Off Armageddon Reef (45 page)

“Good morning, Erayk.”

Erayk Dynnys sat a bit straighter in the comfortable armchair. Well, the chair
would
have been comfortable, if anything could have been. It was heavily upholstered, the cushions deep enough that it took Dynnys' valet and a Temple guardsman to boost him out of it when it was time to rise.

Unfortunately, with a leg broken in three places and a shoulder broken in at least two, there was no such thing as a comfortable place to sit.

At the moment, however, that was definitely in third or fourth place amongst his concerns as he found himself confronting a man in the unadorned orange priest's cap of a vicar.

“Good morning, Your Grace,” he said. “Forgive my appearance. I…wasn't expecting a visitor this morning.”

“I'm aware of that,” Vicar Zahmsyn Trynair said with a gentle smile. “I was in the vicinity on another matter, however, and I thought I'd just drop in and see how you were doing.”

Dynnys nodded with a smile of his own, although he was perfectly well aware that Trynair intended for him to realize he'd just been lied to. The Chancellor of the Council of Vicars didn't “just happen” to drop in on a mere archbishop. Especially not at this time of year, when the visit required the Vicar in question to leave the mystically heated precincts of his luxurious personal quarters in the Temple itself.

“May I?” Trynair gestured gracefully at another chair in Dynnys' sitting room, the sapphire ring of his office flashing in the lamplight, and the archbishop gave himself a shake.

“Please, be seated, Your Grace!” he said hastily. “And please forgive my lack of manners, as well. I truly wasn't expecting you, and I'm afraid the healers are still prescribing poppy juice.”

“Don't concern yourself about it,” Trynair said graciously. “After a fall such as yours, we're indeed fortunate your injuries weren't even more severe.”

“I appreciate your understanding, Your Grace.”

Dynnys waited while Trynair settled himself into the indicated chair. The Chancellor was taller than Dynnys, leaner, with an angular face, deep, intelligent eyes, and a closely trimmed beard. He wore the orange cassock of his exalted rank, badged with the blue quill sigil of the Order of Chihiro, and the hem of his cassock was damp with melted snow to above midcalf.

“May I offer you something to drink, Your Grace?” Dynnys asked once the Chancellor had seated himself and extended his hands to the coal fire crackling cheerfully on the hearth.

“Some hot chocolate would be most welcome on a day like this,” Trynair agreed, and Dynnys nodded to his valet, who scurried off to deal with the request.

“I haven't been out myself, of course, Your Grace,” Dynnys said, “but people tell me the weather's unusually severe this year.”

“They tell you correctly, Erayk.” Trynair chuckled and shook his head. “The snow's over three feet deep out there, and it's only November—not even full winter yet! I've seldom seen so many snowfalls so early in the season. And,” his expression turned graver, “I'm afraid it's had a predictable effect on the semaphore.”

Dynnys nodded glumly. The greatest single weakness of the Church's semaphore system was that it was visibility-limited. Darkness, snow, rain, fog—any and all of them could and did shut down Mother Church's communications relays. There was a system to send signals through simple darkness, but it was less reliable—more vulnerable to errors in transcription at the various semaphore stations—and much slower, and it still couldn't cope with typical winter weather's decreased visibility.

“It's always that way, isn't it, Your Grace?” he said after a moment, with an air of resignation.

“Yes, yes it is. Those in other lands who envy us our high office seldom think about the penance we pay each winter here in Zion and the Temple. Although,” Trynair allowed himself a chuckle which struck Dynnys' ear as not quite truly spontaneous, “you yourself have been spared that particular penance for the past several years, haven't you?”

“I suppose I have,” Dynnys replied, just a bit slowly, while his poppy-fumed brain raced. “And,” he acknowledged with a chuckle of his own, “I suppose I ought to admit I've scheduled my pastoral visits expressly to avoid winter here in Zion, Your Grace.”

“I'm not surprised,” Trynair said dryly, then snorted. “Anyone but a village idiot
would
schedule them that way, if he had the option!
I
certainly would.”

