by David Weber
That had been the final, decisive factor in Earl Tartarian’s choice of Wing for her present mission. After all, few things could possibly have looked less threatening, or less suspicious, to a Charisian boarding party than goods manufactured in Charis, itself.
The Marines clambered around in the hold for several minutes, then climbed back on deck.
“Matches the manifest, Sir,” the senior Marine told his lieutenant, and the lieutenant turned back to Harys.
“Well,” he said, handing Wing’s papers back over, “I suppose that’s that, Captain. Thank you for your cooperation, and, once again, please accept my Captain’s apologies for inconveniencing you.”
“No harm done, I suppose,” Harys allowed just a bit grudgingly. Then he shook his head and grimaced. “Truth to tell, Lieutenant, I don’t blame you or your Captain. Mind you, I think all of you Charisians have lost your minds, but under the circumstances, I’d probably’ve done the same thing in your boots.”
“I’m glad you understand, Sir.” The lieutenant bowed slightly, then twitched his head at his Marines. The sergeant came briefly to attention and then started chivying his men back down into the launch.
“I hope you and your ship enjoy a safe voyage to Shwei Bay, Captain,” the lieutenant said, then followed his Marines.
Harys stood at the bulwark, watching as the launch’s oars dipped, then pulled strongly back towards the schooner. A part of him felt almost sorry for the lieutenant, but the truth was that the young man had done his job well. He’d looked in exactly the right places, and he’d found exactly the right documents and cargo, and who in his right mind would have suspected such an elaborate ruse designed solely to get three passengers to Shwei Bay? The very idea was preposterous.
Of course, I suppose the question of just how preposterous it is depends on who the passengers are, doesn’t it?
Zhoel Harys smiled wolfishly at the thought and discovered that, for the first time, he was perfectly content to be commanding Wing instead of Cutlass.
. VI .
Archbishop’s Palace,
Tellesberg,
Empire of Charis
“Your Eminence,” Father Bryahn said, “Madame Dynnys is here.”
“Of course, Bryahn!”
Archbishop Maikel rose and walked around his desk, smiling broadly, as Ushyr bowed Adorai Dynnys through his office door. He extended his hand, and Erayk Dynnys’ widow returned his smile warmly as she took it. He’d come to know her far better in the months since her arrival in Tellesberg, and he wasn’t surprised when she rose on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Your Eminence,” she said as he tucked her hand into his elbow and escorted her across to one of the office’s chairs. “I realize it isn’t easy to fit someone into your schedule on such short notice. Especially not with all the details of the new Parliament still being settled.”
She had not, Staynair noticed, added all the details of the merger with that other batch of heretics in Chisholm to her list of his duties. That was tactful of her.
“Fitting you into my schedule is never a problem,” he told her. “Well, sometimes it can be a bit difficult, I suppose, but it’s never an unwelcome difficulty.”
“Thank you,” she said, and he considered her carefully if unobtrusively.
The lines worry and grief had carved in her face were less prominent than they had been. They would never fade entirely, just as he suspected that the occasional flashes of sorrow in her eyes would never entirely go away. Yet she’d settled into her new life in Tellesberg better than he would have been prepared to predict. It was possible that Cayleb and Sharleyan’s decision to house her in the palace and make her an official member of their own household had something to do with that, but Staynair thought it had more to do with the fact that, for the first time in her life, she could openly oppose the corrupt system which had ensnared her husband. She’d become one of the most vocal and effective supporters of the Church of Charis’ rejection of the present Church’s leaders’ corruption. That made her anathema to the Charisian Temple Loyalists, of course, but the Church of Charis’ supporters, already disposed to welcome her after they learned the details of Archbishop Erayk’s hideous death, had taken her to their hearts in her own right, and Sharleyan had assigned her two personal armsmen as a precaution.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this particular visit?” he asked now.
“Actually, Your Eminence, I need your advice. I—”
She broke off as Ahrdyn poked his sleek, round, earless head up out of his basket. Adorai Dynnys was one of the cat-lizard’s favorite people. She could always be relied upon to allow him to extort endless petting from her, and he hopped up and ambled across the office floor to leap up into her chair with a hum of welcome.
