by David Weber
“Yes.” Banahr nodded, slowly at first, but with gathering enthusiasm. “Yes, My Lord, I can see that. And, however much I might hunger to strike one of those blows myself, it’s clearly my duty to serve in the most effective way possible. Not to mention the fact that, so far as I know, you’re the only legitimate bishop remaining in the entire Kingdom. As such, anyone truly loyal to Mother Church must obviously place himself under your direction.”
“I believe there are more members of the clergy of this accursed ‘Church of Charis’ who would agree with you in their heart of hearts on that point than Cayleb and Staynair dream,” Halcom said in a hard voice. “And the fact that they keep their faith secret, securely hidden, is a good thing, for now, at least.”
Banahr nodded, and Halcom’s nostrils flared. Then he gave himself a small shake.
“Now, Father,” he said more briskly. “I don’t want to get into too many particulars at the moment, but I can tell you that we have at least one or two quite wealthy supporters here in Charis. Some of them are prepared to place that wealth at the Temple Loyalists’ service. Obviously, we can’t permit any one of them to contribute too heavily.”
Banahr looked a bit confused, and Halcom shook his head.
“Think about it, Father,” he said patiently. “It’s unlikely that someone like Wave Thunder isn’t making a list of people—especially wealthy or powerful people—he might suspect of Temple Loyalist sympathies. If a sizable percentage of one of those wealthy suspects’ wealth should suddenly disappear, it would ring all sorts of alarm bells in Wave Thunder’s mind. So it’s essential that any contributions to our cause be both carefully hidden and not so large as to obviously impact upon the wealth of the contributors.”
Banahr was nodding again, and Halcom sat back in his chair and raised both hands, palms uppermost.
“Fortunately, I’ve managed to make contact with a few people—some of them in Tellesberg, some of them not—who are prepared to channel ‘charitable contributions’ through various monasteries and convents and into our hands. That, to be honest, would be the greatest service Saint Hamlyn’s could provide to our cause at this time.”
No one on Safehold had yet reinvented the term “money-laundering,” but Halcom had the essentials of the practice down pat.
“Of course!” Banahr said promptly.
“Think about it carefully, Father,” Halcom cautioned. “The possibility that, sooner or later, Wave Thunder or one of his spies is going to come up with something that could be traced back to you definitely exists. And for all of Cayleb’s sanctimonious disavowal of ‘repressive measures,’ he’s also made it clear that anyone who lends himself to supporting armed resistance to the Crown or to Staynair’s corrupt régime within the Church will face the sternest penalties.”
“I’m not in love with the concept of martyrdom, My Lord,” Banahr replied somberly. “I’m not afraid of it, either, though. If it’s God’s will that I should die doing His work, then I will have been blessed above all other men.”
“That’s true, Father,” Halcom said quietly, his eyes warm. “That’s very true. In fact, it’s that truth which makes it possible for me to go back into the ‘dragon’s mouth,’ as you put it. And sooner or later, Cayleb and Staynair—and, yes, even Seijin Merlin—are going to discover that no one can ultimately defeat men who remember that. And when they discover that, they’re also going to find themselves giving account to God and Langhorne, and that, Father Ahzwald, is something they’re not going to enjoy.”
FEBRUARY,
YEAR OF GOD 893
. I .
Cherayth,
Kingdom of Chisholm,
Empire of Charis
“Welcome to Cherayth, Your Majesty.”
