How Firm a Foundation (60 page)

“I’ll bear that in mind, My Lord,” Zhevons assured him, and bowed again
as Halahdrom nodded at the door.

“Wait for me in the hall for a moment, Master Zhevons,” he said.

“Of course, My Lord.”

“Harys, is it?” Lakeland murmured as the door closed behind the smuggler. “Interesting choice of deliveryman, don’t you think, Klymynt?”

“Yes, it is,” the chamberlain agreed. “I wonder why they didn’t just send him all the way to Sarmouth himself?”

“Oh, come now!” Lakeland
shook his head. “Cayleb and Nahrmahn’ve had the better part of two years on the ground in Corisande by now. I’d say there’s a good chance they know exactly who Hektor used to get the Prince and his sister to the mainland. They’d probably really like the opportunity to have a few words with him, especially if Anvil Rock and Coris are still using him, too. But they’d be looking for him here or in
Corisande, not in Tarot of all places! So it would make sense for him to use somebody they’ve never heard of for the last leg.”

“I suppose so,” Halahdrom agreed. “Of course, if it is Harys, that makes this ‘gift’ a bit more suspicious, don’t you think?”

“It might, and it might not. My thought, though, is that since Anvil Rock apparently had no problem getting permission to send Prince Daivyn’s
other birthday presents through the blockade with Charisian approval, if there’s anything ‘suspicious’ about
this
gift, it’s probably something he didn’t want the
Charisians
to know about. You haven’t found
anything
out of order about it?”

“Nothing.” Halahdrom shook his head. “I even had the wyverns moved into another cage while I checked the bottom of the one they came in for false partitions
or compartments.”

They looked at one another for a moment while both of them considered the possibility of things like
spoken
messages which would leave no inconvenient written records behind.

“Well, given the thoroughness of your examination, I think we simply make sure we’ve got copies of all the correspondence, then report its arrival to Bishop Mytchail, send him the copies, and pass it on
to Earl Coris for Prince Daivyn,” Lakeland decided. He leaned back in his chair again, meeting Halahdrom’s eyes. “And given the Lord Bishop’s views on smugglers and the embargo, I see no need to describe our conversation with Master Zhevons to him, do you?”

*   *   *

“A gift from Earl Anvil Rock, is it, My Lord?” Tobys Raimair cocked an eyebrow at Phylyp Ahzgood. “Would it happen the boy was
expecting
any additional gifts from him?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” the Earl of Coris replied. “Which is why it occurred to me that it might be as well for you and I to accept delivery before we let it—or the deliveryman—into his presence.”

“Oh, aye, I can understand that,” Raimair agreed. “Would you like me to ask one of the other lads to step in, as well?”

“I doubt that will be necessary,” Coris
replied with a slight smile, considering the sword and dirk riding in well-worn sheaths at Raimair’s side. “Not for one man who’s not even getting into the same room with the boy.”

“As you say, My Lord.” Raimair bowed, then crossed the room to open the door.

A tall, brown-haired man stepped through it, followed by two of the palace’s servants and Brother Bahldwyn Gaimlyn, one of King Zhames’
junior secretaries. Between them, the wary footmen carried an ornately gilded traveling cage which contained six large wyverns. The wyverns gazed about with beady, unusually intelligent-looking eyes, and Coris frowned. It seemed an odd choice for a gift from Anvil Rock, who knew perfectly well that Daivyn had never showed the least interest in hunting wyverns. That had been his older brother’s passion.

“Master … Zhevons, is it?” Coris asked the brown-haired man.

“Aye, Sir. Ahbraim Zhevons, at your service,” the stranger replied in a pleasant tenor voice.

“And you’re an associate of Captain Harys?”

“Oh, I’d not go that far, My Lord.” Zhevons shook his head, but his eyes met Coris’ levelly. “It’s more that we’re in the same line of business, so to speak. These days, at least.”

“I see.” Coris
glanced at the footmen and Brother Bahldwyn, who were waiting patiently, and wondered which of them was Baron Lakeland’s ears for this conversation. Probably all three of them, he decided. Or perhaps one was Lakeland’s and one was Mytchail Zhessop’s.

“Did Captain Harys pass on any messages to me?” he asked out loud.

“No, My Lord. Can’t say he did,” Zhevons replied. “Except that he did say as
how you might be seeing me or one of my … ah,
business
associates with another odd delivery now and again.” He smiled easily, but his eyes held Coris’ gaze intently. “I think you might say the Captain’s of the opinion he might’ve become just a bit too well known to be serving you the way he has before.”

