yairley shrugged. “It was pretty obvious he must’ve been working on them for some time, especially if they’re as close to ready to deploy as your memo suggested. Since I hadn’t heard a whisper about them-and no one else had, either, as far as I know-I have to assume they were another one of Baron Seamount’s ‘Top Secret, Cut Your Own Throat After Reading’ projects. Not the sort of thing a galleon captain would really need to know about, I’d’ve thought.”

“No?” Rock Point smiled a bit oddly. “Well, you did a good job convincing Jahras to stay in port when Harpahr and Sun Rising came calling last year, Dunkyn,” he went on in an obvious non sequitur. “And even with that little… excitement of yours in Scrabble Sound, you’ve done even better, since. So I’m afraid I’m taking Destiny away from you, in a manner of speaking.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?” Yairley’s tone was considerably sharper than he usually allowed himself, and Rock Point smiled slightly.

“I said ‘in a manner of speaking,’” he pointed out. “Which is my way of telling you you’ve been promoted to rear admiral. Congratulations, Dunkyn.”

Yairley’s eyes widened, and the high admiral chuckled.

“I hate to say this, but you didn’t get your streamer just because we need flag officers so badly with all this sudden expansion. You also got it because you damned well deserve it. Frankly, it’s overdue, but we also need good galleon captains, and you’re one of the best we’ve got. As a matter of fact, I actually hesitated about submitting your name to His Majesty. Not because of any reservations on my part, but because I’m only too well aware of how badly we’re going to need those same good captains to lick all these newcomers into shape.”

“I’m honored, Sir,” Yairley said after a moment, “although I’m going to hate giving up Destiny. If I may, Lieutenant Lathyk’s overdue for promotion and he-”

“To repeat myself, I did say you’d be giving her up ‘in a manner of speaking,’ Dunkyn. I assumed that given your choice of flagships, you’d probably pick her. Was I correct?”

“Yes, Sir. Of course!”

“Well, unless I’m mistaken, it’s still a flag officer’s privilege to request the flag captain of his choice. Now I’d assumed someone of your well-known demanding disposition wouldn’t have put up with someone like Lathyk unless he was at least marginally competent. If I was wrong, if you really want him promoted to, say, commander and given one of the new brigs instead, I suppose I could go back to His Majesty and change my current recommendation.”

“And that recommendation would be precisely what, Sir?” Yairley regarded his superior with a distinctly suspicious expression.

“That he be promoted to captain immediately and assigned as HMS Destiny ’s commanding officer.”

“Upon mature consideration, Sir, I see no reason you should put yourself to the trouble or inconvenience His Majesty by changing your recommendation.”

“I thought that was how you’d see it.” Rock Point chuckled, then heaved himself to his feet. “Come take a look at the chart.”

He crossed to the table, Yairley at his side, and the two of them gazed down at the huge chart of the Gulf of Mathyas and much smaller Gulf of Jahras. Rock Point leaned over and thumped an index finger on Silkiah Bay.

“As you’ll know better than most, we’ve got an awful lot of ‘Silkiahan’ galleons moving in and out of Silk Town with Charisian cargoes,” he said. “Now, I’ve never been one for subordinating military decisions to economic ones, but in this case we’re talking about a big enough piece of our total trade to make anyone nervous. To be honest, that’s one reason we’ve stayed away from”-his fingertip slid down to the southwest and tapped once-“Desnair and the Gulf of Jahras. We’re not certain why Clyntahn hasn’t made a bigger push to shut down the Silkiahans’ and the Siddarmarkians’ defiance of his embargo, and we haven’t wanted to do anything to draw his attention to Silk Town or change his mind in that regard. It’s not just good for our own manufactories and merchant marine, Dunkyn. It’s steadily undermining the Group of Four’s authority in both the Republic and the Grand Duchy, and it’s simultaneously drawing more and more Siddarmarkians and Silkiahans into our arms, whether they realize it or not.

“Nonetheless,” he tapped the city of Iythria, “it’s time we did something about the Desnairian fleet. Even after the Battle of the Markovian Sea, we actually don’t have much better than parity with the combined Desnairian and Dohlaran fleets. I’d like better numbers than that, of course, but while Gorath Bay and Iythria are barely thirteen hundred miles apart in a straight line, they’re damned near seventeen thousand miles apart as a ship sails. That’s just a tad far for them to be supporting one another if we should decide to concentrate our strength in order to overwhelm one of them in isolation, wouldn’t you say?”

He raised his eyebrows, and Yairley heard something suspiciously like a snort of amusement from Zhastrow Tymkyn’s direction.

“Yes, Sir. I think I’d agree with that,” the newly promoted admiral replied.

“I’m glad to hear that. Because, next month, you’re going to help me take advantage of that little fact. In fact, you’re going to be carrying my dispatches to Admiral Shain ahead of the rest of the fleet… and I’m sending some new ships with you. Which is why you got that memo about the high-angle guns you were wondering about.”

Rock Point smiled, and this time there was no humor at all in the expression. . IV.

Royal College, Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis

Dr. Rahzhyr Mahklyn looked up as someone knocked on his office door.

“Yes?”

“Father Paityr is here, Doctor,” his senior assistant, Dairak Bowave, announced through the closed door.

“Ah! Excellent, Dairak! Please show the Father in!”

Mahklyn stood behind his desk, beaming as Bowave escorted Paityr Wylsynn into his office. It was the first time the intendant had actually visited the Royal College, and Mahklyn knew most of his colleagues were a little nervous about his decision to do so now. They’d skirted the edge of what Mother Church deemed acceptable knowledge for so long that having the official keeper of the Inquisition in Old Charis actually in their midst was… disconcerting.

Of course, those worried colleagues of his didn’t know everything he knew about Paityr Wylsynn.

“Come in, Father!” Mahklyn held out his right hand. “It’s an honor to welcome you.”

