By Schism Rent Asunder (80 page)

“That's true enough, My Lord,” Waimyn agreed, but he also shook his head. “Somehow, though, I doubt it's ever likely to happen. If there's one person on the face of Safehold Cayleb of Charis hates with every fragment of his being, it's Hektor of Corisande, especially since his father's death. Unless I'm seriously mistaken, about the only negotiating token Cayleb would be willing to receive from Hektor would be his own beating heart.”

“I know. I know!” Shylair waved one hand. “I didn't say it was likely, Aidryn. That doesn't stop it from keeping me awake at night from time to time, though.”

Waimyn nodded in understanding. He rather liked the bishop executor, although he'd always thought of Shylair as something of an intellectual lightweight. He'd hardly have ended up assigned to someplace like Corisande and an archbishop like Borys Bahrmyn otherwise. But God knew the man was under enough stress for any three bishops executor. Small wonder if his imagination was turning to even the most unlikely of scenarios.

Still
, the intendant thought,
if there's one thing in the entire world I'm confident of it's that not even Langhorne himself could work out any sort of ‘negotiated settlement' between Hektor of Corisande and Cayleb of Charis!

.VI.

Tellesberg Palace
and
The Sailor's Lady Tavern,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis

The mood in the throne room was ugly.

Although the official report hadn't been delivered yet, the rumors about its content had spread like wildfire since
Kraken
and the merchantmen under her protection had arrived in Tellesberg, two hours earlier. Captain Fyshyr had sent an immediate letter to the palace, announcing his return and alerting his king (only Cayleb was technically an “emperor” now) and queen (who was also an empress, and who he'd had no notion he was about to acquire when he'd sailed) that he had vital news. Now, Fyshyr walked across the polished stone floor towards the paired thrones, and his grim expression warned everyone that the rumors had been only too accurate.

It was the first time the captain had ever visited the palace or personally encountered his king, and it was obvious he was nervous. On the other hand, the importance of his mission seemed to be providing an antidote for any jitters he might be inclined to feel. The chamberlain escorting him touched his elbow and whispered something into his ear, stopping him the proper distance from the thrones, and Fyshyr bestowed a somewhat awkward but profoundly respectful bow upon his sovereign.

“Your Majesty,” he said, then added a hasty, “and Your Grace,” in Sharleyan's direction as he obviously remembered his last-minute coaching.

“Captain Fyshyr,” Cayleb responded. The captain straightened, and the emperor looked him straight in the eye. “I've read your letter with great concern, Captain. I realize you were able to give me only the barest details in it, but before you say anything else, I wish to acknowledge before these witnesses”—he waved one hand at the court officials and sundry aristocrats around them—“how grateful the Crown and I personally are to you. You did well, Captain. Very well. As well”—this time Cayleb looked away, letting his eyes survey the people his hand had already indicated—“as I could have expected even from a Charisian seaman.”

Fyshyr flushed with pleasure, but the grimness of his expression didn't falter, and Cayleb sat back in his throne.

“And now, Captain,” he said, “I'm afraid it's time for you to tell us what you've come here to say. I want everyone to hear it directly from you.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Fyshyr drew a deep breath, visibly bracing himself, then began. “We were anchored in Ferayd Sound, Your Majesty. There'd been some tension, but until that night, we didn't have any real reason to expect that—”

*   *   *

“—so after we'd picked up
Arrowhead
's survivors, I came straight home to Tellesberg,” Captain Fyshyr finished just over an hour later. “I had my clerk interview all the Charisians we'd picked out of the harbor on our way out, and I brought them with me to the Palace for you to speak with personally, if you wish. Your chamberlain has them.”

The mood in the throne room had been ugly when Fyshyr arrived; now it had been whetted to an edge of incandescent fury. There'd actually been a handful of interruptions—mostly as profane as they'd been angry—as the captain reported what had happened. Especially what the single survivor they'd picked up from the galleon
Wave
had had to say about how the massacre had started.

