by David Weber
Fortunately, the emperor, at least, knew where Merlin had gone. Ahstyn had waited patiently while Gahlvyn Daikyn went in and roused the sleeping emperor. Then the valet had poked his head out of the emperor’s sleeping quarters and beckoned for the guardsman to enter with his message. For just a moment, Ahstyn had thought he saw surprise in Cayleb’s eyes, but he’d obviously been wrong.
“I’m sorry, Franz,” the emperor had said, shaking his head with a wry smile. “I told Merlin I didn’t want anyone to know, but I didn’t expect him to take me quite that literally. I’d assumed that he’d at least tell the rest of the detail I’d decided to send him off.”
“Send him off, Your Majesty?” Ahstyn had repeated.
“Yes.” Cayleb had stood and stretched, yawning hugely, before he accepted a tunic from Daikyn. “Let’s just say I needed a message taken to someone who couldn’t exactly be seen opening a letter from me. Not if he wanted to keep his head, at least.”
Ahstyn’s eyes had widened for a moment. Then he’d understood, and the fact that the seijin had been able to filter through his own sentries without anyone spotting him explained exactly why the emperor had chosen him to carry a critical message to one of his agents behind the Corisandian lines.
“Obviously,” the emperor had continued, turning back to face Ahstyn as he belted the tunic, “I’d prefer that no one else know about this.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Ahstyn had half-bowed. “I’ll brief the rest of the detail immediately.”
“Thank you, Franz. And I apologize. I’d rather hoped Merlin would be back by now. I hadn’t expected you to have to cover his watch, as well as your own.”
“Don’t worry about that, Your Majesty.” Ahstyn had smiled. “Captain Athrawes works longer hours than any of the rest of us. I don’t mind giving up a little of my own off-duty time if you need me to.”
“I know.” The emperor had grinned at him. “Still, it would have been polite of me to at least warn you about it ahead of time.”
Ahstyn had merely smiled, touched his left shoulder in salute, and withdrawn from the emperor’s sleeping tent. He rather doubted that any other king or emperor on the face of Safehold would have worried his head for a moment over the convenience or inconvenience of one of his bodyguards.
Still, it was becoming apparent that even the emperor was growing impatient. It wouldn’t be fair to call Cayleb’s attitude worried, but that might be because, like Ahstyn himself, he found it impossible to conceive of any situation Merlin wouldn’t be able to handle. There had to be one, of course; Ahstyn simply couldn’t imagine what it might be. On the other hand—
“Sorry I’m late, Franz.”
The lieutenant twitched and snapped around in disbelief as a deep, familiar voice spoke from behind him.
“Merlin?”
“In the flesh, as it were,” Merlin replied with a broad smile.
“Damn it, Sir!” Ahstyn glowered at the neatly uniformed apparition which appeared to have sprung up out of the very ground. “I know you’re a seijin, but how in Langhorne’s name did you manage that?”
“Manage what?” Merlin’s expression was innocence itself.
“You know exactly what!” Ahstyn half-snapped. “It’s bad enough you got past all of us on the way out, but if you can get past us on the way in, as well, then maybe someone else could, too!”
“Actually, Franz, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Merlin shook his head, and genuine contrition softened his smile. “No one else is going to be able to duplicate the technique I just used. Believe me.”
“I’m beginning to think there’s a lot more truth to all the old-fashioned ‘magic’ stories about seijin than I thought there was,” Ahstyn said.
“It’s not magic, Franz. Just training and a few enhanced abilities.”
“Sure it is.”
“Well, unless you’re prepared to go off to the Mountains of Light and spend a couple of decades training with me, I’m afraid that’s about the best explanation I can give you.” Merlin reached out and patted the lieutenant on the shoulder. “I’m really not trying to be mysterious, Franz. Although I will admit that the opportunity to show off a bit for people who are cleared to know about my little . . . peculiarities is one of my small pleasures.”
“Which is probably why there aren’t more of us cleared to know about you,” Ahstyn told him sourly. “The way we keep dropping dead from heart failure holds the numbers down!”
Merlin laughed.
“Oh, it’s not quite that bad! Besides, you’re all fit and young. I’m sure that if anyone’s hearts can take it, yours can.”
