Safehold 10 Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  “Obviously, neither Styvyn nor I are in a position to join Zhaikyb in offering loans, General,” Mahthyw Ohlsyn said. “As members of the Chamber of Delegates, that would be a clear violation of the law. However, I’m sure we—and all your friends in the West—could be counted upon to contribute generously to the costs of the campaign.”

  “And Mahryahno and I can promise you the guilds’ support,” Ahskar put in. Hygyns looked at him, and the papermaker shrugged. “We’ve got more than enough guildsmen out of work right now to provide lots of campaign workers,” he said bitterly, “and our people know the community. I mean the real community, the one Myllyr and the Charisians are strangling to death. We’ll turn out the voters to support you.”

  And break the heads of voters who oppose you, Fyrnahndyz thought cynically, even as he nodded in grave agreement.

  “And I’m not the only publisher whose paper will support you,” Phaiphyr said, once again falling into line as smoothly as if Fyrnahndyz had rehearsed him for his role. “At the moment, we may be in a minority, but I promise you, you’ll still have spokesmen—passionate spokesmen—to support your platform!”

  Hygyns looked around at their faces, and Fyrnahndyz reached out to rest a hand on the general’s shoulder.

  “We can’t do this without you, General,” he said softly, earnestly. “Each of us can do our own small part, offer to carry our little piece of the load, but it all comes down to you, in the end. You’re the voice and the face that can carry the fight to Myllyr and his cronies, both here in the Republic and in Charis. All we ask is that you allow us to support you in this effort—in this fight for the Republic’s soul. Do us the honor of allowing us to stand at your back while you wage the greatest battle of your life.”

  APRIL YEAR OF GOD 915

  .I.

  HMS Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Jackson Sound, and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis, Empire of Charis.

  “I feel so Charisian today,” Frahncheska Chermyn said.

  “What?” Daivyn Daikyn stood very close to her, but he clearly hadn’t heard her. They stood on the foredeck of HMS Ahlfryd Hyndryk, just inside the solid bulwark where the deck narrowed to meet the steamer’s stem, and the wind of her passage roared around their ears as she ripped her way through the heavy swell. That wind showered them with regular spatters of spray from the water bursting white under her sharply raked prow.

  It also whipped the loose ends of Frahncheska’s ponytail in a way he found incredibly attractive and more than a little arousing. And he knew it was laying up at least an hour of work for her and her maid as they worked to get the knots out again.

  “I said, I feel so Charisian today!” she said much more loudly. “All … nautical and everything!”

  “Well, you are Charisian!” he replied, and she shook her head and said something else he couldn’t quite catch over the wind roar. But that was fine. It gave him an excuse to move even closer and wrap an arm around her while he ostentatiously moved his ear closer to her lips.

  “You were saying?” he prompted, pressing her against his side and enjoying the firm, shapely warmth of her, and she grinned.

  “I said I may’ve been born Charisian but I’ve actually always thought of myself more as a Zebediahan,” she said.

  “Well, fair’s fair,” he replied with an answering smile. “You were raised Zebediahan—and pretty aggressively, too. Which was really smart of the Grand Duke. I doubt anyone in Zebediah thinks of him as ‘that transplanted foreigner,’ any more, but even if someone does, he probably doesn’t think it about you or your cousins. On the other hand,” his smile turned thoughtful, “I’ve always thought of myself as a Corisandian, but that’s become almost … secondary. We’re all Charisian now.”

  She looked up at him, into the depths of his suddenly contemplative eyes, while the deck underfoot quivered to the beat of Ahlfryd Hyndryk’s mighty triple-expansion engines. His sense of humor and refusal to take himself too seriously were very real parts of his character, but there was a deeper, far more thoughtful side to Daivyn Daikyn. One he used those other parts to disguise whenever possible. She still hadn’t figured out why that was, although she’d begun to suspect it was a deliberate effort to distinguish himself from his father. Hektor Daikyn’s subjects had called him “Hektor the Crafty” but his enemies had used adjectives like “unscrupulous,” “slippery,” “devious,” and “treacherous,” and she wondered if he was consciously—or unconsciously, for that matter—seeking to avoid a similar label. Or, worse, the label of “like father, like son” in the hearts and minds of those he cared about. But whatever his reason, she remembered how her heart had warmed the day she realized she was no longer one of the people from whom he sought to conceal that keen, analytical part of him.