“Well, perhaps this”—Dynnys' left hand indicated the plaster the bonesetter had used to immobilize his shattered right leg and the sling supporting his right arm—“is all of those years of missed penances catching up with me at last.”

He managed to keep his voice almost normal, but it was difficult. The pain was bad enough, but the healers had already warned him he would require a cane, at best, for his right leg would never be the same again.

“Oh, I doubt that.” Trynair spoke in a voice so deliberately jovial that Dynnys suspected the Vicar had already heard the same healers' reports. “None of us is perfect, Erayk, but I rather doubt you could be
imperfect
enough to have laid up a debt quite that severe. On the other hand”—the Chancellor's eyes sharpened—“it may, perhaps, be…unfortunate that you suffered your accident at this particular time.”

“Your Grace?” Dynnys felt his own eyes narrow slightly as he realized Trynair was finally approaching the true point of his visit.

“I'm sure you're aware that certain…concerns have been expressed about Charis,” the Chancellor said. He held Dynnys' gaze until the archbishop nodded.

“I am, Your Grace. Indeed, I've passed those concerns on to Bishop Executor Zherald and Father Paityr, and I'd intended to devote quite a bit of my own attention to them while I was in Tellesberg. Now, though—”

His left hand indicated the heavy weight of plaster once again, and his left shoulder shrugged.

“I understand, of course.” Trynair leaned forward to pat Dynnys lightly on his good knee, then straightened once more as the valet returned with an exquisitely glazed cup of tissue-thin Harchong porcelain filled with steaming hot chocolate.

The Chancellor accepted the cup with a murmur of thanks and sipped deeply and appreciatively while the valet set the matching chocolate pot and a second cup on the small table between him and Dynnys. The valet raised one eyebrow, indicating the unused cup, but the archbishop shook his head slightly. The valet bowed in acknowledgment and withdrew as silently as he had arrived.

“I understand—we all understand—why your usual pastoral visit had to be canceled this year,” the Chancellor resumed after a moment. “It's regrettable, naturally, but given the nature and extent of your injuries, it was also unavoidable.”

“I appreciate your understanding, Your Grace. I'd be less than honest, however, if I didn't say I would far rather be in Tellesberg right now than here.”

He waved at the sitting room window. The glass was well sealed into its frame, and the cozy sitting room was free of any of the icy drafts which plagued so many homes here in Zion, yet the windowpane was heavily frosted, despite the fire on the hearth. Elsewhere in the city, he knew, people less fortunate than he were huddled around any source of heat they could find, and fall and winter always produced hunger, as well. Ships could still make it across Lake Pei, with food from the huge granaries and farms in the southern Temple Lands, but eventually, that route, too, would be closed. The city would become totally dependent upon its own granaries and storehouses, and somehow, huge as those were, they always ran short before spring in a city this size. When the present snow melted or was removed, the inevitable bodies would be found where the combination of cold, hunger, and lack of shelter had overtaken the most vulnerable of the city's poor.

“And I,” Trynair said, his eyes very level, “would be less than honest if I didn't say I would far rather
have
you there than here at this moment, as well.”

“Your Grace, forgive me, but I believe you didn't just happen to ‘drop in' on me this morning. I'm deeply honored by your visit, of course, but I can't avoid the suspicion that you have something rather more serious than the weather on your mind.”

“I suppose I was guilty of a little white lie,” Trynair agreed with a smile. He sipped more hot chocolate for a moment, then lowered the cup. “I did have other business in the city today—that much was quite true, Erayk. But you're right. I do have certain concerns of my own which I wish to bring to your attention.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Please tell me how I can serve you and the Church.”

Dynnys heard the edge of wariness in his own voice, but Trynair ignored it. No doubt the Chancellor was accustomed to that reaction. As the acknowledged senior member of the vicars known (unofficially, of course) as the “Group of Four,” he was the single most powerful man in the entire Temple.

Everyone knew Grand Vicar Erek XVII had been elevated to the grand vicarate only because Trynair had been too busy to seek the Throne of Langhorne for himself. Nor had there been any reason he had to. Erek XVII was little more than a figurehead, completely dominated by Trynair and the Grand Inquisitor, the dominant members of the Group of Four. It was said—very quietly, with carefully hidden snickers—that the Grand Vicar routinely demonstrated his independence of Trynair's direction by choosing which pair of shoes he would wear.

