Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  "No," Pine Hollow agreed. "But what bothers me is this attitude of his. Look at this, for example." He tapped one of the letters he'd brought to the working lunch. "He's not discussing things with us; he's telling us what he's already decided. It's the kind of letter I might have sent the bailiff on one of my secondary estates!"

  "It's not quite that bad," Nahrmahn disagreed. His cousin snorted, and the prince shrugged. "I'm not saying you're wrong, Trahvys. I'm just saying Hektor's always seen himself as the senior member of our little partnership. As nearly as we can tell, things aren't going a lot better for him in Tellesberg than they are for us right now, so he may be getting just a little testier as a result."

  "It's not the insult that bothers me, Nahrmahn. Or, not much, at least. It's the mind-set behind it. If he's talking to us this way while the two of us are still allied against Charis, what's his attitude going to be after Charis goes down? And just who do you think he envisions getting the lion's share of the spoils?"

  "I'm sure he plans on it being him," Nahrmahn said comfortably. "Of course, his calculations may just prove to be slightly in error."

  Pine Hollow's eyes narrowed. He sat back for a moment, gazing at his cousin in intense speculation. Then he cocked his head to one side.

  "Is there something going on here that I ought to know about?" he asked.

  "Well," Nahrmahn said, opening up another shell and inspecting its contents thoughtfully, "actually, there are two things going on. First, there's a little side conversation I've been having with Bishop Executor Wyllys. It seems Archbishop Lyam is already sounding out support in the Temple for granting us a Church mandate over Margaret's Land on the basis of our historic association with its people. From what the Bishop Executor says, the Archbishop's meeting with a fairly favorable reception on that point. After all we're already on excellent terms with the new Earl of Hanth. And our orthodoxy is much firmer than Haarahld's. Or, for that matter, Hektor's."

  He scooped out the shellfish and popped it into his mouth, managing to chew and smile sardonically at the same time.

  Pine Hollow frowned thoughtfully. Lyam Tyrn, the Archbishop of Emerald, was greedier than most archbishops. Which was saying quite a lot, actually. Of course, Tyrn hadn't drawn the most lucrative of archbishoprics, either. Emerald wasn't exactly poverty-stricken, but compared to someplace like Charis—or Corisande, for that matter—its tithes were decidedly on the penurious side. And Tyrn's holdings outside Emerald weren't precisely the most prosperous imaginable. Still, the man came from one of the more powerful of the Church dynasties, and his name and family connections gave him considerably more influence than his lack of wealth might indicate. And that lack of wealth made him much more willing to use that influence in return for suitable consideration.

  "All right," the earl said after a moment. "I can see that. After all, presumably the Church will incorporate any new territory into his archbishopric. But that still leaves Silver and Charis Island itself."

  "The Church isn't going to let anyone snap up all of Charis, Trahvys," Nahrmahn replied. "The Council of Vicars is perfectly willing to let Hektor and me break Charis, but the vicars aren't about to let either of us gobble up everything that's made Haarahld so . . . irritating to them. Hektor has visions of sneaking around them somehow, and I suppose it's possible he may get them to sign off on a mandate over Silver. For that matter, he may even manage to acquire outright title to it. But Silver's worth a lot less than Margaret's Land, and the people living there are even more firmly attached to the Ahrmahks. Controlling them's going to be a fairly strenuous pastime—one I'd just as soon avoid.

  "As for Charis proper, I'll be very surprised if the Church doesn't step in and establish either direct rule—possibly in the name of Haarahld's minor children, assuming either of them survive—or else install a suitable puppet of its own. Possibly both. A regency for Haarahld's younger son might give them enough transition time to accustom Charis to direct Church rule, and there'd always be plenty of opportunities for him to suffer one of those tragic childhood accidents when he was no longer necessary. Either way, neither Hector nor I is going to get possession of Tellesberg. The difference between us is that I know I'm not, and I'm already making arrangements to be sure I do get the second most desirable slice of the pie."