The man who’d been waiting at the foot of the gangway bowed deeply as Cayleb Ahrmahk, Emperor of Charis, stepped off it onto the stone quay and set foot for the very first time upon the soil of the Kingdom of Chisholm. Cayleb had never met the tall, silver-haired Chisholmian with the deep, strong voice, but he’d been looking forward to making the older man’s acquaintance. Not, unfortunately, without a certain amount of trepidation. Fortunately, the Chisholmian’s greeting seemed sincere, although it was hard to be certain, since just hearing him was more than a bit difficult, under the circumstances. The harbor behind Cayleb was crowded with Charisian warships and Charisian transports packed to the gills with Charisian Marines. Even the enormous waters of Cherry Bay seemed congested and crowded well beyond their maximum capacity, and the defensive waterfront batteries were wreathed in smoke. But the fleet behind Cayleb was no invasion force come to pillage Cherayth, and the gunsmoke drifting away on the biting breeze of a northern winter (whose teeth made Cayleb’s southern blood devoutly grateful for his heavy cloak) was from the twenty-four-gun salute which had just roared its way into silence. And if the guns had fallen silent, the shouting voices of the bundled-up Chisholmians packed black and dense into every vantage point they could find had not.
There was enthusiasm in most of those shouts. Not all—Cayleb hadn’t expected that—but most. Yet however welcome that might be, they still made it hard to hear.
“Thank you, My Lord,” Cayleb replied, raising his own voice against the background tumult, then stepped forward and extended his right hand. Mahrak Sahndyrs, Baron Green Mountain and the first councilor of the Kingdom of Charis, seemed surprised at the gesture. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then straightened from his bow and clasped forearms with the man who had become his emperor.
The cheering redoubled, and Cayleb smiled, ever so faintly. He supposed there were rulers who would have felt it was imperative to stand upon their imperial dignity when meeting someone in Green Mountain’s position for the first time. The baron had been the mentor, protector, and, effectively, second father of Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm ever since Sharleyan had ascended to the throne as a mere child, and in many ways, he was every bit as popular with her subjects—her common-born subjects, at least—as she was. Many princes or kings who’d abruptly found themselves in Cayleb’s position would have felt legitimate concern about the ultimate loyalty of a man who’d been all of those things and enjoyed so much support and trust. The mere fact that Sharleyan had become Cayleb’s wife and the Empress of Charis, Cayleb’s coruler, might not have been enough to keep some other Green Mountain from seeking control of Chisholm for himself—especially since Sharleyan had remained behind in Charis, rather than returning with Cayleb—and too much familiarity with a man of such ambitions might all too easily prove fatal.
Yet Cayleb felt no concern about that at all. Mostly because Sharleyan didn’t, and Cayleb trusted her judgment (and her hardheaded realism) implicitly. Almost as important, however, Captain Merlin Athrawes shared Sharleyan’s judgment, and Captain Athrawes possessed certain . . . advantages which were not available to other men when it came to evaluating the actions and beliefs of others. If Merlin Athrawes told Cayleb a man was trustworthy, the emperor was quite prepared to take him at his word. A word which had been amply confirmed by Merlin’s reports on how firmly and ably Green Mountain and Queen Mother Alahnah had looked after Sharleyan’s affairs in Chisholm during her absence.
Of course, Green Mountain had no way to know anything of the sort, and just as Cayleb had never met Green Mountain, Green Mountain had never met him. Now Cayleb held the baron’s arm in his clasp for a few moments longer. He looked levelly across at him, letting Green Mountain look into his own eyes, and Sharleyan’s first councilor accepted that invitation as he had accepted the emperor’s proffered hand. He looked deep, and Cayleb met that searching gaze without flinching, his own eyes steady, until something inside Green Mountain’s expression—something no one could actually have seen, or described—seemed to ease somehow.
“Your Majesty, I—”
“A moment, My Lord,” Cayleb interrupted, his voice pitched just a bit lower, to form a sort of private alcove at the heart of the thunderous cheers still rising about them. Green Mountain
’s eyebrows arched, and the emperor smiled at him. “There are many things I’d like to say to you at this moment,” Cayleb continued. “Unfortunately, I’m well aware that there are any number of official things we need to be discussing, instead, not to mention all of the public folderol we’re both going to have to put up with. I assure you, I have my public face ready to put on for all of that. But first, the Empress, my wife, charged me most sternly, as my very first duty in Chisholm, to give you and her Queen Mother all of her love.”
“I—” Green Mountain stopped and cleared his throat. “I thank you for that, Your Majesty,” he said after a moment, his own voice just a bit husky. His hand tightened on the emperor’s forearm for a second. Then his nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply.
