By Schism Rent Asunder (15 page)

“It's clearly our responsibility to prevent any weaker souls among the vicarate from overreacting to the current provocation, despite the undoubted seriousness of that provocation,” Clyntahn said. “Charis has bidden defiance to the Church, to the Archangels, and to God Himself. I believe we must quench any sparks of panic among those weaker souls by making it clear to the entire vicarate that we have no intention of allowing that defiance to stand. And that we intend to deal … firmly with any additional outbreaks of defiance. That will be the Inquisition's task.”

The Grand Inquisitor's face was hard and cold.

“At the same time, however, we must prepare the entire Council for the reality that it will take time for us to forge the new weapons we need for our inevitable counterstroke,” he continued. “That may be difficult in the face of the deep concern many of our brothers in God will undoubtedly feel, and I believe your earlier point was well taken, Zahmsyn. We must make it clear to those … concerned souls that Charis' apparent strength, and Charis' initial victories, are not a threat to us, but rather a sign to Mother Church. A warning we must all heed. Indeed, if one considers the situation with unclouded eyes, secure—as one ought to be—in one's faith, the hand of God Himself is abundantly clear. Only the achievement of such an apparently overwhelming triumph could have tempted the secret heretics of Charis into openly revealing themselves for what they are. By permitting them their transitory victory, God has stripped away their mask for all to see. And yet, as you say, Zahmsyn, He's done this in a way which still leaves them unable to truly threaten Mother Church or undermine her responsibility to guide and protect the souls of all His children.”

Trynair nodded again, and an icy quiver ran through Duchairn's bones. The Chancellor, he felt certain, had evolved his explanation as if he were solving a chess problem, or perhaps any of the purely secular machinations and strategies his office was forced to confront daily. It was an intellectual ploy based on pragmatism and the naked realities of politics at the highest possible level. But the glitter it had lit in Clyntahn's eyes continued to glow. Whatever the Chancellor might think, and however capable of cynical calculation the Grand Inquisitor might be when it suited his purposes, the fervent conviction in Clyntahn's tone was most definitely not feigned. He had embraced Trynair's analysis not simply out of expediency, but because he
believed
it, as well.

And why does that frighten me so? I'm a Vicar of Mother Church, for God's sake! However we came to where we are, we know what God demands of us, just as we know that God is all-powerful, all-knowing. Why
shouldn't
He have used our own actions to reveal the truth about Charis? Show us how deep the rot truly runs in Tellesberg?

Something happened deep in Rhobair Duchairn's heart and soul, and another thought occurred to him.

I have to think about this, spend time in prayer and meditation, pondering the
Writ
and
The Commentaries
. Perhaps people like the Wylsynns have been right all along. Perhaps we
have
grown too arrogant, too enamored of our power as secular princes. The Charisians may not be the only ones whose mask God has decided to strip away. Perhaps this entire debacle is God's mirror, held up to show us the potential consequences of our own sinful actions and overweening pride
.

It was not, he knew, a suggestion to be brought forth at this moment, in this place. It was one to be considered carefully, in the stillness and quiet of his own heart. And yet …

For the first time in far too many years, in the face of obviously unmitigated disaster, Vicar Rhobair Duchairn found himself once more contemplating the mysterious actions of God through the eyes of faith and not the careful calculation of advantage.

.II.

Queen Sharleyan's Palace,
City of Cherayth,
Kingdom of Chisholm

Trumpets sounded and the batteries protecting the Cherry Bay waterfront blossomed with smoke as they thudded their way through a sixteen-gun salute. Indignant seabirds and wyverns made their opinion of the goings-on abundantly clear as they wheeled, screeched, and scolded across a sky of springtime blue. The brisk wind out of the east lofted them easily as it blew across the sheltering peninsula known as The Sickle, which shielded Cherry Bay and the city of Cherayth from the often rough weather of the North Chisholm Sea, and the air was refreshingly cool.

Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm stood at a window high up in Lord Gerait's Tower on the seaward side of the palace which had been her family's home for two centuries, looking out over the orderly stone houses, streets, warehouses, and docks of her capital as she watched the four galleons sailing majestically into its harbor. The winged tenants of Cherry Bay might be filled with indignation at the disturbance of their normal routine, but they had no idea just how disturbing
she
found all this, she reflected.

Sharleyan was a slender, not quite petite young woman who'd just turned twenty-four. Despite the occasional fawning versification of particularly inept court poets, she wasn't a beautiful woman. Striking, yes, with a determined chin, and a nose which was just a bit too prominent (not to mention a bit too hooked). But her dark hair, so black it had blue highlights in direct sunlight and so long it fell almost to her waist when it was unbound, and her huge, sparkling brown eyes somehow deceived people into thinking she
was
beautiful. Today, Sairah Hahlmyn, her personal maid since she was nine, and Lady Mairah Lywkys, her senior lady-in-waiting, had dressed that hair in an elaborate coiffure, held in place by jeweled combs and the light golden circlet of a presence crown, and those lively eyes were dark and still and wary.

The man at her side, Mahrak Sahndyrs, Baron Green Mountain, was at least eight or nine inches taller than she was, with blunt, strong features and thinning silver hair. Sharleyan had been Queen of Chisholm for almost twelve years, despite her youth, and Green Mountain had been her first councilor all that time. They'd weathered many a political storm together, although neither of them had ever anticipated one like the hurricane which had swept across half of Safehold in the last six months.

“I can't quite believe we're doing this,” she said, eyes on the lead galleon as it followed a flag-bedecked galley of the Royal Chisholmian Navy towards its assigned anchorage. “We have to be insane, you know that, don't you, Mahrak?”

“I believe that was the point I made to you when you decided we were going to do it anyway, Your Majesty,” Green Mountain replied with a crooked smile.

“A
proper
first councilor would have already taken the blame for his monarch's temporary lapse into insanity onto his own shoulders,” Sharleyan said severely.

“Oh, I assure you, I will in
public
, Your Majesty.”

“But not privately, I see.” Sharleyan smiled at him, but her expression couldn't hide her tension from someone who'd known her literally since she'd learned to walk.

“No, not privately,” he agreed gently, and reached out to rest one hand lightly on her shoulder. That wasn't the sort of gesture he would have allowed himself in public, but in private there was no point pretending his youthful queen had not long ago become the daughter he'd never had.

“Have you had any further thoughts about what this is all about?” she asked after a moment.

“None we haven't already discussed to death,” he told her, and she grimaced, never taking her eyes away from the arriving ships.

They had, indeed, “discussed it to death,” she thought, and neither of them—nor any of the other councilors and advisers she truly trusted—had been able to come up with a satisfactory theory. Some of those advisers, the ones who had argued most strenuously in favor of refusing this meeting, were certain it was simply one more trap designed to drag (or push) Chisholm deeper into the Charisian quagmire. Sharleyan wasn't certain why she didn't agree with that interpretation herself. Certainly, it made sense. The “spontaneous” return of her surrendered warships must have already tainted Chisholm with suspicious distrust in the eyes of the Group of Four. The fact that she'd dared to receive Sir Samyl Tyrnyr as King Cayleb of Charis' ambassador, despite the minor fact that she was still technically at war with Cayleb's kingdom, could only have underscored that distrust. And now this.

Somehow, I doubt that rendering formal honors to Charisian warships here in my own capital's harbor while receiving the First Councilor of Charis as Cayleb's personal envoy is going to do a thing for me in that pig Clyntahn's eyes,
she thought.
The doomsayers are right about that much, at least. On the other hand, how much worse can it get?

It was a more than academic question, under the circumstances. She had no doubt at all that the Group of Four must have realized she and her admirals had dragged their heels in every possible way after receiving their orders to support Hektor of Corisande against Charis. Indeed, it would have been amazing if Sharleyan hadn't, given the fact that she was probably the only monarch Hektor hated more than he'd hated Haarahld VII, or the fact that she probably hated
him
even more than he hated
her
. Still, the fact that so many of her navy's warships had surrendered intact had probably been going a bit too far, even for someone as experienced in the cynical realities of politics as Chancellor Trynair. And Cayleb's “generosity” in returning those surrendered ships to her without even seeking reparations for her part in the attack which had killed his father, along with several thousand of his subjects, had been a shrewd move on his part.

