by David Weber
Stop that, she told the tears prickling at the backs of her eyes. You can’t bring them back. All you can do is to make their deaths mean something. You’re an empress; be an empress. You know who wanted to kill you—who did kill your guardsmen. Halcom may be dead, thanks to Merlin, but there are scores of other Halcoms just like him out there. Now you’ve got another reason not to let them win.
It was true, yet there were times when she felt herself being spread far too thin. When the duties and the responsibilities and the debts looming before her seemed fit to crush one of the archangels themselves. When all she wanted was to find some way to pass those duties and responsibilities to someone else. To find the time for the girlhood which had been stolen from her by a throne. Surely she was entitled to at least a little sliver of a life that was hers and hers alone, not the property of Chisholm, or of Charis. Hers.
And that’s why you’re thinking about Cayleb, she thought. Because he is yours. You don’t have all of him any more than he has all of you—the two of you are too many other people, have too many other responsibilities. But the Writ says that to those of whom much is asked, much is also given. It hasn’t seemed that way ever since Father died . . . until now.
Her lips stopped trying to quiver and curved in a tender smile, instead. A marriage of state, yes, but so much more. Her heart seemed to lighten magically as she remembered his smile, the taste of his lips, the magic of his touch and her own responsiveness to it. Archbishop Maikel had said a true marriage was a union of shared burdens and tasks, of two hearts, two minds, and two souls, and he’d been right. There was no challenge the two of them couldn’t face together, and if it was silly of her to believe that of a man she’d actually known for barely two months, then so be it. She—
Knuckles rapped gently on a doorframe and she heard Sairaih’s voice murmuring something. A moment later, Sairaih herself appeared in her bedchamber door.
“Edwyrd is here, Your Majesty,” she said.
It was a mark of how shaken Sairaih had been by the assassination attempt that she didn’t even frown when she saw her mistress’ feet tucked up under her like some schoolroom child’s. Sharleyan felt an urge to chuckle at the thought, but instead, she only nodded.
“Ask him to come in, please.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
Sairaih swept an abbreviated curtsy and withdrew. A few pulse beats later, she returned with Sergeant Seahamper.
“Edwyrd,” Sharleyan said quietly. She winced slightly with the pain in her brutally bruised shoulder as she held out her hand, and the sergeant, armed and armored for duty, bent over it, kissing it, then straightened. “I see Colonel Ropewalk decided I could have you after all,” the empress observed with a faint, bittersweet twinkle.
“Your Majesty, if you want me on your balcony all night, then that’s where I’ll be,” he told her simply.
“I remember when you used to sit outside my bedroom door when I was a girl,” she told him. “Right after Father died. I could always sleep knowing you were there, my very own armsman, to keep the nightmares outside, where they belonged. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight, too.”
“I hope so, Your Majesty.”
“So do I.” She glanced at her maid. “Go on to bed yourself, Sairaih.”
“I’m not that tired, Your Majesty. If you need—”
“If you’re not that tired, you certainly ought to be. And I’m not exactly a little girl anymore, even if I do need Edwyrd to help keep the bad dreams at bay tonight. Go to bed. If it turns out I need you, I promise I’ll ring and drag you back out of bed without a qualm. Now scoot!”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Sairaih smiled slightly, produced another half-curtsy, and withdrew, leaving Sharleyan alone with Seahamper.
“She’s as much a worrier as you are, Edwyrd,” the empress said.
“Funny how you seem to have that effect on people, Your Majesty.”
“Undoubtedly because people don’t trust me to have the sense to come in out of the rain.”
“Undoubtedly, Your Majesty,” Seahamper agreed, and she laughed a bit sadly.
“We really have been through a lot together, haven’t we, Edwyrd?”
“And, if you’ll pardon me for saying it, Your Majesty, I’m hoping we’ll be through a lot more together, as well.”
“I suppose that would beat the alternative. Still, I’d just as soon not have another couple of days as strenuous as the last two,” she said, and this time, he only smiled, his eyes as sad as her own, and nodded in agreement.
“Well,” she said more briskly, “I suppose we should get you out onto the balcony.”