“And it’s a privilege to be here, Doctor.” Wylsynn took the proffered hand, and Mahklyn surveyed the younger man’s expression carefully. Wylsynn was obviously aware of his intense regard, but he only looked back, meeting the older man’s eyes levelly. “I’ve been away from my own office too long,” he continued, “but there are times when anyone needs a bit of a sabbatical. A retreat to think things through and settle oneself back down, you might say.”

“I understand entirely, Father. Please, have a seat.”

Mahklyn escorted Wylsynn to the armchairs arranged across a small table from one another near one of the large office’s windows. They sat and Bowave set a tray on the table between them. It held two tall, delicate glasses and a crystal pitcher beaded with moisture, and Wylsynn’s eyebrows rose as he beheld it.

“A sinful luxury, I know, Father,” Mahklyn said wryly. “For decades I was perfectly happy living a properly ascetic scholarly existence in the old College down by the docks. Then it burned to the ground and His Majesty insisted we relocate to the Palace. Little did I realize that would be just the first crack in my armor of austerity!”

He poured chilled lemonade into the glasses, and ice-actual ice, Wylsynn realized-tapped musically against the inside of the pitcher.

“His Majesty insists we take advantage of his hospitality,” the doctor continued, handing a glass to his guest, “which includes the royal icehouse. I tried manfully, I assure you, to resist the temptation of that sinful luxury, but my younger granddaughter Eydyth discovered its existence and I was doomed. Doomed, I tell you!”

Wylsynn laughed and accepted the glass, then sipped gracefully. Ice and icehouses had been much more easily come by in the cool northern land of his birth than in excessively sunny Charis. There was ice on the very tallest mountains even here in Charis and even in summer, but getting to it was far more difficult, and there were no conveniently frozen winter lakes from which it might be harvested, either. That made it a scandalously pricey luxury in Tellesberg.

“Will there be anything else, Doctor?” Bowave inquired, and Mahklyn shook his head.

“No, Dairak. I think the Father and I will manage just fine. If I do need anything, I’ll call, I promise.”

“Of course.” Bowave bobbed a bow in Mahklyn’s direction, then bowed rather more formally to Wylsynn. “Father Paityr,” he said, and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“This is good,” Wylsynn said, taking another swallow of lemonade. “And I do appreciate the ice, although it’s really too expensive to be wasting on me.”

“That’s what I told Eydyth when she discovered it,” Mahklyn said dryly. “Unfortunately, young Zhan was in the vicinity at the time.” He rolled his eyes. “I think Princess Mahrya’s a very good influence on him in most ways, but he’s acquiring the habit of largesse, especially when she’s looking and he can impress her with it. Mind you, she isn’t impressed by it-she’s too much her parents’ daughter for that sort of nonsense-but he doesn’t realize that yet, and he’s a teenager who’s discovered just how attractive his fiancee actually is. So when he heard me telling Eydyth I thought it would be a bad idea, he insisted we make use of it. And, to be fair, if you pack it in enough sawdust you can actually ship ice all the way from Chisholm to Tellesberg in the middle of summer and get here with as much as half of your original cargo. Which, given the price in Tellesberg, is enough to make a very healthy profit!”

“I suspect there’s going to be an even stronger market for ice-makers in Charis than there is for air-conditioning, when the time finally comes,” Paitryk said, looking across at his host.

Mahklyn sat very still for a moment, looking back at him thoughtfully. Then he gave a slow nod.

“I imagine there is, Father. And we could probably actually get away with a compressed-air plant to manufacture it without worrying about the Proscriptions. I’m sure Edwyrd could even power it with one of his waterwheels.”

“Please, Doctor.” Wylsynn closed his eyes and shuddered theatrically. “I can already hear the Temple Loyalists’ outrage! Much as I like cold drinks, I’d really prefer to avoid that battle if we can. After all,” his eyes opened again, meeting Mahklyn’s, “we’re going to have so many others to fight first.”

“True.” Mahklyn nodded again. “May I ask how you feel about that, Father?”

“About kicking over the traces where the Proscriptions are concerned?” Wylsynn gave a short, sharp crack of laughter. “That doesn’t bother me at all, trust me! Not now. But if you mean how do I feel about discovering the truth about the Church and the ‘Archangels,’ that’s a bit more complicated. There’s still a part of me that expects the Rakurai to come crashing through the window any minute now for my daring to even question, far less reject, the will of Langhorne. And there’s another part of me that wants to march straight into the Cathedral next Wednesday and proclaim the truth to the entire congregation. And there’s another part of me that’s just plain pissed off at God for letting all this happen.”

He paused, and then sat back in his chair and laughed again, far more gently, as he saw Mahklyn’s expression.

“Sorry, Doctor. I imagine that was a little more answer than you really wanted.”

“Not so much more than I wanted as more than I expected, Father. I’m relieved to hear you’re angry, though. It certainly beats some other reactions I could think of… as long as the anger’s directed at the right targets, of course.”

“It took me a while to accept that same conclusion, Doctor, and I won’t pretend I’m as comfortable as I was back in the days of my blissful ignorance. But I’ve also discovered at least a shadow of Archbishop Maikel’s serenity lurking in the depths of my own soul, although it’s going to be a while yet before I can be as… tranquil about all of this as he is. On the other hand, I realized I wouldn’t be angry at God as I am unless I still believed in Him, which was something of a relief. And along the way, I’ve also discovered my belief is even more precious, in some ways, because it no longer rests upon the incontrovertible proof of the historical record. I almost suspect that that’s the true secret of the Archbishop’s faith.”

“In what way?” Mahklyn asked with genuine interest. He’d found himself slipping into what Owl’s library records would have described as a Deist mindset, and he didn’t know whether or not to envy Maikel Staynair’s fiercer, more personal faith.

“The real secret of the strength of Archbishop Maikel’s faith is almost absurdly simple,” Wylsynn told him. “In fact, he’s explained it to us dozens of times in sermons, every time he tells us there comes a point at which any child of God has to decide what he truly believes. Decide what he believes, Doctor. Not simply accept, not simply never bother to question, based on ‘what everyone knows’ or on The Testimonies or ‘the Archangel Chihiro’s’ Holy Writ, but decide for himself.” The young man who’d been a Schuelerite shrugged. “It’s that simple and that hard, and I’m not quite there yet.”