  “I think that may be the most remarkable thing Cayleb and Sharleyan have accomplished,” he went on, unaware of her thoughts. “I mean, the entire Empire’s younger than either of us, but they’ve convinced everyone in it that we belong to it and, more important, that it belongs to us.”

  “That’s what happens when a bunch of stupid Out Islanders stand up against all the rest of the world … and win,” she told him. “When people follow you into that kind of furnace and then walk out the other side at your side, that’s a bond simply being born to rule could never forge.”

  “You’re right.” He nodded and kissed her forehead lightly, then drew her around in front of him, folding both arms around her while she leaned back against his chest. “But I think maybe you just put your finger on another part of the magic.” She looked up over her shoulder and quirked an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “We all walked out of that furnace at their side, not their heels. And I’m not talking just about princes and grand dukes and earls. I’m talking about brick masons and carpenters. About common seamen and railroad tracklayers, about farmers and manufactory workers. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world stupid enough to defy the pair of them, but that’s not the reason no one does. It’s because that bond you’re talking about is personal for all their subjects. And it creates awful big footprints for the rest of us to try to fill.”

  He looked ahead, eyes squinted against the wind of their passage, lips pursed while he considered that. And then, suddenly, he laughed.

  “What?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  “I was just thinking about the first time I was on a Charisian ship,” he said. “That was right after Merlin and Hektor pulled us out of Delferahk, and I thought Destiny was the biggest ship in the world. She was bigger than anything I’d ever seen, anyway! And you should’ve seen the looks on their faces after we got aboard and they all realized no one had thought to provide a maid or a chaperone for Irys!” He shook his head. “There she was, an innocent, delicately nurtured maiden—she’d just turned nineteen, for Langhorne’s sake!—all alone on a ship with three or four hundred men, most of whom weren’t the sort any reputable young lady should know and all of whom had been stuck on board without so much as seeing a woman for months.”

  “Really?” Frahncheska cocked her head. “You know, I don’t think anyone ever told me that bit! She didn’t have any chaperones at all?”

  “Well, she had Phylyp—he was our legal guardian. And she had Tobys and Traivahr and Zhakky. More importantly, though, she had Earl Sarmouth—he wasn’t an earl then; not even a baron yet, of course—and she had Hektor. And she had the fact that not one of those common born, woman-starved, uneducated seamen would have dreamed of laying a finger on her. They were too busy rescuing us and I think all of them had decided she was their kid sister, at least until they got us home. I didn’t even think about it at the time, of course. I was too busy catching krakens!”

  “Krakens?”

  “Well, that’s what I thought I had. It was actually a neartuna, and nowhere near as big as I thought it was. Of course, I was a scrawny-enough runt it didn’t have to be really big to be bigger than me! They had me in a safety harness, lashed to the deck, and there were t
hese two great big seamen ready to pounce if the line started pulling me over the stern.” He shook his head, smiling in fond memory. “I think that was the first time I’d actually laughed since we’d left Manchyr for Delferahk. Sir Dunkyn and Hektor gave us that.”

  “I can just see you,” she said, leaning back against his chest. “I bet you had the time of your life!”

  “Oh, yes!” A chuckle rumbled through his chest, vibrating against her back. “In fact, I still go fishing whenever I can. It’s never been quite the same again, though. Probably because I’d just been rescued by the legendary Seijin Merlin—only he was more the ‘notorious Seijin Merlin’ at the time—and I knew no one was going to try to kill me or Irys. That was a nice change.”

  His light tone didn’t fool her, but she let it pass. He was a much deeper and more complex person, her Daivyn, than she’d thought when they were younger.