“And now that you’ve delivered her message, Your Majesty, we really do have those formalities to deal with, I’m afraid.” His head twitched ever so slightly, indicating the gorgeously clad ranks of aristocrats—some of whose expressions seemed just a bit less welcoming than his own—standing behind him at a respectful distance on the jam-packed quay.
“Will you come and meet your Chisholmian subjects?”
Welcome heat poured from the vast fireplace to Queen Mother Alahnah Tayt’s left as she sat at the foot of the table, gazing up its length across the glittering silver and polished glass and china at the dark-haired young man sitting at the table’s head. For the past several months, that chair—the one at the table’s head—had been Alahnah’s, and it felt odd to see someone else sitting in it.
Especially this someone else, she thought. It wouldn’t bother me a bit to see Sharley sitting there again!
She watched Emperor Cayleb turn his head, laughing at something Baron Green Mountain had said, and she discovered that her eyes were examining his profile intensely. It was as if by staring at him she could somehow have a glimpse of her daughter once again. Then, without warning, Cayleb stopped laughing at Green Mountain’s comment and looked straight at her, and she found her eyes gazing directly into his.
They were dark in the lamplight, those eyes. Dark and deep and surprisingly warm. Almost . . . gentle.
Odd. “Gentle” was the one adjective it would never have occurred to her to apply to the victor of Rock Point, of Crag Hook and Darcos Sound. And yet it was the only one which really fitted. The young man sitting in her daughter’s chair met her gaze directly, not challengingly, but with understanding. With compassion.
A peculiar little tingle danced somewhere deep inside her at the thought. It was as if in that moment she had finally allowed herself to realize—or, at least, to admit—something she’d refused to face directly from the moment Cayleb’s proposal of matrimony arrived in Cherayth. Fear. Fear that the man who’d won those smashing victories, who’d threatened to sink every one of the Earl of Thirsk’s ships, without quarter or mercy, unless his surrender terms were accepted, must be as hard as his reputation. As cold as the sword at his side. Fear that her daughter had gone to wed a man as merciless, in his own way, as the kraken which was the emblem of his house. It wasn’t that she’d feared Cayleb might be evil, the monster of depravity depicted in the Group of Four’s propaganda. But a man need not be evil to be cold. To recognize all of the ways in which political calculation must trump mere human emotions when the prize was the life or death of entire kingdoms, and to act accordingly.
But she wasn’t seeing that man. Oh, she had no doubt that a man with that chin, those eyes which had seen too much blood and death already for a man of twice his years, could be just as hard and cold as any steel blade. Whatever else he might be, Cayleb Ahrmahk was no weakling, no captive to indecision or to vacillation. Yet who she was seeing in this moment was the young man—the husband—Sharleyan’s letters had described. Not the emperor. Not the invincible admiral, or merciless dictator of terms, or leader of schism against God’s Church, but her daughter’s husband.
Oh my God, a quiet voice said softly, almost prayerfully, in the back of her mind. Sharley wasn’t just trying to reassure me. She was telling me the truth. She truly loves him . . . and maybe even more important, he truly loves her.
Alahnah Tayt had watched her daughter sacrifice too much already on the altar of responsibility, give too much to the weight of the crown she had been forced to assume when other girls were still playing with dolls, surrender too many of the joys which should have been hers. Sharleyan had never complained, never wasted effort on self-pity or admitted she missed those things, yet Alahnah had missed them for her. In the lonely watches of the night, she had prayed for her daughter’s happiness, begged God to give her some small scrap of personal love and joy as partial compensation for all of the cold, demanding prestige, power, and wealth of her queenship. Surely God could not have condemned her to a bitter, cold marriage after all He had already demanded of her! Yet that was exactly what Alahnah had feared . . . and if Sharleyan had never admitted it, her mother had known it was what she feared, as well.