“Neither am I,” Mahklyn confessed.

“I suspect very few people in history, whether here on Safehold or back on Old Terra, have ever matched our Archbishop’s personal faith,” Wylsynn pointed out.

“A personal faith which, thank God, doesn’t prevent him from being one of the most pragmatic men I’ve ever met,” Mahklyn said.

“As long as we’re not talking about something which would compromise his own principles, at least,” Wylsynn agreed.

“And you feel the same way?” Mahklyn asked quietly.

“And I’m trying very hard to feel the same way.” Wylsynn quirked a brief smile. “I’m afraid I haven’t quite decided where my principles are going to settle now that I’ve learned the truth. In fact, I’m afraid I’m discovering that I have very few principles-or hesitations, at least-when it comes to considering things to do to those bastards in Zion.”

“I can work with that,” Mahklyn said with an answering and far colder smile. “Of course, I’ve been thinking about it for a while longer than you have.”

“True, but I have a very personal motivation for seeing every one of them dangling at the end of a rope, just like those butchers in Ferayd.”

“By the oddest turn of fate, I believe that’s precisely what Their Majesties and Captain Athrawes have in mind, Father.”

“In that case, why don’t we see what we could do to expedite that moment?” Wylsynn’s naturally warm eyes were as cold as the gray ice of Hsing-wu’s Passage in winter. “I’ve been giving some thought to Commander Mahndrayn and Baron Seamount’s more recent ideas, and even more to Master Howsmyn’s. I don’t believe the Baron’s notions are going to present any serious problems, but Master Howsmyn’s getting close to the Proscriptions’ limits. I can probably cover his interest in hydraulics by an extension of my attestation for his accumulators, but his proposed steam engines clearly cross the line into exactly the sort of knowledge Jwo-jeng and Langhorne wanted to make certain we’d never go anywhere near.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“In my present mood, that’s actually a powerful recommendation for building the things tomorrow,” Wylsynn said dryly. “Nonetheless, we’re obviously going to have problems if we don’t prepare the ground carefully. Fortunately, all the years I spent condemning intendants and inquisitors who connived at getting around the Proscriptions in return for the proper considerations gave me all sorts of examples of logic-chopping when I approached my new task, and it occurred to me that if I simply borrowed a page from their book, the steam engine problem might not be so insurmountable as I’d first thought.”

“Indeed?” Mahklyn leaned back and raised his eyebrows hopefully.

“Of course not!” Wylsynn assured him. “It’s very simple, Doctor! We’ve used steam and pressure cookers since the Creation in things like food preparation and preservation. There’s nothing new or tainted about generating steam! Who could possibly object to someone’s doing that? And when you come right down to it, producing steam the way Master Howsmyn is proposing is simply a way of generating wind pressure on demand, isn’t it? Of course it is! And we’ve used windmills since the Creation, too. For that matter, wind is one of Jwo-jeng’s allowable trinity of wind, water, and muscle! So except for the novel notion of making wind where and how it’s most urgently required, I see no barrier under the Proscriptions to the development of Master Howsmyn’s new device.”

He leaned back in his own chair and smiled broadly at his host.

“Do you?” he asked. . V.

King’s Harbor, Helen Island; Navy Powder Mill #3, Big Tirian Island; and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg Kingdom of Old Charis

“Have you got those new fuse notes for Master Howsmyn, Urvyn?”

“Right here, Sir,” Urvyn Mahndrayn said patiently, tapping the leather briefcase clasped under his left arm with his right forefinger. “And I also have the improved high-angle gun sketches, and the memoranda High Admiral Rock Point wants me to deliver, and the memo from Baron Ironhill, and your invitation for him to dine with you when he visits Tellesberg next month.” He smiled at his superior and raised his eyebrows innocently. “Was there anything else, Sir?”

“You,” Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, said severely, swivel chair squeaking as he leaned back, the better to contemplate the commander, “are an insubordinate young whelp, aren’t you?”

“Never, Sir!” Mahndrayn shook his head, expression more innocent than ever. “How could you possibly think such a thing?”

“After working with you for the last couple of years?” Seamount snorted. “Trust me, it’s easy.”

“I’m shocked to hear you say that, Sir,” Mahndrayn said mournfully.

“Disappointed if I didn’t, more likely!”

Mahndrayn only grinned, and Seamount chuckled.

Sunlight poured into the baron’s office. He had a marvelous view out over King’s Harbor from his windows, although some people might have felt just a little uncomfortable knowing that the fortress’ main powder magazine was directly underneath them. The slate wall panels were covered with their usual smudgy chalked notations, at least a quarter of which were in Mahndrayn’s handwriting, not Seamount’s. Stacks of memos and folders of correspondence littered the baron’s desk in seeming confusion, although Mahndrayn knew they were actually carefully organized.

“Are you sure my absence isn’t going to knock anything off schedule, Sir?” the commander asked more seriously, and Seamount shrugged.

“I realize this may come as another shock to you, Commander, but I’d been looking after myself on my own for quite some time before you happened along. I imagine I’ll be able to fumble through somehow until you get back,” he said dryly.

Mahndrayn nodded, although he and Seamount both knew he’d been gradually assuming more and more responsibilities as Seamount’s assistant and executive officer-what High Admiral Lock Island had called a “chief of staff.” And a trip to Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s massive foundry complex wasn’t exactly a jaunt to Tellesberg, either; it was well over eight hundred miles, which would take a full five-day each way. That was going to take a serious bite out of Mahndrayn’s usual schedule, and a lot of additional work was going to end up dumped back on Seamount’s desk while he was away.

“I think we’ve got everything covered,” the baron went on, more serious now. “I won’t pretend it’s not going to be a pain, and I don’t want you away any longer than you have to be, but we’ve been letting stuff that needs to be handed off to Master Howsmyn pile up too long because both of us were too busy to make the trip. If we’re going to meet High Admiral Rock Point’s schedule, we can’t afford to let that go on. Which means one of us has to go, since no one else is cleared for all of this material, and I just plain can’t. Which is why-”

He gestured at the briefcase under Mahndrayn’s arm, and the commander nodded again.