  "Fair enough." Pine Hollow nodded. "On the other hand, I am your First Councillor, Nahrmahn. I think it might be a good idea to keep me informed on these little side negotiations of yours. Just to keep me from stepping on any toes because I didn't know they were there."

  "A valid point," Nahrmahn agreed. He sipped wine and squinted out across the sunlit gardens from the terrace's shade. "I'll try to bear it in mind," he promised, although Pine Hollow had no great expectation that he'd succeed. Nahrmahn probably didn't even tell himself about all of his various plots.

  "But you said there were two points Hektor wasn't aware of," the earl prompted after a moment, and Nahrmahn chuckled nastily.

  "I know Hahl hasn't had very much luck rebuilding his agents in Tellesberg," he said. "But whatever may be happening to him there, he's doing quite well other places. Which is one reason," the prince's voice turned somehow subtly darker, "I'm being patient with him about Charis."

  Pine Hollow nodded. Baron Shandyr's every effort to replace the departed Braidee Lahang's operation in Charis had failed. Every attempt seemed to be detected almost instantly, and Shandyr had lost at least a half-dozen of his better people trying to figure out what was going wrong.

  "Among the things he's done right," Nahrmahn continued more lightly, "is to establish contact with Baron Stonekeep."

  Pine Hollow's eyes narrowed once more; Edymynd Rustmyn, Baron Stonekeep, was not only King Gorjah of Tarot's first councillor, but also his equivalent of Hahl Shandyr.

  "Stonekeep is keeping us informed about Gorjah's negotiations with Hektor. His services aren't coming cheaply, but when the time's ripe, we'll use him to tell Gorjah what Hektor really has in mind for Tarot. Which is for it to get exactly nothing out of the deal, except relief from its treaties with Charis. I'm sure Gorjah won't care for that, at all. Especially if we offer to support his claim to at least a chunk of Charisian territory of his own. We're providing Stonekeep with some of our homing wyverns, as well, which may come in handy if quick political decisions have to be made."

  Pine Hollow nodded again, this time in unalloyed approval, although he was tempted to point out that this was another of those little stratagems which Nahrmahn might have wanted to bring to his first councillor's attention.

  "And, as a measure of last resort, as it were," Nahrmahn continued, "Hahl has a man in place in Manchyr. In fact, he has two of them. In a worst-case situation, Hektor's health may turn out to be much more fragile than he assumes it is."

  The prince smiled again, then nodded at one of the serving platters.

  "Pass the rolls, please?" he requested pleasantly.

  JUNE, YEAR OF GOD 891

  I

  Tellesberg

  "So what's this all about?"

  Zhaspahr Maysahn knew he sounded just a bit testy as he sat across the table from Zhames Makferzahn, but that was perfectly all right with him. Makferzahn hadn't been due to make contact with him for another two days under their agreed-upon schedule. Given Oskahr Mhulvayn's hasty departure and the fact that he and Maysahn had met fairly regularly—and publicly—Maysahn had ample reason to feel decidedly unhappy at the prospect of frequent meetings with Makferzahn.

  "I know we're off schedule," Makferzahn said now, "but this is important, I think."

  "I hope so, anyway," Maysahn grumped, then shrugged.

  Part of it, he knew, was that he and Makferzahn sat in the same sidewalk café—at the exact same table, in fact—as they had on the day of Cayleb's attempted assassination. That struck him as a potentially bad omen, but he told himself he was being silly. In fact, he'd picked the site and the table deliberately. It was one of the places he used regularly for business meetings in his shipping house
owner's persona, after all, and Makferzahn—whose cover was that of a purchasing agent for a Desnairian merchant house which was constantly hiring cargo vessels—had a perfectly logical ostensible reason for meeting with him.

  "All right," he said after moment. "What's so important it couldn't wait two more days?"

