How Firm a Foundation (34 page)

Of course, that intellectual ferment was the main reason he was sitting here on his grandfather’s Siddar City terrace feeding bread to greedy wyverns and squabbling seagulls. It wasn’t like—

“So, here you are!” a familiar voice said, and he looked over his shoulder, then rose with a smile of welcome for the silver-haired, plump but distinguished-looking woman who’d just stepped out
of the mansion’s side door behind him.

“I wasn’t exactly
hiding
, Grandmother,” he pointed out. “In fact, if you’d opened a window and listened, I’m sure you could have tracked me down without any trouble at all.”

He pulled one of the chairs away from the table with one hand while the other gestured at the guitar lying in its open case on the bench beside him.

“For that matter, if you’d only
looked
out the window, the fleeing birds and the small creatures running for the shrubbery with their paws over their ears would have pinpointed me for you.”

“Oh, nonsense, Byrk!” She laughed, patting him on the cheek before she seated herself in the proffered chair. “Your playing’s not
that
bad.”

“Just not
that
bad?” he teased, raising one eyebrow at her. “Is that another way of saying it’s
almost
that bad?”

“No, that’s what your grandfather would call it if
he
were here,” Sahmantha Raimahn replied. “And he’d mean just as little of it as I would. Go ahead and play something for me now, Byrk.”

“Well, if you insist,” he said in a long-suffering tone.

She made a face at him, and he laughed as he picked the guitar back up. He thought for a moment, picking random notes as he considered,
then struck the opening chord of “The Way of the Widow-Maker,” one of the very first ballads he’d learned to play sitting on Sahmantha’s lap. The sad, rich notes spilled across the terrace while the sunlight struck chestnut highlights in his brown hair and the wind ruffled that hair, sighed in the branches of the ornamental fruit trees, and sent the shrubbery’s sprays of blossoms flickering in
light and shadow.

He bent his head, eyes half-closed, giving himself to the ballad, and his grandmother drew her steel thistle silk wrap closely about her shoulders. She knew he thought of his music as a rich young man’s hobby, but he was wrong. It was far more than that, and as she watched him play her own eyes lost some of their usual sparkle, darkening while the lament for lost sailors spilled
up from his guitar strings to circle and curtsy around the terrace. It was a haunting melody, as lovely as it was sad, and she remembered how he’d insisted she teach it to him when he’d been barely seven years old.

The year before his parents’ deaths had sent him to her more as her youngest son than her oldest
grandson
.

“I don’t suppose you could’ve thought of anything
more
depressing, could
you?” she teased gently when the final note had faded away, and he shrugged.

“I don’t really think of it as depressing,” he said, laying the guitar back in the case and running a fingertip gently down the bright strings. He looked back up at her. “It’s sad, yes, but not
depressing,
Grandmother. There’s too much love for the sea in it for that.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded.

“Of course
I am—
I’m
the poet, remember?” He smiled infectiously. “Besides,” his smile turned warmer, gentler, “I love it because of who it was that taught it to me.”

“Flatterer.” She reached out and smacked him gently on the knee. “You got that from your father. And
he
got it from your grandfather!”

“Really?” He seemed astounded by the notion and gazed thoughtfully out across the gleaming blue water for
several seconds, then nodded with the air of someone who’d just experienced a revelation. “So
that’s
how someone with the Raimahn nose got someone as good-looking as you to marry him! I’d always wondered about that, actually.”

“You, Byrk Raimahn, are what was known in my youth as a rapscallion.”

“Oh, no, Grandmother—you wrong me! I’m sure the term you’d really have applied to me would’ve been
much
ruder than that.”

She laughed and shook her head at him, and he offered her the bowl of grapes. She selected one and popped it into her mouth, and he set the bowl down in front of her.

“Somehow the hothouse grapes just aren’t as good,” he commented. “They make me miss our vineyards back home.”

He glanced back out across the bay as he spoke and missed the shadow that flitted through her
eyes. Or he could pretend he had, at least.

“I think they have a lower sugar content,” she said out loud, no sign of that shadow touching her voice.

“That’s probably it,” he agreed, looking back at her with another smile.

She returned the smile, plucked another grape, and leaned back, cocking her head to one side.

“What’s this about you being off to Madam Pahrsahn’s again this evening?” she
asked lightly. “I hear you have at least a dozen rivals for her affections, you know.”

