by David Weber
It wasn’t as if that very thing hadn’t happened to Sharleyan before.
“How long do you think it’ll take—the construction phase, I mean?” Sahndfyrd asked. “Like you say, I’m a Charisian—beg pardon, an Old Charisian—and I don’t have a very good feel for how winter weather’s likely to slow things down here in Chisholm.”
“The foundations will be in by the end of the month, unless we get really bad weather between now and then.” Raimahnd turned a silver letter opener in his hands while he considered the question. “Once they are, we’ll run up the framing timbers and roof it over, then hang canvas for windbreaks. After that, we should be able to go right on working whatever the weather does. My best guess is that the building itself will be structurally complete by … the middle or end of March. After that, it’s a matter of installing the machinery, and that depends on your Master Howsmyn.”
“And on how well the war’s going,” Sahndfyrd pointed out a bit sourly. “Still, that’s better than I expected. And unless something does come along that completely reorders Master Howsmyn’s priorities—which, I’m afraid, has happened more than once—we should make delivery no later than April fifteenth.”
“Then I imagine we’ll be in operation by the end of July. Unless we have trouble with the workforce, of course.”
“How likely is that?” Sahndfyrd cocked his head, those owl’s eyes sharper than ever, and Raimahnd shrugged.
“To be honest, I don’t know. There’s a lot of enthusiasm among the people who’re investing in the manufactories and among the unskilled workers. The workers, especially, have heard stories—wildly exaggerated, some of them—about how well paid Charisian manufactory workers are and how the owners take people without trades and train them to do what’s needed. I imagine there’ll be some disappointment when they find out the workshop floors aren’t really paved in gold, but we’re still talking about an opportunity to triple or quadruple their earnings, and some of them will do even better than that. I’m sure you’ve seen how some of the aristocracy feels about the whole idea, though, and the guilds’re going to be less and less happy as the damage to their prestige and economic power sinks in. I don’t expect to see a lot of open, public opposition, but I am afraid we’ll see some acts of sabotage and vandalism.”
Sahndfyrd nodded, his expression thoughtful. Byndfyrd Raimahnd was one of the wealthiest bankers in Chisholm, and a close associate of the House of Tayt. In fact, he’d enjoyed a warm, personal friendship with Sharleyan’s maternal uncle Byrtrym Waistyn, the Duke of Halbrook Hollow, for over thirty-five years. Halbrook Hollow’s treason had hit Raimahnd hard, but he was scarcely alone in that, and his own loyalty to Sharleyan—and Cayleb—had never wavered.
That wasn’t to say the banker was a wildly enthusiastic Reformist, because he wasn’t. Like Halbrook Hollow, he’d been horrified by the thought of mortal rulers defying the majesty of the Church of God Awaiting. At the same time, he’d been well aware of how corrupt the men governing Mother Church had become, and that had been enough, coupled with his loyalty to the House of Tayt, to pull him into resolute if not eager support of the war against the Group of Four.
He’d poured quite a bit of his personal fortune into that support. Assuming the Empire of Charis won, those investments would make him a fabulously wealthy man. Perhaps not on the level of an Ehdwyrd Howsmyn, but staggeringly so by anyone else’s standards. Of course, if the Empire of Charis lost, he wouldn’t have to worry about returns on investments, because he was one of the people who would most certainly be dead.
“I wish I understood how anybody could pass up the chance to get in on something like this,” Sahndfyrd said after a moment. “I know it’s happening, and I can see where Temple Loyalists would resist anything that could help us win the war, but that’s not what’s driving most of them. Or not as nearly as I can tell, anyway.”
“The reason you can’t understand is that you’re a Charisian—an Old Charisian.” Raimahnd smiled as he repeated Sahndfyrd’s earlier emphasis, then snorted and tossed the letter opener onto his blotter. “You people are all shopkeepers, remember? You worship the almighty mark, not what really matters! All those smoky, messy, smelly manufactories of yours, disrupting the social order the Archangels themselves clearly ordained when they were wise enough to make their forefathers noblemen and filling the purses of men of no blood—no lineage! Offering commoners a chance to dominate the economy?! What can Their Majesties possibly be thinking?” He shook his head with a grimace. “Of course no proper noble wants to sully his lily-white hands with anything reeking of trade and manufacturing!”