Well, Staynair thought, I suppose it could be welcome. Personally, I think it’s triumph.
The cat-lizard settled down across her lap, and she stroked his short, luxuriant coat with a smile.
“You do realize, don’t you, that the sole value human beings have for cat-lizards is the fact that they have hands?” Staynair asked.
“Nonsense, Your Eminence. They also have pitchers of milk.”
“Well, yes. I suppose there is that, as well,” Staynair allowed with a smile. Then, as Adorai sat back, still stroking the cat-lizard, he cocked his head. “I believe that, before we were interrupted, you were about to explain why you might desire my advice?”
“Yes.” Her fingers never stopped moving, but her expression faded into one of intense seriousness. “Actually, ‘need your advice’ probably wasn’t the best way to put it, but I do need your spiritual counsel, I think.”
“Of course,” he murmured, his eyes darkening with concern as he absorbed her expression and the tone of her voice.
“I have a letter for you, Your Eminence—one I’ve been instructed to share with you and with the Emperor. It’s from a very dear friend of mine, and my friend has made an offer which could be of great value to Charis. But if that offer is accepted, it could also be very dangerous for . . . my friend. So, I’ve come to you to bring you the letter and also to ask your advice. You’re not only a member of the Imperial Council, but a priest. My friend has already risked a great deal in a great many ways. I’m . . . hesitant to let still more risk be added to that, yet I’m not sure I have the right to make this decision for someone else. So before I pass that offer on to Empress Sharleyan, I want to tell you a little bit about this letter, the reason it was written, and what it implies.”
“And ask my opinion on whether or not you should allow your friend to run the additional risk to which you’ve just referred?” he asked gently.
“Yes.” She looked into his eyes. “Politically, I know what your answer ought to be, Your Eminence. But I’ve also come to know you as one of God’s priests. I ask you to consider this matter as a priest.”
“Always,” he told her simply, and she inhaled in what might have been relief.
She sat for a few more seconds, petting Ahrdyn, then shook herself.
“Your Eminence, when I first arrived here in Tellesberg, you and the Emperor and Empress all expressed your relief and surprise that I’d managed it. Well, I wouldn’t have without the help of a dear friend. Let me tell you about her.
“Nynian’s father was Grand Vicar Zhoel, who, as you may be aware, was my uncle. Unfortunately, her mother died two years after she was born, and my uncle—who I’m sure must have had some worthwhile qualities beyond his truly outstanding gifts for hypocrisy and selfishness and an undeniable skill at manipulating Temple politics, although I never personally saw them, you understand—was unwilling to acknowledge his bastard daughter.”
Adorai’s lips tightened in remembered anger, and her eyes were hard.
“Fortunately, Uncle Zhoel hadn’t become Grand Vicar yet. He was only a vicar at the time, as was my father. Father and Mother were sufficiently angry at him not to allow a mere vicar’s r
esentment to keep them from taking her in, and until she was twelve years old, she was raised in my parents’ home. They called her Nynian, because she was such a beautiful baby, and she grew up to be as beautiful as the original Nynian. For all intents and purposes, she was my sister, not simply my cousin, although not even Father and Mother were prepared to openly acknowledge her blood relationship to us. There were ‘appearances’ to be maintained, after all.
“Then her father was elected to the Grand Vicarate, and everything changed. He insisted my parents send Nynian away, and this time, they felt they had no choice but to agree. So they sent her off to convent school to be educated. I think they hoped she might discover a vocation, which would keep her safely out of my uncle’s sight, and I suppose, in a way, she did.”
This time, Adorai’s lips twitched in what was obviously amusement.
“I’m sure a Bédardist like yourself would have a field day deciding exactly why she chose the particular vocation she did. And I don’t doubt that the circumstances of her own birth played a part. But I genuinely don’t think she did it simply because she could be certain it would keep her father spinning in his grave for centuries. At any rate, what she did was to change her name and—”
“—and that’s how ‘Ahnzhelyk’ came to be able to help me and the boys escape to Charis,” Adorai finished, some time later. “She has all manner of contacts, and one of them managed to smuggle us aboard ship without any of the Schuelerites looking for us realizing who we were.”