“Yes, I suppose I might,” Coris said thoughtfully, and nodded. “Well, in that case, Master
Zhevons, thank you for your efficiency.”

He reached into his belt pouch, withdrew a five-mark piece, and flipped the golden disk to the smuggler, who caught it with an easy economy of movement and a grin. One of the footmen smiled as well, and Coris hoped the man had made note of the fact that there’d been absolutely no way for anything written to have been exchanged in the process.

“I’m sure
these fellows can see you safely on your way, Master Zhevons,” he continued. “And I’m sure you can imagine there’s a certain young man anxiously awaiting my report on what his mysterious birthday gift might be.”

“Oh, that I can, My Lord! I’d no idea he was a
prince,
of course, but I’m sure every boy that age is much the same under the skin.”

The earl smiled again and nodded, and Zhevons sketched
a bow and followed the footmen and Brother Bahldwyn out. Coris watched the door close behind him, then turned to Raimair.

“And what do you make of our Master Zhevons, Tobys?”

“Seems a capable sort, My Lord,” Raimair replied. “Never heard as how the boy—Prince Daivyn, I mean—was all that fond of wyvern hunting, howsome ever.”

“That’s because he wasn’t … and isn’t,” Coris murmured.

“You don’t
say?” Raimair observed. “Now that makes a man feel just a mite suspicious, especially arriving all unannounced this way, doesn’t it just?”

“Perhaps, but Master Zhevons says Captain Harys got them as far as Tarot,” Coris said, lifting his eyes to Raimair’s face. “Of course, by this time it’s entirely possible someone’s figured out how we got here from Corisande, so the fact that Zhevons
claims
he knows Harys doesn’t necessarily prove anything. It does strike me as an indicator in its favor, though. And then there’s this.”

He pulled out the (already opened) envelope which had accompanied the traveling cage. It contained a sheaf of correspondence, and the earl extracted the letters and showed them to Raimair.

“I recognize the handwriting—both Earl Anvil Rock’s and his secretary’s,”
he pointed out.

He looked down at them for a moment, then shrugged and walked across to his bookcase. He ran his finger down the spines of the shelved books until he found the one he wanted, then took it from the shelf, sat down at his desk, and unfolded Anvil Rock’s letter to Daivyn. The chapter and verse notations Anvil Rock had included in his letter were exactly the sort to which a considerably
older kinsman and a regent might want to direct a youthful charge’s attention, especially if they had no opportunity for personal contact with the boy. A little somber and weighty for a lad Daivyn’s age, perhaps, but the boy
was
the legitimate ruler of an entire princedom. Something a bit more serious than the sorts of verses most children memorized for catechism might well be in order, given
those circumstances.

Coris wasn’t particularly interested in looking up the passages indicated to check their content, however. Instead, he was turning pages in the cheap novel (printed in Manchyr) he’d taken from the shelf, selecting page numbers, then lines down the page, then words in the lines.
Langhorne
6:21-9, for example, directed him to the sixth page, the twenty-first line, and the ninth
word. He tracked down each passage’s indicated words, jotting each of them down quickly on a sheet of paper. Then he sat gazing at the sheet for a moment, frowning, before he dropped it into the fire on his sitting room’s hearth, stood, and crossed to the traveling cage. Its gilded bars were topped with ornamental finials, and he counted quickly around them from left to right until he got to
the thirteenth. He gripped it, careful to keep his fingers out of reach of the wyverns’ saw-toothed beaks, and twisted, but it wouldn’t budge.

“You’ve got stronger wrists than I do, Tobys,” he said wryly. “See if you can get this thing to screw off. It turns clock-wise to loosen, not counter-clockwise.”

Raimahn raised an eyebrow, then reached out. His powerful hand closed on the finial and he
grunted with effort. For a moment, nothing happened; then it yielded. Once it started turning, it went on turning easily until he’d screwed it completely off, revealing that the bar was hollow and contained two or three tightly rolled sheets of paper.

“Well, well, well,” Coris murmured, reaching in and extracting the sheets.

He unrolled them and began to read, then stopped abruptly. His eyes
widened in shock, and he looked quickly at Raimahn.

“My Lord?” the guardsman asked quickly.

“It’s … just not from who I thought it would be from,” Coris said.

“Is it bad news, then, My Lord?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.” Coris managed a smile, beginning to come back on balance with the practice of decades as a spymaster. It was, he admitted to himself, rather harder this time than it had ever
been before, however. “
Unexpected
news, yes, but not bad. At least, I don’t think so.”