“I know that’s what they think, Byndfyrd. I just don’t understand how they can think it, especially at a time like this.”
“Tahvys, some of them still resent the hell out of the way King Sailys kicked their sorry arses. Anything that strengthens the Crown’s reach and power—and God knows building a manufacturing sector like the one in Old Charis can’t do anything but strengthen the Crown—is anathema to them, because they still dream of the day when the House of Lords reclaims its rightful place as the dominant power in Chisholm. Mind you, I think it’s more likely the Archangels will return in glory tomorrow, but some of them are still invested in doing just that. Then there’re the ones who’re genuinely disdainful of this whole newfangled notion—nothing more than a fad, probably—of manufactories. Their family fortunes are founded on the ownership of land—on wheat fields and vineyards and sheep and cattle. That’s what they understand, and they don’t want anything to change an arrangement that suits them so well. And, finally, it’s new. It’s not traditional, not familiar, and the Writ itself warns against the dangers of too much innovation.”
His expression tightened with the last sentence, and Sahndfyrd looked at him thoughtfully.
“You’re not entirely comfortable with all of this yourself, are you?” he asked softly, and Raimahnd stiffened. It was the first time the Old Charisian had asked him that question, and he started to answer quickly, then paused and made himself give it the consideration it deserved.
“No,” he acknowledged finally. “Not entirely. But I’m even less comfortable with a lot of other things that are happening right now. I wish we didn’t have to change. That the world could continue the way God and the Archangels intended without all this dangerous tinkering with God’s plan. But the world’s already stopped being what I’d like it to be, and the more I hear about what the Inquisition’s doing in Siddarmark, the more I read Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s denunciations, and the more I listen to men like Maikel Staynair and Archbishop Ulys, the more I realize I have to choose a side. I have to choose, whether I want to or not—I don’t agree with Archbishop Maikel in all ways, but he’s right about that—and I can’t choose to leave Mother Church in the grasp of someone like Clyntahn.”
He shook his head slowly, eyes looking beyond Sahndfyrd to something only he could see, and his voice was low-pitched and sad.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate realizing that when this struggle is over it’s going to be impossible for the Church of Charis to ever return to its obedience to the Grand Vicar and the Temple, Tahvys. I know some of the Reformists still believe—or hope, at least—that the unity of Mother Church can be restored once Zion’s been purged of corruption. It’s not going to happen, though. It can’t. There’s been too much bloodshed, especially in Siddarmark, and too many people will never forgive Mother Church for allowing that to happen. And much though it grieves me, I don’t think they ought to. So here I am, a man who always wanted to be a loyal son of Mother Church—a man who’s spent seventy years of his life trying to be just that—dedicating the rest of my life to making the Schism permanent.”
“Why?” Sahndfyrd asked gently.
“I could say it’s because I’m loyal to my Queen. I could say it’s because I’m appalled by Clyntahn’s atrocities, by the realization that he sees no distinction between his will and God’s. I could say it’s because that even as muc
h as this tide of innovation and change distresses me, I see how much better they’ll make life for so many Chisholmians. I could say all of those things, and they’d all be true, but the biggest reason I’ve betrayed Mother Church? It’s the only way to save her. She can’t—she won’t—reform herself, so someone has to make her—the Reformists are right about that—and who else can possibly do that?”
Silence fell, hovering between them for several minutes until Raimahnd inhaled sharply.
“Listen to me nattering like an old woman! I believe you had something else you wanted to discuss?”
