By Schism Rent Asunder (87 page)

Some of his fellow guardsmen sometimes resented—or perhaps regretted would be a better way to put it—the duty which kept them standing guard during festivities like tonight's. Merlin didn't. If pressed, he would have admitted that he hadn't realized, despite his experience as one of Crown Prince Cayleb's personal bodyguards, that the King of Charis' personal armsman would spend such a huge chunk of his life simply standing around looking sufficiently menacing to deter any thought of assault upon the king's person. Cayleb's transition from king to emperor hadn't done a thing to ease those particular requirements, either.

But whereas his fellow guardsmen's feet might ache, Merlin Athrawes' artificial sinews never felt fatigue unless he chose to feel it. And whereas those same fellow guardsmen might occasionally think of something else they could be doing with that same time, Merlin was actually grateful for the sometimes endless periods he spent standing outside a chamber door, or against the wall behind Cayleb's chair or throne. There was never enough time for him to adequately review the take from the literally hundreds of remote sensors his SNARCs had deployed, after all. To be gifted with large chunks of time when he could simply stand in one place and review the intelligence tidbits Owl had flagged for human (or, at least, Merlin's) evaluation was welcome. The fact that Nimue had always been capable of multi-tasking and that Merlin could do the same meant he could engage in that review while simultaneously keeping an eye on Cayleb. It wasn't something he'd even be tempted to do under other circumstances, but as only one member of a four- or five-man security detail inside Tellesberg Palace, he was willing to take the chance of operating at a few percentage points less than his full capability while he studied the transmissions from Owl. Especially when that “full capability” included many times human strength, enhanced hearing, and the sort of reaction speed possible for someone whose nervous impulses moved a hundred times faster than those of any organic human.

At the moment, given the dense, glittering crowd which filled the grand ballroom to capacity, reviewing sensor reports was the last thing on his mind. He didn't really anticipate any desperate attack upon Cayleb or Sharleyan, but the sheer number of people packed together could provide highly effective cover for an assassin with a knife, as the attempt on Archbishop Maikel had made only too clear. It wouldn't necessarily have to be some suicidal fanatic from the Temple Loyalists in this case, either. The size of the crowd itself could provide plenty of cover for any assassin cool enough to blend back into it once he'd struck the fatal blow.

You know
, Merlin told himself rather severely,
you do have a tendency to look on the dark side of these festive occasions, don't you?

There was an undeniable edge of truth to the self-question. During Nimue's lifetime, evenings like this had possessed an almost frenetic aura. Everyone attending them had known the Gbaba were out there, and that humanity was losing. That every formal ball they attended was one of a dwindling number of balls any human being would ever attend again. It had, to say the least, put a damper on the festivities.

It had for Nimue, at least. Or perhaps it was only that she'd been sufficiently sensitive to the moods of others that the crowds around her had caused her to feel that sense of depressing mortality. Merlin sometimes thought that must have been the case, given Nimue's preference for solo forms of entertainment. Sailing, for example. Rock climbing, hang gliding, hikes. Reading, or splashing paint on a canvas. It was as if she'd been spending the limited number of years available to her soaking up the natural universe through her very pores.

There was actually a faint ghost of some of those currents of Gbaba-spawned tension in Charis these days. Even the most ardent of Cayleb's supporters had to feel the occasional moment of dread when he or she contemplated the odds against Charis' survival. Adding Chisholm and Emerald to the newborn Charisian Empire had obviously helped, but given the fact that at least eighty percent of the human race lived on one of the mainland continents under the direct control of the Church of God Awaiting, doubling the Charisian population hadn't really shifted the overall odds very far.

Tonight, however, no one seemed to be thinking gloomy thoughts. The ballroom's polished floor of black marble, inlaid with the kraken motif of the Kingdom of Charis' coat of arms in a warm, honey-gold marble from the Lizard Range in the Duchy of Ahrmahk, gleamed in the light of the chandeliers' countless flames. The marble was like a pool of deep, dark water, its surface mirroring the dancers upon it, and those dancers glittered and gleamed with their own finery in the same light, touched with the red, blue, and golden fire of rubies, sapphires, and topaz. Gold and silver chains, bullion embroidery, rustling cotton silk and the even more expensive steel thistle silk.…

A commercially oriented ear—and what Charisian ear wasn't commercially oriented?—could have literally heard the sweet, musical clinking of all the coins which had changed hands to create that rich, swirling interplay of fabric, precious metals, and gems.