“Yes, Sir. I think Master Howsmyn and I can probably cover everything in one day. And I promise I’ll get back here as quickly as I can.”

“Quickly is good, but the whole point of this trip is to give Master Howsmyn the chance to ask any questions he needs to face-to-face. Don’t rush your meeting with him. Better to take an extra day, or even two or three, than for one of us to have to make the same trip again.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“I’m sure you do. And give your cousin my regards.”

“I will, Sir.”

“Good. Now go.” Seamount pointed at the office door, and Mahndrayn smiled, saluted, and obeyed the command.

“Urvyn! This is a surprise,” Trai Sahlavahn said as the yeoman ushered his cousin into his office. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“I’m on my way to see Master Howsmyn,” Mahndrayn explained, crossing the office to clasp Sahlavahn’s offered forearm. “Big Tirian’s not very far out of the way, so I thought I’d drop by.”

“I see.”

Sahlavahn tilted his head to one side, regarding his cousin speculatively. Mahndrayn’s intensity and energy frequently fooled people into thinking he was impetuous, or at least impulsive, but Sahlavahn knew better. While he might be prone to rushing off in two or three directions at once, the commander had a remarkable ability to keep everything he was doing organized, balanced, and far more tightly scheduled than anyone else realized. The term “multi-tasking” was one of many which had been lost on Safehold, but if there’d been anyone on the planet it applied to, it would have been Urvyn Mahndrayn. That was something he had in common with Baron Seamount, which was one of the many reasons the two of them complemented one another so well.

But it was also the reason Sahlavahn rather doubted his cousin had “just decided” to drop in on him. True, Big Tirian Island did lie about midway between Helen Island and Port Ithmyn, but Mahndrayn wasn’t the sort to take time off for personal visits when he was on official business. Besides, he and Sahlavahn exchanged letters on a regular basis, so it wasn’t as if they had a lot of private family matters to catch up on.

“Are you going to be here overnight?” he asked, leading the way to the windows overlooking Eydyth Sound, the channel between Big Tirian and the mainland portion of the Duchy of Tirian.

Although Sahlavahn’s command-officially, Navy Powder Mill #3, but more generally known as the Hairatha Mill-was officially part of the port city of Hairatha, it was actually located over a mile north of the main port. For fairly obvious reasons, really, given the nature of what it produced and the quantities in which it produced it. At any given moment, there was a minimum of several hundred tons of gunpowder in the Hairatha Mill’s storage magazines, and no one wanted those magazines too close to a major city. Then there was the minor fact that Hairatha was one of the Navy’s main bases and dockyards. Losing that would have been just a trifle inconvenient, as well, he supposed.

“Probably not overnight,” Mahndrayn said, following him to the window and gazing across the twenty-six-mile-wide sound at the green blur of the mainland. “I’ve got a lot to discuss with Master Howsmyn, and Baron Seamount needs me back at King’s Harbor as quickly as I can get there.”

“I see,” Sahlavahn said again, and turned to face him. “So why do I have the feeling you didn’t come four or five hours out of your way just for a family visit with one of your favorite cousins?”

“Because I didn’t,” Mahndrayn half sighed.

“Then why did you come? Really?” Sahlavahn raised an eyebrow, and Mahndrayn shrugged.

“Because I came across a discrepancy I hope is just a clerical error,” he said.

“You hope it’s a clerical error?”

“Well, if it’s not, then I think we may have a fairly significant problem.”

“You’re beginning to make me nervous, Urvyn,” Sahlavahn said frankly, and Mahndrayn shrugged again. Then he set his briefcase on the window ledge in front of him, opened it, extracted a sheet of paper, and handed it across.

Sahlavahn accepted the sheet, tipped it slightly to catch the better light from the window, and squinted nearsightedly as he looked at it. Then he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face with a perplexed expression.

“This is what you came to see me about?” He waved it gently. “Last month’s production return and shipping summary?”

“Yes,” Mahndrayn said flatly, and Sahlavahn frowned.

“I don’t understand, Urvyn. What about it?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Sahlavahn’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s a discrepancy, Trai,” Mahndrayn said. “A forty-five- ton discrepancy.”

“ What? ” Sahlavahn’s frown disappeared and his eyes widened abruptly.

“The amount you shipped doesn’t match the amount you delivered. Look at the numbers for the June fifteenth shipment.” Mahndrayn tapped the top of the sheet. “You loaded one thousand and seventy-five tons of powder in a total of six shipments, but when the individual quantities of each shipment are totaled, they only come to one thousand and thirty tons.” He tapped the foot of the sheet. “There’s forty-five tons missing, Trai.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Sahlavahn said.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Mahndrayn replied. “So I checked the numbers three times, and they came out the same way each time.” He shrugged and smiled crookedly. “You know how I am. I couldn’t get my brain to turn loose of it, so I pulled the detail sheets and went over the numbers in each shipment’s individual consignments one by one. And I found the problem right here, I think.” He leaned over the sheet and found the specific entry he wanted. “Right here. Somebody dropped a decimal point. I think this was supposed to be a fifty-ton consignment, but it’s listed as only five tons.”

“So somebody just made a mistake, is what you’re saying?”

“Like I said, I hope it’s just a clerical error. But this shipment was supposed to come to King’s Harbor, Trai. So I went and checked… and five tons is exactly what we received. So either you have an extra forty-five tons of gunpowder still in inventory here at Hairatha, or else we have forty-five tons of unaccounted for gunpowder floating around somewhere.”

“Langhorne!” Sahlavahn looked at his cousin, face pale. “I hope to God you’re right about its being a clerical error! Give me just a second.”

He crossed to his desk, sat, and pulled a pair of thick ledger books from one of its drawers. He picked up the reading glasses from the corner of his blotter, perched them on the tip of his nose, and consulted the sheet of paper Mahndrayn had handed him. Then he set aside the topmost ledger book, opened the bottom one, and ran his finger down one of the neatly tabulated columns.