  "I finally got one of my people into the King's Harbor dockyard," Makferzahn said, and despite himself, Maysahn sat a bit straighter, eyes narrowing. "I know it's taken longer than either of us hoped it would," Makferzahn continued, "and he was only there for a few hours, but he managed to pick up at least a little information."

  "And?"

  "And I'm not sure what to make of it," Makferzahn admitted.

  "Well don't just sit there," Maysahn commanded.

  "Sorry." Makferzahn gave himself a little shake and sipped from his chocolate cup. Then he set the cup back down and leaned a bit closer to his superior.

  "They've got half a dozen new ships under construction in the yard," he said. "Not galleys—galleons."

  "Galleons?" Maysahn frowned in perplexity. What in Langhorne's name could the Royal Charisian Navy want with galleons?"

  "I know." Makferzahn's small shrug was eloquent with frustration. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's what they're doing."

  "Did your man manage to pick up any indication of why?"

  "No one's talking about it very much, even in the taverns and bars," Makferzahn said. "But according to the gossip he did overhear, they're arming them with cannon. Lots of cannon. According to one fellow he got drunk enough to risk pumping a bit, they're putting as many as thirty or even forty guns aboard some of them."

  Maysahn's frown deepened. That was as silly as anything he'd heard lately. Oh, it might explain why they were building galleons, since he couldn't think of any practical way to put that many guns aboard a galley. But it didn't explain why they wanted to mount that many guns in the first place. No doubt they'd be able to fire a devastating broadside before boarding, which would certainly be worthwhile. But they wouldn't have time for more than a single broadside each, and given how clumsy and unmaneuverable galleons were, closing with a galley in the first place would be all but impossible.

  "Whatever they're up to," Makferzahn continued, "they seem to think it's pretty important. My man managed to confirm the rumors about Cayleb. He's taken personal charge of their efforts out there, and he's pushing hard. Seems to be doing a damned good job of it, too, I'm afraid."

  "I wish I could say I was surprised by that," Maysahn said sourly. "Unfortunately, he's a lot like his father in that regard. Life would be so much simpler if they were both just idiots. But then the Prince probably wouldn't need us here, would he?"

  "Probably not," Makferzahn agreed. "But what do you make of it?"

  "I'm not at all sure, either," Maysahn admitted.

  He leaned back in his chair, drumming lightly on the tabletop while he watched the hucksters in the square across the street hawking their wares. A huge, articulated eight-wheeled freight wagon rumbled past, big enough to require two draft dragons, and one of the big six-limbed lizards snuffled wistfully as it smelled the fresh vegetables on display.

  "You're right about the importance they must attach to whatever it is they're doing, especially if that's where Cayleb's disappeared to," he said finally. "And I suppose those new rigging plans Olyvyr has introduced could have something to do with it, too. Every report about them indicates that even the square-riggers he's been experimenting with are lots more maneuverable. Maybe they actually think they can get a galleon into effective artillery range of a galley."

  "I just don't see them doing it without getting swarmed," Makferzahn objected. He wasn't rejecting Maysahn's theory out of hand, but clearly he wasn't convinced, either. "I could believe they thought they could get into range to smash one galley, but an entire fleet? What do they think all the other galleys are going to be doing in the meantime? And how do they expect to coordinate their own galleys with galleons?"

  "I didn't say I thought they could do it." Maysahn shrugged. "I'm just trying to figure out what they could possibly be thinking. And," he continued a bit reluctantly, "the fact that I can't makes me very nervous. Whatever else the Charisian Navy may be, it's not exactly run by fools."

  Makferzahn nodded in emphatic agreement. Like Maysahn, the more Makferzahn saw of the Royal Charisian Navy, the more he came to appreciate its quality. The Corisandian navy was one of the best in the world, but it wasn't in the Charisian Navy's league. No one else's Navy was, and Makferzahn had found himself sharing Maysahn's concern over the fact that not even Prince Hektor seemed to realize just how true that was.

