by David Weber
He glanced sideways to where Captain Athrawes stood waiting patiently, those “unearthly blue seijin eyes” sweeping alertly for any sign of threat, even as his invisible overhead sensors did the same thing, and felt a familiar rush of wonder and confidence. The mind, the thoughts and the soul, behind those sapphire eyes were even older than the lie. Nimue Alban had already deliberately sacrificed her life to defeat it; Cayleb Ahrmahk had no doubt that the seijin she had become in death would succeed, however long it took, whatever the cost.
Merlin glanced at him, one eyebrow slightly arched, as if he’d felt the pressure of Cayleb’s eyes. And perhaps he had. Cayleb certainly wasn’t prepared to set limitations upon the esoteric senses of a PICA! Although, now that the emperor thought about it, it was more likely Merlin had simply seen him looking through one of those invisible “sensors” of his.
The thought touched his mouth with a fleeting smile, and Merlin smiled back, then returned his attention to the task of keeping Cayleb alive.
And I should stop wasting time trying to delay the inevitable and get on with my own job, Cayleb told himself firmly. It’s just that . . . I don’t want to.
He admitted the truth to himself, then turned to the main reason he didn’t want to.
Queen Mother Alahnah had accompanied Baron Green Mountain to the docks to bid her son-in-law farewell. Now, as he looked into her eyes—northern eyes, as gray and clear as the Chisholm Sea itself—he saw the same awareness.
“I don’t want to leave,” he told her softly, his voice all but lost in the sound of wind and water and the murmuring sound of the watching crowd.
“I know, Your Majesty . . . Cayleb.” She smiled at him, those gray eyes misty, and her lips trembled ever so slightly as she smiled at him. “I don’t want you to, either. But if we could order the world in the way we would have it, none of this would have happened, and you and I would never have met, would we?”
“The Writ says the world works as God would have it,” Cayleb replied. And that much, at least, is true, he reflected. “I think we would have met, anyway.”
“Perhaps so,” Alahnah said. “Perhaps so.”
She reached out to touch his cheek gently, and he saw her eyes looking deep into his own, searching for an echo, a reflection, of her daughter. And he saw her expression lighten as she found it . . . even as he found its twin in her eyes.
“Take care of her, My Lord,” he said, moving his eyes to Green Mountain’s watching countenance.
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Green Mountain bowed slightly, then straightened with a crooked, whimsical smile of his own. “You might say I’ve had some experience in that direction.”
“You have, haven’t you?” Cayleb returned his smile, then drew a deep breath. “And now, I really do have to go. If we miss the tide, we probably won’t make our scheduled rendezvous with the main fleet. And if we don’t do that, Captain Gyrard and Admiral Lock Island will never forgive me!”
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Alahnah said. Cayleb looked back at her, and she shook her head at him. And then, with absolutely no warning, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
Like her daughter, she was a slender, small-framed woman, while Cayleb was a muscular, deep-chested man. That chest still had some filling out to do, but those arms couldn’t quite reach all the way around him even now. Yet if they were slender, those arms, almost frail, still he felt the strength of Chisholm itself in them. His eyes widened in surprise. Then his own arms went about her, and he felt her head resting on his shoulder.
A thunderous roar of approval went up from the watching crowd, and Cayleb wondered if a single member of the aristocracy would ever believe the embrace was unplanned, unchoreographed. He doubted they would, and he couldn’t have cared less.
“My daughter chose well,” she told him softly, raising her head and meeting his eyes once more. Tears glistened, and he eased his embrace enough to use the index finger of his right hand to wipe them away. She smiled again and shook her head. “I never had a son before,” she said.
“Things change,” he told her.
“Yes. Yes, they do.” Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply, and then she released him and stood back once again. “But we really can’t have your captain and your admiral upset with you, can we? Not with a Charisian emperor!”
“No, I don’t suppose we can.”
He touched her face one more time, nodded to Green Mountain, then turned and marched up the gangway to his flagship through the raw northern cold and the roar of the spectators’ approval.
. V .