“No one is dissatisfied with the service you've already rendered, Erayk,” Trynair said in reassuring tones. “However, as I'm sure you're aware, many members of the Council have felt increasingly…uneasy over Charis' growing wealth and influence for quite some time. There are those persistent rumors that the Kingdom is dabbling in proscribed techniques and knowledge. And the equally persistent rumors that Haarahld and his ministers have succeeded in evading their rightful tithes. Then there was that matter of the dispute over Hanth. And, of course, there's always that ‘Royal College' of Haarahld's.”

The Chancellor shook his head, his expression pensive, and Dynnys drew a deep, surreptitious breath.

“Your Grace,” he began, “I realize the rumors and accounts of which you've spoken have to be weighed and considered carefully. However, I've made all of Bishop Executor Zherald's and Father Paityr's reports available to the Council. And my own observations on my past pastoral visits have been that—”

“Erayk.” Trynair interrupted him, raising one hand and shaking his head with a slight, crooked smile, and the archbishop paused.

“No one's accusing you, or Bishop Executor Zherald, of any wrongdoing or inattention to your responsibilities. I've personally read many of your reports, and I've reviewed other sources of information. I trust your intelligence and your attention to the duties of your archbishopric, and I believe your observations have been substantially accurate in the past.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Dynnys said into the silence as Trynair paused. “I appreciate that.”

“It's no more than your due,” Trynair assured him. But then the Chancellor continued gravely. “However, the reports we've been receiving over the past months are different from earlier ones. They appear to be coming from many additional sources, and too many of them agree in form and content.”

“I've fallen somewhat behind in my own correspondence over the past few five-days, Your Grace,” Dynnys said slowly, cautiously. “Has there been some additional change in that time period?”

“To some extent, there has,” Trynair confirmed. Dynnys sat up straighter, wincing at the pain of his injudicious movement, and Trynair shook his head quickly. “It's more a matter of volume then changes in content, Erayk,” he said. “And, to be fair, I think it's entirely possible the seasonal loss of the semaphore has all of us in the Temple paying more attention to past correspondence than we might otherwise have done. After all,” he smiled ruefully, “it's not as if there's a great deal of
new
correspondence to distract us from our chilblains!”

Dynnys chuckled dutifully, but his eyes remained serious, and Trynair shrugged.

“I've also read Father Paityr's reports on all of these new ‘innovations' coming out of Charis, as have Vicar Zhaspyr and several other members of the Council. While Father Paityr appears to be comporting himself in his usual conscientious and hardworking fashion, Vicar Zhaspyr isn't entirely satisfied with all of his conclusions.”

Dynnys felt genuine alarm. He tried to keep it from getting as far as his expression, but it was obvious he hadn't completely succeeded in the effort, and he cursed the befuddling effect of the poppy juice.

“No one is arguing that we have a genuine infraction of the Proscriptions, Erayk,” Trynair said soothingly. But any reassuring effect was wiped away by his next words. “Yet, at least. There's some decided concern about where your Charisians may end up if they continue along this road, however.”

“Your Grace, I assure you that as soon as I'm fit to travel, I'll—”

“Erayk, Erayk!” Trynair shook his head. “No one expects you to leap up out of your sickbed and go galavanting off to Charis through the middle of a Haven winter! As I say, we've seen no evidence that the Proscriptions have already been violated. Our concerns are for the future, and I'm sure there's no need for you to slog off through the snow to deal with them at this time. We would like you to schedule your next pastoral visit for as early in the year as possible, but no one's suggested packing you off to your archbishopric before the ice melts in Hsing-wu's Passage in the spring.”

“Thank you, Your Grace. I…appreciate that, and of course I'll arrange to make the journey as soon as practical.”

“Good. In the meantime, however, you need to be aware of how the Council is thinking,” Trynair said more gravely. “Just last night, Vicar Zhaspyr, Vicar Rhobair, Vicar Allayn, and I were discussing this very point at an informal little dinner.”