She wanted to resent the way he'd deliberately maneuvered her into a position which could not but make the Group of Four furious with her. What had started as a simple move to conserve her own military power by “cooperating” with Hektor as grudgingly as possible started to look dangerously like active collusion with Charis in the wake of Cayleb's “spontaneous” gesture. No one in the Temple was likely to forgive that, which could all too easily have fatal consequences for her own kingdom in the fullness of time.

But she could scarcely complain over the fact that Cayleb had done precisely what she would have done, had their roles been reversed. Anything which might divert at least some of the Group of Four's attention and resources from Charis had to be worthwhile from Cayleb's perspective. And, again from his perspective, any lever he could use to … encourage Chisholm into some sort of active alliance
with
Charis, rather than against it, had to be tried. Indeed, what she felt far more strongly than any sort of resentment was an unbegrudged admiration for how well Cayleb clearly understood that.

And be honest, Sharleyan
, she thought.
From the very beginning, you would have preferred aligning yourself with Charis to finding yourself “allied” with Hektor and Nahrmahn. If you'd thought Haarahld had a single chance of surviving, you
would
have proposed an alliance to him, and you know it. That's the real reason you accepted Cayleb's “gift” when he returned your galleys. And it's the real reason you let him send Tyrnyr to Cherayth, as well. There's a part of you that still prefers Charis to Hektor, isn't there? And it's just possible Cayleb
does
have a chance of surviving
—
maybe even winning
—
after all
.

She watched the galleons which represented that chance of victory moving sedately towards their anchorage, and wondered what the Earl of Gray Harbor had come all this way to say to her.

*   *   *

This was Rayjhis Yowance's third visit to Cherayth, although both of his earlier trips had been made as an officer in the Royal Charisian Navy, not as the kingdom's first councilor. First councilors, after all, never left home. That was why kingdoms had little things called “ambassadors” to do the traveling instead, since first councilors were far too busy, and their duties were far too important, for them to go haring off on quixotic quests.

Of course they are!
he snorted mentally.
Which is how
you
happen to be here, isn't it, Rayjhis?

His lips twitched at the thought, but he suppressed the smile reflex sternly as he followed the chamberlain down the palace corridor. However accommodating Sharleyan had been, it would never do to suggest that he saw anything humorous in her agreeing to meet with him. Especially in her agreeing to meet with him privately, accompanied only by her own first councilor. And especially not when she'd had less than a five-day's notice he was coming, given how closely he'd followed on the original messenger's heels.

Cayleb's like his father in a lot of ways, but he has his own inimitable style … and
far
too much energy for an old man like me,
Gray Harbor reflected.
I'm beginning to appreciate what Merlin and Domynyk had to say about trying to ride herd on him at sea. He's not really anywhere near as … impulsive as he sometimes seems, but Merlin's right. Given two possible approaches to any problem, he'll always opt for the more audacious one. And once he's made up his mind, he's not about to waste time, is he?

There were worse traits a king could have, especially when he was engaged in a battle for survival. But it did make keeping up with him more than a little wearing.

The chamberlain slowed, looked over his shoulder at the Charisian with an expression which had been carefully trained to conceal any trace of what its owner might have thought about his monarch's decisions, and then turned a final bend and stopped.

There were two guardsmen, sergeants, in the silver and royal blue of Chisholm posted in front of the door, and their expressions weren't quite as neutral as the chamberlain's. They clearly nursed significant reservations about allowing the first councilor of the kingdom whose navy had just smashed a sizable portion of the Chisholmian fleet into firewood into their queen's presence. The fact that they'd been ordered to stay
outside
the small presence chamber didn't make them any happier, and the fact that they'd been expressly forbidden to search Gray Harbor or relieve him of any weapons made them unhappier still.