By Schism Rent Asunder (30 page)

“There are two separate things to consider here, Trahvys,” Nahrmahn said, in response to his question. “Well, three, actually.”

He pushed his plate aside and leaned forward, his face and body language both unwontedly serious.

“First, from a political and military standpoint, Emerald is fucked,” he said bluntly. “And, no, I didn't need Uncle Hanbyl to tell me that. Anytime Cayleb wants to put troops ashore, supported from the sea, he can do it. That's one of the things that little business in North Bay was supposed to bring to my attention, in case it had managed to escape me thus far. For the moment, he's probably still building up his troop strength; God knows the Charisian Marines are good, but he didn't have a lot of them when this whole business started. On the other hand, we have even less in the way of an army, don't we? Especially given how much of it was serving as Marines when our navy suffered its little mishap. It's not going to be all that much longer before he's ready to come calling here in Eraystor, probably with a siege train of artillery in tow to knock on any doors that get in his way, and I doubt very much that Uncle Hanbyl is going to be able to do much more than inconvenience him when he does.

“Second, from a diplomatic standpoint, our
good
friend Hektor isn't about to stick his neck out to help us in any way. And I'll be deeply surprised if Sharleyan doesn't decide she'd rather be allied to Charis than to us or to Hektor, under the circumstances. Which means we're … ‘swinging in the wind,' is the term I want, I believe. We're the most exposed, we're the ones who tried to assassinate Cayleb, and we're the ones who don't have a single hope this side of Hell that anyone is going to come sailing to our rescue.

“And, third …
third
, Trahvys, every single word Staynair and Cayleb have said about the Group of Four, the Grand Vicar, and the Church herself is true. You think that just because I recognize the corruption of men like Clyntahn and Trynair and their sycophants on the Council of Vicars I don't believe in
God
?” The prince's laugh was a harsh bark. “Of course I believe in
Him
—I just don't believe in the bastards who've hijacked His Church! In point of fact, I think Staynair and Cayleb have the right idea …
if
they can make it stand up. And that's exactly why Graisyn is so concerned, the reason he keeps pushing us so hard to figure out some way to take the offensive, keeps probing to see how ‘loyal' I am to Hektor.”

“And how loyal
are
you, My Prince?” Pine Hollow asked softly.

“To Hektor?” Nahrmahn's lip curled. “About as loyal as
he
is to
us
—which is to say I'm just as loyal as it will take to get into reach of his throat with a nice sharp knife. Or do you mean to the Church?”

Pine Hollow said nothing. He didn't need to, for his expression said it all.

“My loyalty to the Church extends exactly as far as the reach of the Inquisition,” Nahrmahn said flatly. “It's time we stop confusing the Church with God, Trahvys. Or do you think God would have permitted Charis to completely gut the combined fleets of an alliance that outnumbered it five-to-one if Haarahld had actually been defying His will?”

Pine Hollow swallowed hard, and the pit of his stomach was a hollow, singing void. Deep inside him somewhere a schoolboy was repeating the catechism in a desperate gabble of a voice while he hunched down and stuffed his fingers into his ears.

“Nahrmahn,” he said very, very quietly, “you can't be thinking what I think you're thinking.”

“No?” Nahrmahn tilted his head to one side. “Why not?”

“Because, in the end, Charis is
going
to lose. It can't be any other way. Not when the Church controls all of the great kingdoms completely. Not when its purse is so deep and so much of the world's total population lives on Haven and Howard.”

“Don't be too certain of that.” Nahrmahn leaned back, his eyes intent. “Oh, I know the ‘Group of Four' sees it that way. Then again, we've just had a rather pointed lesson in the fallibility of their judgment, now haven't we? I suspect they're about to find out that the world is less monolithic than they'd been assuming, and that's going to come as an even more unpleasant shock to them. All Cayleb really needs to do is to survive long enough for his example to spread, Trahvys.
That's
what has Graisyn running so scared. I'm not the only ruler or noble who understands what's going on in the Council of Vicars right now. If Charis is able to defy the Church, others are going to be tempted to follow Cayleb's example. And if that happens, the Church is going to find herself much too busy putting out local forest fires to put together the kind of fleet it would take to break through the Royal Charisian Navy. And that assumes Charis is trying to stand off the Church all by itself.”

