How Firm a Foundation (56 page)

“Are you sure my absence isn’t going to knock anything off schedule, Sir?” the commander asked more seriously, and Seamount shrugged.

“I realize this may come as another shock to you, Commander,
but I’d been looking after myself on my own for quite some time before you happened along. I imagine I’ll be able to fumble through somehow until you get back,” he said dryly.

Mahndrayn nodded, although he and Seamount both knew he’d been gradually assuming more and more responsibilities as Seamount’s assistant and executive officer—what High Admiral Lock Island had called a “chief of staff.”
And a trip to Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s massive foundry complex wasn’t exactly a jaunt to Tellesberg, either; it was well over eight hundred miles, which would take a full five-day each way. That was going to take a serious bite out of Mahndrayn’s usual schedule, and a lot of additional work was going to end up dumped back on Seamount’s desk while he was away.

“I think we’ve got everything covered,”
the baron went on, more serious now. “I won’t pretend it’s not going to be a pain, and I don’t want you away any longer than you have to be, but we’ve been letting stuff that needs to be handed off to Master Howsmyn pile up too long because both of us were too busy to make the trip. If we’re going to meet High Admiral Rock Point’s schedule, we can’t afford to let that go on. Which means one of us
has to go, since no one else is cleared for all of this material, and I just plain can’t. Which is why—”

He gestured at the briefcase under Mahndrayn’s arm, and the commander nodded again.

“Yes, Sir. I think Master Howsmyn and I can probably cover everything in one day. And I promise I’ll get back here as quickly as I can.”

“Quickly is good, but the whole point of this trip is to give Master
Howsmyn the chance to ask any questions he needs to face-to-face. Don’t rush your meeting with him. Better to take an extra day, or even two or three, than for one of us to have to make the same trip again.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“I’m sure you do. And give your cousin my regards.”

“I will, Sir.”

“Good. Now go.” Seamount pointed at the office door, and Mahndrayn smiled, saluted, and obeyed the
command.

*   *   *

“Urvyn! This is a surprise,” Trai Sahlavahn said as the yeoman ushered his cousin into his office. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“I’m on my way to see Master Howsmyn,” Mahndrayn explained, crossing the office to clasp Sahlavahn’s offered forearm. “Big Tirian’s not very far out of the way, so I thought I’d drop by.”

“I see.”

Sahlavahn tilted his head to one side, regarding
his cousin speculatively. Mahndrayn’s intensity and energy frequently fooled people into thinking he was impetuous, or at least impulsive, but Sahlavahn knew better. While he might be prone to rushing off in two or three directions at once, the commander had a remarkable ability to keep everything he was doing organized, balanced, and far more tightly scheduled than anyone else realized. The
term “multi-tasking” was one of many which had been lost on Safehold, but if there’d been anyone on the planet it applied to, it would have been Urvyn Mahndrayn. That was something he had in common with Baron Seamount, which was one of the many reasons the two of them complemented one another so well.

But it was also the reason Sahlavahn rather doubted his cousin had “just decided” to drop in
on him. True, Big Tirian Island did lie about midway between Helen Island and Port Ithmyn, but Mahndrayn wasn’t the sort to take time off for personal visits when he was on official business. Besides, he and Sahlavahn exchanged letters on a regular basis, so it wasn’t as if they had a lot of private family matters to catch up on.

“Are you going to be here overnight?” he asked, leading the way
to the windows overlooking Eydyth Sound, the channel between Big Tirian and the mainland portion of the Duchy of Tirian.

Although Sahlavahn’s command—officially, Navy Powder Mill #3, but more generally known as the Hairatha Mill—was officially part of the port city of Hairatha, it was actually located over a mile north of the main port. For fairly obvious reasons, really, given the nature of
what it produced and the quantities in which it produced it. At any given moment, there was a minimum of several hundred tons of gunpowder in the Hairatha Mill’s storage magazines, and no one wanted those magazines too close to a major city. Then there was the minor fact that Hairatha was one of the Navy’s main bases and dockyards. Losing that would have been just a trifle inconvenient, as well, he
supposed.

