By Schism Rent Asunder (11 page)

Nahrmahn's voice was even drier than before, Pine Hollow noticed, and the first councilor felt a distinct flicker of uneasiness. Nahrmahn's position was grim enough without his openly antagonizing the Church's official representative in Emerald.

And, of course, the position of Emerald's first councilor depended almost entirely upon that of its prince.

“I'm sorry to hear His Eminence feels that way,” Zhaztro said politely, and Nahrmahn actually chuckled.

“I'm sure you are, Commodore.”

The prince shook his head, then shrugged.

“Well, Commodore, that was really the only question I had for you. I can't say your answer surprises me, but that's certainly not your fault. Would you be so good as to draw up a list of the best alternate landing sites for future Church messengers so that I could get it to the Bishop Executor by tomorrow morning?”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

Zhaztro bowed, clearly recognizing his dismissal, and withdrew. Nahrmahn watched the door close behind him, then looked at his cousin.

“I can't say I'm delighted about the attached price tag, Trahvys,” he observed almost whimsically, “but at least the reaming Haarahld and Cayleb gave us has brought one worthwhile officer to my attention.”

Pine Hollow nodded. Zhaztro's apparent immunity to the gloom, doom, and despair which had sent most of the Emeraldian Navy's surviving senior officers' morale plunging was remarkable. The commodore had to be aware of the near hopelessness of Emerald's position, but instead of dwelling upon it, he was actively seeking ways to strike back at Charis. As he had just finished pointing out, the Royal Charisian Navy lacked sufficient ships to blockade every Emeraldian port, and Zhaztro was busy fitting out light, jury-rigged cruisers as commerce raiders in every harbor with a boatyard. Most of them would be little more than lightly armed, outsized rowing skiffs or hastily converted—and even more lightly armed—merchantmen. Neither type could hope to stand up to any sort of regular man-of-war, even one without the devilish new Charisian artillery, but they could capture and destroy lumbering, lightly armed—or completely
unarmed
—merchantmen, and commerce raiding was probably the one way in which Emerald could hope to actually hurt—or inconvenience, at least—Charis.

Not that it was going to do any good in the end, of course.

Nahrmahn continued to gaze out the window for two or three more minutes without speaking. Pine Hollow knew the prince's eyes were following the grayish-tan pyramids of the Charisian galleons' weathered sails as they glided slowly, slowly across Eraystor Bay.

“You know,” Nahrmahn said finally, “the more I think about how we got into this mess, the more pissed off I get.”

He turned away from the Charisian warships and looked his cousin in the eye.

“It was
stupid
,” he said, and that, Pine Hollow knew, was the deepest, most damning condemnation in Nahrmahn's vocabulary. “Even if Haarahld hadn't been building all those damned galleons, with all those damned new guns of his, it would still have been stupid. It's obvious Trynair and Clyntahn never even tried to find out what was actually happening in Charis, because they didn't really care. They had their own agenda, and their own objectives, and so they simply said the hell with thinking things through and started moving their chess pieces around like blind, fumbling idiots. Even if things had worked out the way they'd expected, it would have been using a sledgehammer to crack an egg. And the way it
did
work out, they only pushed Haarahld into smashing
everyone
who could have hurt him! Oh,” he made an impatient gesture, “we didn't know what he was up to, either, before he handed us all our heads. I'll admit that. But we at least knew he was up to
something
, which was more than that idiot Hektor seemed aware of! And who did Trynair and Clyntahn decide to back? Hektor, that's who!”

Pine Hollow nodded, and Nahrmahn's lips worked as if he wanted to spit on the floor. Then the prince drew a deep breath.

“But there's another reason it was stupid, too, Trahvys,” he said in a much softer voice, as if he were afraid someone else might hear him. “It was stupid because it shows all the world exactly what the ‘Group of Four's' precious members really think.”

His eyes had gone very still, dark and cold, and Pine Hollow's stomach muscles tightened.

“What they think, My Prince?” he asked very carefully.