“But—”

“Think about it, Trahvys,” Nahrmahn commanded, overriding Pine Hollow's attempt to object. “It's not going to be long before Sharleyan becomes at least Charis' de facto ally. For all I know, she may choose to make it official and join him in openly defying Clyntahn and his cronies. When that happens, Hektor is going to find himself flanked by enemies, cut off from anything the Church could do to help him. And when Sharleyan and Cayleb split Corisande and Zebediah up between them, and when Cayleb adds
us
to Charis proper, he and Sharleyan between them will control over a third of the total surface of Safehold. Of course they won't have anywhere near as large a fraction of the world's
people
, but they
will
have most of the world's naval power, a lot of room to expand into, and all of the resources they'll need for their economies … or their military power. How easy do you think the Church is going to find it to squash him after that?”

Pine Hollow sat silent, his eyes worried, and Nahrmahn waited while his cousin worked his way through the same logic chain. The earl, Nahrmahn knew, was cautious by nature. More than that, Pine Hollow's younger brother was an upper-priest of the Order of Pasquale, serving in the Republic of Siddarmark and about due to be elevated to the episcopate. It was entirely possible that Nahrmahn's frankness was more than Pine Hollow was prepared to accept.

“No,” the earl said finally. “No, the Church isn't going to find it easy. Not if it works out the way you're predicting.”

“And
should
the Church find it easy?” Nahrmahn asked softly, deliberately pushing his cousin still further.

“No,” Pine Hollow sighed, and his expression was no longer uncertain, although Nahrmahn doubted the profound sorrow it mirrored struck Pine Hollow as an improvement. “No. You're right about that, too, Nahrmahn. The Group of Four aren't the true problem, are they? They're the symptom.”

“Exactly.” Nahrmahn reached out and placed one plump hand on Pine Hollow's forearm. “I don't know whether or not it's possible for the Church to reform herself internally. I do know that before the Group of Four and the other vicars like them allow that to happen, there's going to be bloodshed and slaughter on a scale no one's ever seen since the overthrow of Shan-wei.”

“What do you want to do about it?” Pine Hollow managed a wan smile. “It's not like you to drop something like this on me across the breakfast table unless you've already got a plan in mind, My Prince.”

“No, I don't suppose it is.” Nahrmahn sat back again and reached for his temporarily abandoned plate. His eyes fell to his hands as he meticulously sliced the remaining melon into bite-sized pieces.

“I need to send a message of my own to Cayleb,” he said, never looking away from his knife and fork. “I need someone who can convince him I'm prepared to surrender to him. That he doesn't need to keep burning my cities and killing my subjects to make his point.”

“He's made it pretty clear he wants your head, Nahrmahn. From the tone of his comments, I don't think he's going to be very happy about settling for anything short of that.”

“I know.” The prince's smile was more of a grimace than anything else, but there might have been a little actual humor in it. “I know, and I suppose that if he really
insists
upon it, he'll undoubtedly get it in the end, anyway. It's a pity Mahntayl decided to run off to the mainland rather than coming here. I might have been able to convince Cayleb of my sincerity by offering him the ‘Earl of Hanth's' head as a substitute, as it were. Still, I may be able to demonstrate to him that a man of my talents and experience would be more valuable working for him than fertilizing a garden plot somewhere behind his palace.”

“And if you can't?” Pine Hollow asked very quietly.

“If I can't, I can't.” Nahrmahn shrugged far more philosophically than Pine Hollow felt sure he would have been able to manage under the same circumstances. “I can always hope he'll settle for life imprisonment in some only moderately unpleasant dungeon somewhere. And even if he doesn't, at least Cayleb isn't the sort to carry out any sort of reprisals against Ohlyvya or the children. Which”—he looked up and met Pine Hollow's eyes squarely—“is about the best I could hope for anyway, if he has to land an invasion force. Except that, this way, we get to skip the bit where thousands of my subjects get killed first.”