“According to the manifest, your ‘missing’ gunpowder came out of Magazine Six,” he said, looking up over the tops of his glasses. His color was a little better, but his expression remained drawn. “Assuming it’s a clerical error and the additional forty-five tons was never loaded, that’s where it should still be. I assume Baron Seamount would like me to go see whether or not it’s still there?”

He managed a wan smile, and Mahndrayn chuckled.

“Actually, I haven’t discussed it with the Baron yet,” he said. “To be honest, I’m almost certain it really is a simple error-we’d certainly only requested five tons, not fifty! -but I figured this was the sort of thing I should make sure about. And since I was going to be headed up this way, it seemed simplest to discuss it with you personally. Assuming it is an error, you’re the one in the best position to straighten it out. And on the off chance that it isn’t an error, that somebody’s playing clever-buggers with our powder shipments, the less attention we draw to it until we’ve figured out what’s going on, the better.”

“Langhorne, Urvyn-you didn’t even mention this to Baron Seamount?” Sahlavahn took off his glasses and shook his head at his cousin. “If someone’s ‘playing clever-buggers’ with something like this, we need to get him and Baron Wave Thunder informed as quickly as possible! That’s a lot of gunpowder!”

“I know. I just wanted to make sure it really was missing before I started running around screaming,” Mahndrayn said. “I mean, clerical error’s far and away the most likely answer, and I didn’t want the Baron- either of the Barons, now that I think about it-to think I was getting hysterical over nothing.”

“Well, I suppose I can understand that.”

Sahlavahn closed the ledger and stood, resting one hand on its cover for a moment while he frowned down at it, his eyes anxious. His face remained pale and drawn, and he seemed to be thinking hard, Mahndrayn noticed, and it was hard to blame him. As he’d said, forty-five tons was a lot of gunpowder-enough for almost ten thousand full-charge shots from a long thirty-pounder-and the notion that he might have lost track of that much explosives had to be a sobering reflection. Then the captain drew a deep breath and crossed the office to take his swordbelt from the wall rack. He buckled it and settled it methodically into place, took down his hat from the same rack, and turned to his cousin.

“Come on. The simplest way to see whether it’s there or not is to go take a look. Care for a walk?”

“Stop,” Captain Sahlavahn said as he and Mahndrayn reached a heavily timbered, locked door set into a grassy hillside.

A small, green-painted storage shed stood beside the door, and the captain opened its door.

“Here.” He took a pair of felt slippers from a pigeonholed shelf with two dozen compartments and handed them across. “These should fit, if I remember your boot size. Speaking of which-boots, I mean-they get left here.”

He pointed into the shed, and Mahndrayn nodded. Both of them removed their Navy boots, setting them under the shelving, then pulled on the slippers. Despite every precaution, the possibility of loose grains of powder on the magazine floor was very real, and a spark from an iron shoe nail or even the friction between a leather sole and the floor could have unpleasant consequences.

Sahlavahn waited until Mahndrayn had his slippers on, then unlocked the magazine door.

“Follow me,” he said, and led the way into a brick-walled passageway.

There was another heavy, locked door at its end, and a lighter door set into the passageway’s side. Sahlavahn opened the unlocked door into a long, narrow room. Its right wall, the one paralleling the surface of the hillside into which the magazine had been built, was solid brick, but its left wall was a series of barred glass windows, and a half-dozen large lanterns hung from hooks in its ceiling. Sahlavahn drew one of the new Shan-wei’s candles from his pocket, struck it on the brick wall, and lit two of the lanterns from its sputtering, hissing flame.

“That should be enough for now,” he said. He waved out the Shan-wei’s candle, moistened his fingertips and pinched them together on the spent stem to be sure it was fully extinguished, then stepped back out into the passageway and closed the side door behind him.

He made sure it was securely shut before he unlocked the inner door, and Mahndrayn heartily approved of his caution. The last thing anyone wanted inside a powder magazine was a live flame, which was the reason for the lantern room; the light spilling through its carefully sealed windows would provide them with illumination without actually carrying a lamp into the magazine itself. At the same time, the possibility of powder dust drifting out of the opened magazine and into the lantern room was something to be avoided. It was far less likely to happen now than it would have been just three or four years ago, of course. The new grained powder didn’t separate into its constituent ingredients the way the old-fashioned meal powder had, which meant it didn’t produce the explosive fog powder shipments had all too often trailed behind them. But as someone who worked regularly with explosives, Mahndrayn was in favor of taking every possible precaution where this much gunpowder was concerned.

Sahlavahn opened the inner door-this one fitted with felted gaskets-and the two of them entered the magazine proper. Barrels of powder were stacked neatly, separated by convenient avenues to facilitate handling them with all the caution they deserved. It was cool and dry, just the way it was supposed to be, and Mahndrayn stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust fully to the relatively dim illumination coming from the lantern room.

“It looks pretty nearly full,” he said. “How are we going to tell if-?”

His voice cut off abruptly as the point of his cousin’s sword drove into the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord and killing him almost instantly.

“Captain Sahlavahn!” the shift supervisor said in surprise. “I didn’t expect you this afternoon, Sir!”

“I know.” The captain looked a little distracted-possibly even a little pale-the supervisor thought, but he spoke with his usual courtesy. “I just thought I’d drop by.” The supervisor’s expression must have given him away, because Sahlavahn shook his head with a chuckle which might have sounded just a bit forced if someone had been listening for it. “Not because I think anything’s wrong! I just like to look things over once in a while.”

“Of course, Sir. Let me-oh, I see you already have slippers.”

“Yes.” Sahlavahn looked down at the felt slippers on his feet. They were a little dirty and tattered-looking, the supervisor thought. “I thought it would be simpler to leave my boots in my office, since I had these lying around in one of my desk drawers,” the captain explained, and the supervisor nodded.

“Of course, Sir. Do you want an escort?”

“I believe I’m adequately familiar with the facility,” Sahlavahn said dryly.

