Safehold 10 Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  Fyshyr looked at the seemingly endless line coming towards him and groaned mentally. He’d be here for at least another six or seven hours, he estimated, although he’d be getting another relief break in the next twenty minutes or so, and he’d need it.

  But however much you might carp and complain, it was worth it. It was all worth it. He knew some of the other realms of Safehold found the Republic’s voting procedures amusing. The sort of nonsense to be expected out of a bunch of people so ignorant they actually voted to determine who ruled them. But that was just fine with Myltyn Fyshyr. Nobody ever promised the Republic’s voters would always elect the right man as lord protector. But at least they got to think about it every five years, by God!

  * * *

  The thick-shouldered man with the Weaver’s Guild badge came stomping out of the tavern and started down the sidewalk, shouldering his way through the crowd. His expression was as surly as it had been before he went in to vote, and the city guardsman who’d intervened in the earlier quarrel pursed his lips as the younger fellow with whom he’d been arguing came out the door behind him.

  The younger man paused long enough to make eye contact with the guardsman and raised his eyebrows as he twitched his head after the departing guildsman. The guardsman looked back levelly for a second, then ostentatiously turned away and looked up at the bronze wyvern on the flagpole across the street from the tavern.

  The younger man looked at his back for a moment, then grinned, spat into the palms of his hands, and started down the sidewalk in the guildsman’s wake.

  * * *

  “Well, he won,” Cayleb Ahrmahk observed, leaning back in the rattan chaise lounge and watching as Empress Sharleyan, Crown Princess Alahnah, Princes Gwylym Haarahld and Bryahn Sailys, and Princess Nynian Zhorzhet—who would be six next month—engaged Hauwerd Mahrak Breygart, his sister Alysyn, Princess Irys Aplyn-Ahrmahk, and their cousins Prince Hektor Merlin, Princess Raichynda Sharleyan, and Princess Sailmah in what was theoretically a game of rugby. The teams were understrength, but that didn’t really matter, since both of them were busy trying to score against Nimue Gahrvai, who was tending goal in the deep end of the swimming pool. In deference to her merely mortal opponents, she’d dialed down the speed of her reflexes just a bit, but she was still holding her own handily, he noticed.

  “Yes, he did,” Merlin acknowledged from the chaise lounge beside his.

  Nynian and Stefyny were stretched out on blankets, just far enough from the pool to avoid the frequent fountains launched from its surface, soaking up sun with an abandon which would have horrified an Old Terran dermatologist who didn’t know about Federation nanotech. Interesting-smelling smoke drifted from the other end of the courtyard around the imperial family’s private swimming pool where the Duke of Darcos and Sir Koryn Gahrvai, assisted by Ensign Sebahstean Mahlard Athrawes, ICN, officiated over the enormous grill upon which meat patties and wyvern and chicken breasts currently sizzled.

  The smoke, Merlin noticed, with the perversity of outdoor grills the universe over, followed the chefs no matter where they squirmed to avoid it. And unlike his eyes, theirs watered—a lot—when it caught up with them.

  Moments like this were as precious as they were rare, he thought, smiling as he soaked up the comfort like a drowsy cat. Of all the outcomes Nimue Alban had imagined when she first awoke here on Safehold and realized the task she’d assumed, this—finding herself surrounded by the joyous shouts of children, all of them “hers” in one sense or another—had not among them.

  “Yes, he won,” Kynt Clareyk acknowledged over the com. “It was a squeaker, though.”

  “It was, but he’s got five years to firm that up,” Cayleb pointed out. “I could wish he’d had a bigger margin, and it looks like the Chamber’s going to be even more … factionalized than it was, but five years is still five years, Kynt. Let’s not borrow trouble.”

  “Granted. Granted!” the Duke of Serabor agreed, looking out his Maikelberg office window as the sentries outside the Imperial Charisian Army’s headquarters building were changed. “And a lot can change in five years. For the better, I mean.”

