David Weber - How firm a foundation

“’Nother round, dearie?” the plump barmaid asked him brightly.

“Yes, I think so,” he replied, setting the empty mug on her tray and dropping a silver tenth-mark beside it. Her eyes widened at the size of the coin, and she started to hand it back to him, but he put his own hand on top of it. “Keep it,” he said, and smiled at her. “I’m leaving on a long voyage, and I won’t have anywhere to spend it anyway. Besides, you can wish me luck for it, if you like.”

“Oh, that I will!” she assured him with a broad smile. “And I’ll have that new beer back to you quicker than a cat lizard could lick her ear, Sir!”

“No ‘sir,’” he told her. “Just a simple sailorman.”

“Not to me, you’re not,” she assured him.

From the glow in her eye she would have been perfectly prepared to demonstrate that to him, as well, but he only smiled and made shooing motions to send her on her way. Not that it wasn’t tempting, but there were other and far more important things to concentrate on at this moment. In fact, it had probably been foolish of him to give the girl such a lavish tip. It might make her remember him later, not that “later” was going to be a problem. Besides, he’d been sent on his way with plenty of cash and, as he’d told her, he wouldn’t have any place to spend the rest of it.

He leaned back in the ancient, leather-upholstered booth, smelling decades of pipe smoke, of beer, of fried sausages, fish, potatoes, and spider crabs. It was a comforting, homey kind of smell that soothed his nerves. And he had to admit there was something soothing about the ebb and flow of the conversations around him, as well.

He’d never quite fitted in in the Temple Lands, with his “islander” accent. The other boys his age had been merciless about teasing him over it, and there’d been several fistfights-one of them fairly spectacular, culminating in an uncomfortable interview with the city guard-before they’d finally learned better. But no matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to rid himself of that telltale accent, and in the end that had proven a good thing. It had helped him slip seamlessly back into the land of his birth, yet he was still more than a little amused by how right the dialect he’d tried so hard to eradicate in himself sounded falling upon his ear from others.

Well, it’s not as if they’re all heretics and blasphemers, now is it? he asked himself. There are plenty of Faithful still right here in Charis. They’re just afraid to show it, that’s all. Wave Thunder’s damned spies are everywhere. They’ve managed to sniff out every organization the Grand Inquisitor’s tried to establish here, so of course the Charisian Temple Loyalists are afraid to trust anyone enough to organize any kind of effective resistance!

For that matter, he reminded himself, there had been Charisian Loyalists who’d dared to raise their hands against their heretical, excommunicate king and his apostate bride. They’d almost gotten that bastard Staynair in his own cathedral! And they’d come within inches of getting Sharleyan at Saint Agtha’s. And then there’d been the man who’d made his own mission possible.

“Here you are, dearie,” the barmaid said, sliding the fresh beer onto the table before him. She’d added a complimentary bowl of fried potato slices, and he smiled his thanks as he popped one of the fresh, piping hot slices into his mouth. In fact, it was hot enough he had to follow it rather quickly with an extinguishing swallow of beer.

“Good!” he told her, nodding enthusiastically even as he puffed out air to cool his scorched tongue and lips. “Hot, but good.”

“Not the only thing here you could say that about,” she told him with a saucy wink, and headed back off through the early evening crowd with an even saucier swing of her hips.

He smiled after her, but then the smile faded as he thought about how far he’d come. Not much further to go, though, he thought. Not much further at all.

He never would have admitted it to a soul, but he’d had more than a few reservations after his mission had been fully explained to him. Not about the mission itself, but about the complexity involved in getting him into position and preparing the way for it. The thought of returning to Charis completely on his own would have been enough to make anyone nervous. The fact that he was strictly prohibited from actually contacting any of the people who’d made his trip possible or contributed to the arrangements here in Charis had produced even more anxiety. He had to simply trust that each of the people responsible for moving him along would do his-or her, for all he knew, in some cases-part and that none of the details would go astray. The notion that such a complex set of arrangements could possibly work had seemed absurd, but as Archbishop Wyllym had pointed out, the Inquisition had been conducting similar operations for centuries. Perhaps not under conditions quite this extreme, but close enough to give them the expertise they needed once they’d realized what an efficient counter-spying organization they were up against here in Charis.

And there hadn’t been all that many people involved, not really. It only seemed that way to him because he’d had to rely on them so blindly. But that very blindness had been his own best defense, because they hadn’t known him, either. For that matter, they hadn’t even known why they were doing what they’d been assigned to do. Not only that, every one of them had done his or her job exactly as Ainsail had-with no contact with anyone else in the service of Mother Church from the moment they or their instructions left Zion. No one would overhear any conversations or intercept any communications between them because there were no conversations or communications. There were only Ainsail and his fellow volunteers (none of whom had ever met, so far as he knew, even in Zion) and the detailed directions they’d been given before they were sent out.

When the Charisian powder mill blew up, Ainsail had been certain the entire operation had gone up in the same explosion. He had no idea who the Inquisition’s contact inside the Charisian Navy was, yet it had been obvious there had to be one. And when he’d heard about the explosion-he’d still been in Emerald at the time, waiting for the brig to carry him for the final leg of his wearisome journey from Zion-he’d realized that whoever the contact was, he must have been unmasked somehow. And that meant he hadn’t been able to complete his part of the preparations.

Ainsail had considered aborting the operation. He’d had that option, yet he’d known even as he’d considered the possibility that he wasn’t going to do it. He hadn’t come this far to turn back. And so he’d continued and, to his amazement, he’d found the promised supplies waiting exactly where he’d been told they’d be. Obviously, the Inquisition’s contact had managed to complete his preparations, and Ainsail found himself wondering if perhaps the destruction of the powder mill had always been part of the plan. For that matter, had the contact been in the mill when it blew up? Could he have contrived the explosion with some sort of delay mechanism that let him escape before the blast?

Ainsail didn’t know about that. It wasn’t the way his part of the operation was supposed to work, but there was nothing that said other parts of it couldn’t work differently. In fact, he rather hoped it had. Anyone who could have made Rakurai possible was far more valuable alive than dead.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know, he reflected now, cautiously testing another of the potato slices to see if it had cooled enough. It had, and he chewed slowly, savoring the taste despite his scorched tongue. It was the best tasting fried potato he’d ever had, he thought, and then snorted in amusement. Sure it is! Then again, maybe it’s not. And maybe the beer isn’t really as good as I think it is, either. Maybe it’s just that knowing how close I am is making me savor everything more than I ever did before.