“Probably not overnight,” Mahndrayn said, following him to the window and gazing across the twenty-six-mile-wide sound at the green blur of the mainland. “I’ve got a lot to discuss with Master Howsmyn, and Baron Seamount needs me back at King’s Harbor as quickly as I can get there.”

“I see,” Sahlavahn said again, and turned to face him. “So why do I have the feeling you didn’t come
four or five hours out of your way just for a family visit with one of your favorite cousins?”

“Because I didn’t,” Mahndrayn half sighed.

“Then why did you come? Really?” Sahlavahn raised an eyebrow, and Mahndrayn shrugged.

“Because I came across a discrepancy I hope is just a clerical error,” he said.

“You
hope
it’s a clerical error?”

“Well, if it’s not, then I think we may have a fairly
significant problem.”

“You’re beginning to make me nervous, Urvyn,” Sahlavahn said frankly, and Mahndrayn shrugged again. Then he set his briefcase on the window ledge in front of him, opened it, extracted a sheet of paper, and handed it across.

Sahlavahn accepted the sheet, tipped it slightly to catch the better light from the window, and squinted nearsightedly as he looked at it. Then he raised
his eyes to his cousin’s face with a perplexed expression.

“This is what you came to see me about?” He waved it gently. “Last month’s production return and shipping summary?”

“Yes,” Mahndrayn said flatly, and Sahlavahn frowned.

“I don’t understand, Urvyn. What about it?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Sahlavahn’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s a discrepancy,
Trai,” Mahndrayn said. “A forty-five-
ton
discrepancy.”

“
What?
” Sahlavahn’s frown disappeared and his eyes widened abruptly.

“The amount you shipped doesn’t match the amount you delivered. Look at the numbers for the June fifteenth shipment.” Mahndrayn tapped the top of the sheet. “You loaded one thousand and seventy-five tons of powder in a total of six shipments, but when the individual quantities
of each shipment are totaled, they only come to one thousand and
thirty
tons.” He tapped the foot of the sheet. “There’s forty-five tons missing, Trai.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Sahlavahn said.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Mahndrayn replied. “So I checked the numbers three times, and they came out the same way each time.” He shrugged and smiled crookedly. “You know how I am. I couldn’t get my brain
to turn loose of it, so I pulled the detail sheets and went over the numbers in each shipment’s individual consignments one by one. And I found the problem right here, I think.” He leaned over the sheet and found the specific entry he wanted. “Right here. Somebody dropped a decimal point. I think this was supposed to be a fifty-ton consignment, but it’s listed as only
five
tons.”

“So somebody
just made a mistake, is what you’re saying?”

“Like I said, I hope it’s just a clerical error. But this shipment was supposed to come to King’s Harbor, Trai. So I went and checked … and five tons is exactly what we received. So either you have an extra forty-five tons of gunpowder still in inventory here at Hairatha, or else we have forty-five tons of unaccounted for gunpowder floating around
somewhere.”

“Langhorne!” Sahlavahn looked at his cousin, face pale. “I hope to God you’re right about its being a clerical error! Give me just a second.”

He crossed to his desk, sat, and pulled a pair of thick ledger books from one of its drawers. He picked up the reading glasses from the corner of his blotter, perched them on the tip of his nose, and consulted the sheet of paper Mahndrayn had
handed him. Then he set aside the topmost ledger book, opened the bottom one, and ran his finger down one of the neatly tabulated columns.

“According to the manifest, your ‘missing’ gunpowder came out of Magazine Six,” he said, looking up over the tops of his glasses. His color was a little better, but his expression remained drawn. “Assuming it’s a clerical error and the additional forty-five
tons was never loaded, that’s where it should still be. I assume Baron Seamount would like me to go see whether or not it’s still there?”

He managed a wan smile, and Mahndrayn chuckled.

“Actually, I haven’t discussed it with the Baron yet,” he said. “To be honest, I’m almost certain it really is a simple error—we’d certainly only requested five tons, not
fifty!
—but I figured this was the sort
of thing I should make sure about. And since I was going to be headed up this way, it seemed simplest to discuss it with you personally. Assuming it
is
an error, you’re the one in the best position to straighten it out. And on the off chance that it
isn’t
an error, that somebody’s playing clever-buggers with our powder shipments, the less attention we draw to it until we’ve figured out what’s
going on, the better.”