“Of course! I didn’t mean-”

“Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant.” Sahlavahn patted him lightly on the arm. “I didn’t think you did.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The supervisor stood respectfully to escort Sahlavahn out of his office. He accompanied the captain into the anteroom and waited until Sahlavahn had left, then turned to one of his clerks. Like everyone who worked in the powder mill proper, the clerk was already in slippers, and the supervisor twitched his head after the vanished captain.

“Quick, Pahrkyr! Nip around the side and warn Lieutenant Mahrstahn Captain Sahlavahn’s on his way!”

“Yes, Sir!”

The clerk dashed out of the anteroom, and the supervisor returned to his own office wondering what bee had gotten into the Old Man’s bonnet. It wasn’t like the perpetually efficient, always well-organized Captain Sahlavahn to just drop by this way.

The supervisor was just settling into his chair once again when he, his clerks, Captain Sahlavahn, and the one hundred and three other men currently working in Powder Mill #3 all died in a monstrous blast of fire and fury. A chain of explosions rolled through the powder mill like Langhorne’s own Rakurai, rattling every window in Hairatha. Debris vomited into the sky, much of it on fire, trailing smoke in obscenely graceful arcs as it soared outward, then came crashing down in fresh fire and ruin. It shattered barracks and administrative buildings like an artillery bombardment, setting more fires, maiming and killing. Voices screamed and stunned men wheeled towards the disaster in disbelief. Then alarm bells began a frenzied clangor and the men who’d frozen in shock ran frantically into the fire and chaos and the devastation looking for lives to save.

Eleven minutes later magazines Six, Seven, and Eight exploded, as well.

“It’s not looking any better, is it?” Cayleb Ahrmahk’s voice was flat and hard, and Prince Nahrmahn shook his head.

The two of them sat in a private sitting room located off the room which had been Cayleb’s grandfather’s library. That library-added to generously by King Haarahld-had long since outgrown the chamber and been moved to larger quarters, and Cayleb had had the old library converted into a working office near the imperial suite. Now he and Nahrmahn sat looking out the windows which faced north, out across the waterfront and the blue expanse of Howell Bay in the general direction of Big Tirian Island. They didn’t actually see the bay, however. Big Tirian was almost six hundred miles from where they sat, but both of them were gazing at the imagery relayed from Owl’s SNARCs.

“I don’t think it is going to look any better,” Nahrmahn said quietly, looking at the shattered, smoking hole and the demolished buildings around it which had been one of the Empire’s largest and most important powder mills, and shook his head sadly. “I think all we can do is bury the dead and rebuild from scratch.”

“I know.” It was obvious the financial cost of rebuilding was the least of Cayleb’s concerns at this moment. “I just-” He shook his own head, the movement choppier and angrier than Nahrmahn’s headshake had been. “We’ve been so lucky about avoiding this kind of accident. I just can’t believe we’ve let something like this happen.”

“We didn’t,” Nahrmahn said, and Cayleb looked at him sharply as he heard the iron in the Emeraldian prince’s voice.

“What do you mean?” the emperor asked sharply.

“I mean this didn’t just ‘happen,’ Your Majesty. And it wasn’t an accident, either.” Nahrmahn met his gaze, his normally mild brown eyes hard. “It was deliberate. An act of sabotage.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Indeed I am, Your Majesty.” Nahrmahn’s voice was grim. “We may never be able to prove it, but I’m positive in my own mind.”

Cayleb pushed back in his armchair and regarded his imperial councilor for intelligence narrowly. No one else in Tellesberg, aside from the other members of the ‘inner circle,’ knew anything about the disaster at Hairatha, and no one would until sometime the next day. That rather restricted the number of people with whom they could discuss it, but Maikel Staynair, his younger brother, Ehdwyrd Howsmyn, and Bynzhamyn Raice were all listening in over their coms.

“Bynzhamyn?” the emperor said now.

“I’m not certain, Your Majesty,” Baron Wave Thunder replied. “I think I see what Prince Nahrmahn is getting at, though.”

“Which is?” Cayleb prompted.

“It’s the delay in the magazine explosions, isn’t it, Your Highness?” Wave Thunder said by way of reply.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about,” Nahrmahn agreed grimly. He looked at Cayleb. “Nobody, not even Owl, was watching when this happened. Perhaps that’s an oversight we’d like to rectify in the future, although I realize we’re already taxing even his capabilities with the number of SNARCs we’ve got deployed. Because we weren’t watching, we’ll never be able to reconstruct the events leading up to it-not accurately, and not anything like completely. But there was a significant delay between the main explosion in the powder mill itself and the explosions in the magazines. I’m no expert on the way powder’s handled and stored in the mills or what their standard safety measures may be, but I’d be surprised if it was easy for an explosion in one magazine to touch off an explosion in another one. And if that’s true, it should certainly have been difficult for an explosion in the mill to cause any of the magazines to explode, far less three of them. Yet that’s exactly what happened, and it didn’t happen simultaneously, which is what I would have expected if it had been a sympathetic detonation. And all of that suggests to me that the explosions were deliberately arranged with some sort of timer.”

“Owl?”

“Yes, Your Majesty?” the distant AI said politely.

“I know you weren’t watching Big Tirian or Hairatha, but did any of your SNARCs pick up the explosions, and if so, how close together did they come?”

“In answer to your first question, Your Majesty, yes, the com relay above The Cauldron did detect the explosions. In answer to your second question, the powder production facility itself was destroyed by seven distinct explosions occurring over a period of approximately eleven seconds. Each magazine was destroyed by a single primary explosion followed by a chain of secondary detonations. The first magazine was destroyed approximately eleven minutes and seventeen seconds after the first detonation in the powder production facility. The second magazine was destroyed thirty-seven seconds after that. The third was destroyed three minutes and nine seconds after the second one.”

Cayleb and Nahrmahn looked at one another and Domynyk Staynair swore softly over the com.