“That’s reassuring, Sir.” Ahstyn gave his superior officer a very old-fashioned look for a moment, then grimaced. “I’m sure it was entertaining to scare me out of a year’s growth, but the Emperor’s been poking his head out of his tent every ten minutes on the minute. I think he expected you back some time ago.”
“I know.” Merlin shrugged. “It took longer to find His Majesty’s . . . correspondent than I’d expected. And, to be honest, not even a seijin can run around too energetically without someone’s noticing him.”
“That really is reassuring,” Ahstyn said with a smile. “In the meantime, though—”
He made shooing motions towards the emperor’s command tent, and Merlin nodded. Then the seijin squared his shoulders, crossed to the tent, and rapped his knuckles smartly against the small bell hanging outside the closed tent flaps.
“Your Majesty, I’m back,” he announced over the bell’s shimmering musical note.
“Oh, you are, are you?” The emperor sounded undeniably testy. A moment later, he poked his head back out and gave his personal armsman an equally undeniably sour look. “I thought you said something about dawn,” he said, and glanced rather pointedly at the late-morning sun.
“I did, Your Majesty,” Merlin admitted. “There were a few complications, however.”
“I don’t like that word, ‘complications,’ ” Cayleb said even more testily. “I suppose you’d better come in here and tell me about them, though.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Merlin murmured, and followed the emperor into the tent.
Ahstyn and Faircaster looked at one another.
“Don’t worry, Sir,” the sergeant said with a broad grin. “The Emperor’s very fond of the Seijin, really.”
Cayleb let the tent flaps settle back into place, then turned to Merlin, crossed his arms across his chest, and raised both eyebrows.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that it might be a good idea to keep me at least generally informed about these little expeditions of yours?”
There was a note of genuine anger in his voice, Merlin observed, and he had a right to feel it.
“Cayleb, I’m sorry,” the man who had been Nimue Alban said soberly. “If there’d been time, I certainly would have told you. Unfortunately, there wasn’t. In fact, I damned nearly didn’t get there in time, after all.”
Cayleb’s anger visibly disappeared as Merlin’s serious tone registered.
“Get where?” he asked.
Merlin gazed at him for a moment, wondering how Cayleb was going to react. He’d kept watch on the encampment through one of his SNARCs the entire time he’d been gone, and he’d been relieved when Cayleb automatically covered for his absence. He’d expected the emperor to do just that, but if he’d been a flesh-and-blood human, he would have held his breath when Ahstyn went to tell Cayleb about his own absence. Fortunately, Daikyn (who also knew the “cover story” about Seijin Merlin’s visions) had made sure the emperor was fully awake before allowing Ahstyn in to explain why he’d awakened him in the first place, and the lieutenant had obviously half-expected to be told that Cayleb knew where Merlin was.
Still. . . .
“Sit down, Cayleb,” he said, waving at one of the folding camp chairs by the map table.
“Just what are you busy preparing me for, Merlin?” Cayleb’s eyes narrowed, but he sat in the indicated
chair.
“I’m about to tell you that. But, before I do, you need to do two things. First, you need to understand that I did get there in time. And, second, you need to get ready to do the best job of acting you’ve ever done in your entire life.”
“Merlin, you’re starting to really scare me,” Cayleb said frankly.
“That’s not my intention. But I know you, Cayleb. When I tell you where I’ve been, and why, you’re not going to take it . . . excessively calmly, shall we say? And it’s not going to be easy for you to pretend I haven’t told you, but you’re going to have to.”
“Will you please stop trying to reassure me?” Cayleb grimaced. “If you have to, you can sit on me after you’ve told me to keep me from running around the camp like a lizard with its head cut off. But if you don’t get busy and tell me where the hell you’ve been, you’re going to see a really good imitation of a volcano!”
Merlin smiled briefly, then squared his shoulders.
“All right, Cayleb. I’ll tell you.
“Last night, I was going through the routine take from the SNARCs in Charis with Owl. I didn’t really expect to find anything too surprising, but I was wrong. In fact—”
Merlin didn’t—quite—need to sit on Cayleb. It was a close thing, though.
