by David Weber
He smiled, showing improbably white, perfect teeth, and Cayleb frowned.
"Don't think me ungrateful," he said, "but I find it difficult to believe I'm so righteous that God Himself would send a seijin to save me."
"I suspect you're more righteous than many, Your Highness. Possibly even than most—after all, at your age, how much opportunity have you had to become unrighteous?" Merlin chuckled and shook his head. "However, I'm not at all sure your personal righteousness has anything to do with it. You seem a nice enough young man, but I rather suspect that what brought me here has more to do with what you may accomplish in the future than anything you've already done."
"Accomplish in the future?" Cayleb stiffened, and Merlin shrugged.
"As I've already said, Your Highness, it's never been given to me to see the future. I do, however, see the patterns of the present, and what I've seen of your father's rule gives me a very good opinion of him. I know." He held up one hand with an easy smile. "I know! Presumptuous of me to judge the worth of any king, and especially of a king not my own! Still, there it is. His people are happy and prosperous and, until . . . certain other parties began actively plotting against him, they were secure, as well. And he's spent years training you, which suggests you would continue in the same mold as king. At any rate, and for whatever reason those visions have come to me, it seemed evident your enemies were prepared—or preparing—to strike directly at either you, your father, or both. There was nothing I could do about it from my home, and so I took ship for Charis. I arrived three days ago, aboard Captain Charlz' ship."
"Marik Charlz?" Falkhan asked more sharply than he'd intended to, and Merlin nodded.
"Yes. I traveled cross-country to Siddar, and I was fortunate enough to find Wave Daughter there with a load of Zebediahan tea. Captain Charlz had run into some sort of problem with the Customs officers which took several five-days to straighten out, but he'd finally gotten it taken care of just before I arrived. He was headed home with a cargo of Siddarmark brandy, and I needed a ride." Merlin smiled again. "If the good Captain is typical of the way you Charisians haggle, it's small wonder so many envy your trading ships' successes!"
"Captain Charlz drives a hard bargain," Falkhan agreed. "I suppose it comes from all the years he spent as a purser in the Navy."
"You need more practice at trapping liars, Lieutenant," Merlin told him with a chuckle. "Captain Charlz was never a purser. In fact, I believe he told me he holds a reserve commission in your navy. As a full ship master, if I recall correctly." Cayleb snorted behind Falkhan, and Merlin winked at the crown prince. "Besides," he added, "it would be particularly stupid of me to give you the name of both captain and ship if I were lying, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, it would," Falkhan acknowledged. "Still, given the . . . uncanny nature of your tale, I'm sure you realize we will be speaking to Captain Charlz?"
Merlin simply nodded, with another small smile, and Falkhan inhaled deeply.
"So. You arrived in Tellesberg three days ago. Why didn't you make your presence known sooner?"
"Oh, come now, Lieutenant!" This time Merlin laughed out loud. "Suppose I'd walked up to the palace gate three days ago, rung the bell, and informed the commander of the Palace Guard that I'd journeyed all the way from the Temple Lands to Charis because I had a vision that the Crown Prince was in danger, and could I possibly have a personal audience with him to explain all that, please? Given all the political currents and crosscurrents swirling about between Charis, Emerald, Corisande, and Tarot, how do you think Colonel Ropewalk would have reacted?"
"Not well," Falkhan admitted, noting once more that whoever and whatever else this Athrawes might actually be, he was fiendishly well informed about events and people here in Charis.
"-'Not well' is putting it mildly, Lieutenant." Merlin snorted. "I'm sure he would've been at least reasonably polite about it, but I'd still be sitting in a cell somewhere while he tried to figure out which of your many enemies had sent me." He shook his head. "I'm afraid Colonel Ropewalk doesn't have a very trusting disposition."
"Which is why he's the commander of the Palace Guard," Falkhan pointed out.
"I'm sure. But without any way to prove my bona fides, it seemed best to me to find myself an inn and take a room while I waited to see what would happen next. At that time, I had no knowledge of any immediate, specific threat to the King or to the Prince. Indeed," Merlin said with total honesty, "it was only late yesterday evening that I became aware of this particular plot. In my visions, I'd already seen these men's commander"—a jerk of his head indicated the bodies sprawled around them—"receiving instructions and passing on instructions of his own. But only last night did I 'see' him issuing the orders for this attack. And, by the way, it was he who saw to it that one of the Prince's huntsmen heard about this slash lizard, as well. I'm afraid he and his masters had a very good idea of how the Prince would react to the news.
"Thanks to my vision, I knew what was intended, but I had absolutely no evidence I could have presented to anyone. Had I been in your boots, Lieutenant, I would have been most suspicious of any total stranger who arrived on my doorstep this morning with tales of hidden assassins lurking in the forest. I would have had the stranger in question detained, at least until I could get to the bottom of his preposterous story. Which would just happen to have put the only person—other than the murderers, of course—who knew anything about the plan in a position from which he could accomplish nothing. So instead of trying to warn you, I came ahead, determined to do what I could to spoil their plans myself."