Vicar Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Office,
The Temple,
City of Zion
Vicar Zhaspahr Clyntahn, Grand Inquisitor of the Church of God Awaiting and Father General of the Order of Schueler, looked up from the paperwork on his desk, eyebrows knitting in anger, as the door to his sumptuous office in the Temple was opened abruptly. The upper-priest who had opened it so unceremoniously bobbed in a rushed bow, and Clyntahn’s eyes flashed dangerously. Father Dahnyld Fahrmyr had been one of his confidential secretaries for almost eight years. He knew better than to burst in upon his patron without so much as knocking first.
“What—?!” Clyntahn began thunderously, but the upper-priest actually had the temerity (or desperation) to interrupt him.
“I most humbly beg your pardon for intruding so abruptly, Your Grace,” Fahrmyr said, speaking so rapidly the words came out almost in a babble. “I would never have done so if it hadn’t been—that is—I mean . . .”
“Oh, spit it out, Dahnyld!” Clyntahn snapped, and the upper-priest swallowed hard.
“Your Grace, Vicar Zahmsyn is here!”
Clyntahn’s corrugated eyebrows flew up in surprise.
“Here?” he repeated, his tone as close to incredulous as it ever came. “In the office?”
“Yes, Your Grace!” Father Dahnyld nodded almost spastically, but there was relief in his voice, as well. As if he were astounded he’d gotten his message out without being incinerated on the spot by the thunderbolts of Clyntahn’s well-known temper.
The Inquisitor General sat back in his chair, mastering his expression of astonishment while his brain raced.
No wonder Fahrmyr seemed so stunned. The Chancellor of the Church of God Awaiting didn’t just casually “drop in” on the Grand Inquisitor without scheduling his appointment well in advance. In fact, no one “dropped in” on the Grand Inquisitor without an appointment.
Clyntahn spent a handful of seconds trying to think of any reason for Zahmsyn Trynair to have just suddenly appeared in his office anteroom, but no explanation suggested itself to him. Not, at any rate, any suggestion that he cared to contemplate.
“I assume, since you haven’t told me why he’s here, that he hasn’t told you, either,” he said in a tone which suggested that that had better be the reason Fahrmyr hadn’t already told him, and the upper-priest shook his head sharply.
“No, Your Grace.” Fahrmyr’s own intense uneasiness at such a radical breach of procedure showed in his eyes, but his voice was coming back under control. “He just . . . walked in the door and ‘requested a moment of your time.’ ”
“He did, did he?” Clyntahn snorted like an irritated boar, then shrugged. “Well, in that case, I suppose you’d better show the Chancellor in, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, Your Grace. At once!”
Fahrmyr disappeared like a puff of smoke. He was back a moment later, followed by Zahmsyn Trynair. The Chancellor’s expression had been trained by decades of experience—first as a priest, then as a diplomat, and finally as the true ruler of the Council of Vicars—to say whatever he told it to say. This time, though, there was a glitter in his eyes, a tightness to his mouth. Those who didn’t know him well might have missed seeing that, but Clyntahn did know him, and he felt his own stomach muscles tightening.
“Good morning, Zahmsyn,” he said.
“Good morning.” Trynair’s response came ou
t half-snapped, and Clyntahn looked over the Chancellor’s shoulder at Fahrmyr.
“That will be all, Father,” he said, and Fahrmyr vanished with even more alacrity. Whatever curiosity he might feel—and Clyntahn suspected he felt quite a lot of it—the upper-priest didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity. Obviously, he, too, had read the storm flags flying in Trynair’s expression.
Of course, only a blind man could have missed seeing them, the Grand Inquisitor thought dryly.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, since there seemed little point in indulging in polite nothings.
“To this, Zhaspahr.” Trynair reached into the breast of his orange cassock and extracted a sheaf of paper.
“And ‘this’ would be exactly what?” Clyntahn’s voice was more brusque as his hackles rose in response to the other man’s obvious anger. Anger which appeared to be directed at Clyntahn himself. The Grand Inquisitor wasn’t accustomed to confronting anyone with the courage—or the stupidity—to show open anger with him, and he found that he didn’t much care for the experience.
“It’s a semaphore message, Zhaspahr. A message from King Zhames in Talkyra. Or, rather, from Bishop Executor Frayd for King Zhames. And himself, of course.”
Clyntahn had never heard that particular note out of Zahmsyn Trynair. The Chancellor’s voice sounded like hammered metal, and the emotion in his eyes burned hotter than ever.