She climbed out of the armchair and tucked one arm into his armored elbow, walking barefoot across the bedchamber’s cool marble floor beside him in a fluttering swirl of nightgown and steel thistle-silk night robe. He opened the latticed door onto the enormous balcony and escorted her out into the cool darkness of evening.
The sky was a cobalt-blue dome, beginning to flicker faintly with stars, and the moon was a burnished copper coin just peeking above the eastern horizon, but it wasn’t quite completely dark yet. She could look out over the roofs of Tellesberg, across the waterfront to the twinkling lights of galleons moving out of the harbor on the wings of the falling tide. Other lights were beginning to glimmer across the capital, and she raised her head, savoring the cool kiss of the breeze on her face.
Yet for all the present moment’s tranquility, there was a different feel to Tellesberg tonight, she thought. One at odds with the peacefulness of the scene before her. If she’d ever doubted that her new subjects had taken her to their hearts, the wave of fury which had swept across Tellesberg on the heels of the news of the assassination attempt would have put them to rest forever.
“How bad was it, really, Edwyrd?” she asked now, quietly, looking at the tendrils of smoke still rising down near the river. She could see them, despite the gathering evening, because they were underlit with a faint, reddish glow, pulsating gently where embers and coals still smouldered at their feet.
“Not as bad as it could have been, Your Majesty.” He shrugged. “The healers are going to be busy for a while, but the City Guard got there in time to keep anyone from actually getting lynched, and the firemen held the fires to just the one block around the church.”
“I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said softly, still gazing at the smoke, and Seahamper shrugged again. His sympathy was manifestly limited, she realized. Then again, her arms-man had always been a . . . direct sort of fellow. But then he surprised her just a bit.
“They’re angry, Your Majesty,” he said. “Angry and, I think, ashamed. As far as we know, all of the bastards—begging your pardon—were Charisians, and they feel as if their entire kingdom’s at fault.”
“That’s so foolish,” she said sadly. “Three-quarters of the detachment were Charisians, too, and they died to stop it!”
“Of course they did. And, eventually, the rest of Charis is going to remember that, too. But not yet.”
Sharleyan nodded, knowing he was right. Knowing she couldn’t really have expected anything else, and grateful that, as Seahamper said, the City Guard had arrived in time to prevent any fatalities, at least. She wished the Guard could have gotten there in time to prevent the mob from torching the Church of Langhorne the Blessed, too, yet that probably would have been expecting too much.
She’d wondered, from time to time, if Cayleb and Archbishop Maikel had truly been wise to allow the Temple Loyalists who openly professed their continued allegiance to the Council of Vicars to claim one of the city’s larger churches as their own. She’d been especially concerned when the people who continued to worship there began to move themselves and their families into the tenements and apartments clustered around the church, like their own little enclave in the heart of Tellesberg. What had happened today only underscored her earlier concerns, but she still hadn’t been able to come up with a better solution than the one Cayleb had adopted. Whatever
its drawbacks, she agreed with him and the archbishop that the last thing they could afford to do would be to confirm the Inquisition’s allegations about the “bloody suppression of the true Church in heretic Charis” by actually persecuting the Loyalists.
Well, we didn’t take their church away from them . . . not that the Inquisition is going to admit that for a moment!
She stood there, sharing a companionable silence with Seahamper while she felt the darkness settling fully into place, then inhaled deeply.
“I suppose I should go back inside,” she told him.
“Well, if you insist,” another voice said. “But we just got here, you know.”
She jumped, then turned with a squeak of astonishment—and joy—as she saw the two men standing behind her.
“Cayleb!”
Later on, she could never remember actually having moved. All she remembered was his arms around her, the crushing power of his embrace, and the hot, sweet taste of his mouth. She was vaguely aware of Merlin and Seahamper standing back, watching the two of them with perfectly matched smiles, despite her armsman’s own astonishment at the other men’s abrupt appearance, and she couldn’t have cared less.
Then, finally, Cayleb’s arms relaxed at least enough for her to breathe, and she heard Merlin chuckle.
“I figured they’d have to come up for air soon,” he said to Seahamper. “I was beginning to think I might have been wrong about that, though.”