“Alas, too true!” He pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead, his expression tragic. “That cretin Raif Ahlaixsyn offered her a sonnet last night, and he actually had the gall to make it a
good
one.” He shook his head. “Quickly, Grandmother! Tell me what to do to recover in her eyes!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll
come about.” She shook her head at him. “Although, at the rate she seems to attract fresh suitors, you may yet find yourself crowded out.”

“Grandmother,” he looked at her affectionately, “I enormously admire Madam Pahrsahn. I also think she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, and bearing in mind my paternal grandmother’s youthful beauty that’s a pretty high bar for anyone to pass.
Even more important, I’ve never met anyone more brilliant and cultured than she is. But she’s also somewhere around twice my age, and I think she regards me more in the light of a puppy who hasn’t yet grown into his ears and feet than anything remotely like a paramour. I promise I’m on my very best behavior at her soirées.”

“Of course you are. I know that,” she said, just that bit too quickly,
and he laughed and shook a finger under her nose.

“Oh, no, you
don’t
know it!” he scolded. “What a fibber! You’re worried your darling grandson is going to be so enamored of the gorgeous, sophisticated older woman that he’s going to commit some indiscretion with her.” He shook his head, brown eyes glinting devilishly. “Trust me, Grandmother! When
I
commit youthful indiscretions, I’ll take great
care to make certain you know nothing about them. That way
you’ll
be happy, and
I’ll
remain intact.”

“You’re right, ‘rapscallion’ is definitely too polite a term for you, young man!”

Her lips quivered as she fought to restrain a smile, and he laughed again.

“Which is why you’re afraid of those youthful indiscretions of mine,” he observed. “A charming, unprincipled rogue and general, all-round
ne’er-do-well is far more likely to succeed in being indiscreet, I imagine.”

“That must be it,” she agreed. “But you are going to be out again this evening?” He looked a question at her, and she shrugged. “Your grandfather and I have invitations to the theater tonight—they’re presenting a new version of Yairdahn’s
Flower Maiden
—and I just wanted to know whether we should include you in the party.”

“It’s tempting,” he said. “That’s always been my favorite of Yairdahn’s plays, but I think I’ll pass, if you and Grandfather won’t be offended. I don’t think it’s going to be up to the Royal Company’s production. Remember the last time we saw it at the Round? I doubt they’ll be able to match that here in Siddar City.”

“Perhaps not.” She shrugged lightly. “It is an easy play to get wrong, I’ll
admit,” she went on, deliberately not addressing his reference to the Round Theatre, the epicenter of the performing arts back home in Tellesberg. “And your grandfather and I won’t be at all offended by the thought that you prefer a younger, livelier set of companions for the evening. Go have a good time.”

“I’m sure I will. And I promise—no indiscretions!”

He gave her a wink, closed the guitar
case, kissed her cheek, and headed off into the townhouse whistling.

She watched him go with a smile, but the smile faded as his whistling did, and she looked back out across the bay with a far more pensive expression.

Despite Aivah Pahrsahn’s indisputable beauty, Sahmantha Raimahn had never cherished the least fear Byrk might become amorously involved with her. For that matter, she wouldn’t
have been terribly concerned if he had. Madam Pahrsahn was as cultured as she was lovely. If anyone would have known how to take a young lover’s ardor, treat it with gentleness, and send it on its way undamaged in the fullness of time, it would be she. And she was also wealthy enough for Sahmantha to be certain she couldn’t possibly cherish any designs upon the Raimahn family fortune. In fact, Sahmantha
would actually have preferred for her grandson’s interest in her to have been far more … romantically focused than she feared it was.

She hadn’t been entirely honest with Byrk about her husband’s probable reaction to his destination for the evening, either. Claitahn Raimahn hadn’t shaken the dust of Tellesberg from his feet lightly when he moved his entire household—and all of his business investments—from
Charis to the Republic of Siddarmark. Claitahn was a Charisian to his toenails, but he was also a man who took his principles seriously and a devout son of Mother Church. When it came time to choose between heretical Crown and orthodox Church, principles and belief alike had driven the inevitable outcome.

