By Schism Rent Asunder (79 page)

On the other hand, the French rifles were superior to the Prussians' in the Franco-Prussian War, and that didn't keep the Prussian artillery from kicking the French Army's ass. Now
there's
a cheerful thought, Merlin!

He grimaced, continuing to watch the demonstration play out across the backs of his eyelids as he sat in his darkened room. Cayleb wasn't going to be happy to hear about this, he decided, but that could have its good points, as well. Now that Nahrmahn was no longer the enemy, the question as to what constituted the next natural strategic objective for Charis had been drastically simplified. Now, watching the new weapons Hektor was putting into the field, it was obvious to Merlin that it was time to accelerate their timetable for the invasion of Corisande.

I just hope we can accelerate it enough
, he thought.

*   *   *

“That was truly impressive, Rysel,” Prince Hektor told Anvil Rock with simple sincerity as the gun crews swabbed out the bores of their weapons.

“You can thank Koryn for most of it.” Anvil Rock smiled, his pride in his eldest son evident. “Well, him and Charlz Doyal. We'll have three complete batteries in service by the end of next five-day, and they're concentrating on grapeshot and canister for field use. I don't suppose we'll be battering any walls down anytime soon.”

“I don't imagine so.” Hektor smiled thinly. “In point of fact, I'm fairly confident
Cayleb
expects to be the one doing any wall-battering. I'm going to rely on you and Koryn to see to it that he's disappointed in that respect.”

“We'll do our best, My Prince.” Anvil Rock touched his breastplate in formal salute, half bowing in the saddle, and Hektor nodded.

“I know you will, Rysel. I know you will.”

Anvil Rock straightened, then glanced down the hill to where the artillerists were almost done with their post-demonstration cleanup.

“My Prince, it would do morale a world of good if you could have a few words with the men.”

“I'd be delighted to,” Hektor said with a smile. “And do you think having Irys say a little something might help, too?”

“My Prince,” Anvil Rock smiled at the princess, “most of these men are young, impressionable, and away from home for the first time in their lives. Having a beautiful young princess tell them how wonderful they are is bound to help morale! But it would probably be a good idea for me to go and warn them they're about to be visited by royalty before you suddenly turn up.”

“‘Beautiful!'”
Irys sniffed, then smiled at her cousin. “Go and warn them to be suitably stricken by my incomparable loveliness, you mean, don't you, Uncle Rysel?”

“Actually,” Anvil Rock said with an expression of unusual sobriety, “you need to spend a little more time looking into your mirror, Irys. Since all those knobby tomboy knees and scraped elbows became things of the past, you've started to look a lot like your mother. And, to be perfectly honest, your mother was the one thing I ever truly envied your father over.” His eyes softened for a moment, then brightened with a gleam of humor. “Of course, it
was
an arranged marriage. Otherwise, I'm certain, she would have opted for my own incomparable masculine grace and charm. I certainly tried hard enough to convince her to elope with me, but she was always a slave to family duty.”

“No doubt,” Hektor said dryly, then smiled himself. “I think it's time you trotted on over and warned your artillerists about our impending arrival. I'd hate to be forced to deprive myself of my best field commander by beheading you for lèse-majesté on the very eve of invasion.”

“Of course, My Prince!” Anvil Rock slapped his breastplate again, wheeled his horse, and went cantering down the gentle slope in a spatter of damp clods of earth.

“Did Uncle Rysel really want to marry Mother?” Irys asked her father softly as the earl rode away.

“No.” Hektor shook his head, smiling faintly after Anvil Rock. “Oh, he adored her, no question of that. But he was already very happily married, and he loves his wife, too. Actually,” he turned to look at his daughter, “everyone adored your mother, I sometimes think. And Rysel's right. You do look more and more like her every day, despite your hair. Hers was closer to chestnut. Your brother got that. It's a pity he didn't get anything else.”

“Father—” Irys began, and Hektor grimaced.