  “Actually, the one thing I don’t like about this trip is that the Ahlfryd’s moving a bit too fast for comfortable fishing. Does make a nice breeze, though, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” she replied, raising her head and shading her eyes against the brilliant sunlight with one hand while she looked out at the low-slung, gun-bristling armored cruisers crashing through the swell on either side of their ship.

  Thanks to her time at the Royal College—and, even more, to her status as the sister of a commander in the Imperial Charisian Navy who’d been navy-mad since he could talk … and who talked a lot—she knew quite a lot about Ahlfryd Hyndryk’s escorts.

  HMS Devastation and HMS Kahrltyn Haigyl were twenty feet shorter than Ahlfryd Hyndryk, and they were working hard to keep up with her as her prow turned back high, white walls of foam and her wake trailed away behind her. Without their massive weight of guns and armor, she was lighter and fleeter of foot than they, despite her much larger and commodious superstructure. They were warships, low and sleek; she was a passenger vessel, with luxurious accommodations and a top speed of thirty knots. The cruisers couldn’t match that speed. They could just touch twenty-seven knots, but they couldn’t sustain it for very long.

  The ICN had also specified a cruising radius of 12,000 miles at normal displacement when the Thunderbolts were designed. That limited them to a cruising speed of only fourteen knots (which would have been only twelve knots on Old Terra, where nautical miles and land miles were different lengths), because coal consumption was far lower at that speed. The fact that reciprocating steam engines required far more frequent maintenance if they were run at high RPMs was another factor in their design, since the navy emphasized durability over speed. They were also designed to stow up to an additional seven hundred and fifty tons of coal at maximum displacement, which extended their maximum range at fourteen knots to over 14,000 miles, although it also increased their draft so much two-thirds of their armored belt was submerged until they’d burned off the excess.

  Ahlfryd Hyndryk, with no need to pack in their armament (or the eight hundred men to crew each of them) could afford the combination of sleek lines, optimized for high-speed, and an enormous coal capacity. She could also afford to be far more “maintenance intensive” than they could, and the combination let her cruise for over 10,000 miles at twenty-three knots. At that speed, a Thunderbolt’s maximum range at design displacement was only 5,200 miles.

  Because of that, all three ships had refilled their bunkers at the ICN’s Hard Shoal Bay coaling station five days ago, and each cruiser had loaded an extra two hundred tons of coal. Since then, they’d steamed roughly 3,000 miles, and they were presently leaving Jackson Sound, passing to the west of Fergys Island on their way to round Dahnahtelo Head. From there, they would travel another 2,600 miles down Dolphin Reach and across Darcos Sound to Crown Point, in just over four and a half days. And from there, Ahlfryd Hyndryk’s passengers would travel the final thousand miles to Tellesberg by automotive, which would take them another day and a half.

  Or, of course, they could have made the entire trip, direct from Manchyr, in only four and a half days aboard one of the Air Force’s Moonraker-class airships, and Frahncheska knew that was what Daivyn had truly hoped to do. Unfortunately, the Air Force had declined to make any of its Moonrakers available to him. They’d been very polite about it, but they’d been equally firm, and Daivyn had recognized the fell hand of Earl Coris and Earl Anvil Rock.

  Personally, she was just as happy they’d decided Daivyn was too important to risk aboard an airship, despite the safety record they’d so far amassed. Daivyn, on the other hand, felt particularly aggrieved that his cousin Koryn and his entire family had made the same flight—both ways—not just once but three times, now. Unfortunately for him, Earl Coris had pointed out that so far neither Cayleb nor Sharleyan had been allowed to risk themselves in the air, either. And then he’d asked if Daivyn really wanted to take Frahncheska two or three miles into the air over trackless ocean in a cabin attached to an enormous bag of explosive gas.

  As it happened, she had no problem at all being used unscrupulously to deflect Daivyn from airships in general. Ships that floated in water were one thing, as far as she was concerned. Despite her time at the College, ships that floated in the air still struck her as profoundly unnatural. Pretty, and impressive, and undoubtedly useful, but distinctly unnatural.