Now, for just an instant, the queen mother’s lips trembled, and then—to her astonished embarrassment—she burst into totally unanticipated tears. Green Mountain rose quickly, stepping urgently around to her, going to one knee beside her chair and taking her right hand in both of his, and she heard his soft, urgent questions. Heard him asking her why she wept. But she couldn’t answer him. She could only stare down the length of the table at the young man who had so unexpectedly, without saying a single word, told her that her daughter had found the one thing in the world her mother had most feared she would never know.
Cayleb Ahrmahk watched Queen Mother Alahnah weep, listened to Green Mountain speaking softly and urgently to her. He’d been as surprised as Sharleyan’s first councilor by the queen mother’s tears, but only for a moment. Only until he’d recognized the way her eyes clung to him, even through her tears, and recognized that the one thing in which she did not weep was sorrow.
He patted his mouth with his napkin, laid the snowy linen aside, and pushed back his own chair. At his express request, he, Alahnah, and Green Mountain were dining privately. Even the servants had withdrawn, waiting to be summoned by the ringing of Queen Mother Alahnah’s bell if they were needed. Even Merlin Athrawes stood outside the private dining chamber’s door, guarding the privacy of all its occupants, and now Cayleb went to one knee at the other side of Alahnah’s chair. He took her free hand in his own, raised it to his lips and kissed its back gently, then looked up at her—or, rather, across, for he was as tall kneeling as she was sitting.
“Your Grace,” he murmured, “I feared the same thing myself, in many ways.”
“ ‘Feared,’ Your Majesty?” Alahnah repeated, and he nodded, then reached up with his left hand. A gentle thumb brushed tears from her cheek, and he smiled softly, almost sadly.
“You feared your daughter had been caught in a trap,” he told her. “You were afraid of a loveless marriage of state, a thing of cold calculation and ambition. From what Sharleyan’s told me, I believe you recognized the reasons for that calculation, understood the necessity behind the ambition, but still, you feared them. As did I. I had reports of your daughter, descriptions. I knew her history. But I didn’t know her, and I was afraid—so afraid—that if she accepted my proposal, I would be condemning both of us to a necessary but loveless union. That like so many other princes and princesses, kings and queens, we would be forced to sacrifice our own hopes of happiness on the altar of duty to our crowns.
“Sharleyan changed that for me. She changed it by being someone I could love, and someone who could love me. By being as brave, as warm and loving, as she was intelligent. As compassionate as she was pragmatic. As gentle as she could be ruthless at need. I would have proposed this marriage no matter what her character might have been, and I would have wed her with all honor, even if there’d been no love at all between us, just as she would have wed me. But God was good to us. We had no need to make that choice, because we truly do love one another. I wish, more than I could ever possibly say, that she were here to
tell you that herself. She can’t be. God, in His mercy, may have spared us from a cold, unfeeling marriage, yet our other duties, our other responsibilities, remain. And it would be impossible for Sharleyan, as I know I need not tell you, to leave those responsibilities unmet, those duties undone. You—and Baron Green Mountain—taught her that, just as my father taught me, and neither of us will be unworthy of our teachers.”
“I know,” Alahnah half-whispered. “I know, Your Majesty, truly. And I see now that Sharley’s letters told me nothing but the simple truth when I feared she was trying desperately to offer me false comfort. Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I half-suspected—feared, at least—that the true reason she hadn’t accompanied you home to Cherayth was that it was a loveless marriage and you feared I might realize that when I finally saw the two of you together.”
“Your Grace, I told you Sharleyan would never lie to you about something like that,” Green Mountain said softly, and she gave him a watery smile.
“Dear Mahrak!” She pulled her hand out of his to touch him lightly on one cheek. “Of course you did. I know that. Just as I fully realize that you would lie Shan-wei out of Hell if that was what it took to protect Sharleyan or me.”
“Your Grace, I never—” he began, only to have her interrupt him with a soft gurgle of laughter.
“Of course you would have! And don’t make it worse by trying to convince me otherwise.”
He looked at her with an oddly hopeless expression, and she laughed again, then turned her attention back to Cayleb.