“She sounds like a rather amazing woman,” Staynair said. “I wish I could have the opportunity of meeting her someday.”
“Do you really mean that, Your Eminence?” Adorai asked, her eyes searching his face, and he nodded.
“If you’re asking me if I would condemn her for her choice of—vocation, I believe you called it—the answer is no,” he replied serenely. “I won’t say it’s exactly the one I would have wished for for my own daughter, but, then again, my daughter never had to fend for herself simply because she would have been an embarrassment to my high and holy position. And from all you’ve told me about her, she obviously managed to become a strong person and a loyal and loving friend—and sister—despite her father’s manifold shortcomings.”
“Yes,” Adorai said softly. “Yes, she did. Although I must confess that both of us felt more than a little odd over her relationship with Erayk.”
“I scarcely see how you could have felt any other way, Adorai.” Staynair shook his head. “The lives we live are not always the ones we might have chosen, but with two such extraordinary women in his life, I begin to see that there must always have been rather more to Erayk Dynnys than I realized at the time. Enough more that perhaps we should not all have been so surprised at the final decision of his life.”
“I don’t really know about that, Your Eminence. I’d like to believe you were right, and perhaps I do. But, at the moment, the point is that Ahnzhelyk—Nynian—has sent me this.”
She set Ahrdyn aside and reached into the handbag she’d brought with her. Ahrdyn obviously felt intensely annoyed by her misguided interruption of the proper relationship between human fingers and cat-lizard fur. He gave her one disgusted look, then hopped down to the floor and headed back to his basket and his interrupted nap. Adorai paid him no attention as she extracted a thick envelope and set it squarely in her lap, where the indignant cat-lizard had been, and looked down at it for a long moment.
“Your Eminence, this is a transcript of the Grand Vicar’s Address from the Throne,” she said, looking up. “It’s a transcript of the actual Address, not the . . . expurgated version that was officially circulated.”
Staynair stiffened, sitting upright in his chair, and she nodded.
“I realize the official Address was severe enough in its charges and allegations against Charis, Your Eminence. It turns out the actual Address was worse. I suspect the reason it was edited before it was officially released is its explicit warning to the vicarate that the Group of Four—oh, excuse me, I meant the Grand Vicar, of course—has decided Holy War is inevitable.”
Staynair inhaled deeply. Not in surprise so much as in confirmation.
“I was very tempted to burn her letter and simply hand the transcript to you—and to Empress Sharleyan—without telling you where it came from or exactly how it came into my hands,” Adorai continued.
“To protect Nynian’s identity?”
“No, Your Eminence. To prevent you from ever reading what else she’s offered to do.”
Staynair simply cocked his head, raising his eyebrows slightly and waiting, and she sighed.
“Your Eminence, she’s offered, essentially, to become your spy in Zion. And she’s offered—in fact, she sent with this letter—the contents of her own files.”
“Her files?”
“Almost twenty years of meticulous notes detailing abuses of Church authority, corruption in the ranks of the vicarate, the sale of writs of attestation and of condemnation under the Proscriptions, the buying and selling of legal decisions like the one in favor of Tahdayo Mahntayl’s claim to Hanth . . . all of it. They fill several trunks, Your Eminence. It’s amazing what powerful men will discuss among themselves or let slip in the company of someone in her profession.”
Staynair’s eyes widened. For several moments, he only sat there, looking at her, before he spoke again.
“That’s an . . . extraordinary offer.”
“She’s an extraordinary woman, Your Eminence,” Adorai said simply.
“I can well believe that, from what you’ve already told me. Still, I must confess that I’m puzzled.”
“About the reason for her offer to act as the Church of Charis’ spy? Or about the reason she compiled those notes in the first place?”
“Both, actually.”