Empress Sharleyan had hardly been surprised. Although she'd only recently become a Charisian by marriage, the people of Charis weren't
that
different from Chisholmians, and volcanic outrage had surged up in her with actual physical force as she listened. One look at Cayleb's profile had shown both his matching anger and the harsh discipline which held it in check, yet there was something else about his expression. Something which puzzled her. Not his fury, or his discipline, but his … preparedness. He'd had time to read Fyshyr's preliminary letter, of course. Sharleyan had read it with him, in fact. So obviously this hadn't all come at him completely cold. But that was true for her, as well, and yet she had the distinct impression that he'd already guessed far more of the details they were about to hear than she had.

Don't be silly
, she scolded herself.
You're still getting to know him, you twit! You already knew he was one of the most disciplined men you've ever met, so why should you feel surprised when he shows it?

Which was obviously true, but still didn't dismiss that slight sense of puzzlement.

“I'd already said you did well, Captain.” Cayleb's voice drew her out of her thoughts once more. “I now wish to repeat that. In fact, you performed outstandingly.” He looked across at Earl Gray Harbor. “My Lord, I want this man's name added to the Order of Queen Zhessyka. See to it.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Gray Harbor bowed slightly, and Fyshyr flushed with embarrassment once more. The knightly Order of Queen Zhessyka had been instituted by the House of Ahrmahk almost two centuries earlier. It could be awarded only to those who had distinguished themselves in battle in the service of Charis, and it was not lightly given.

No, it isn't,
Merlin thought from his position behind Cayleb's throne.
But if it's ever been well deserved, this is the time
.

“I assure you that you'll soon be receiving additional proof of the Crown's gratitude, Captain,” Cayleb continued, turning back to Fyshyr. “When you return to your ship, please tell the rest of your ship's company they won't be forgotten, either.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Fyshyr got out, speaking rather more awkwardly than he had when he'd been confining his remarks to mere matters of life, death, and massacre.

“And also inform them,” Cayleb said grimly, “that King Zhames and the Church in Delferahk will soon receive a message of rather a different sort from me and from all of Charis.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Fyshyr repeated, and this time there was no awkwardness at all in his hard-eyed response.

“And now, if you will, Captain,” Cayleb continued, standing and nodding to the chamberlain who'd waited patiently through the captain's entire lengthy account, “please go with the chamberlain. Quarters here in the Palace have been prepared for you. Go and refresh yourself, but please hold yourself in readiness if I should send for you.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. Your Grace.” This time Fyshyr remembered Sharleyan, and she felt her lips trying to twitch in an inappropriate smile despite the gravity of the occasion.

Fyshyr bowed to them again, and this time Cayleb returned it with a formal nod of his own head. He stood there, waiting while Fyshyr followed the chamberlain out of the throne room, then turned back to Gray Harbor.

“My Lord, I believe it's time the Council discussed this … incident.”

*   *   *

“—and burn the bastards' city to the ground!”

“Aye, with them
in
it!”

The first speaker turned his head, peering through the thick fume of tobacco smoke which hazed the main taproom of The Sailor's Lady. The tavern was one of the two or three biggest on the entire Tellesberg waterfront. The Red Dragon and The Golden Keg each had their champions as being larger than The Lady, but there wasn't any true question as to which was queen of the sailors' drinking establishments. The fact that The Lady's owner was always careful to set an excellent table, as well, and that one could always count on finding fresh vegetables waiting for one after even the longest voyage, had more than a little to do with that.

But the air of contented homecoming which so often filled The Lady's taproom and dining rooms was notably absent today.

“Let's see how
their
women and children like it!” someone else snarled.

“Here, now!” a burly, broad-shouldered seaman with grizzled hair braided in a long pigtail said sharply. “There weren't no
women
trying to come aboard our ships! No, nor any children, either!”