“They think they can destroy anyone they want to,” Nahrmahn told him. “They whistled up—what was it Earl Thirsk said Cayleb called us? Ah, yes. They whistled up a pack of ‘hired stranglers, murderers, and rapists' and ordered us to cut Charis' throat. They couldn't have cared less what that meant—for us, as well as for Charis. They decided to burn an entire kingdom to the ground and kill thousands of people—and to use
me
to do it, Shan-wei take their souls!—as if the decision were no more important than choosing what bottle of wine to order with supper, or whether to have the fish or the fowl for the main course.
That's
how important the decision was for them.”

He'd been wrong, Pine Hollow thought. Nahrmahn's eyes weren't cold. It was simply that the lava in them burned so deep, so hot, that it was almost—
almost
—invisible.

“Nahrmahn,” the earl said, “they're the Church. The vicarate. They can do whatever—”

“
Can
they?” Nahrmahn interrupted him. The pudgy Prince of Emerald raised his right hand, jabbing his index finger at the window. “Can they?” he repeated, pointing at the Charisian galleons' sails. “I don't know about you, Trahvys, but
I'd
have to say their plans didn't work out exactly the way they'd intended, did they?”

“No, but—”

“It's not going to end here, you know.” Nahrmahn's voice was calm again, and he seated himself on the padded window seat with his back to the wall, gazing up at his taller cousin. “Given even the Church's purely secular power, the odds against Charis' survival are high, of course. But Cayleb's already proven Charis isn't going down easily. I would rather have preferred being here myself to see how it all works out, of course. But even though I won't be, I can tell you this much already. It's going to take
years
for anyone to overcome the defensive advantages Charis already enjoys, and it's going to take a lot more ships, and a lot more men, and a lot more gold than the Group of Four ever imagined in their worst nightmares. Cities are going to be burned, Trahvys. There are going to be murders, atrocities, massacres, and reprisals … I can't even begin to imagine everything that's going to happen, and at least I'm
trying
to, unlike the ‘Group of Four.' And when it's all over, there won't be a single prince or king in all of Safehold who doesn't know his crown depends not on the approval of God, or even the acceptance of the Church, but on the whim of petty, corrupt, greedy,
stupid
men who think they're the Archangels themselves come back to Safehold in glory.”

Trahvys Ohlsyn had never before heard anything like that out of his prince, and hearing it now frightened him. Not just because of its implications for his own power and survival, either. He'd always known, despite the way his rotund little ruler's allies and opponents alike persistently tended to underestimate him, that Nahrmahn of Emerald was a dangerously, dangerously intelligent man. Now it was as if his own impending defeat and probable demise had cracked some inner barrier, loosed some deep, hidden spring of prophecy, as well.

“Nahrmahn, think about what you're saying, please,” the earl said quietly. “You're my Prince, and I'll follow wherever you may take Emerald. But remember that, whatever else they may be, they speak with Mother Church's voice, and they control all the rest of the entire
world
. In the end, Charis can't—”

“Charis doesn't
have
to,” Nahrmahn interrupted again. “That's the very point I'm making! Whatever happens to Charis, whatever the Group of Four may think, this is only beginning. Even if they manage to completely crush Charis, it's
still
only beginning. This isn't God's will, it's
theirs
, and that's going to be obvious to everyone, not just to someone like me, or like Greyghor Stohnar in Siddarmark. And when it becomes obvious, do you really think the other princes and kings are simply going to go back to sleep, as if this never happened? As if Trynair and Clyntahn hadn't
proved
no crown is secure, no city is safe, if it's foolish enough to rouse the ire of the Group of Four or whoever replaces them on the Council of Vicars?”

He shook his head slowly, his expression grim.

“The one thing in the entire world the Church simply can't afford to lose is its moral authority as God's voice, His steward among His people, Trahvys.” His voice was very, very soft. “That's been the true basis for the world's unity—and the Church's power—since the Day of Creation itself. But now the Group of Four has just thrown that away, as if it were so unimportant, so
trivial
, that it wasn't worth so much as a second thought. Only they were wrong. It wasn't unimportant; it was the only thing that could have saved them. Now it's gone, and that, Trahvys—
that
—is something they will never, ever be able to get back again.”

