A Mighty Fortress (78 page)

“Once I found the enclosure,” Fharmyn continued, “I seriously considered burning both letters. On more mature consideration, however, I realized I had no way of knowing if additional letters would be sent if this one didn’t produce what ever outcome its sender had in mind. The idea of having an unknown number of Charisian letters addressed to me—and, quite possibly, to Your Majesty—floating around the Kingdom didn’t appeal to me. And, frankly, the thought that the letter- sender might attempt to reach you through a different channel—one which could end up bringing all of this to the Inquisition’s notice after all—was even less appealing.”

The foundry owner hadn’t mentioned the probability that “a different channel” wouldn’t have known the initial letter had come by way of Fharmyn. Which would have meant, presumably, that the other man wouldn’t have been implicated, so far as the Inquisition knew, in the effort to set up some sort of clandestine communication with the king. Fharmyn was far too astute not to have thought of that, and the fact that he hadn’t chosen to say a word about it suggested many things to King Gorjah of Tarot.

“Should I assume, Sir Ryk,” he said, carefully, after a trickle of seconds, “that you’ve brought that letter to me?”

“I have, Your Majesty.”

Fharmyn bowed gravely, then extracted a large envelope from inside his tunic. Gorjah held out his hand when he saw it, and Fharmyn limped around the table to lay it in his palm. But he paused before he handed it to his king.

“Your Majesty, I’ve brought you
both
letters,” he said, looking Gorjah in the eye. “Obviously, I haven’t opened the one addressed to you. I have no idea what it contains. If you choose to place all of this in the Inquisition’s hands, I will cooperate in any way they—or you—require. Indeed, if you wish it, I’ll take both of them to Father Frahnklyn immediately, without ever mentioning this meeting.”

“I appreciate the generosity of your offer, Sir Ryk,” Gorjah replied, and he meant it. “Nonetheless, as yourself, I believe it behooves me to see what this letter contains first.” He showed a flash of white teeth, and his dark eyes glinted with genuine, if sardonic, humor. “I can think of quite a few ways in which a letter could be crafted to create all manner of suspicion in someone’s mind.”

“I considered that, Your Majesty,” Fharmyn acknowledged. “At the same time, though, it occurred to me that if the idea was to plant false information, false suspicion, in the mind of the Inquisition, there were probably simpler and more reliable ways for Earl Gray Harbor or Baron Wave Thunder to ‘accidentally’ allow their correspondence to ‘fall’ into the Inquisition’s hands.”

Gorjah’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. There’d been no need for Fharmyn to offer that last observation, and the king wondered why he had.

Is that simply your way of suggesting that you think what ever this damned thing says is genuine? Or is it your way of suggesting that I ought to read it . . . and possibly give some serious thought to what ever it
does
say?

He considered asking the question out loud, but only briefly. Either way, it really didn’t matter... except that—again, either way—the foundry owner obviously did think he should read it.

“That’s an excellent point,” he said instead, and waggled the fingers of his outstretched hand very slightly.

Fharmyn took the hint and laid the envelope in his palm. Gorjah let it lie there for a moment while he gazed down at it, feeling its weight, wondering what it said. Then he looked back up at Fharmyn.

“Sir Ryk, I’m well aware that bringing this to me was no easy decision. I appreciate your courage in doing so, and the frankness of your explanation. And, for that matter, the wisdom of your analysis. Now, however, I think it would be best for you to return to your home while I examine this and think about it.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Fharmyn began to back away from the table, avoiding the social solecism of turning his back upon his monarch, but Gorjah raised the index finger of his free hand, and the foundry owner paused.

“If it should happen I decide the Inquisition needs to be informed about this, Sir Ryk,” the king said quietly, “I’ll have word sent to you first. Before I contact Father Frahnklyn.” He saw Fharmyn’s face tighten slightly. “I believe I owe you that courtesy. And, what ever happens, I promise you that I won’t forget your ser vice in bringing it to
me
.”

He emphasized the final pronoun very slightly, but deliberately, and Fharmyn nodded.

“Thank you, Your Majesty. And, now, with Your Majesty’s permission—?” He gestured in the door’s direction, and Gorjah nodded.

“By all means, Sir Ryk,” he agreed, then watched while the foundry owner eased out of the council chamber and the door closed quietly behind him.

The King of Tarot gazed at that closed door for the better part of two minutes. Then, finally, he laid the envelope on the table in front of him, opened it, and extracted its contents. He paid no immediate attention to the cover letter to Fharmyn. Instead, he slowly unfolded the second envelope which had been enclosed in the first one, and his eyes widened as he saw the handwriting. He paused for just a moment, then flattened it on the table, holding it down for a moment with both hands, the way a man might restrain a small, unknown animal he wasn’t certain wasn’t going to bite.

Well, I don’t suppose
that’s
a surprise,
a corner of his brain reflected as he studied the handwritten address.
Or, maybe it is. I’m sure he has a secretary somewhere he could trust with almost any correspondence. On the other hand, I imagine he could be fairly confident this would be one way to get my attention
. The king surprised himself with a snort of humor.
Not that his rather dramatic way of getting it delivered didn’t already take care of that!

King Gorjah shook his head, looking down at the envelope an extraordinarily busy and powerful man had addressed himself. There was no question in the king’s mind that the man who’d done that had expected his addressee to recognize his handwriting, know it had truly come from
him
.

Now it only remained to see exactly what Rayjhis Yowance, the Earl of Gray Harbor and, effectively, the first councilor of the Charisian Empire, had to say to him.