Sahndfyrd looked back at him, thinking about all the other “somethings” he wanted to discuss. Like how they were going to encourage manufactories in central and western Chisholm, away from the canals serving Lake Megan and Lake Morgan. The coal in Eastshare, the iron deposits in the Sharon Mountains, the fact that small barges could use the Paul River to haul that iron ore downriver to the lakes—all of those made eastern Chisholm a natural initial foothold. That was, after all, one of the reasons Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had established his Maikelberg Works on Lake Morgan. Another, of course, was that it just happened to put the Imperial Charisian Army’s primary arsenal and heavy weapons facility right outside the ICA’s front door, handy for deliveries … and easy to protect. The Maikelberg Works had delivered its first locally produced Mahndrayns and rifled field artillery just last five-day, and there were ample arguments in favor of concentrating as much as possible of Chisholm’s industry around that well-guarded center and the transportation advantages of the twin lakes and the Edymynd and King Sailys Canals. But the Crown remained determined to foster the same sorts of development throughout as much of the Kingdom as possible, and Tahvys Sahndfyrd and Byndfyrd Raimahnd were supposed to be figuring out how to make that happen. But somehow, at the moment.…
“I’m sure we both have a lot we need to discuss,” he said, “but for just now, I’m a poor half-frozen Charisian lad, lost and forlorn in this barren northern wasteland. I need a guide to a hot meal, a good bottle of whiskey, and an evening of quiet conversation about something that has nothing at all to do with wars and manufactories.”
Those owl’s eyes gazed very levelly at the banker sitting behind the desk, and the lips under them smiled.
“You wouldn’t know where I might find such a fellow, would you?”
.VIII.
Holy Langhorne Canal, Earldom of Usher, The Border States
Rain dripped endlessly from the branches of native Safeholdian waffle bark and nearoak and imported Terran chestnut, ash, and yew as the winter evening limped toward night. It was cold, that rain, even colder than the patient, biting wind, and the well-rugged horse sighed deeply, grateful for his heavy blanket. Grain crunched in his feed bag, and tendrils of wood smoke rose white as the horse’s steaming breath from the small, carefully hidden campfire.
That fire burned in a stone-faced fire pit in a well-sheltered hollow three hundred yards north of the Holy Langhorne Canal. Had trackers or woodsmen examined the fire pit, measured the depth of its ash, explored the carefully hidden campsite, they would quickly conclude it had been there for more than a five-day at the very least. That, after all, was the conclusion they were supposed to reach, and the remotes of an AI named Owl had gone to considerable effort to be sure they would. In fact, it was less than two days old, and the single individual sitting between it and the water, perched in the shooter’s blind on the lip of the canal cut, had arrived barely three hours ago.
His hair was brown, but his eyes … those were dark as sapphire, and harder than any stone, and his breath made no plume.
This particular iteration of him didn’t have a name. It had never needed one, since it had never existed prior to today, and he’d used at least some of his waiting time considering what he might call himself. Something that spoke to the darkness of the purpose that brought him here, he thought. Something the Inquisition would find easy to remember, whether it understood it or not.
He’d gone to some pains to equip this particular persona properly and set the stage for its work this night. It was entirely possible he’d need it again, and he couldn’t afford to leave any questions about who’d been responsible.
Not after Sarkyn.
I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t just burn the place down and plow the ruins with salt while they were at it, he thought harshly. They probably would have, if they hadn’t wanted to leave enough witnesses to get the message out.
Those sapphire eyes went even harder, the face in which they lived still colder and bleaker. By Owl and Nahrmahn’s best estimate, the population of Sarkyn was now thirty percent of what it had been. Thirty-six of the town’s citizens—twenty-three men and thirteen women—had suffered the full rigor of the Punishment of Schueler after the denunciations began. And they had begun. When the “impartial investigators” had already decided witnesses were going to come forward and were going to name names—and when the interrogators had been ordered by the Inspector General to use whatever means were necessary to produce those witnesses—names would, indeed, be named. At least three of the executed men had deliberately implicated themselves, even knowing what awaited them, in order to spare others, and one of the women the Inquisition had murdered had been a harmless forty-year-old with the intellect of a ten-year-old. But the Inquisitors had, by God, found the hidden heretics, the betrayers of Holy Langhorne and Mother Church, who’d somehow detonated four hundred tons of gunpowder in the middle of their own town.