Pine Hollow sat looking into his cousin's eyes and realized that possibly for the first time since Nahrmahn had ascended to the throne of Emerald, his prince had abandoned all pretense. It came as something of a shock, after all these years, but Nahrmahn was serious.

“You can't just make peace with Cayleb, even surrender to him, without Graisyn and the rest of the clergy going up in flames behind you,” the earl said. “You know that, don't you?”

“Graisyn, yes. And probably most of the bishops, at the very least,” Nahrmahn conceded. “On the other hand, most of our upper-priests—even our itinerant bishops—are Emeraldians. We're almost as bad as Charis in that respect. Frankly, that's one of the things that has Graisyn running so scared, and I strongly suspect he has good reason for it. At any rate, I've … discussed this matter with Uncle Hanbyl at some length.”

“I see.” Pine Hollow leaned back, the fingers of his right hand drumming slowly, rhythmically, on the arm of his chair while he thought.

Nahrmahn's point about the composition of the Emeraldian clergy was well taken. Whether or not the division between the lower-ranking, native-born clergy and their foreign-born ecclesiastical superiors would even begin to translate into the sort of support for schism which Cayleb had discovered in Charis was another, more complicated calculation. And, the first councilor admitted to himself, it wasn't one to which he himself had given the careful consideration it no doubt merited.

Probably
, he acknowledged to himself,
because I didn't want to think about this possibility at all until Nahrmahn rubbed my nose in it
.

But if Nahrmahn had discussed it with Duke Solomon, and if Solomon had said what Nahrmahn appeared to be suggesting he had, then Pine Hollow was prepared to assume that the prince's estimate of how the clergy would react—and whether or not Nahrmahn could survive their reaction—was probably accurate. And when it came right down to it, the Church's reaction was the only potential domestic opposition he truly had to fear. Like the Ahrmahks in Charis, although for rather different reasons and in rather a different fashion, the House of Baytz had centralized political power in its own grasp. Nahrmahn's father had deprived the feudal magnates of their personal standing armies (not without a certain degree of bloodshed, in some cases), and Nahrmahn had gone even farther in subordinating the aristocracy to the Crown. Not only that, but the Commons in the Emeraldian Parliament, such as it was and what there was of it, had strongly supported both Nahrmahn and his father in their efforts to restrict the power of their nobly born landlords. That tradition of support would
probably
carry over to Nahrmahn's response to the present crisis, as well.

And in this case, both the aristocracy and the commoners of Emerald would almost certainly find themselves in general agreement. If the religious elements were subtracted from consideration, both of them would undoubtedly support a settlement with Charis—probably even an outright surrender
to
Charis. Despite the traditional rivalry between Emerald and Charis, the Ahrmahks had a reputation as reasonable rulers. It would be difficult to convince anyone, on a purely secular level, that finding themselves under Cayleb of Charis' rule would be any sort of personal disaster. And completely rational self-interest and the desire to avoid the destruction and bloodshed of an outright Charisian invasion would make convincing them of that even more difficult.

That was obviously Nahrmahn's reading of the situation, at any rate, and the prince had an impressive track record when it came to assessing and accurately predicting the reactions of Emerald's usual power brokers.

On the other hand, he
has
been wrong a time or two before,
Pine Hollow reminded himself.
Not often, though. And unlike some people, he doesn't have a tendency to convince himself that what he wants the truth to be automatically
is
the truth
.

Assuming he wasn't wrong, and assuming the preparations Pine Hollow had no doubt Solomon was even then very quietly making were effective, then Nahrmahn could almost certainly survive negotiating with Cayleb. Whether or not he could survive the
outcome
of those negotiations with his head still attached to the rest of his body was another question entirely, of course. And in all honesty, Pine Hollow wasn't prepared to offer any better than barely even odds in favor of the possibility that he could, which could have most unpleasant consequences for the first councilor, as well. Still …