For example, the steel thistle silk, which had been all but unobtainable outside the borders of the Empire of Harchong until very recently, was remarkably present tonight. The cotton gin technology which Merlin had suggested to Ehdwyrd Howsmyn and Rhaiyan Mychail had, indeed, proved capable of extracting the tiny, spiny, toxic seeds from raw steel thistle fiber. Unlike cotton silk, steel thistle had to be run through the ginning process multiple times, using a progressively finer comb to extract all the seeds, so it seemed likely to remain the more expensive of the two, despite the fact that steel thistle grew faster than cotton silk and in a much greater range of climates. But its price was already beginning to fall, despite Mychail's best efforts to increase the supply only gradually. In fact, Mychail had even suggested that the cost of the material might fall far enough for it to be considered for sailcloth.

The very notion had struck both Cayleb and Earl Lock Island as preposterous, yet they'd come to the conclusion that it actually had much to recommend it. For one thing, steel thistle was almost indestructible, with a remarkable resistance to rot and virtual immunity to mildew, so even if initial purchase costs might be high,
replacement
costs would be much lower. It was also enormously strong, stronger than anything Terra-based humanity had been able to produce before the days of artificial fibers. Coupled with its extraordinarily fine weave, which would give it a considerable efficiency advantage in driving power over any organic-based sail which had ever been produced on Earth, there was much to be said for the “preposterous” notion.

For tonight, though, any suggestion that the noblest, most expensive fabric ever known on Safehold might be put to such a plebeian use would have been greeted with mingled incredulity and horror by the guests displaying their wealth and sartorial splendor by wearing it to the most important social event of the year, after Cayleb's coronation and his and Sharleyan's wedding.

The guests of honor weren't dancing at the moment, however, and Merlin's lips twitched with wry sympathy as he glanced in their direction. Crown Prince Zhan and his wife-to-be, Princess Mahrya, sat side by side, watching the dancers. The fact that Zhan was still less than eleven Safeholdian years old—barely ten standard years—while Mahrya was almost nineteen Safeholdian years of age made them an ill-matched couple on the dance floor. Mahrya wasn't especially tall for her age (not surprisingly, Merlin thought, given her parentage), but she was still the better part of a foot taller than Zhan, even though he was already showing promise of matching Cayleb's inches.

Still, they'd danced with surprising gracefulness in the evening's first dance. In fact, Merlin had been astonished by how calm they'd both managed to look under the massed eyes of the entire royal and imperial court. No doubt the fact that they'd been reared and trained literally from the cradle for moments precisely like tonight had helped, but he'd still been surprised by their apparent aplomb and self-possession as they swirled through the measures of the opening dance of the ball in honor of their official betrothal.

He'd realized only later that Mahrya was deliberately (and surprisingly skillfully) diverting her younger fiancé's thoughts from the evening's central tension. Despite the difference in their ages, she seemed genuinely pleased with the betrothal, and not just because she would be marrying the current heir to the Charisian throne. Merlin sincerely doubted that she cherished any smolderingly romantic thoughts about an eleven-year-old, but she obviously liked Zhan. And, as Cayleb had pointed out, the difference in their ages—barely six and a half years, standard—was actually far from uncommon when it came to arranged marriages of state.

Zhan, for his part, had been seriously inclined to pout when he'd been informed that his older brother intended to marry him off to the eldest daughter of Nahrmahn of Emerald. Zhan hadn't been disposed to look favorably on
anything
coming out of Emerald or Corisande, even before his father's death. Since the Battle of Darcos Sound, that hatred had hardened rather alarmingly. But the fact that Mahrya was so much older than he was, with a figure ripening into intensely intriguing contours, had served to discount at least some of the Emeraldian taint clinging to her. The discovery that she shared his own love for books, and that despite the age differential and her undoubted (and obvious) intelligence she showed absolutely no tendency to talk down to him, had eliminated still more of that taint in Zhan's eyes. Princess Ohlyvya, Mahrya's mother, had been another factor in the betrothal's favor. She was darker than Zhan's dead mother, but there was much about her that reminded the orphaned crown prince of Queen Zhanayt.