HMS Dancer, 56,

Off the Thairmahn Peninsula,

Southern Ocean

It was cool on deck, despite the bright sunlight, as the brisk easterly wind pushed HMS
Dancer
steadily westward in a wind- hum of rigging and the wash and bubble of water around the hull. The galleon was on very nearly her best point of sailing, with the wind coming in just abaft the starboard quarter, and with all sail set to the royals, she was making almost ten knots. That was a very respectable turn of speed for any galleon, even one only two months out of port. Of course, like every galleon in the Imperial Charisian Navy,
Dancer
was copper- sheathed below the waterline. It protected her from both the borers which all too often devoured a ship’s timbers without anyone noticing (until her bottom fell out, that was) and from the weed which killed her speed, as well. Nothing could
completely
stop a ship’s bottom from growing steadily fouler, but
Dancer
’s copper gave her a tremendous advantage. It was going to make her faster than most ships she might meet, even as far away from home as the Gulf of Dohlar.

Still, she could have done a bit better than her present speed if she’d been sailing by herself, Admiral Sir Gwylym Manthyr thought as he paced steadily back and forth along the railed walkway which stretched the full width of her stern. Ships sailing in company were always slower than they might have been sailing alone, because every sailing vessel was unique, each had her own best point of sail. Even sister ships from the same dockyard, as alike as two peas to the human eye, took wave and wind differently, made their best speeds under slightly different conditions. A captain who knew his ship as well as Captain Raif Mahgail knew
Dancer
could wring the very best performance out of his command in any given wind and sea, but when ships sailed in company, they were limited to the best speed of the
slowest
vessel under what ever conditions currently applied.

That thought was one which had been largely academic when Manthyr had commanded HMS
Dreadnought
, then- Prince Cayleb’s flagship. Despite the fact that
Dreadnought
had been a fleet flagship, Manthyr’s responsibilities hadn’t included deciding what that fleet was going to do next, or worrying about how long it was going to take
all
of its ships to get from one point to another.

Of course, he wasn’t a mere flag captain any longer.

He’d lost
Dreadnought
at Darcos Sound, a memory which still brought him intense pain, and not simply because of how much he’d loved that ship. He’d lost her, in the end, because he’d deliberately rammed her into a Corisandian galley under all the sail she could carry. Even though she’d struck bows- on, she’d been traveling too fast at the moment of impact, and he’d split her seams wide open. He’d managed to stave in a good twenty feet of her hull planking, as well, inflicting far too much damage below the waterline for her crew to save her, desperately though they’d tried. He’d known well before she struck that he was going to do potentially fatal damage, too. But that wasn’t the reason the memory hurt so much. No. No, it hurt so much because, even so, he’d been too late. Because despite all he and his crew had been able to do—and he knew, without doubt, that they’d done everything humanly possible—they’d been ten minutes too late to save their king’s life.

Gwylym Manthyr would have sent a dozen galleons to the bottom in return for those ten minutes.

He realized he’d stopped pacing, that he was standing with his hands on the sternwalk rail, staring back across
Dancer
’s wake. He looked out over the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean and gave himself a shake. The only person in the world who blamed him for being too late was himself, and he knew that, too. His knighthood, and his promotion from captain to admiral, would have been proof enough of that, even without his current assignment.

His was the most distant of all of Charis’ far- flung squadrons. He was two months out from the great naval base at Lock Island, with eighteen war galleons, six schooners, and no less than thirty transports, and wind and weather had favored him quite unreasonably. Indeed, he was the better part of two five- days ahead of his originally projected passage time, some hundred miles south of the Thairmahn Peninsula, rounding up around the southern end of the continent of Howard to pass through the Gosset Passage between Westbreak Island and the western tip of the enormously larger island called The Barren Lands into the Harthian Sea. That put him nine thousand miles from Lock Island, but that was in a straight line, and ships couldn’t just fly through the air. To reach this point, Manthyr’s squadron had been forced to sail over
fifteen
thousand miles, and they still had almost five thousand to go. At such a vast distance from any of his superiors, Manthyr was entirely on his own, which was a pretty conclusive statement of those superiors’ trust in him and his judgment, however he looked at it. After all, he had only the resources aboard his own ships—plus what ever he could “liberate”— and no one to turn to for orders or directions.

In some ways, that made him no different from the captain of any warship on in de pen dent duty. Ultimately, every captain in that situation was always on his own when it came to the decision point. And what ever that captain decided, someone else was likely to decide he’d been wrong and say so—loudly. But that was part of the price for commanding a king’s (or, now, an emperor’s) ship.

Still,
he thought, gazing out over that enormous spread of dark blue water,
I have to admit that I never really appreciated, as a mere captain, how much . . . nastier the whole thing gets as a flag officer
.

His lips twitched wryly. One thing he’d learned long ago was that the perspective was always different. As a midshipman, he’d thought captains were God and lieutenants were Archangels. As a lieutenant, he’d started to recognize that captains were only masters
after
God, but they’d still been at least equal to the Archangels in their godlike authority and power. As a captain, he’d come to recognize—fully recognize, for the first time—the full crushing weight of the responsibilities a captain shouldered in return for his all- powerful authority at sea. But now that he was an admiral himself, he realized that, in many ways, flag officers had the worst of all worlds. For all their lordly authority, they commanded squadrons and fleets, not
ships
. They directed, they administered, they devised strategies, and the full weight of responsibility for success or failure rested upon
them,
but they were forced to rely on
others
to execute their plans, carry out their orders. They might even get to direct the movements of their squadrons up to the moment battle was actually joined, yet once the ships under their command finally came into action, they were spectators. Passengers. For all their lordly power to direct the movement of
other
ships, they would never again command their own, and he hadn’t realized just how much that was going to hurt.