Merlin paused, and his strange sapphire eyes darkened as he gazed briefly at the two dead Marines.
"I regret that I couldn't find a way to do it which would have kept the rest of your men alive, Lieutenant. Perhaps if I could see the future, I might have been able to."
Falkhan sat silent for several minutes, gazing at the blue-eyed stranger. The lieutenant felt certain there were a great many things this Athrawes wasn't telling, or was glossing over. And yet he also felt oddly certain the mysterious foreigner truly did wish young Cayleb well. And whatever else he might be up to, without his intervention, the prince would most assuredly be dead at this moment. Moreover, it was Athrawes who'd seen to it that they had at least one of the assassins to interrogate, which he would hardly have done if that interrogation might implicate him in any plots.
It was always possible Athrawes, or someone he worked for, had designs of his own upon Charis. He might know exactly who'd sent the assassins and be working at cross-purposes to that particular enemy without being a friend himself. At the same time, however, he'd provided a wealth of detail about his own arrival in Charis which could be readily checked, and it might well be possible to test his claim to see "visions," as well.
For the moment, the lieutenant decided, he had no choice but to take the seijin claim at least tentatively seriously. Where that might lead if, indeed, it proved accurate was anyone's guess.
Except, of course, that those who wished his kingdom ill would not be at all pleased to hear about it.
III
Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis
"What happened?"
"How do I know?" Oskahr Mhulvayn replied irritably. He glowered at Zhaspahr Maysahn, his immediate superior. The two of them sat at a table in a street-side café only two blocks from the wharves, sipping cups of strong, sweet Dohlaran chocolate. The café was on the west side of the street, which had put it into cool shadow as the sun moved steadily towards evening (for which both men were devoutly grateful), and seabirds and sand wyverns foraged for scraps in a square across from it, where the produce hucksters had just closed their booths for the day. Despite the noise and bustle of a typical, busy Tellesberg day, the scene was reassuringly normal and calm. Which might well change in the next few hours, Mhulvayn thought, and shrugged one shoulder.
"Cayleb went out; he came back. Alive," he said.
"That much I've figured out for myself," Maysah
n said sarcastically. "And I know two of his bodyguards came back dead, and another one came back wounded, too."
"Then you should also know the gate guard was told to expect a pair of wagons shortly. One's supposed to have a dead slash lizard in it; the other one's supposed to be piled up with dead assassins. A full wagonload—over a dozen." Mhulvayn bared his teeth in a caricature of a smile. "I don't suppose you'd care to guess just who all of those 'dead assassins' might be?"
"Shan-wei!" Maysahn muttered. "How could they screw up that badly against just five bodyguards?"
"Well," Mhulvayn said philosophically, "at least we don't have any explaining to do." He paused and looked at his superior closely. "We don't, do we?"
"Not likely!" Maysahn snorted. "You think I'd be sitting around here talking to you if there were any chance something like this might lead back to me?"
"It would seem a little foolish," Mhulvayn agreed.
"The only thing more foolish I could think of right off hand would be going home to tell him in person that I'd been involved in anything this stupid."
Mhulvayn chuckled, although, in truth, neither of them felt particularly amused. He started to say something else, then paused as the waiter stopped by their table to offer refills on their chocolate. Maysahn raised one eyebrow at him, and Mhulvayn nodded. The imported chocolate was expensive, but Mhulvayn's cover as the representative of a Desnairi banking house and Maysahn's cover as the owner of a small fleet of merchant ships gave them the resources to indulge themselves from time to time.
The waiter poured, then departed, and Mhulvayn waited until the young man was out of earshot before speaking again. Their table was right at the edge of the slightly raised sidewalk, which put them very close to the cobblestone street. It was hardly a preferred location for most of the café's patrons. The noise of horse hooves, the grating roar of iron-shod wheels over cobbles, the burbling whistles of draft dragons, and the constant surf of background voices made it difficult to carry on a comfortable conversation. That same racket, however, also made it extremely difficult for anyone to overhear what they might have to say to one another.
"Actually," Mhulvayn said in a more serious tone, when he was certain no one else was in earshot, "from the rumors I've heard, it ought to have worked."
"The rumors are already busy?" Maysahn looked amused, and Mhulvayn shrugged.
"The rumors are always busy. In this case, the mayor of Rothar sent a messenger ahead. The yokel he chose passed his message to the gate guards, then found himself a tavern and had a few beers." Mhulvayn raised one hand and waggled it back and forth. "By the time he had three or four of them inside him, he was waxing eloquent. How much of it was accurate, I don't know, of course."
"Of course." Maysahn nodded. Half a spy's job consisted of picking up rumors which might or might not be true and passing them along. If he was smart, he eliminated all the ones he could demonstrate were inaccurate and was honest with his employer about the ones whose veracity he doubted. Not that all spies were smart, in Maysahn's experience.
"Bearing that in mind," Mhulvayn continued, "it sounds like everything went pretty much according to plan. They had the Prince out in the woods, and he'd sent two or three of his bodyguards back for horses. And they'd brought along crossbows, so they shouldn't even have had to get into sword's reach of them."