“Langhorne, Urvyn—you didn’t even
mention
this to Baron Seamount?” Sahlavahn took off his glasses and shook his head at his cousin. “If someone’s ‘playing clever-buggers’ with something like this, we need to get him and Baron Wave Thunder informed as quickly as possible! That’s a
lot
of gunpowder!”

“I know. I just wanted to make sure it really was missing before I started
running around screaming,” Mahndrayn said. “I mean, clerical error’s far and away the most likely answer, and I didn’t want the Baron—
either
of the Barons, now that I think about it—to think I was getting hysterical over nothing.”

“Well, I suppose I can understand that.”

Sahlavahn closed the ledger and stood, resting one hand on its cover for a moment while he frowned down at it, his eyes anxious.
His face remained pale and drawn, and he seemed to be thinking hard, Mahndrayn noticed, and it was hard to blame him. As he’d said, forty-five tons
was
a lot of gunpowder—enough for almost ten thousand full-charge shots from a long thirty-pounder—and the notion that he might have lost track of that much explosives had to be a sobering reflection. Then the captain drew a deep breath and crossed
the office to take his swordbelt from the wall rack. He buckled it and settled it methodically into place, took down his hat from the same rack, and turned to his cousin.

“Come on. The simplest way to see whether it’s there or not is to go take a look. Care for a walk?”

*   *   *

“Stop,” Captain Sahlavahn said as he and Mahndrayn reached a heavily timbered, locked door set into a grassy hillside.

A small, green-painted storage shed stood beside the door, and the captain opened its door.

“Here.” He took a pair of felt slippers from a pigeonholed shelf with two dozen compartments and handed them across. “These should fit, if I remember your boot size. Speaking of which—boots, I mean—they get left here.”

He pointed into the shed, and Mahndrayn nodded. Both of them removed their Navy boots,
setting them under the shelving, then pulled on the slippers. Despite every precaution, the possibility of loose grains of powder on the magazine floor was very real, and a spark from an iron shoe nail or even the friction between a leather sole and the floor could have unpleasant consequences.

Sahlavahn waited until Mahndrayn had his slippers on, then unlocked the magazine door.

“Follow me,”
he said, and led the way into a brick-walled passageway.

There was another heavy, locked door at its end, and a lighter door set into the passageway’s side. Sahlavahn opened the unlocked door into a long, narrow room. Its right wall, the one paralleling the surface of the hillside into which the magazine had been built, was solid brick, but its left wall was a series of barred glass windows,
and a half-dozen large lanterns hung from hooks in its ceiling. Sahlavahn drew one of the new Shan-wei’s candles from his pocket, struck it on the brick wall, and lit two of the lanterns from its sputtering, hissing flame.

“That should be enough for now,” he said. He waved out the Shan-wei’s candle, moistened his fingertips and pinched them together on the spent stem to be sure it was fully extinguished,
then stepped back out into the passageway and closed the side door behind him.

He made sure it was securely shut before he unlocked the inner door, and Mahndrayn heartily approved of his caution. The last thing anyone wanted inside a powder magazine was a live flame, which was the reason for the lantern room; the light spilling through its carefully sealed windows would provide them with illumination
without actually carrying a lamp into the magazine itself. At the same time, the possibility of powder dust drifting out of the opened magazine and into the lantern room was something to be avoided. It was far less likely to happen now than it would have been just three or four years ago, of course. The new grained powder didn’t separate into its constituent ingredients the way the old-fashioned
meal powder had, which meant it didn’t produce the explosive fog powder shipments had all too often trailed behind them. But as someone who worked regularly with explosives, Mahndrayn was in favor of taking every possible precaution where this much gunpowder was concerned.

Sahlavahn opened the inner door—this one fitted with felted gaskets—and the two of them entered the magazine proper. Barrels
of powder were stacked neatly, separated by convenient avenues to facilitate handling them with all the caution they deserved. It was cool and dry, just the way it was supposed to be, and Mahndrayn stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust fully to the relatively dim illumination coming from the lantern room.