He looked back down at the note, trying to wrap his mind around all it implied. The handwriting in the correspondence was definitely Anvil Rock’s, but if the note in his hand was to be believed, Anvil Rock had never written it. Never even seen it, although exactly how the man who
had
written it—and had the
sheer audacity to personally deliver it to Talkyra—had managed to forge the correspondence so perfectly
and
gained access to the code book Anvil Rock and Coris had arranged so long ago were certainly … interesting questions.

“Earl Coris,” it began, “First, I beg your pardon for a slight deception on my part. Two of them, to be more accurate. First, I’ve never actually
met
Captain Harys, I’m afraid,
nor has any portion of Prince Daivyn’s ‘gift’ ever been within a thousand leagues of Corisande. And, second, I’m afraid my name isn’t actually Ahbraim Zhevons. It serves me well enough when needed, however, and while I’m aware you’ve never heard of me, I’m an associate of someone I’m certain you
have
heard of: Merlin Athrawes. I do the occasional odd job for
Seijin
Merlin when it would be impolitic
for him to handle them himself, and he asked me to deliver these wyverns to you as a gift from Earl Gray Harbor. I’m sure you’ve noticed they’re a bit larger than most messenger wyverns, and there’s a reason for that. You see—”

.II.

Tellesberg Palace and Tellesberg Cathedral, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis

“God, it’s good to be
home!
” Sharleyan Ahrmahk sighed, curling up against her husband’s side and resting her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes, feeling as if she were expanding the pores of her skin to absorb the gentle night breeze breathing through the bedchamber’s open windows. Exotic insects
she hadn’t heard in too many months sang in the moon-silvered darkness, the brilliant stars of the southern hemisphere hung overhead like ornaments from some cosmic glassblower, and the part of her which had been missing for far too long was back beside her.

“So Tellesberg is ‘home’ now, is it?” Cayleb teased gently, and she nodded.

“At the moment, at least.” She raised her head long enough
to kiss him on the cheek, then snuggled back down and wrapped one arm around his chest, all without ever opening her eyes again. “Don’t let this go to your head, but home is wherever
you
are.”

His own arm tightened around her and he pressed his cheek against the top of her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair and savoring its silken texture.

“Works both ways,” he told her. “Except, for
me, home is wherever you and
Alahnah
are.”

“Correction accepted, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

Sharleyan giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Cayleb demanded. “You’ve got something against formality and courtesy?”

“Under most circumstances, no, I don’t. But under
these
.…”

Her hand slid down under the light thistle silk sheet covering them to the waist, and Cayleb smiled.

“Courtesy is never
wasted,” he informed her. “I’m courteous to
every
naked lady I find in my bed. In fact—”

He broke off with a sudden twitch, and she raised her head from his shoulder to smile sweetly at him.

“I’d consider my next sentence very carefully if I were you,” she said.

“Actually, my brain doesn’t seem to be working very well at the moment,” he replied, scooping her up and draping her diagonally across
his body while he smiled up into her eyes. “I think this may be one of those moments when silence is golden.”

*   *   *

The mood was rather different as the two of them headed for the council chamber they used as a working office whenever both of them happened to be in Tellesberg at the same time.

Not the most exacting of their subjects—and not even the two of them, for that matter—could have
demanded they give themselves over to official business the day before. Not after that same “official business” had separated the two of them for over four months. HMS
Dawn Star
’s arrival in Tellesberg on yesterday afternoon’s tide had been greeted even more tumultuously than Cayleb’s return from Chisholm. In some ways, the citizens of Old Charis had taken Sharleyan even more deeply to their hearts
than Cayleb. They loved both of them, but they
adored
her, which (as Cayleb put it) indicated the soundness of their taste. And like the majority of their subjects, Charisian and Chisholmian alike, the citizens of Tellesberg were entranced by the deep and obvious love between the handsome young king and beautiful young queen who had married for reasons of state. Half the city had crowded the waterfront
to watch
Dawn Star
being nudged gently up against the Royal Quay’s pilings, and they’d seen Emperor Cayleb go bounding up the gangplank almost before the galleon was fully moored. And when he swept Empress Sharleyan up into his arms, tossed her over one shoulder, and carried her back
down
the gangplank while she laughed and whacked him on the back of his head, the entire huge crowd had erupted
in cheers and whistles. Anyone who had suggested that the two of them should do anything besides take themselves off immediately to the palace would probably have been tarred and feathered on the spot.