His stature among Charis’ mercantile elite, his wealth, and the fact that he’d sacrificed
so much of that wealth in the process of moving it from Tellesberg to Siddar City’s Charisian Quarter gave him a standing second to none in the Charisian émigré community, yet he himself remained trapped between his two worlds. Despite his horror at the Church of Charis’ open break with the Grand Vicar, he remained too much a Charisian not to argue that the Kingdom had been grievously provoked.
One sin couldn’t justify another in his view, but neither would he condemn Charis’ initial reaction to a totally unprovoked and unjustified onslaught. He’d fully supported King Haarahld’s decision to fight in self-defense; it was
King Cayleb’s
actions he could not condone.

Not that he blamed Cayleb entirely. Haarahld’s premature death had brought Cayleb to the throne too early, in Claitahn’s
view, and the new king had found himself in a desperately dangerous position. It had been his job to protect his people—no one could dispute that—and he’d been too young, too susceptible to the pressures of his advisers and councilors when it came to doing that job. The true culprits were Maikel Staynair and the Earl of Gray Harbor, who’d pushed Cayleb into supporting open schism instead of at least
trying to make a respectful appeal to the Grand Vicar’s justice first. From there to the creation of the new, bastard “Empire of Charis” had been only a single, inevitable step, in Claitahn’s opinion, and he could not support it. But by the same token, he was quick and fierce to defend Charis, as opposed to the
Church
of Charis, when tempers flared.

His and Sahmantha’s surviving children had
accompanied them into voluntary exile, and he encouraged them to continue thinking of themselves as Charisians. Sahmantha lacked the heart to tell him, yet her own advice was quite different. In fact, she’d encouraged them to find homes outside the Charisian Quarter and do their very best to integrate into the
Siddarmarkian
community.

She loved her homeland as much as Claitahn ever had, but unlike
him, she was able to admit—and too self-honest to deny—that the Church of Charis wasn’t going away. Claitahn would never see his dreamed-of, longed-for peaceful reconciliation with the Temple. If the heretical church was brought down, it would fall only to the sword, and the carnage—and retribution—would destroy the kingdom he remembered so lovingly. The ashes would poison the ground and bear
bitter fruit for generations to come, and she would not see her family poisoned in turn by clinging to an identity which was doomed. Better, far better, for them to recognize reality and become the Siddarmarkians into which fate and their faith in God had transformed them. She and Claitahn would die here in Siddar City, be buried in the Republic’s alien soil, still dreaming of the past they could
never hope to reclaim, and she would never even hint to him that she’d realized that hope could never have been
more
than a dream.

But not every Charisian living in the Republic shared that attitude. The fracture lines within the rapidly growing Charisian community here in Siddar City grew deeper—and uglier—with every passing day. Over a third of its members were here not because they’d fled
Charis out of religious principle but because this was where trade and commerce had brought them long before the current warfare had erupted. The swelling influx of newcomers were as much Temple Loyalist as she and Claitahn could ever be, yet even a growing fraction of them were being attracted to the Reformist elements within the
mainland
Church, and nowhere were those Reformist elements stronger
than here in the Republic. Many a Siddarmarkian—and even many of the Charisian émigrées who’d turned their backs in horror on the open schism of the Church of Charis—found the condemnations of clerics like Maikel Staynair resonating with their own disappointment in what the vicarate and the Church had become in the hands of men like Zahmsyn Trynair and Zhaspahr Clyntahn. Schism they would not
condone; Reform they were prepared to respectfully demand.

Sahmantha Raimahn was a shrewd, clear-eyed observer, determined to protect her family, and the shadows were growing darker, even here in the Republic. Claitahn sensed it, too, and despite his own sympathy for much of the Reformist argument, he resolutely refused to embrace it. Neither would Sahmantha, for she’d seen only too clearly the
horrors of which Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Inquisition was capable. She recognized the danger hovering in the Reformist label, even here in the Republic, where the Inquisition’s writ ran less deeply, and that was the true reason she longed to pry her grandson gently away from Aivah Pahrsahn. She’d begun picking up whispers that the brilliant, witty, wealthy beauty who’d taken Siddar City’s society by
storm looked with favor upon the Reformist movement. As always, Madam Pahrsahn spoke gently and calmly, championing
peaceful
reform, condemning violence, couching her murmured arguments in terms of love and compassion. No reasonable soul could possibly have accused her of the least impropriety … but these were not the times for reasonable souls.