“I'm not going to start in on him again, I promise. And you're right. He
is
young, and there's still time for him to grow into the crown. Or, there ought to be, anyway. But as much as you love him, I can't help wishing he could develop at least a
little
of the urgency you seem to feel over our imminent invasion by Charis. I'd feel a lot happier over the succession if he would.”

Irys' expression was obviously unhappy, but she only nodded.

“And speaking of the succession,” Hektor continued, lightening his tone deliberately as he turned to the Earl of Coris, who'd sat his horse to one side while he and Irys talked, “are there any further clues as to who was behind that assassination attempt?”

“No, My Prince,” Coris admitted. “My agents have interviewed every shop owner, street vendor, and beggar in Manchyr looking for witnesses who might be able to identify the assassins or tell us where they went after the attack. We've even tried—without success—to find the maker of the arbalests on the off-chance that he might remember who bought them from him. The only thing I can tell you for certain is that their proof marks aren't Corisandian.”

“They aren't?” Hektor rubbed his chin contemplatively. “That's interesting. Do we have any idea whose proof marks they are, since they aren't ours?”

“I suspect they're Harchongese, My Prince. Unfortunately, Harchong is rather outside our normal area of interest. I'm trying to get confirmation of that, but so far without much luck.”

“But they're not Corisandian, and they're from far enough away—wherever they were actually made—that you're finding it difficult even to identify the maker,” Irys said, her hazel eyes as thoughtful as her father's. “That's significant itself, don't you think?”

“Possibly.” Coris nodded. “The same thought had occurred to me, Your Highness. Foreign weapons, difficult to trace, might well suggest this was carefully planned by foreigners. I don't think we ought to jump to any conclusions in that regard, however. That's not to say I'm not strongly inclined towards the same one you're suggesting, only that I'm trying to keep my mind open to other possibilities.”

“I understand, My Lord.” Irys smiled at him. “And I'm grateful to you for reminding me of the need to consider possible culprits besides Cayleb.”

“If anyone in the entire Princedom, besides the two of you, is blaming anyone but Cayleb for it,
I
haven't heard anything about it,” Hektor said wryly.

“Good!” Irys turned back from Coris and showed him her teeth. “If it wasn't Cayleb,
I'm
not going to shed any tears over seeing him blamed for it anyway. And judging from the reactions I've been seeing, the idea that he tried to kill you has truly infuriated quite a few of your subjects, Father!”

“Amazing how a foreign assassination attempt can make people forget all the reasons they have for being … irritated with their own prince, isn't it?” Hektor observed with a chuckle.

His daughter's eyebrows furrowed, and he chuckled again, harder.

“Irys, no matter how good a prince may be—and I've never made any pretensions to sainthood, sweetheart—at least some of his subjects are going to be unhappy with him about something. It happens. I couldn't make everyone happy even if I tried, and it's not really the fault of those I make
unhappy
that they don't like me very much. That's one reason I try not to step too heavily on any one group—here at home, at least—and one reason to balance the nobility and its demands and desires against the commons and
their
demands and desires. I don't lose any sleep over the fact that I can never satisfy everyone, but the ruler who forgets that at least some of his subjects have
legitimate
reasons to be unhappy with him isn't likely to continue to rule very long.”

She nodded very seriously, and he smiled at her.

Rysel is even righter than he knows
, he thought.
You're
so
much like your mother. And Hektor isn't enough like me …
or
your mother. But at least he'll have you, won't he, Irys? And maybe he'll actually be smart enough to listen to you. I'm sure a more unlikely miracle has happened somewhere in history … even if I can't think of one right offhand
.

“Earl Anvil Rock is waving his flag again down there, My Prince,” Coris observed.

“Then let's ride down and enhance a little morale, shall we, Irys?” Hektor said lightly, and turned his horse towards the waiting artillerists.

*   *   *

“I hate relying on anyone from Siddarmark,” Bishop Executor Thomys Shylair said unhappily.

“As do I, My Lord,” Father Aidryn Waimyn, Bishop Executor Thomys' intendant, agreed. “At the moment, however, we don't have very much choice, do we?”