Of course none of the executed culprits had personally set off the explosion. Not even the Inquisition could explain how they might have managed that and still been around for execution. But they’d known about the plot, and they’d conspired afterward to conceal what had actually happened. That made their guilt just as great as that of whoever had set the actual fuse, and so they’d paid the penalty for their crimes.
And purely as a precaution, to prevent any repetition of Mahlyk Pottyr’s and Mayor Wylyt Thompkyn’s heinous crimes, over nine hundred of the town’s citizens, a quarter of them children, had been taken into “preventative custody” and transported to Camp Fyrmahn, the Inquisition’s concentration camp in Westmarch Province.
Some of them might even survive the winter.
I guess just butchering Siddarmarkians gets boring. Plenty of those to go around—they’ve got whole concentration camps full of them! How much challenge is there in catching more of them? Better to try some different quarry, see how Sardahnan screams compare to Siddarmarkian ones. I imagine a fellow gets bored just listening to the same old sounds day after day.
His mouth twisted and he closed his eyes for a moment.
I’m probably being unfair. They didn’t do it just for the personal satisfaction. Oh, it did satisfy them. Proved how virtuous they were, punishing the guilty. But that wasn’t the only reason they did it. They wanted to make sure anybody who might be tempted to really try something like blowing up one of their powder barges would damned well know better. I wouldn’t be surprised if Clyntahn had been primed for months, waiting for an opportunity just like this. He might’ve preferred for it to happen in the Republic, but maybe not. Maybe having it happen outside Siddarmark worked out better for him. It sure as hell reinforces his claim that heretics are everywhere, just waiting to betray the Church if not for the ever vigilant Inquisition! And the example’s not going to be lost on anyone who might even think about actually trying to sabotage the Jihad.
He closed his eyes, wishing he could close the eyes of his memory as easily. But he’d watched the imagery. Not all of it—in fact, he’d been able to handle only a very small amount of it—but enough. Enough to know he’d never forget it … and enough to take measures.
* * *
Hahskyll Seegairs’ pen scratched busily across the page.
It was chilly in his cubbyhole cabin, despite the tightly closed windows and small coal-fired stove, but Father Hahskyll was a man of austerity. His fingers were cold, but he ignored the di
scomfort, warmed by the satisfaction of knowing he’d accomplished a distasteful task without flinching, as his duty had required.
He would have preferred to return to the Inquisitor General’s headquarters in Tarikah, but he’d been ordered to Zion by the fastest route. That was why his barge flew the golden scepter banner which gave it priority over all other traffic. When darkness fell, the red lanterns already blazing at bow and stern would assure the same precedence, although the mere fact that they were moving after nightfall should make that superfluous. Normal traffic was already mooring for the night, as the Canal Service regulations required, leaving only Vicar Rhobair’s “specials” on the water, and they hadn’t seen another barge in hours.
Seegairs hated this diversion from his responsibilities in Siddarmark. He wasn’t so consumed by pride as to believe his was the only nose capable of sniffing out heresy, yet the proof was there to see. Hahskyll Seegairs had uncovered more hidden heretics in the Republic than any two of Wylbyr Edwyrds’ other personal aides. And now there was the horror of Sarkyn. However badly he might be needed in the field, someone had to report personally to the Grand Inquisitor about the blasphemous treason they’d uncovered, and who better than the Inquisitor who’d ferreted it out to begin with? Especially if that weak-spined old woman Zhaikybs truly had protested to Vicar Zhaspahr. It was important to place the evidence proving Seegairs’ suspicions—and Bishop Wylbyr’s, of course—had, sadly, been well founded before the Grand Inquisitor. Who would have believed such an extensive network of heretics could have concealed itself so tracelessly? Yet there they’d been, hidden until the Question stripped away their mask. Surely their mere existence only reemphasized how wise the Office of Inquisition had been to organize the Sword of Schueler before the cancer in Siddarmark could spread still further into the healthy tissue of the Mainland!