“Obviously something about it has upset you,” Clyntahn said, trying to make his own voice come out more naturally. He wasn’t accustomed to trying to defuse someone else’s anger, but it looked as if Trynair was whipping himself into an even greater rage with every word he said. “And presumably, since you’ve come storming into my office without even warning anyone you were coming, whatever it is that’s upset you concerns me, or the Office of Inquisition.”
“Oh, yes,” Trynair agreed. “Yes, indeed, Zhaspahr! I think that would be a very good way to put it.”
“Then tell me what it is and let’s get on with it,” Clyntahn said flatly.
“All right, Zhaspahr, I will tell you.” Trynair dropped the folded sheets of paper onto Clyntahn’s desk. “King Zhames and Bishop Executor Frayd have sent word that the Charisians have burned half or two-thirds of Ferayd to the ground. You remember Ferayd, don’t do, Zhaspahr? The place where all of those Charisians ‘foolishly resisted’ the Delferahkan troops who attempted to sequester their vessels on your orders?”
Clyntahn’s facial muscles tightened ever so slightly, but he declined to rise to Trynair’s verbal bait—if that was what it was—and simply nodded.
“Well, Cayleb and Sharleyan appear to have decided how they intend to respond to such incidents in the future. They sent twenty or thirty of their galleons into Ferayd Sound, they pounded the defensive batteries into rubble—then blew them up, after they surrendered—and burned every structure within two miles of the Ferayd waterfront.”
Anger fumed up in Clyntahn’s own eyes as Trynair listed the catalog of Charisian reprisals. He started to open his mouth, but Trynair cut him off with a quick, sharp wave of his hand.
“I’m not quite done yet, Zhaspahr.” This time the Chancellor’s voice was icy, not fiery hot, and his eyes bored into Clyntahn’s. “Despite the fact that they burned down most of the city, the Charisians were extremely careful to inflict as few Delferahkan casualties as possible. They even allowed the civilian population of Ferayd to remove their portable valuables from homes inside the area they intended to burn. Not exactly the response one would have anticipated out of heretics and blasphemers after Delferahkan troops massacred their fellow heretics and blasphemers, wouldn’t you say?”
Clyntahn’s jaw muscles clenched, but he said nothing, and Trynair’s nostrils flared.
“I thought it showed remarkable restraint on their part, actually,” the Chancellor continued. “Of course, the reason for it was that they fully intended to punish those actually responsible for the deaths. Which is why, Zhaspahr, Admiral Rock Point of the Imperial Charisian Navy had sixteen—sixteen, Zhaspahr—consecrated priests of Mother Church hanged.”
Clyntahn’s eyes flew wide. Despite Trynair’s obvious anger, despite his realization that the contents of the semaphore message must be shocking, he’d never anticipated that! For several seconds, he could only sit, staring at Trynair. Then he shook himself and started to shove up out of his chair, his jowly face going dark with fury.
“Those bastards! Those goddamned, murderous—!”
“I’m not finished yet, Zhaspahr!” Trynair’s voice cracked like a musket shot, and the white-hot fury in his eyes stunned Clyntahn. No one looked at the Grand Inquisitor that way—no one!
“What?” he made himself bite out the single word, and Trynair’s lips twisted.
“Every one of those priests,” he said, and his voice was deadly now, each word precisely uttered, cut off as if with a knife, “was a member of the Order of Schueler. In fact, by an odd turn of chance, they were all servants of the Office of Inquisition.” He watched Clyntahn’s expression turning even darker, and there was something almost like . . . satisfaction mixed with the anger in his eyes. “And the reason they were hanged, Zhaspahr—the reason that a Charisian admiral executed sixteen consecrated priests of Mother Church as if they were common felons—is that the massacre of Charisians in Ferayd may have been carried out by Delferahkan troops, but it wasn’t at Delferahkan orders. It was carried out, as I feel sure you knew very well, under the de facto command of Father Styvyn Graivyr, Bishop Ernyst’s intendant, and fifteen other members of the Order of Schueler.”
Clyntahn had opened his mouth once more. Now he paused, and Trynair glared at him.
“You lied to us, Zhaspahr. Lied to all of us.”