  “No, you mean it can change—either way,” Nahrmahn disagreed from Nimue’s Cave. “And it can. To be honest, I don’t like some of the trendlines we’re seeing, but we knew that going into the election. This is absolutely the best outcome we could’ve hoped for, Kynt. Aside from that factionalism in the Chamber, at any rate, and let’s face it, that couldn’t make things much worse on the legislative front!”

  “Even that couldn’t make things much worse, you mean?” Merlin inquired a bit sourly.

  “Well, yes,” Nahrmahn acknowledged. “I’m trying really hard to find a bright side to this, you know, Merlin. You’re not helping.”

  “Not my job,” Merlin said, rising from the chaise lounge and heading for the edge of the pool. “My job is always to be the voice of stern duty, my ‘seijin blue eyes’ fixed unwaveringly upon the steady horizon, my calm hand upon the tiller, my—”

  “Your overinflated ego, so humbly displayed,” his wife’s “voice” put in over her implants.

  “Your self-admiration, so unblushingly disclosed,” Nimue Gahrvai observed as he neared the edge of the pool.

  “And your pomposity its own penalty!” Stefyny Athrawes concluded, as she rose from her tanning blanket, took four running steps, and pounced. She landed on his back, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind with a shout of laughter, and he hit the water just a bit harder than he’d originally intended to … and just in time for every contestant in the water polo game to descend upon him.

  It was a very good thing, he concluded later, that PICAs didn’t need to breathe.

  .II.

  Five Islands, Maddox Province, East Harchong, Harchong Empire.

  The islands in the middle of the Mynkhar River had proved their worth yet again, Vicar Zherohmy Awstyn thought, looking out the carriage’s window as the automotive chuffed across the river. Without them, this bridge could never have been constructed.

  The Mynkhar was over two thousand miles long, from its far distant source in the Langhorne Mountains to its mouth on Fairstock Bay. Even in late summer, it was three and a half miles wide here at the city of Five Islands, seven hundred winding miles above Fairstock, but the reason Five Islands had grown into a major city in the first place was because it was the point at which the high road out of the Temple Lands crossed the river. And it crossed it on the enormous Archangel Sondheim Bridge, broad enough for four freight wagons abreast, whose mighty stone piers were founded on the five islands strewn across the river’s course which had given the city its name. The rail bridge used the same islands, running parallel to the high road. Looking out the window, Awstyn watched the draft dragons harnessed to a pair of massive eight-wheeled freight wagons throw up their heads in alarm as the smoke-spouting monster clattered past them, but they fell behind quickly.

  Awstyn might still cherish a few apprehensions about the furious pace of the change Charis had unleashed upon the world, but he had to admit that the sheer exhilaration of traveling at almost forty miles an hour—although they’d traveled even more rapidly than that over much of his enormous journey—still filled him with wonder and delight. The poor draft dragons obviously felt rather differently about it. He chuckled at the thought, then looked out the other window, across the broad expanse of the river.

  Even at the automotive’s furious pace, it took almost three minutes to cross the wide stretch of dark brown water, and he was uncomfortably aware that the bridge beneath him, supporting the massive weight of the automotive and its rails, was made of timber. Yet another bridge was currently taking form on the far side of the high road, and when completed it would cross the river in bounds of solid masonry and good, honest stone, but that project would take years yet to complete. The trestle bridge—built by enormous gangs of engineers who’d learned their trade in the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels—had gone up far more rapidly, and Mother Churc
h’s own engineers assured him it was more than adequate to its task. It was still made of wood, though, and Awstyn was cursed with an active imagination. There were moments when he could picture massive iron bolts vibrating their way out of the wood, waiting until exactly the right moment. Or a horde of beavers chewing its way through the timbers themselves, undoubtedly urged on by the spicy savor of their creosote!

  Stop that, he chided himself, watching a barge emerge from under the enormous trestle. You’re a vicar, for goodness’ sake! Surely someone in your position should have a little faith, Zherohmy!