“My God.” The emperor’s face was ashen. “My God! You’re sure she’s all right, Merlin?!”
“Positive,” Merlin said reassuringly. “I kept an eye on her all the way back to Corisande, and Seahamper’s no slouch. He personally sat on her while he sent one of the nuns down to the bay, and Captain Hywyt took two full companies of Marines back up to the convent under his personal command to fetch her. She’s well on her way back to Dancer by now, and Hywyt and Seahamper are watching her like great dragons with a single cub.”
“Thank God,” Cayleb murmured fervently, closing his eyes. Then he straightened, stood up, and put his hands on Merlin’s shoulders.
“And thank you, Merlin Athrawes,” he said softly, looking into Merlin’s dark blue eyes. “I already owed you far more than I could ever hope to repay. Now—” He shook his head. “Would you mind very much if we named our first son Merlin? Or—” he grinned suddenly “—our first daughter Nimue?”
“Either name would probably raise a few eyebrows, but I’d be honored.”
“Good!”
Cayleb gave him a little shake, then stood back and drew a deep breath.
“I can see why you said I’m going to have to be a good actor. How is anyone supposed to act like nothing happened when a pack of madmen tried to murder his wife less than five hours ago?”
“I don’t know,” Merlin replied honestly, “but somehow, you’re going to have to. On the other hand, it could be that you’ve built a little bit of cover for yourself already. That business about sending me off to deliver a message was a good recovery.”
“Saw that, did you?” Cayleb grinned crookedly at him, his face beginning to lose a little more of its ashen hue. “I figured you’d have one of those SNARCs of yours keeping an eye on me, wherever you were.”
“Of course I did. And since you didn’t tell anyone what sort of ‘message’ it was, you can go right on not telling them. Let all of them assume you’ve got more irons in the fire than they know about. And since you’re not going to tell them what the message was, or who it was to, most of them will put their own . . . creative construction, shall we say, on whatever mood you appear to be in.”
“That’ll work for everyone but Nahrmahn,” Cayleb said a bit sourly. Merlin raised an eyebrow, and Cayleb chuckled.
“Don’t misunderstand me. If anyone had ever told me I was actually going to find out that I liked the man, I would’ve told him he was a lunatic. As it happens, though, I do like him, and the fact that everything you’ve seen indicates he’s genuinely decided his best hope is to be loyal to me and Sharleyan only helps. But that man is fiendishly clever.”
“I believe I mentioned something to that effect quite some time ago,” Merlin observed mildly.
“Indeed you did. But my point at this particular moment is that I’m quite certain he’s already deduced that ‘Seijin Merlin’s’ abilities are even more peculiar than all of the ‘wild stories’ about him would suggest.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’re right about that.” Merlin shrugged. “One of the problems when you’re using a particularly sharp knife is keeping your fingers out from under the blade.”
“You’re taking this suspicion of mine mighty calmly, I must say.”
“It’s not going to help if I don’t take it calmly,” Merlin pointed out. “And assuming the man doesn’t panic if he learns a little more of the truth, then he’ll be even more useful as an analyst. Not to mention the fact that we’ll be able to share even more of the raw data with him.”
“Should I assume from that that you’re thinking in terms of introducing him to the story we’ve given Payter and the rest of the detail?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. In fact, I think it might not be a bad idea to ask Nahrmahn to step in here.”
“Right now?” Cayleb’s eyes widened, and Merlin shrugged again.
“As long as we can keep the layers of our stories straight,” he said with a crooked smile. “Let’s see. We tell Franz and the rest of the detail you sent me off with a message to some unknown agent on the other side. They pass that on to the rest of the army, if anyone’s wondering where I disappeared to. And we give that same story to Chermyn and the rest of your officers, which will also help explain why you wanted to see Nahrmahn. After all, who could be a better adviser where skullduggery and general, all-round sneakiness is concerned? Then, we tell Nahrmahn that where I really spent the morning was sitting in my tent having a vision of Saint Agtha’s. We tell him everything I know about the assassination attempt and who was behind it and ask him for his reactions and what he thinks would be the best way to proceed. And we tell him the ‘message’ story is our official cover, and that he should simply tell anyone gauche enough to ask that he’s not at liberty to discuss just who you might be sending messages to, or why you might be doing it.”