Maysahn looked impressed, almost against his will. He cupped his chocolate in both hands, sipping thoughtfully, then shook his head.
"If they had a 'wagonload' of men, and they had the target just where they wanted him, what the hell went wrong?"
"That's the interesting part," Mhulvayn said. "According to our beer-loving messenger, everything was going exactly the way it should have until some mysterious stranger interfered."
"-'Mysterious stranger'?" Maysahn repeated.
"That's what he said. Some fellow with 'strange blue eyes' who killed at least a dozen assassins single-handedly."
"Of course he did!" Maysahn snorted sarcastically. "I may not have been overly impressed with the quality of our . . . associates' brains, Oskahr, but they were reasonably competent in their own limited area."
"Agreed, but this fellow was pretty insistent. According to him—and he stuck by it through at least three complete repetitions before I had to leave to make our appointment here—it was the stranger who warned Cayleb's bodyguards about the attack, and then he apparently slaughtered the attackers right and left himself. If we're going to believe the messenger's version of things, Cayleb and this 'stranger' were the only two still on their feet when it was all over."
"Really?" Maysahn leaned back, lips pursed. "That is interesting," he murmured, so softly even Mhulvayn could scarcely hear him through the background noise. "If this fellow was that insistent, then he was probably telling the truth, at least as far as he knows the truth. Did he have anything to say about how this stranger of his happened to be there?"
"According to him, the stranger was obviously sent by God," Mhulvayn said. The two of them looked at one another across the table, their eyes amused. "After all, how else could he have arrived at exactly the right moment to save the crown prince?"
"Somehow I doubt God had a great deal to do with it," Maysahn said dryly. "Which isn't to say someone else didn't. Were our friends indiscreet, do you think?"
"They must've been. Although," Mhulvayn frowned, "I wouldn't have expected it of them. Admittedly, they were basically blunt instruments, but they knew Haarahld's agents are watching everywhere for assassins these days, and they were experienced."
"Not the sort to blab about their plans where someone might hear, you mean?"
"Exactly. Besides, if that was what happened, why was only one 'stranger' involved? We're talking about Cayleb. If they'd truly believed someone meant to try to kill him, they'd have had an entire regiment out there, not just one man."
"Unless that one man was the only one who'd realized what our less adroit associates intended to do," Maysahn said thoughtfully.
"Even then, he should have gone straight to the Guard with it," Mhulvayn argued.
"Unless he truly is a stranger, not a Charisian at all, and he saw this as an opportunity to win the Prince's confidence."
"Ah?" Mhulvayn scratched one eyebrow, frowning thoughtfully out across the busy street, then looked back at Maysahn.
"That could be it," he conceded. "A rather risky strategy, though, I'd have said. One man would stand a pretty good chance of getting himself killed trying to play hero against a 'wagonload' of assassins. Assuming this really was the work of the people we think it was, and I'm pretty sure it was, there'd have been at least a dozen of them. Pretty steep odds, don't you think?"
"I certainly wouldn't care for them." Maysahn nodded. "On the other hand, I suppose a lot would depend on just how good with a sword you actually were. That's not my area of expertise, after all. Actually, the riskiest part of the entire strategy would be that the assassins might succeed despite your intervention. You wouldn't win much of Cayleb's confidence if he was dead. Besides, if he'd been killed, and you looked like you'd known about the attempt ahead of time, Haarahld would probably have had a few unpleasant things to say to you about your failure to bring it to someone else's attention."
"At the very least." Mhulvayn made a face at the oblique reminder of all of the "unpleasant things" King Haarahld and his interrogators might have to say to one Oskahr Mhulvayn under certain best not thought about circumstances.
"But," Maysahn continued thoughtfully, "if this 'stranger' did manage to stymie an attempt to kill the Prince, he's undoubtedly going to find himself cordially received at the palace. If he plays his cards properly, that could lead to all sorts of rewards. Or," he looked back across the table at his subordinate, "influence."
"Influence to accomplish what?" Mhulvayn wondered.
"Who knows?" Maysahn shrugged. "Still, I suspect our employer won't be overly pleased to discover that a new player's taken a hand. This broth's rich enough without adding
another cook to the kitchen!"
"What do you want to do about it?" Mhulvayn asked.
"He's going to want to know about this as soon as possible," Maysahn replied. "Unfortunately, Captain Whaite's just sailed."
"Should we use one of the alternate couriers?"
"An interesting question." Maysahn took another sip of chocolate and considered Mhulvayn's query.
Captain Styvyn Whaite's merchant ship plied a regular trading route from Tellesberg, up Howell Bay and The Throat, and across the Charis Sea to Corisande, picking up whatever cargo charters he could. That ought to be enough to make him a guaranteed object of suspicion to Haarahld's agents, but Whaite's vessel was a miserable, barely seaworthy tub, and Whaite himself was a drunk who spent most of his time in port cozied up to a cask of cheap wine. No one in his right mind would trust him or his ship with anything remotely important or confidential.