  He snorted at the thought, but he also couldn’t suppress an ignoble spurt of envy. According to Bryahn Ohcahnyr, the Charisians were producing sufficient iron and steel to build their river bridges out of steel “girders” instead of wood, whereas the Temple Lands’ foundries could produce no more than eighty or eighty-five percent of the rails needed by its expanding rail network. They were forced to purchase the remainder from Charis, and they had no capacity at all to spare for bridge “girders.” Without the enormous number of modern foundries built during the final years of the Jihad, they couldn’t have managed even that … which only underscored the vast scale of Charis’ internal “industrialization.” Not only were Delthak Enterprises and its steadily growing field of internal competitors sufficient to meet their empire’s internal needs, they remained very much iron master to the world, aggressively competing with one another to supply other realms’ needs.

  But that’s changing, he reminded himself as the river fell behind and the automotive’s headlong pace began to slow. Just building all these railroads—he’d traveled almost two thousand miles, in barely more than two days, from Zion to reach Five Islands—drove an ongoing, apparently never ending, frenetic expansion of the steel industry. And that had its own ripple effect throughout the entire economy.

  And produces Shan-wei’s own hell on earth, sometimes, he thought grimly.

  Like so many things on Fallen Safehold, “industrialization’s” advantages brought problems of their own. On balance, the advantages appeared to outweigh the problems, but that made the problems no less severe.

  Mother Church had mandated that the Temple Lands’ foundries, mines, and manufactories emulate the codes Charis had adopted for the safety of employees. She’d fully embraced the prohibitions on child labor, the apprentice training programs that were open to all, not just members of a closed guild, and the educational opportunities for their workers’ children. And she’d especially taken to heart the advice of the Charisian experts Delthak had made available—with amazing generosity, considering the bitterness of the conflict—almost before the Jihad’s smoke had faded. They’d been well-paid, those experts, but they’d been more than worth it, and not just because of the new techniques they could teach. One of the things they’d most strongly emphasized was the need to minimize as much as possible of the health impact of the new processes. Blast furnaces and coal mines both produced enormous quantities of slag, other manufactories produced their own contamination, and the volume of smoke from a steel manufactory had to be seen to be believed. There were steps that could minimize damage to the land and water around the manufactories, but nothing could completely alleviate it. And some workers were foolish enough—or stubborn enough—to resist wearing the safety gear Mother Church required, at least at first. Coal miners had used the face masks required by the Book of Pasquale as protection against the curse of black lung since the Creation, however, and experience soon brought the new manufactories’ workers around.

  Either that, or they found other employment, because Mother Church’s inspectors gave them—or their employers—short shrift for repeated violations. Much though Awstyn continued to worry about the Church of Charis and its impact on the world, he was deeply grateful for the way in which the Charisians had clearly thought through the impact of their innovations.

  It was a pity that people in places like Harchong and Desnair, or even some places in Siddarmark and the Border States, didn’t seem to care about that impact.

  His mouth twisted bitterly at that thought. His sense of compassion, his need to serve others’ needs, was what had drawn him to Mother Church in the first place, and he hated the thought of what rulers like Emperor Zhyou-Zhwo and Emperor Mahrys were not simply permitting, but actively inflicting upon their subjects. Grand Vicar Tymythy Rhobair had followed in Grand Vicar Rhobair’s footsteps in denouncing those abuses, and Mahrys, at least, had piously promised to do “all in my unfortunately limited power” to alleviate them. Zhyou-Zhwo hadn’t even bothered to reply, and that ominous silence only underscored the totality of the break between the Church of Harchong and Mother Church, whatever Zhyou-Zhwo and Kangsya Byngzhi, his tame archbishop, might claim.

  But, he reminded himself, that wasn’t true everywhere in Harchong, and if God and Langhorne were good, perhaps it wouldn’t be true forever in the rest of that bloodied and battered empire, either.

  The buffers between the carriages banged as the automotive entered the outskirts of Five Islands proper and began to slow, and he sat a bit straighter in his seat, watching buildings begin to flow past his window.

  * * *

  “I trust the men are prepared to behave themselves, Syizhyan,” Medyng Hwojahn, Baron Wind Song, murmured as the automotive banged and clattered to a hissing halt in the Five Islands Station.