  But the immediate point, he reminded himself, was that Charisians normally didn't do stupid things where their navy was concerned.

  "There were two other tidbits of information," he offered. Maysahn quirked an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "First, Olyvyr seems to think he's finally worked out a way to sheath a ship in copper without having it fall apart. At any rate, according to my man, the ships they're building are all supposed to be coppered when they're finished."

  He and Maysahn looked at one another thoughtfully. Sir Dustyn Olyvyr's mania for finding some way to protect his ships' hulls from the depredations of borers was well known. Not that he was alone in that, of course. The several varieties of shellfish and worms which fell under that general heading could literally devour a ship's timbers in a matter of only a few months, and every attempt to stop them with pitch or some other form of protective coating had failed. If Olyvyr truly had managed to solve the problems which had so far stymied his efforts to use copper, the long-term implications would obviously be significant. But at this particular moment, Zhaspahr Maysahn was rather more concerned with short-term implications.

  "You said two tidbits," he observed. "What's the other one?"

  "The minor fact that they appear to have assembled a squadron of galleons to practice whatever it is they're up to," Makferzahn said grimly. "It's only five ships, but it seems to spend a fair amount of time out on exercises. And it anchors in the Citadel Basin, well away from any other shipping, whenever it's in port. According to the fellow my man got drunk, it's commanded by a Commodore Staynair."

  "Staynair?" Maysahn repeated slowly. The last name was scarcely unique in Charis, but it wasn't especially common, either. "Would that be Sir Domynyk Staynair?"

  "The Bishop's younger brother," Makferzahn agreed with a nod.

  "Now that's interesting," Maysahn murmured while his brain raced.

  On one hand, it was reasonable enough, he supposed. If this mysterious project of theirs was important enough for Cayleb to take personal command of it, then they'd want one of their best naval officers working with him on it, and everything he'd ever heard about Commodore Staynair suggested the commodore certainly fell into that category. But there was also the connection to Tellesberg's bishop. Rumor had it that Bishop Executor Zherald had been known to express more than a few qualms about Staynair's ultimate loyalties. If his younger brother was this deeply involved in whatever Haarahld and his son were up to, then Bishop Maikel probably knew all about it, too. Which meant the Church—or, at least, the Charisian branch of the Church—also knew about it. Although that didn't necessarily mean the bishop executor did.

  "I wonder," Makferzahn said. His thoughtful tone drew Maysahn's attention back to him, and the younger man shrugged. "I was just wondering," he continued once he was certain he had his superior's ear, "about those galleons Olyvyr is building right here in Tellesberg."

  "What about them?"

  "Well, it just occurred to me while we were sitting here that he has a dozen of them under construction for eight different owners. That's in addition to all these 'schooners' of his, of course."

  "Every shipyard in the Kingdom's laying down ships right and left," Maysahn pointed out dryly. "The yards that aren't actually building are all busy rerigging existing ships to take advantage of the new sail plans. And it's all Olyv
yr's fault, one way or another. Well, his and Howsmyn's."

  "I know. But apparently all these new galleons of his are identical to one another. And according to a couple of carpenters working in Howsmyn's Tellesberg yard, there are some significant changes in their design. For one thing, they're a good twenty or thirty feet longer and a hell of a lot more heavily built than any galleon those carpenters have ever worked on before. I know Olyvyr's reputation, and I know these new rigging notions of his have only strengthened that reputation. Still, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that eight different shipowners should simultaneously order a dozen new ships, all built to a new and untested design?"

  "That does sound a bit peculiar," Maysahn acknowledged. He sipped chocolate thoughtfully, gazing out at the busy street scene once more.

  "You'd think they'd be a little bit more conservative, wouldn't you?" he mused aloud. "Maybe let Olyvyr build a couple of these new designs of his, get them into service and see how they actually performed, before they sank that much money into them."