David Weber - How firm a foundation

Raimair’s eyebrows rose, and Coris shrugged.

“I don’t want to hear about blood running in the streets any more than anyone else, Tobys. I’ll admit a part of me would like to think Corisandians would be slow to accept foreign rulers they think had Prince Hektor assassinated, but I’d sooner not get anyone killed or any towns burned to the ground, either. You’ll know better than I would how ugly suppressing rebellions can be.”

Raimair nodded grimly, thinking about his previous prince’s punitive campaigns to Zebediah, and Coris nodded back.

“Unfortunately, there are some people-the ones in the north you were just speaking of, for example-who aren’t going to be happy to hear there’s not widespread rebellion against Cayleb and Sharleyan. And they’re going to be even less happy to hear the Reformists are making solid progress in the Church.”

He paused again, unwilling even here, even with Raimair, to name specific names, but the ex-sergeant nodded once more.

“It’s in my mind that those unhappy people will see any reports of cooperation and acceptance in Corisande as dangerous. They’ll want as much as possible of the Charisians’ manpower tied down back home, and any erosion of the Temple Loyalists’ strength is going to be completely unacceptable to them. And there’s not anyone they can reach in Corisande to change the way our people are beginning to think back home.”

Raimair’s eyes widened, then narrowed with sudden, grim understanding. He’d quietly assembled a tiny guard force-no more than fifteen men, plus himself-who were loyal not to King Zhames of Delferahk but to Princess Irys Daykyn and the Earl of Coris. He’d chosen them carefully, and the fact that Prince Hektor had established lavish accounts on the continents of Haven and Howard to support his espionage networks and that the Earl of Coris had access to them meant Raimair’s men were quite comfortably paid. And not by King Zhames.

Or by Mother Church.

From the outset, Raimair’s primary attention had been focused on the Delferahkans and any threat from the Charisians who’d assassinated Prince Hektor and his older son. Over the last couple of months, he’d begun to entertain a few doubts of his own about exactly who had assassinated whom, yet he’d never put together what Coris seemed to be suggesting now. But for all her youth, Princess Irys had a sometimes dismayingly sharp brain. The ex-sergeant never doubted for a moment that she’d already considered what he was considering now, whether she wanted to admit it even to herself or not.

And that would explain a lot about the brooding darkness he’d sensed within her, especially since the Grand Inquisitor had begun his purge of the vicarate and the episcopate.

“It would be an awful shame if something were to happen to Prince Daivyn that led to all that rebellion back in Corisande after all, wouldn’t it, My Lord?” he asked softly, and Coris nodded.

“It would indeed,” he agreed. “So perhaps you had better have a word with the lads, Tobys. Tell them it’s especially important to be on the watch for any Charisian assassins just now. Or, for that matter”-he looked into Raimair’s eyes once more-“anyone else’s assassins.”

King’s Harbor Citadel, Helen Island, Howell Bay, Kingdom of Old Charis

Admiral Sir Domynyk Staynair, Baron Rock Point, stood gazing out a familiar window at an incredibly crowded anchorage. His own flagship lay well out on the seventeen mile stretch of King’s Harbor Bay, but dozens of other galleons were moored literally side-by-side all along the waterfront. Others lay to anchors and buoys while flotillas of small craft wended their way through the press.

From this high in the Citadel they looked like toy boats, growing smaller as the eye moved farther and farther away from the wharves and piers, and he’d never in his wildest imagination dreamed he might see that many warships anchored here.

They’d arrived over the last several weeks in fits and starts as the men who had originally crewed them were taken ashore or moved to one of the old ships which had been converted into prison hulks to accommodate them. Under other circumstances, in another war, those men probably would have been paroled and repatriated to the Temple Lands and the Harchong Empire. In these circumstances, in this war, that was out of the question, and so the Kingdom of Old Charis had been forced to find places to put them.

Finding places to safely confine and guard upward of sixty thousand men, more than a few of whom were religious zealots perfectly prepared to die for what they believed God wanted of them, was a serious challenge. Safeholdian wars never produced POWs on a scale like that, and no realm had ever been prepared to accommodate them. The sheer expense of feeding that many prisoners, far less maintaining security and hopefully seeing to it that their living conditions were at least bearable, was one reason the practice of paroling honorably surrendered enemies was so universal. Perhaps Charis should have foreseen something like this, but it hadn’t occurred to any of the native Safeholdians to even think about it. Nor, for that matter, had it occurred to Merlin Athrawes.

Rock Point had been inclined, when he first recognized the magnitude of the problem, to think Merlin should have seen it coming. After all, unlike Rock Point, Nimue Alban had been born and raised in the Terran Federation. She’d grown up learning about the long and bloody history of a planet called Old Terra, where prisoner hauls like this one had once been almost routine. But that was the point, he’d realized. It had been history to her… and there’d been no surrenders, no POWs, in the only war Nimue had actually fought, which explained why Merlin hadn’t anticipated the problem either.

Oh, quit bitching, Rock Point told himself now. The problem you’ve got is one hell of a lot better than the alternative would’ve been!

Which was undoubtedly true, however inconvenient things might seem at the moment.

Most of the ships closer to shore still flew the imperial Charisian flag above the green, scepter-badged banner of the Church of God Awaiting. A handful still showed red and green banners with the crossed scepter and saber of the Harchong Empire, instead, but most of those were moored farther out, or in one of the other anchorages. King’s Harbor was more concerned with the ships which had been fully armed, and surveyors and petty officers swarmed over those vessels like locusts. Their reports would tell Rock Point how quickly the prize vessels could be put into Charisian service… assuming he could find crews for them, of course.

And with Bryahn Lock Island’s death, that decision would be his, at least until Cayleb could get home.

An embarrassment of riches, that’s what it is, he thought. Thank God the Church doesn’t have them anymore, but what the hell am I going to do with all of them?

He shook his head and turned back from the window to the two officers he’d actually come here to see.

Commodore Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, stood before one of the slate sheets which covered his office’s walls. As always, the cuffs of his sky-blue uniform tunic were dusted with chalk and the fingers of his good hand were stained with ink. The short, plump Seamount was about as far removed from the popular imagination’s image of a sea officer as it would be possible to get, yet his fertile brain and driving energy were one of the primary reasons all those prize ships were anchored in King’s Harbor this sunny summer afternoon.

The rail-thin, black-haired commander standing respectfully to one side was at least ten or twelve years younger than Seamount. He radiated all the intensity and energy people tended not to notice just at first in his superior officer, and his left hand was heavily bandaged.