“I think Nahrmahn’s right, Your Majesty,” Howsmyn said quietly. “It had to be some kind of timing mechanism, at least in the magazines. I don’t know what kind of timer-it could have been something as simple as a lit candle shoved into a powder cask and allowed to burn down-but I think that’s the only explanation for how they could have come that long after the main explosion but still have been sequenced that closely.”

“Damn.” Cayleb shoved up out of his chair and crossed to the window, folding his arms across his chest while he stared out towards the invisible island and the pall of smoke still hanging above it. “How did they get in?”

“We’ll probably never know, Your Majesty,” Nahrmahn told him heavily. “Obviously, our security measures weren’t stringent enough after all, though.”

“I don’t see how we could make them much tighter, Your Highness,” Wave Thunder objected. “We’ve always recognized the powder mills would be a priority target for any Temple Loyalist intent on seriously damaging us. We’ve got round-the-clock Marine sentries on the gates and every building, and the magazines themselves are kept locked except when powder’s actually being transferred. Keys to the locks are held only by the mill’s commanding officer and the current officer of the watch. When powder transfers are ordered, they’re always overseen by a commissioned officer with a Marine security and safety detachment, and additional keys have to be signed out individually by that officer, who’s also responsible for their return. And when any of the magazines are opened for transfers, we have sentries on all the other magazines, as well. Beyond that, nobody’s allowed into the facility unless he actually works there or has clear, verified authorization for his visit. Any visitor’s accompanied at all times by someone assigned to the mill, and regular and random patrols sweep the perimeter fence.”

“My comment wasn’t a criticism, Bynzhamyn,” Nahrmahn said, “simply an observation. Whether we can make them tighter or not, they obviously weren’t sufficiently tight to prevent what just happened. I do think it would be a good idea to assign at least a couple of remotes to each of our remaining powder mills, though. We might not’ve been able to do anything quickly enough to prevent what happened at Hairatha even if Owl had been watching and realized something was amiss before the explosions, but at least we’d be in a much better position after the fact to figure out what actually did happen and who was responsible for it. And that might put us in a better position to keep it from happening again.”

“You think it’s part of an organized operation?” Cayleb asked. “That they may attempt to blow up our other powder mills, as well?”

“I don’t know.” Nahrmahn shook his head, eyes intent as he considered the question. “All it would really take would be one truly convinced Temple Loyalist in the wrong place. For all we know, that’s what happened here-the fact that some sort of timer was used may indicate we’re looking at the work of a single individual or a small number of individuals. Or it may not indicate anything of the sort; perhaps it was a larger group that used timers for all four of the primary explosions so its members could get out again. If it was a larger group, that would seem to up the chances of additional, similar attempts. We just don’t know. But I don’t see where keeping a closer eye on the remaining mills could hurt anything, and it might just help quite a lot.”

“Agreed.” Cayleb nodded. “Owl, please implement Prince Nahrmahn’s suggestion and assign sufficient remotes to keep all of our remaining powder mills under observation.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you,” Cayleb said, and Howsmyn sighed heavily over the link.

“What is it, Ehdwyrd?”

“I was just thinking that, terrible as this is from every perspective, it gets even worse when I think about Urvyn’s having walked into the middle of it, Your Majesty,” the ironmaster said heavily. “It’s going to devastate Ahlfryd when he finds out. For that matter, it’s hitting me damned hard. But that’s from a purely personal, selfish viewpoint. We needed him, needed him pushing the envelope and constantly coming up with new ideas, like that breech-loading rifle of his.”

“I know,” Cayleb sighed. “I know.” He shook his head. “And speaking of personal viewpoints, think about his family. They didn’t lose just him, but his cousin, too.” He shook his head again, his expression hard. “I want the people responsible for planning this. I want them badly.”

“Then we’ll just have to see what we can do about finding them for you, Your Majesty,” Prince Nahrmahn said. . VI.

Shakym, Princedom of Tanshar

“All right, you lazy bastards! On your feet! Your little pleasure cruise just came to an end!”

Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s head twitched up at the raucous chorus of shouts. He could see virtually nothing in the hot, stinking tween-decks space, but he heard the thud of hammers as the wedges which secured the hatch battens were driven out. Boots clumped and thumped on the deck overhead, other voices bawled orders, and heavy chain rattled metallically in the darkness around him.

I guess I really can sleep just about anywhere, he thought. Must be Shakym. About time, even for this tub.

He knew very little about Shakym beyond the name; only that it was the major seaport of the Princedom of Tanshar and that it lay across the four-hundred-and-fifty-mile-wide mouth of the Gulf of Tanshar from Gairlahs in the Duchy of Fern, the most northwesterly of Dohlar’s provinces. If this was Shakym, they were officially in West Haven, little more than five hundred miles from the Temple Lands border and fourteen hundred miles from Lake Pei.

“Sir?” The voice was faint, barely audible, and his right hand gently stroked the matted hair of the head lying in his lap.

“It seems we’re here, Master Svairsmahn.” He kept his own voice as close to normal as he could, but it was hard when the boy’s bony hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “I imagine we’re going to have some light in a few minutes.”

“Can’t come too soon for me, Sir,” the midshipman said gamely. He grunted with effort, shoving himself up into a sitting position, and Manthyr heard a retching sound. It went on for several seconds before it stopped.

“Sorry about that, Sir,” Svairsmahn said.

“You’re not the only one who’s fouled himself down here, Master Svairsmahn,” Manthyr told him. “Not your fault, either. Chain a man where he can’t move and leave him there long enough, and it’s going to happen.”

“True enough, Sir Gwylym,” Captain Maikel Krugair’s voice came out of the dark. “And just think how much fun these bastards are going to have washing down all this shit-if you’ll pardon the expression, Sir-once we’re out of here.”

The man who’d captained HMS Avalanche sounded positively cheerful at the thought, and Manthyr heard other laughter from men he couldn’t see.

“There is that bit in the Writ about reaping what you sow, Cap’n,” someone else observed. “An’ shit fer shitheads is about right, t’ my way of thinking.”

There was more laughter, and then the first batten was thrown aside and bright morning sunlight streamed down into the cavernous, stinking hold.