Shylair shook his head, but his expression didn't get any happier, and Waimyn was scarcely surprised. Unfortunately, they truly didn't have much choice at the moment. It was painfully evident that the Royal Charisian Navy—and for all Waimyn knew, veritable swarms of Charisian privateers—were going to gleefully take, sink, or destroy every Church dispatch boat they encountered. On the other hand, the accursed heretics had every motive to avoid irritating the Republic of Siddarmark. Which meant, galling as it was to admit it, that Shylair's dispatches to the Council of Vicars and the Office of Inquisition in Zion stood a much better chance of reaching their destinations aboard a Siddarmarkian merchant ship than they would have aboard one of Mother Church's own vessels.

“I'm afraid Archbishop Borys and the Chancellor aren't going to be very happy to read our messages even when—
if
—they receive them,” the bishop executor continued. “And I doubt very much that Vicar Zhaspahr's going to be delighted to hear Hektor is dabbling with the same ‘improvements' as the Charisians!”

“I doubt he will be,” Waimyn agreed.

On the other hand
, the intendant thought,
it's not as if
Hektor
has a lot of choice, either. And whatever the Grand Inquisitor may choose to decree from Zion, the truth is that
I
can't see anything in the new artillery that comes close to violating the Proscriptions, either
.

That was not a point he intended to make in any of his own correspondence. He understood that anything of Charisian origin was going to be suspect in Zhaspahr Clyntahn's eyes. In fact, to some extent, he was in wholehearted agreement with the head of his own order in that regard. And whether or not there was anything impermissible about the new artillery, the fact remained that its introduction was symptomatic of Charis' infernal fascination with new and dangerous things. Waimyn often thought Charisians were in love with change for the sake of change itself, however vociferously they might protest that they were seeking only increased efficiency within the allowed bounds of the Proscriptions. And the fact that they were so far away from Zion and the Temple generated its own tendencies towards dangerous independence of thought, as Waimyn knew from his own experience here in Corisande. Corisandians were nowhere near so demonically fixed on overturning the established order wherever they found it, yet even they were far more … freethinking than any servant of the Inquisition could ever find truly comfortable.

Despite all of that, however, Waimyn firmly believed that, in the end, Mother Church—
and, yes, even Vicar Zhaspahr, for that matter!
—was going to have to adopt at least some of the Charisian innovations. The new artillery, for example, and the acceptance of the primacy of the cannon-armed galleon over the traditional galley. The advantages those things bestowed upon Charis were simply too great to be overcome without duplicating them.

And won't
that
make the Grand Inquisitor happy?
Waimyn thought acidly.

“I wish we could at least tell them something about who tried to kill Hektor,” Bishop Executor Thomys said.

“I thought the entire world knew it was Cayleb, My Lord,” Waimyn said with a chuckle, and Shylair snorted.

“If you truly believe that, Aidryn, I have some nice property on the bottom of Temple Bay I'd like to sell you!”

“Oh,
I
don't believe it, My Lord, but that probably makes us the only two men in the entire League of Corisande—outside of Prince Hektor and Earl Coris, of course—who don't. And you have to admit it's had a salutary effect on support for the Prince here in Corisande.”

“Yes, it has,” Shylair acknowledged. “In fact, I shouldn't admit it, but there are times I almost wish whoever it was had succeeded.”

Waimyn's eyes narrowed, and the bishop executor shook his head quickly.

“I said
almost
, Aidryn. Still, the truth is that unless Cayleb's a lot more incompetent than his performance to date has given us any reason to think, he's going to beat Hektor. Despite any of these new Charisian ‘innovations' Hektor may choose to adopt, he's going to lose in the end. When he does, it's going to be one more blow at Mother Church's position, and knowing Hektor, there's always the chance he'll at least try to reach some sort of last-minute accommodation with Cayleb, if the only alternative is outright defeat. And
that
, Aidryn, will be even more destructive to Mother Church. Hektor dead at Charisian hands, and a martyr to God's cause, could at least be a rallying point. Hektor alive, and a prisoner of Charis, languishing in some noisome dungeon somewhere, might even be useful to us. But Hektor alive and
negotiating
with Charis is going to be anything but an asset.”