“No, but they started—”

“Shut your damned trap!” the seaman barked, coming off of his stool at the bar like a galley breaking an enemy's column. He forged through the crowd like an angry doomwhale, and it parted before him like nearcod while the man who'd been shouting—and who looked much more like some counting house clerk than a seaman—stepped back quickly. He was still stepping back when a solid wall stopped him, and he froze as the sailor glared at him.

“Aye, I want our own back,” he told the unfortunate clerk, nailing him to the floor with fiery eyes. “But whatever it may be
they're
inclined to do, and whatever those mother-loving Inquisition bastards might think, I'll not have the blood of women and children on my hands! No, and not on my
Kingdom's
hands, neither!”

“Hey, now,” the barkeep said soothingly. “Tempers are hot, and they're going to get hotter. Let's not be going for each other.”

“Yes!” someone else said. “Sit back down. Let me buy you another round.”

The sailor settled back down, and the clerkish man disappeared. The exchange had interrupted, however briefly, the steadily mounting firestorm of outrage which had enveloped The Sailor's Lady ever since the seagoing community of Tellesberg had discovered the truth was even worse than the rumors had been.

The man who'd just departed had been very much out of place in that taproom at that time. The men—and women—in it were overwhelmingly professional seamen and their wives. Every one of them had known someone who'd been in Ferayd, and every one of them knew it could just as easily have happened to them, or to their husbands, brothers, sisters.

Or children.

The fury seething barely below the surface was a bitter, ugly thing. The majority of those present might have agreed with the grizzled seaman, but at least some of them had obviously agreed with the clerk, instead. And even those who hadn't agreed with him wanted vengeance, as well as justice. The long-standing anger against Corisande and the Group of Four hadn't gone away, hadn't abated. But this was different. It was new, it was ugly, it was
personal
 … and it was the direct doing of the Church.

There was no question of that in the minds of the men and women gathered in The Sailor's Lady. Every single one of the handful of survivors from the ships which had been tied up at dockside in Ferayd had reported exactly the same thing. Reported the presence of Schuelerite priests in the boarding parties. Reported the shouted exhortations to “Kill the heretics!” Even some of those who'd entered the tavern as Temple Loyalists now shared the bone-deep hatred that had aroused, and the infuriated reaction was already spreading beyond the waterfront district and into the city of Tellesberg as a whole.

“I still say burn the bastards' city down!”

“Why, as to that,” the grizzled seaman growled, looking up from his beer mug, “I'm with you there! Aye, and ready to ship out tonight to do it, too!”

A general rumble of agreement snarled through the taproom, and the owner poked his head through the archway from the dining room.

“Don't be getting greedy, lads—or you, either, lassies—but the next round is on the house!” he announced.

“Aye, and here's the toast!” someone shouted.
“Death to the Inquisition!”

*   *   *

The mood in the council chamber was quieter than the one in The Sailor's Lady's taproom, but it was no less bare-clawed.

Prince Nahrmahn was present in his new position as Councilor for Imperial Intelligence. The newfangled title still sounded more than a little peculiar, but it was no less odd than seeing the man who'd been one of Charis' mortal enemies until so very recently sitting at the same table with the Royal Council of Charis.

Actually, with the
rest
of the Royal Council of Charis.

At least the news from Delferahk's managed to distract the “Old Guard” from their suspicions about Nahrmahn
, Merlin thought from his place just inside the council chamber door.
For now, at least
.

“—subjects are going to expect prompt, severe action, Your Majesty,” Ahlvyno Pawalsyn was saying. “And it's hard to blame them, either. For that matter, if this is allowed to pass unanswered, it's much more likely the Group of Four will actually succeed in closing the mainland ports against us and keeping them that way.”

“But if we take strong action against Delferahk, then we up the stakes all around, don't we, My Lord?” Paityr Sellyrs, Baron White Church and Keeper of the Seal, seemed almost as worried as he was angry. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Merlin thought dryly, given what a huge percentage of his personal wealth was tied up in the merchant ships he owned. Most of the other councilors looked at him, and he shrugged.