“Your Eminence, Nynian has never had a great deal of reason to feel any loyalty to the great Church dynasties. To individuals from those dynasties, like me, and like my parents, perhaps, but not to the dynasties themselves. And even if she’d had any such reason, her first and strongest reaction is to sympathize with those the Church has abandoned, much as my uncle abandoned her. Worse, from the perspective of the vicarate, at least, that convent education of hers took. She believes, as I do, in what the Church is supposed to stand for, and that makes her opposition to what the Church actually is inevitable. And,” she looked directly into Staynair’s eyes once more, “I have to confess that it was Nynian who first drew me into active opposition to the internal corruption of Mother Church, not the other way around.”
“But I’m still somewhat at a loss to understand why she collected all of the information you’ve described.”
“I realize that. And, although she didn’t actually authorize me to tell you this, I’m going to have to give you some additional information if I’m really going to explain. Before I do, though, please understand that what I’m about to tell you could cost scores of lives if Clyntahn should ever learn of it, Your Eminence.”
“You intend to tell me this in order to clarify why you would like my advice on passing her offer along to Sharleyan?” Staynair asked, and she nodded. “In that case, Adorai, it comes under the seal of the confessional. Without your permission, I will never share it with another living soul.”
“Thank you, Your Eminence.”
She drew another deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“Your Eminence, there is, within the Church, at the very highest levels, a group of men who are as aware of the abuses around them as any Charisian could be. I won’t reveal their names, even to you, without their permission. For that matter, I feel confident that I know only a handful of them. But Ahnzhelyk—Nynian—has been one of their primary agents for decades. They call themselves simply ‘the Circle,’ and their purpose is—”
. VII .
Talbor Pass,
Duchy of Manchyr,
League of Corisande
Sir Koryn Gahrvai watched grimly as the wounded limped towar
ds the rear. Many of them used their weapons as improvised crutches. Here and there, one of them leaned on the shoulder of a companion—sometimes both were wounded and leaned together, supporting one another—and stretcher parties carried men too severely wounded even to hobble. There could be nothing in the world more terrible than a battle lost, he thought. It wasn’t simply the defeat; it was knowing that so many men had died and been wounded under his orders for absolutely nothing.
Unlike many commanders, Gahrvai made it a point to visit the wounded as often as he could. Altogether too many of them were going to die, anyway, despite everything the Order of Pasquale could do, and he owed it to them to at least tell them how grateful he was for all they’d done and suffered. And it also kept him aware of the price of his failure.
That’s not really fair, Koryn, a corner of his brain insisted. It’s not your fault the Charisians have longer-ranged artillery and those damnable rifles.
No, another corner of his brain replied harshly, but it is your fault you managed to get your entire army penned up in Talbor Pass like sheep in a slaughter pen.
His jaw clenched and remembered fury guttered through his veins. The one thing he’d managed to do since that disastrous afternoon which gave him a fierce sense of personal satisfaction was to relieve Baron Barcor of his command. Yet even that sense of satisfaction was flawed, because he couldn’t forgive himself for not going ahead and relieving Barcor the instant word of Cayleb’s landing had reached him. The baron had taken over four hours to get any of his troops into motion. Even then, he’d moved with arthritic slowness, and the main body of the rear guard had still been inside the western terminus of the pass when the defeated remnants of Windshare’s cavalry had come pelting back.
There’d still been time, even then, for Barcor to clear the pass and at least let some of the other troops trapped behind him get clear of Talbor’s restrictive terrain. But the baron had panicked as he heard the defeated cavalry’s inevitably inflated estimates of the Charisians’ strength. On his own initiative, he’d suspended the advance and ordered his men to dig in where they were. By the time Gahrvai had managed to reach the rear guard to personally countermand Barcor’s orders, the Charisians truly had been present in strength, and the attempt to fight his way out of the pass had ended in bloody wreckage and the loss of over three thousand in dead, wounded, and prisoners. Coupled to the losses Windshare’s cavalry had taken, that had amounted to a total loss of over six thousand, and they’d actually ended up being driven the better part of a mile and a half farther east, deeper into the pass.