by David Weber
“Well, given the thoroughness of your examination, I think we simply make sure we’ve got copies of all the correspondence, then report its arrival to Bishop Mytchail, send him the copies, and pass it on to Earl Coris for Prince Daivyn,” Lakeland decided. He leaned back in his chair again, meeting Halahdrom’s eyes. “And given the Lord Bishop’s views on smugglers and the embargo, I see no need to describe our conversation with Master Zhevons to him, do you?”
* * *
“A gift from Earl Anvil Rock, is it, My Lord?” Tobys Raimair cocked an eyebrow at Phylyp Ahzgood. “Would it happen the boy was expecting any additional gifts from him?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” the Earl of Coris replied. “Which is why it occurred to me that it might be as well for you and I to accept delivery before we let it—or the deliveryman—into his presence.”
“Oh, aye, I can understand that,” Raimair agreed. “Would you like me to ask one of the other lads to step in, as well?”
“I doubt that will be necessary,” Coris replied with a slight smile, considering the sword and dirk riding in well-worn sheaths at Raimair’s side. “Not for one man who’s not even getting into the same room with the boy.”
“As you say, My Lord.” Raimair bowed, then crossed the room to open the door.
A tall, brown-haired man stepped through it, followed by two of the palace’s servants and Brother Bahldwyn Gaimlyn, one of King Zhames’ junior secretaries. Between them, the wary footmen carried an ornately gilded traveling cage which contained six large wyverns. The wyverns gazed about with beady, unusually intelligent-looking eyes, and Coris frowned. It seemed an odd choice for a gift from Anvil Rock, who knew perfectly well that Daivyn had never showed the least interest in hunting wyverns. That had been his older brother’s passion.
“Master … Zhevons, is it?” Coris asked the brown-haired man.
“Aye, Sir. Ahbraim Zhevons, at your service,” the stranger replied in a pleasant tenor voice.
“And you’re an associate of Captain Harys?”
“Oh, I’d not go that far, My Lord.” Zhevons shook his head, but his eyes met Coris’ levelly. “It’s more that we’re in the same line of business, so to speak. These days, at least.”
“I see.” Coris glanced at the footmen and Brother Bahldwyn, who were waiting patiently, and wondered which of them was Baron Lakeland’s ears for this conversation. Probably all three of them, he decided. Or perhaps one was Lakeland’s and one was Mytchail Zhessop’s.
“Did Captain Harys pass on any messages to me?” he asked out loud.
“No, My Lord. Can’t say he did,” Zhevons replied. “Except that he did say as how you might be seeing me or one of my … ah, business associates with another odd delivery now and again.” He smiled easily, but his eyes held Coris’ gaze intently. “I think you might say the Captain’s of the opinion he might’ve become just a bit too well known to be serving you the way he has before.”
“Yes, I suppose I might,” Coris said thoughtfully, and nodded. “Well, in that case, Master Zhevons, thank you for your efficiency.”
He reached into his belt pouch, withdrew a five-mark piece, and flipped the golden disk to the smuggler, who caught it with an easy economy of movement and a grin. One of the footmen smiled as well, and Coris hoped the man had made note of the fact that there’d been absolutely no way for anything written to have been exchanged in the process.
“I’m sure these fellows can see you safely on your way, Master Zhevons,” he continued. “And I’m sure you can imagine there’s a certain young man anxiously awaiting my report on what his mysterious birthday gift might be.”
“Oh, that I can, My Lord! I’d no idea he was a prince, of course, but I’m sure every boy that age is much the same under the skin.”
The earl smiled again and nodded, and Zhevons sketched a bow and followed the footmen and Brother Bahldwyn out. Coris watched the door close behind him, then turned to Raimair.
“And what do you make of our Master Zhevons, Tobys?”
“Seems a capable sort, My Lord,” Raimair replied. “Never heard as how the boy—Prince Daivyn, I mean—was all that fond of wyvern hunting, howsome ever.”
“That’s because he wasn’t … and isn’t,” Coris murmured.