Seahamper turned a chuckle of his own into a rather unconvincing cough, and Cayleb smiled.
“I hope you remembered to bring your cards,” he told Merlin.
“And why might that be, Your Majesty?” Merlin inquired politely.
“Because you and Sergeant Seahamper are going to have to spend at least an hour or so out here amusing yourselves with something!”
“Ah, the impetuousness of young love!” Merlin replied, and Sharleyan felt her cheeks heating even as she laughed. It was odd. Not even Seahamper or Sairaih had ever displayed that sort of familiarity, and yet it felt perfectly natural—appropriate, even—coming from Captain Athrawes.
“How did the two of you get here?” she demanded, and Cayleb shook his head.
“That’s part of what we’re going to be telling you about, love,” he said. “And, trust me, you’re going to find it hard to believe, but it’s all true. And thank God for it! If Merlin hadn’t been keeping an eye on you, hadn’t been able to get there in time . . .”
His voice trailed off, and Sharleyan gasped as his arms tightened almost convulsively about her once again. He realized he was crushing her and relaxed his embrace with a murmur of apology.
“Don’t worry. I’m not that fragile,” she assured him, reaching up to cup the side of his face in her hand. Whiskers stirred against her palm, like a brush of wiry silk, and she smiled. “And when did you grow all of this?” she demanded, tugging on the newly grown beard.
“I’ve just been a bit too busy to shave,” he told her with a smile of his own.
“Of course you have.” She tugged again, hard enough to make him wince, then looked past him at Merlin.
“You did say you’d bring a character witness with you, Seijin Merlin.”
“Yes, I did, Your Grace.” He bowed to her. “To be honest, I don’t think I could have left him home in Corisande even if I’d wanted to. Not that it didn’t take quite a bit of ingenuity to figure out how to cover our absence. Well, his absence, at any rate.”
“How did you cover for it?”
“At this particular moment, love,” Cayleb told her, “the ‘Emperor’s Own’ is guarding an empty sleeping tent. They know it’s empty, even if they don’t have a clue just how far away from ‘home’ I am at this moment. As far as they’re concerned, Seijin Merlin and I are creeping off all alone to meet a representative of a faction in Manchyr which may be prepared to turn against Hektor in return for the proper guarantees of their own positions. They weren’t too happy about my going off with a single guardsman, even Merlin, but they weren’t prepared to argue about it. Well, not too long and hard, anyway. And they—and Nahrmahn—understand that it’s essential that no one, not even General Chermyn or Bryahn, know about these supposed negotiations. Lieutenant Ahstyn and Gahlvyn are prepared to keep anyone out of the tent until morning, but we can’t guarantee that something isn’t going to come up. So, much as I hate to say it, we really don’t have a lot of time. And,” he smiled wickedly into her eyes, “we are going to spend an hour or two of the time we do have together, My Lady.”
“Which means,” Merlin murmured with a smile of his own while Sharleyan’s blush turned hotter, “that we’d better get started on those explanations I promised you, Your Grace.”
“No wonder you’ve always seemed a bit . . . unusual to me, Merlin,” Sharleyan said, the better part of two hours later. She shook her head slowly, her eyes still huge with wonder, as she gazed at the guardsman who was over nine hundred years old.
Seahamper looked almost dazed. For the first time in memory, he’d obeyed her command to sit in her presence without even token argument as Cayleb began his explanation. Now it was his turn to look at Merlin, and he shook his head.
“I guess I don’t feel quite so old and feeble compared to you anymore, Captain,” he said. “I don’t pretend to understand all of that. For that matter, I don’t pretend to understand half of it! But at least now I know how you manage to do some of the . . . peculiar things I’ve heard stories about. You really did strangle three krakens with your bare hands, didn’t you?”
“Not quite,” Merlin replied with a crooked smile. Then he turned back to Sharleyan. “Have we answered your questions, Your Grace?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, you’ve answered the ones I knew I had,” she assured him. “Of course, you’ve given me at least a couple of dozen new ones!”
“It does seem to work that way, love,” Cayleb agreed.