The reaction Mahrya had drawn from the older male adolescents of the court had sealed Zhan's approval of the arrangement, Merlin thought, lips twitching in another smile. It was fortunate the princess had inherited both her figure and her coloration from her mother, not her father. She was going to be as slender as Princess Ohlyvya, but she was already well past that coltish, awkward stage of adolescence, and unless Merlin was mistaken, she was likely to prove even more curvaceous than her mother. At least a few nobly born Charisian teenagers seemed to experience some difficulty restraining themselves from drooling whenever she strode gracefully past them. In fact, she appeared to effortlessly evoke a response from the male of the species which Nimue Alban at seventeen would have envied with every hormonally activated bone in her body. Zhan had been quick to note how his proposed betrothal to her had raised his stock among his older contemporaries in a way which even his newfound status as Crown Prince of Charis had been unable to do.

This is one notion of Cayleb's that's going to work out very well, I think
, Merlin told himself, his sapphire eyes watching Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan swirling gracefully about the dance floor.
I doubt very much that Zhan is truly aware of all the political implications of this betrothal. Even if he were, I don't think they'd matter a great deal to him
—
certainly not as much as those stirring hormones of his do! But everyone else recognizes those implications only too well. Given the formal provisions of the treaties establishing the Empire, it's unlikely Nahrmahn's grandson or granddaughter will ever inherit the imperial crown, even if something happens to Cayleb in the upcoming campaign. But whether that happens or not, this marriage will guarantee his close association with the House of Ahrmahk, and a lot of the people who were most worried about Emerald as a threat to Charis are just delighted to have Nahrmahn working
for
Charis, instead
.

As was Merlin, himself. He was perhaps a little less surprised than others by the strengths Nahrmahn brought to Cayleb and Sharleyan's council, but that only made him even happier to have Nahrmahn working for Cayleb, rather than trying to have him assassinated. Diverting
anyone
from assassinating the emperor would have been worthwhile in its own right; gaining the full-fledged support of someone as irritatingly capable as Nahrmahn had proven himself was even more worthwhile. Merlin never doubted that there were moments when Nahrmahn deeply regretted the way in which his decades of plotting and scheming against Charis had come to such an abrupt and final—and
unsuccessful
—end. Still, he'd made out almost as well as he might have if he'd won, especially after the Group of Four had chosen to make him Hektor's lackey, and he seemed rather surprised by the fact that he actually
liked
Cayleb and Sharleyan. At the moment, he was more comfortable admitting that liking for Sharleyan than he was for Cayleb, but once the remaining ruffled feathers of his masculine ego had recovered, he would probably grudgingly admit (to Princess Ohlyvya, at least) that Cayleb was at least moderately likable in his own right.

And I'll bet Ohlyvya will hardly even say “I told you so” more than two or three times.
Merlin chuckled mentally at the thought, then checked his built-in chronometer.

Another couple of hours, and then the ball would begin to wind down. Mostly, although no one was about to admit it, because they were already well past the prospective groom's bedtime.

*   *   *

“Well,
this
seems to be working out reasonably well, at any rate.” Emperor Cayleb sipped at a cup of punch as he and his empress sat regaining their breath. A discreetly interposed wall of Imperial Guardsmen actually afforded them a few moments of genuine privacy, and he chuckled as he gazed at his younger brother. “Zhan was certain this was going to be a disaster,” he added.

“No wonder, given the way most of your people seem to have spent their time talking about Emerald and Prince Nahrmahn the entire time he's been alive.” Sharleyan sniffed. “I'm not trying to say they weren't justified, but expecting a boy Zhan's age to leap with joy when he found out he was about to be married off to the ogre's daughter would have been silly.”