There was no question in Clyntahn’s mind who the “us” Trynair referred to might be. After all, all of the members of the Group of Four had . . . creatively reconstructed certain events for the rest of the vicarate.
“And what makes you immediately jump to that conclusion?” he demanded, instead of denying the charge outright. “Are you that prepared to take the word of schismatic heretics? It never occurred to you that they might have every motive in the world to lie about what happened and blame it on Mother Church in order to justify their own murderous actions?”
“Of course the possibility occurred to me. Unfortunately, they sent King Zhames certain . . . documentary evidence. I’m sure there were already copies of most of it in your files, Zhaspahr.”
“What do you mean?” A thin note of caution had crept into Clyntahn’s voice, and Trynair’s lips tightened.
“You know perfectly well what I mean! They captured Graivyr’s files, Zhaspahr! The originals of the reports he and his fellow Inquisitors sent to you, detailing the role they played. In fact, I was quite astonished at how openly and honestly Graivyr admitted in his correspondence with you that the first shot was fired by one of the Delferahkans, not by the Charisians. Or the fact that as soon as the first shot was fired, his handpicked Schuelerites immediately took command of the detachments to which they were assigned and ordered—ordered, Zhaspahr—the massacre of Charisian women and children! My God, man! The idiot boasted about it, and you knew he had, and you never warned us!”
“He didn’t ‘boast’ about it!” Clyntahn snapped back.
“Oh, yes, he did!” Trynair retorted. “I’ve read the reports now, Zhaspahr. He was proud of what he did!”
“Of course he was!” Clyntahn’s eyes flared with contempt. “They were heretics, Zahmsyn. Heretics, you understand? They were God’s own enemies, and they deserved exactly what they got!”
“Some of them were only eight years old, Zhaspahr!” For the first time in Clyntahn’s memory, someone leaned across a desk and shouted at him. “How in Shan-wei’s name are you going to convince anyone with a working brain that an eight-year-old child was a heretic? Don’t be insane!”
“They were the children of heretics,” Clyntahn grated. “Their parents were re
sponsible for putting them in that position, not me! If you want to blame someone for their blood, blame Cayleb and Staynair!”
“The Charisians are going to publish these reports, Zhaspahr. Do you understand what that means? They are going to publish the documents, the very words in which Graivyr and his . . . his accomplices wrote down, for the record, in their own words, exactly what the Charisians accused them of doing!” Trynair glared at his colleague. “I can’t think of a more effective piece of propaganda we could have handed them if we’d tried!”
“And I say let them publish!” Clyntahn snapped back. “I’ve already got confessions out of those bastards, too, some of them!”
“Oh?” Trynair’s eyes were suddenly much colder. “Would those be the confessions Rayno tortured out of the Charisian prisoners you had secretly transferred to Zion without mentioning it to the rest of us?”
Clyntahn twitched, and the Chancellor shook his head, his expression disgusted.
“I know you’re the Grand Inquisitor, Zhaspahr. I know you have agents everywhere, more than I could possibly have. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m stupid, or that I don’t have agents of my own. Of course I knew about your orders to Rayno!”
“Then if you disagreed with what I was doing, you should have said so at the time!” Even Clyntahn seemed to realize his retort sounded remarkably lame, and Trynair snorted.
“I’m not the Grand Inquisitor,” he pointed out. “As far as I was concerned, if you could get confessions out of some of them, it might at least have ameliorated the disaster I was already afraid Ferayd could be turning into. Of course, not even I had any reason to suspect the full magnitude of the catastrophe you and Graivyr were busy cooking up for us, did I?”
Clyntahn sat back down, tipped back his chair, and glowered sullenly.
“As you say, you aren’t the Grand Inquisitor; I am. And the bottom line, Zahmsyn, is that I’ll do whatever God requires of me as his Grand Inquisitor. If that means a few innocents are going to get caught up in bloodshed that was provoked by their own parents, then that’s going to happen. And before you tell me anything more about Graivyr or the other Inquisitors in Ferayd, let me point out to you that without the blasphemy, without the schism, being pushed by the goddamned Charisians, none of this would be happening! Forgive me if I seem just a bit more concerned with the future of God’s Church and the protection of the souls of God’s people than with the well-being of a few dozen Charisian heretics or their miserable brats!”