“You don’t say?” Raimair observed. “Now that makes a man feel just a mite suspicious, especially arriving all unannounced this way, doesn’t it just?”
“Perhaps, but Master Zhevons says Captain Harys got them as far as Tarot,” Coris said, lifting his eyes to Raimair’s face. “Of course, by this time it’s entirely possible someone’s figured out how we got here from Corisande, so the fact that Zhevons claims he knows Harys doesn’t necessarily prove anything. It does strike me as an indicator in its favor, though. And then there’s this.”
He pulled out the (already opened) envelope which had accompanied the traveling cage. It contained a sheaf of correspondence, and the earl extracted the letters and showed them to Raimair.
“I recognize the handwriting—both Earl Anvil Rock’s and his secretary’s,” he pointed out.
He looked down at them for a moment, then shrugged and walked across to his bookcase. He ran his finger down the spines of the shelved books until he found the one he wanted, then took it from the shelf, sat down at his desk, and unfolded Anvil Rock’s letter to Daivyn. The chapter and verse notations Anvil Rock had included in his letter were exactly the sort to which a considerably older kinsman and a regent might want to direct a youthful charge’s attention, especially if they had no opportunity for personal contact with the boy. A little somber and weighty for a lad Daivyn’s age, perhaps, but the boy was the legitimate ruler of an entire princedom. Something a bit more serious than the sorts of verses most children memorized for catechism might well be in order, given those circumstances.
Coris wasn’t particularly interested in looking up the passages indicated to check their content, however. Instead, he was turning pages in the cheap novel (printed in Manchyr) he’d taken from the shelf, selecting page numbers, then lines down the page, then words in the lines. Langhorne 6:21-9, for example, directed him to the sixth page, the twenty-first line, and the ninth word. He tracked down each passage’s indicated words, jotting each of them down quickly on a sheet of paper. Then he sat gazing at the sheet for a moment, frowning, before he dropped it into the fire on his sitting room’s hearth, stood, and crossed to the traveling cage. Its gilded bars were topped with ornamental finials, and he counted quickly around them from left to right until he got to the thirteenth. He gripped it, careful to keep his fingers out of reach of the wyverns’ saw-toothed beaks, and twisted, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You’ve got stronger wrists than I do, Tobys,” he said wryly. “See if you can get this thing to screw off. It turns clock-wise to loosen, not counter-clockwise.”
Raimahn raised an eyebrow, then reached out. His powerful hand closed on the finial and he grunted with effort. For a moment, nothing happened; then it yielded. Once it started turning, it went on turning easily until he’d screwed it completely off, revealing that the bar was hollow and contained two or three tightly rolled sheets of paper.
“Well, well, well,” Coris murmured, reaching in and extracting the sheets.
He unrolled them and began to read, then stopped abruptly. His eyes widened in shock, and he looked quickly at Raimahn.
“My Lord?” the guardsman asked quickly.
“It’s … just not from who I thought it would be from,” Coris said.
“Is it bad news, then, My Lord?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that.” Coris managed a smile, beginning to come back on balance with the practice of decades as a spymaster. It was, he admitted to himself, rather harder this time than it had ever been before, however. “Unexpected news, yes, but not bad. At least, I don’t think so.”
He looked back down at the note, trying to wrap his mind around all it implied. The handwriting in the correspondence was definitely Anvil Rock’s, but if the no
te in his hand was to be believed, Anvil Rock had never written it. Never even seen it, although exactly how the man who had written it—and had the sheer audacity to personally deliver it to Talkyra—had managed to forge the correspondence so perfectly and gained access to the code book Anvil Rock and Coris had arranged so long ago were certainly … interesting questions.