“The thing that’s going to be hardest is accepting that all my life, all I was taught about God and the Archangels was a lie.” Sharleyan’s voice was low and bitter, and Seahamper’s jaw tightened as if she spoke for him as well.
“Your Grace, you really need to discuss that with Archbishop Maikel,” Merlin told her. “You already knew men like Clyntahn and Trynair could twist and abuse the faith of others. All they’ve really done, though, whether they knew it or not, is to follow in Langhorne’s and Bédard’s footsteps. The fact that corrupt and ambitious men are willing to lie even about God Himself in their pursuit of power is nothing new, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t make everything you’ve ever believed about God untrue. In fact, as much as I hate to admit it, men like the Archbishop and the Brethren of Saint Zherneau believed the truth when they saw it in large part because of the values they’d been taught by the religion Langhorne and Bédard invented to enslave every Safeholdian. Things like that tend to happen when people use the goodness of God as a weapon. My own belief is that despite the best efforts of a Langhorne or a Bédard, they aren’t able to keep God from creeping through the cracks when He wants to.”
“ ‘Creeping through the cracks,’ ” Sharleyan repeated softly, then smiled. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it, at least. And I truly do understand why the Archbishop is unwilling to challenge the Church’s fundamental doctrines at this point.”
“At the same time, though, we’re building up a sort of inner circle of our own,” Cayleb pointed out. “The four of us here, the Brethren, Dr. Mahklyn and a handful of others in the Royal College. We’ll have to go on being almost insanely careful who else we tell about it, but it’s a beginning.”
“Yes.” Sharleyan’s eyes closed again, and Cayleb felt her muscles tightening in the circle of his arm. “And I’m afraid the Archbishop’s reservations about telling Earl Gray Harbor the full truth apply to Mahrak, as well. He loves me, and he trusts me, and he’s fully aware of—and outraged by—the corruption in the Temple and Zion. But his fundamental faith is as strong a part of him as Uncle Byrtrym’s
is—was.”
The final word came out cracked, so quavering it seemed to have two syllables, not one, and Cayleb’s arm tightened comfortingly about her.
“I’m so sorry, love,” he said, bending close to press his cheek against the top of her bent head. “I know you loved him.”
“I did. I do,” she whispered. “And I truly believed he loved me.”
“I think he did, Your Grace,” Merlin said quietly. She opened eyes brimming with tears to look at him, and he sighed. “The original plan was his, true, but he never intended for you to be harmed. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him, I admit, and it’s not going to be easy to forgive myself for that. Unfortunately, I can only look at so much data from the SNARCs, and I assumed—wrongly—that Bynzhamyn and Archbishop Maikel would be keeping an eagle eye on him. Obviously, they thought that I’d be watching him, as well. That’s how this entire plot managed to slip past all of us, and it’s only underscored how important it is that none of us take anything for granted. But I’ve been replaying and reviewing some of the reconnaissance take I hadn’t personally reviewed before, and some of it includes your uncle.
“I don’t have any idea how much of his plan was driven by ambition and how much of it was driven by true horror at your defiance of the Church hierarchy. For that matter, I’m still not sure how he got into communication with Halcom in the first place. There had to be a go-between, and whoever it was is still here, I’m sure. Maybe Owl and I will be able to figure out who it was as we continue going back through the SNARCs’ recordings, or maybe Bynzhamyn will find him. But I do know your uncle was adamant about seeing to it that you were captured alive. That’s what took him to Saint Agtha’s, and it’s why Halcom murdered him, too.”
“Don’t make excuses for him, Merlin,” Sharleyan said sadly. “I always knew he liked power. He supported me, yes, but that was partly because without his relationship to me, he wouldn’t have stood at the left hand of the throne. If he’d allowed me to be set aside, the same people would have set him aside, because of how he and Mahrak had worked with Father, and that meant he would have lost that access to power. Yes, he loved me . . . but that love always marched in tandem with his own ambition, and it had never really been tested. Not the way it was when I decided to marry Cayleb and defy the Church. And when the test came, he chose what he chose. No one else made him, and from everything you’ve said, he must have been the one who went to the Temple Loyalists, not the other way around. Whatever his reasoning, whatever his motives, he was still a traitor . . . and I was still in his way.”