  And, besides, this way she got him all to herself for two whole five-days. Well, to herself, a bevy of servants, her maid, her parents, and Earl Anvil Rock and Lady Sahmantha. Fortunately, Ahlfryd Hyndryk was a large ship and they’d been able to find something like privacy in places like this, standing amid the exuberant buffeting of the wind with the bow wave crashing rhythmically to either side. No doubt dozens of eyes were upon them even as they stood here, but she really didn’t care about that, and she nestled down in Daivyn’s wind shadow and leaned her head back against his chest.

  * * *

  “So, Daivyn,” Cayleb said, tipping back in his chair, “should I assume you’ve come to formally seek my permission to wed, like a dutiful vassal?”

  “Actually, no,” Daivyn said politely, then took a sip from his whiskey glass. “This is really good Glynfych,” he added brightly.

  “Undutiful whelp!” Cayleb growled. “I’ve got a good mind to put my foot down and forbid the banns!”

  “No you don’t,” Daivyn told him. “First, because politically it’s brilliant.” He grinned broadly. “Secondly, because I happen to know Empress Sharley’s entirely in Frahncheska’s corner and she’s the only person in the world you’re frightened of. And third,” the grin faded into something much softer, “because you know how much I love her.”

  “I don’t know which is worse,” Cayleb sighed. “Being told my consent to the marriage is immaterial or knowing you can read me like a book.”

  “What can I say? I had good teachers!”

  “Yes, you did,” Cayleb agreed. “And they had a good student. Seriously, Daivyn, I couldn’t be happier for both of you. Although Alahnah has pointed out—in her exquisitely tactful style—that it did take you the better part of twenty years to figure it out.”

  “Not fair,” Daivyn said firmly. “For a good half of those years she was a scrubby schoolgirl and I was an even scrubbier schoolboy. That was during our ‘kisses are icky’ phase, you understand. And then she was gone to school for five of the other ten! Actually, I think I did pretty well, given the time I actually had to work with!”

  Cayleb shook his head with a grin, then climbed out of his chair and beckoned for Daivyn to follow him through the latticed glass doors onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the palace’s central courtyard.

  “I tend to agree with you, and the truth is both of you have improved with age. As Merlin would put it, you clean up pretty good. And neither of you is a dummy, either.”

  “I don’t know if my natural modesty can stand all this effusive praise,” Daivyn said dryly, carrying his whiskey glass with him.

  “Just calling it as I see it,” Cayleb said. “And,
on a more serious note, I’m glad to see you finally settling down. Now I’ll have all of my ruling princes married off and busily producing heirs!”

  “I tend to doubt any of us are going to produce them at the rate you and Sharley have.” Daivyn shook his head philosophically. “Must be something about the water here in Old Charis and Chisholm.”

  “Whippersnapper!”

  Cayleb leaned on the balustrade, looking out over the courtyard as evening settled across Tellesberg. Daivyn joined him, and they stood companionably side-by-side, the son at the shoulder of the man who’d been his father’s most bitter enemy.

  “Seriously,” Cayleb continued after a moment, “I couldn’t be happier for both of you. And thank you for making the trip to announce the formal betrothal here.”

  “Political choreography can be a pain, can’t it?”

  “Oh, tell me about it! The real problem’s Gorjah, though. I can’t blame him for wanting to stay close to home, given how Maiyl’s mother is failing. I know he’d come to Manchyr for the wedding if he had to, and he’d smile while he was there. But he really doesn’t want to take her that many thousand miles from home right now.”

  “And there’s no reason he should have to.” Daivyn shook his head.

  He wasn’t as close to King Gorjah of Tarot as he was to Cayleb and Sharleyan or even Nahrmahn Garyet of Emerald. The two of them got along well on the rare occasions when they met, but there were over thirty years between them, as opposed to barely nine between him and Nahrmahn Garyet. Despite that, he knew how deeply Gorjah cared for his queen and how deeply attached he himself was to his mother-in-law.