.VII.

Breygart House,
Hanth Town,
Earldom of Hanth

“Move, damn you! I want this street
cleared!
”

Colonel Sir Wahlys Zhorj reined his horse around so angrily that the animal sunfished under him. He reacted—predictably, in Captain Zhaksyn Maiyr's opinion—by pulling the reins even shorter and leaning forward to slap the back of the horse's head.

Sir Wahlys (only Maiyr wasn't supposed to know that the “Sir” was self-bestowed) snarled and jabbed his index finger in the general direction of the waterfront.

“I don't give a
damn
how you do it, Captain, but you get this street cleared all the way to the wharves, and you do it
now!
”

“Yes, Sir,” Maiyr replied in a stony voice. Zhorj gave him one more fulminating glance, then jerked his head at his small party of aides and went cantering back towards the center of town, leaving Maiyr to his own devices. Which, in a lot of ways, suited Maiyr just fine.

Of course, in other ways, nothing about this entire bitched-up situation suited Zhaksyn Maiyr at all.

He turned a glare of his own towards the shouting, smoke, and general hullabaloo of the street Zhorj had ordered him to clear. It was going to be an unmitigated pain in the arse however he went about it, he reflected. And whatever “Sir” Wahlys might think, it wasn't going to make the situation any better.

He isn't really idiotic enough to think it'll do any good,
Maiyr thought angrily.
He just doesn't have any better ideas. Which isn't all that surprising, either, I suppose
.

The truth was that Colonel Zhorj was a reasonably competent field commander, with a genuine talent for managing the logistics of a mercenary cavalry company, which happened to include Maiyr's mounted arbalesters. No one knew exactly where he'd come from originally, but his reputation as someone prepared to ask very few questions of his employer had preceded him. And for the last couple of years, he'd been Tahdayo Mahntayl's senior troop commander here in the Earldom of Hanth.

And mightily unpopular he's made himself … and all the rest of us
, Maiyr thought bitterly.

“All right,” he told his troop sergeant, “you heard the Colonel. If you have any bright ideas, this is the time to trot them out.”

“Yes, Sir,” the gray-haired sergeant said sourly. He was a highly experienced man, and his expression was even sourer than his tone as he looked past Maiyr at the defiant riot and shook his head. “As soon as one occurs to me, you'll be the first person I tell.”

“Well,
that's
remarkably helpful,” Maiyr observed dryly.

“I'm sorry, Sir.” The sergeant's voice was a bit chastened, and he shook his head again, in quite a different manner. “I just don't see any way to do it without leaving blood in the street, and I thought we were supposed to be avoiding that.”

“Apparently, the Colonel has just changed our orders in that regard.” Maiyr and the noncom exchanged speaking glances, and then the captain shrugged.

“Well, whether it's a good idea or not, we've got our orders. On the other hand, I'd just as soon not kill anyone if we can help it.”

“Yes, Sir.” The sergeant's agreement was obvious, although Maiyr doubted he felt that way for the same reason the captain did. The sergeant simply understood that bloodshed begat bloodshed, and that there was no nastier kind of fight than one against a true general insurrection. Maiyr, on the other hand, was familiar with the House of Ahrmahk's reputation, and he thought giving King Cayleb any more reason to come personally looking for one Zhaksyn Maiyr was an enormously bad idea.

Besides, it went against the grain to kill people with as many legitimate reasons for hating their local earl as these people had.

“Most of them aren't that well armed,” he thought aloud for the sergeant's benefit.
After all
, he added to himself,
we've spent the last two years confiscating every weapon we could get our hands on
. “They're also on foot. So we'll try a show of force, first. I want half of our troopers mounted. They'll take the center of the street and try to push the rabble in front of them. I don't want any casualties we can avoid, so tell them that they're to fire over the rioters' heads unless we're actually taking fire from them. Make
sure
that's understood.”