“Hold your noise, you fucking scum!” someone shouted. “Keep shut, if you know what’s good for you!”

“Why?” a Charisian voice shot back derisively. “What’re you going to do? Tell the Grand Inquisitor on us?!”

Laughter hooted in the stinking hold, and Manthyr’s heart swelled with weeping pride in his men.

“Think it’s funny, do you?” the voice which had shouted snarled. “We’ll see how you like it in a month or so!”

Manthyr looked around him, squinting his eyes against the light as more battens were heaved aside. Naiklos Vahlain lay beside him, blinking groggily. Manthyr didn’t like the valet’s sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Vahlain was ten years older than he was, and he’d started without the inherent toughness a life at sea had given Manthyr. No man in the world could have more courage and spirit, but Vahlain’s body was beginning to fail him.

Beyond Vahlain, as the light explored their fetid prison, he saw other scarecrows, many of them lying in pools of their own filth. Dysentery was stalking among them, taking its own toll, and his heart was grimly certain that at least some of those still lying motionless would never move again.

When he thought about it, it was almost a miracle so many of them were still alive. The six five-days since they’d left Gorath had been the most brutal and crushing of Manthyr’s life, and that was saying something for a Charisian seaman. But, then, whatever men might say, the sea was never truly cruel. She simply didn’t care. It took men to practice cruelty. Men who deliberately and knowingly gave themselves to cruelty’s service, and it didn’t matter whether they claimed to do it in the name of God or the name of Shan-wei herself. What mattered was the sickness and the hunger and the perversion eating away whatever it was inside them that might once have made them truly human.

Things had gotten a little better after Twyngyth. Manthyr didn’t really know why, although he’d come to the conclusion they probably owed at least some of it to Father Myrtan. The fair-haired young upper-priest seemed no less fervent in his faith than Vyktyr Tahrlsahn, and Manthyr doubted Father Myrtan would hesitate to put any heretic to the Question or to the Punishment. The difference between him and Tahrlsahn was that Tahrlsahn would enjoy it; Father Myrtan would simply do it because that was what his beliefs required of him. Manthyr couldn’t decide which of those was actually worse, when he came down to it, but at least Father Myrtan didn’t delight in the sort of small souled brutality which had killed almost a dozen of Manthyr’s men in the first five-day and a half of this nightmare journey.

Oh, stop trying to analyze things, Gwylym, he told himself. You know perfectly well what it really was. Even that asshole Tahrlsahn finally realized none of you were going to live the rest of the way to Zion if he kept it up. Pity he figured it out. It would’ve been so fitting for him to have to face Clyntahn and explain how he’d come to use up all of the Grand Asshole’s “heretics” before he got home with them! Hell, he’d probably have gotten to take our place!

He let himself dwell for a moment or two on the delightful image of Tahrlsahn facing his own Inquisition, then brushed it aside. Whether Tahrlsahn faced justice in this life or the next really didn’t matter. Face it he would, one way or the other, and for now, duty called, and duty-and fidelity-to his men were really all he had left.

“Wakey, wakey, Naiklos!” he called as cheerily as he could, shaking the valet gently. “They say our cruise is over. Back on the road again, I suppose.”

“Yes, Sir.” Vahlain shook himself, struggling gamely up into a sitting position and fastidiously straightening the remaining rags of his clothing. “I’ll see to making reservations at a decent hotel, Sir.”

“You do that,” Manthyr said affectionately, resting one hand on the older man’s slight shoulder. “Nothing but the best, mind you! Clean linen and warming pans for me and Master Svairsmahn. And be sure you pick the wine; can’t trust my judgment about that, you know.”

“Of course, Sir.” Vahlain managed a death’s-head smile, and Manthyr squeezed his shoulder before he turned back to Svairsmahn.

The midshipman smiled, too, but it looked even more ghastly on him. Vahlain was over sixty; Lainsair Svairsmahn was not yet thirteen, and thirteen-year-old boys-even thirteen-year-old boys who were king’s officers-weren’t supposed to be one-legged, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, half-starved, wracked by fever and nausea, and filled with the knowledge of what awaited all of them.

Three Temple Guardsmen clattered down the steep ladder from the upper deck. Manthyr was pretty sure they’d been chosen for their duty as punishment for some lapse in duty, and he heard them gagging on the stench despite the bandannas tied across their noses and mouths. Three days locked in the hold of an undersized coasting brig tended to produce quite an aroma, he thought grimly.

“On your feet!” one of them snarled. “You, there!” He kicked one of the seamen lying closest to the hatch. “You first!”

He tossed the seaman a key, then stood back, tapping the two-foot truncheon in his right hand against the side of his boot while the Charisian fumbled with the padlock. He managed to get it open, and iron grated and rattled as the chain which had been run through ringbolts on the deck and then through the irons on every man’s ankles was released. He pushed himself clumsily to his still-chained feet and staggered towards the ladder.

“Get a move on, whoreson!” the Guardsman sneered, prodding him viciously with the truncheon. “Can’t be late for your date in Zion!”

The Charisian almost fell, but he caught himself on the ladder with his manacled hands and climbed slowly and painfully up it while the cursing Guardsmen kicked and cuffed and beat his fellows to their feet. They made no distinction between officer, noncom, and enlisted, and neither did the Charisians, anymore. Those distinctions had been erased in the face of their common privation, and all that remained were Charisians, doing whatever they could to help their companions survive another day.

Which is stupid of us, Manthyr thought as he forced himself to his feet and then bent to half assist and half lift young Svairsmahn. All we’re doing is prolonging our own punishment until we get to Zion. If we had any sense, we’d figure out how to hang ourselves tonight.

That dark thought had come to him with increasing frequency, and he braced himself against its seduction while he slipped his arm around Svairsmahn’s shoulders and helped him towards the ladder. However tempting it might be, it wasn’t for him-not while a single one of his men lived. There might not be one damned thing he could do for any of them, but one thing he couldn’t do was to abandon them. And they, the miserable, starving, sick, gutsy bastards that they were, would never give the Inquisition the satisfaction of giving up.