“I’m beginning to get a headache keeping track of who knows which part of our current set of lies,” Cayleb grumbled. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think you’re right,” he said. “And I expect Nahrmahn will take it fairly well. He’s smart enough to understand why we couldn’t risk telling him about something like this until we’d had a chance to evaluate how wholeheartedly he’d decided to support the Empire.”
“Exactly.”
“All right. But in that case,” Cayleb met Merlin’s eyes levelly, “do we tell him about Halbrook Hollow?”
“Cayleb, we’re talking about your wife’s uncle,” Merlin replied quietly, then shook his head in self-condemnation. “We all knew he had Temple Loyalist sympathies, and I should have been keeping a closer eye on him. I had the capability, but as you pointed out to me quite a while ago, I just don’t have the time to watch everything. I had to prioritize, and I made a serious mistake in his case. I think I let the fact that he obviously did love her make me overconfident. And I probably counted on Bynzhamyn’s natural suspicion more than I had a right to.” He shook his head again. “However it happened, I didn’t make watching him one of my priorities, and it almost killed Sharleyan.”
“But it didn’t,” Cayleb told him. “And as I also pointed out to you on the occasion to which you’ve just referred, it was inevitable that something like this was going to happen sooner or later. There’s only one of you, Merlin. No matter how wondrous you seem to be, no matter how hard you drive yourself, there’s only one of you.”
“I know, but—”
“Stop beating yourself over this,” Cayleb said sternly. “It’s over, and she’s still alive. That’s the important thing. Now, you were about to say about the Duke?”
Merlin looked at him for a moment longer, then gave a slight nod of acceptance.
“I don’t know whether
or not anyone will find his body,” he said. “Daivys shoveled enough dirt across him and his armsmen, and enough of that whole area is still the next best thing to virgin forest, that even searchers looking for a grave might well miss it. But if Wave Thunder goes after Kairee, his connections to Halbrook Hollow are almost bound to come out. And explaining away his mysterious disappearance at a time like this. . . .”
He let his voice trail off then, and Cayleb snorted sourly.
“Not exactly designed to put Sharleyan’s Chisholmians’ minds at ease, is it?” the emperor said.
“No. And especially not in the Chamber of Commons, given his close relationship with the Army and with Green Mountain. But that’s not really what you were thinking about, anyway, was it?”
“No,” Cayleb admitted with a sigh.
“She’s a very smart lady,” Merlin pointed out sadly. “Much too smart not to figure it out eventually, whether we tell her about it or not. Especially if Bynzhamyn goes after Kairee. So I suppose the real question is whether there’s any point in trying to protect her.”
“And how she’s likely to react when she finds out we tried to,” Cayleb agreed.
“Either way, I think we definitely need to tell Nahrmahn. First, because his advice on how we handle that entire nasty part of the problem would be extremely valuable. Second, because he’s as smart as Sharleyan is. Whether we tell him or not, he’s going to figure it out, so we might as well tell him the entire truth—about that, at any rate—from the beginning and save everyone a little bit of time.”
“You’re right, of course.” Cayleb’s shoulders slumped. “I only wish you weren’t. She loved him like a father, Merlin. This is going to break her heart. And, to be honest, I’m a little afraid.”
“Afraid she’ll blame it at least indirectly on you?” Merlin asked gently. “That she’ll see her decision to accept your proposal as the real cause for what he did . . . and for his death?”
“Yes,” the emperor admitted.
“I can’t promise she won’t, Cayleb. No one could. But Sharleyan isn’t the first person who’s had someone close to her disapprove of her marriage. And she didn’t survive that long on the throne of Chisholm without learning to understand the way people’s minds—and hearts—work where politics and power are concerned. Let’s face it—she brought her uncle to Charis in the first place because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to trust him back home in Chisholm. She knew that much about him before she ever married you. People can punish themselves for things that don’t make any sort of rational sense at all, of course, so it’s possible she’ll decide her marriage did ‘push him’ into the actions he took, however much her intellect knows the final decision was still his and his alone. But even if she does, I think she’s more likely to blame herself for accepting your proposal than she is to blame you for extending it.”