“Earl Coris,” it began, “First, I beg your pardon for a slight deception on my part. Two of them, to be more accurate. First, I’ve never actually met Captain Harys, I’m afraid, nor has any portion of Prince Daivyn’s ‘gift’ ever been within a thousand leagues of Corisande. And, second, I’m afraid my name isn’t actually Ahbraim Zhevons. It serves me well enough when needed, however, and while I’m aware you’ve never heard of me, I’m an associate of someone I’m certain you have heard of: Merlin Athrawes. I do the occasional odd job for Seijin Merlin when it would be impolitic for him to handle them himself, and he asked me to deliver these wyverns to you as a gift from Earl Gray Harbor. I’m sure you’ve noticed they’re a bit larger than most messenger wyverns, and there’s a reason for that. You see—”
.II.
Tellesberg Palace and Tellesberg Cathedral, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis
“God, it’s good to be home!” Sharleyan Ahrmahk sighed, curling up against her husband’s side and resting her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes, feeling as if she were expanding the pores of her skin to absorb the gentle night breeze breathing through the bedchamber’s open windows. Exotic insects she hadn’t heard in too many months sang in the moon-silvered darkness, the brilliant stars of the southern hemisphere hung overhead like ornaments from some cosmic glassblower, and the part of her which had been missing for far too long was back beside her.
“So Tellesberg is ‘home’ now, is it?” Cayleb teased gently, and she nodded.
“At the moment, at least.” She raised her head long enough to kiss him on the cheek, then snuggled back down and wrapped one arm around his chest, all without ever opening her eyes again. “Don’t let this go to your head, but home is wherever you are.”
His own arm tightened around her and he pressed his cheek against the top of her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair and savoring its silken texture.
“Works both ways,” he told her. “Except, for me, home is wherever you and Alahnah are.”
“Correction accepted, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
Sharleyan giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Cayleb demanded. “You’ve got something against formality and courtesy?”
“Under most circumstances, no, I don’t. But under these.…”
Her hand slid down under the light thistle silk sheet covering them to the waist, and Cayleb smiled.
“Courtesy is never wasted,” he informed her. “I’m courteous to every naked lady I find in my bed. In fact—”
He broke off with a sudden twitch, and she raised her head from his shoulder to smile sweetly at him.
“I’d consider my next sentence very carefully if I were you,” she said.
“Actually, my brain doesn’t seem to be working very well at the moment,” he replied, scooping her up and draping her diagonally across his body while he smiled up into her eyes. “I think this may be one of those moments when silence is golden.”
* * *
The mood was rather different as the two of them headed for the council chamber they used as a working office whenever both of them happened to be in Tellesberg at the same time.
Not the most exacting of their subjects—and not even the two of them, for that matter—could have demanded they give themselves over to official business the day before. Not after that same “official business” had separated the two of them for over four months. HMS Dawn Star’s arrival in Tellesberg on yesterday afternoon’s tide had been greeted even more tumultuously than Cayleb’s return from Chisholm. In some ways, the citizens of Old Charis had taken Sharleyan even more deeply to their hearts than Cayleb. They loved both of them, but they adored her, which (as Cayleb put it) indicated the soundness of their taste. And like the majority of their subjects, Charisian and Chisholmian alike, the citizens of Tellesberg were entranced by the deep and obvious love between the handsome young king and beautiful young queen who had married for reasons of state. Half the city had crowded the waterfront to watch Dawn Star being nudged gently up against the Royal Quay’s pilings, and they’d seen Emperor Cayleb go bounding up the gangplank almost before the galleon was fully moored. And when he swept Empress Sharleyan up into his arms, tossed her over one shoulder, and carried her back down the gangplank while she laughed and whacked him on the back of his head, the entire huge crowd had erupted in cheers and whistles. Anyone who had suggested that the two of them should do anything besides take themselves off immediately to the palace would probably have been tarred and feathered on the spot.
It had all been most improper, of course, as Sharleyan was well aware. On the other hand, she didn’t much care. And, on a more pragmatic note, she knew the short shrift she and Cayleb often gave protocol and formal state occasions was part of the legend that made them not simply respected but beloved by their subjects.
She knew Earl Gray Harbor had also decided yesterday belonged to them, not to the Empire, but that had been then. This was now, and she wasn’t looking forward to the news he’d delayed giving them that first, precious day.