  “My Lord, the men are always prepared to behave themselves,” Lord of Foot Syizhyan Lung replied. He gave his superior a sidelong look and puffed his magnificent mustache. “When was the last time they embarrassed you in front of an important visitor?”

  “There’s always a first time for anything,” Wind Song replied with a smile. But then his expression sobered a bit. “And I’m not happy about what we’re hearing about the men’s reaction toward Mother Church. Mind you, I can’t blame them for it, but we can’t have them painting with too broad a brush. Especially not where our genuine friends, like Vicar Zherohmy and the Grand Vicar, are concerned.”

  “I take your point, My Lord.” Lung nodded. “And I’ve already had a word with the escort’s officers. And, more to the point, with their noncoms!” He and the baron both smiled at that. “I don’t think anyone’s going to forget we wouldn’t be here without Mother Church’s support, but you’re right. The mood is turning really ugly where the Church of Harchong is involved.”

  “I know,” Wind Song said sadly, remembering the fervency with which the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels had set forth in Mother Church’s defense those ten or twelve long years ago.

  He’d been younger at the time, filled with much of the same fervor, yet he’d known even then that the Church in Harchong bore precious little resemblance to the one Langhorne and Bédard had decreed before the rise of the Fallen. Today, that difference was greater than ever, and the fact that Grand Vicar Rhobair and Grand Vicar Tymythy Rhobair had done so much to restore the vision of Langhorne and Bédard outside Harchong only made the rift even more obvious.

  “So long as they remember that,” he said more briskly. “Although,” his eyes narrowed, “I don’t want to hear any more ‘rumors’ about burned rectories or priests who ‘disappear’ when our men arrive in the parish, either.”

  “I take your point again,” Lung replied. “Mind you, My Lord, I think a lot of those priests—the ones bright enough to see lightning and hear thunder—scampered for it the instant they heard we were coming. Doesn’t mean a goodly lot of them didn’t fall foul of our lads, though. I’ll see to it the wick stays turned up for any of them who feel like taking personal revenge.”

  “Good. Good Syizhyan!” Wind Song patted the younger man on the shoulder as the train came fully to a halt and a captain in the orange colors of a vicar’s armsman hopped down from the lead carriage. “Now, let’s go make a good impression on our visitor!”

  * * *

  Zherohmy Awstyn descended the carriage steps and the waiting trumpets blared the instant his foot touched the wooden platform. The
entire station smelled of sawn wood, tar, creosote, and fresh paint, and he suspected the clatter of tools would resume the instant he got his own august presence decently out of the way.

  The Rebellion had swept through Five Islands before Earl Rainbow Waters and his veterans were able to intervene. It had been less violent than other places, with a lower casualty total, but altogether too many people had died anyway. Worse, most of the city’s storehouses and waterfront warehouse district had burned. That had been particularly pointless, with winter coming on, and it had contributed to far more deaths from starvation over the bitter months of ice and snow. But the conflagration had also cleared a broad swath along the riverbank, and Rainbow Waters’ engineers had chosen the spot for the Five Islands Station with care. The broad streets which had served dragon-drawn freight wagons for centuries converged on what had been the warehouses, giving good access to the rest of the city; the station’s planned switching and freight yards would mesh nicely with the river wharves; and new warehouses were going up on all sides. The freight hauled by the gleaming line of rails already challenged that delivered by canal and river barge, and that challenge was likely to grow in months to come.

  At the moment, Five Islands was effectively the capital of East Harchong, although Rainbow Waters had been careful—so far—to avoid bidding formal defiance to Zhyou-Zhwo and the government in Yu-kwau. Everyone understood how unlikely it was that that could last, given the intransigence with which Zhyou-Zhwo had chosen to proclaim his own position vis-à-vis Rainbow Waters’ “invasion” of his realm. Clearly, the emperor would prefer to see entire provinces burned to the ground rather than have his subjects rescued by someone as disloyal as Rainbow Waters!