They reached the council chamber door, Merlin following at their heels, and Sergeant Seahamper saluted before he opened it for them and stood aside. Cayleb smiled at the sergeant, resting one hand briefly on his shoulder, then escorted Sharleyan into the chamber where the waiting ministers and councilors stood respectfully to greet them.
“Oh, sit back down.” Cayleb waved them back into their seats. “We can get all formal later, if we need to.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Of course.”
Gray Harbor managed to sound simultaneously patient, amused, and long-suffering, and Cayleb made a face at him while he pulled Sharleyan’s chair back from the table and seated her. The first councilor smiled back, although there truly were times when he found Cayleb’s informality—even by Charisian standards, which were far more flexible than most—a little disconcerting.
All in all, he vastly preferred it to the sort of ego-aggrandizing formality, bowing, and scraping with which too many monarchs (and far too many lesser nobles, for that matter, in his opinion) surrounded themselves. It wasn’t that he had any objection to the way in which Cayleb and Sharleyan handled themselves; it was that the part of him which looked to the future worried, sometimes, about the traditions they were establishing. The two of them had the strength of will, ability, and self-confidence—and the sheer charisma—to handle their roles and responsibilities without taking refuge in strictly regulated, well-worn formality, but what happened when the Empire found itself ruled by someone without those strengths? Someone who wasn’t able to laugh with his councilors without undermining his authority? Someone who lacked the confidence to pick up his wife in public or make jokes at his own expense in formal addresses to Parliament? Someone who couldn’t allow herself to be scooped up without sacrificing one iota of her dignity when she needed it? Someone who lacked the focused sense of duty that prevented informality and tension-releasing humor from degenerating into license and frivolity?
A kingdom was fortunate to have a single monarch of Cayleb or Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s caliber in a century; no realm could count on having two of them at the same time … still less on producing a third to follow in their footsteps. Indeed, much as Gray Harbor loved the baby crown princess, it had been his observation that the children of the towering rulers who dominated the history books had a distinct tendency to disappear in their parents’ shadows. And what soul could have the hardihood to stand in the shadows of rulers like these two without feeling diminished—even angry—under the weight of their subjects’ expectations? No wonder the heirs of so many great kings and queens h
ad ended up giving their lives over to dissolution and sensuality!
You must be feeling more confident about the outcome of this minor war of ours if you’re wasting time worrying about things like that, Rayjhis, he told himself dryly. Cheerful, too. Alahnah’s just turned one and you’re already worrying about her having drunken orgies after her parents are gone? About the way the Empire’s going to fall apart after them? Neither of them is thirty yet, for Langhorne’s sake! It’s not like you’re going to be around for the transition.
No, he wasn’t—God willing—but it was one of a first councilor’s jobs to worry about things like that. Besides, he’d been making a conscious effort to stand back and consider the long view whenever he could. It was entirely too easy to get trapped up in the day-to-day concerns of simply surviving against an opponent the size of the Church of God Awaiting, and when that happened, unhappy consequences could sneak up on someone.
And it also keeps you from thinking about what you’re going to have to tell them on their very first full day together in almost five months, doesn’t it? he asked himself grimly.
Cayleb sat in his own chair, laid his folded hands on the table in front of him, and glanced at Maikel Staynair, sitting at its foot.
“Maikel?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Staynair looked once around the table, then bent his head. “Oh God, maker and keeper of the universe, author of all good things, our loving creator and father, bless these Your servants Cayleb and Sharleyan and all of their advisors. Let us all hear Your voice and be guided by Your council, and let our Emperor’s and Empress’ decisions be worthy of their responsibility to the subjects who are also Your children, even as they are. Amen.”
No one seemed to notice the absence of any reference to the “Archangels,” Cayleb reflected as he opened his own eyes once more. Ever since he’d been elevated to archbishop, Staynair had focused even more directly upon every human being’s personal relationship with God rather than on the intermediary role of the Archangels. By now, people scarcely noticed the subtle but deeply significant shift, and the majority of the Church of Charis’ clergy seemed to be taking their own stance and practices directly from their archbishop’s.