David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I’m sure I will. And I promise-no indiscretions!”

He gave her a wink, closed the guitar case, kissed her cheek, and headed off into the townhouse whistling.

She watched him go with a smile, but the smile faded as his whistling did, and she looked back out across the bay with a far more pensive expression.

Despite Aivah Pahrsahn’s indisputable beauty, Sahmantha Raimahn had never cherished the least fear Byrk might become amorously involved with her. For that matter, she wouldn’t have been terribly concerned if he had. Madam Pahrsahn was as cultured as she was lovely. If anyone would have known how to take a young lover’s ardor, treat it with gentleness, and send it on its way undamaged in the fullness of time, it would be she. And she was also wealthy enough for Sahmantha to be certain she couldn’t possibly cherish any designs upon the Raimahn family fortune. In fact, Sahmantha would actually have preferred for her grandson’s interest in her to have been far more… romantically focused than she feared it was.

She hadn’t been entirely honest with Byrk about her husband’s probable reaction to his destination for the evening, either. Claitahn Raimahn hadn’t shaken the dust of Tellesberg from his feet lightly when he moved his entire household-and all of his business investments-from Charis to the Republic of Siddarmark. Claitahn was a Charisian to his toenails, but he was also a man who took his principles seriously and a devout son of Mother Church. When it came time to choose between heretical Crown and orthodox Church, principles and belief alike had driven the inevitable outcome.

His stature among Charis’ mercantile elite, his wealth, and the fact that he’d sacrificed so much of that wealth in the process of moving it from Tellesberg to Siddar City’s Charisian Quarter gave him a standing second to none in the Charisian emigre community, yet he himself remained trapped between his two worlds. Despite his horror at the Church of Charis’ open break with the Grand Vicar, he remained too much a Charisian not to argue that the Kingdom had been grievously provoked. One sin couldn’t justify another in his view, but neither would he condemn Charis’ initial reaction to a totally unprovoked and unjustified onslaught. He’d fully supported King Haarahld’s decision to fight in self-defense; it was King Cayleb’s actions he could not condone.

Not that he blamed Cayleb entirely. Haarahld’s premature death had brought Cayleb to the throne too early, in Claitahn’s view, and the new king had found himself in a desperately dangerous position. It had been his job to protect his people-no one could dispute that-and he’d been too young, too susceptible to the pressures of his advisers and councilors when it came to doing that job. The true culprits were Maikel Staynair and the Earl of Gray Harbor, who’d pushed Cayleb into supporting open schism instead of at least trying to make a respectful appeal to the Grand Vicar’s justice first. From there to the creation of the new, bastard “Empire of Charis” had been only a single, inevitable step, in Claitahn’s opinion, and he could not support it. But by the same token, he was quick and fierce to defend Charis, as opposed to the Church of Charis, when tempers flared.

His and Sahmantha’s surviving children had accompanied them into voluntary exile, and he encouraged them to continue thinking of themselves as Charisians. Sahmantha lacked the heart to tell him, yet her own advice was quite different. In fact, she’d encouraged them to find homes outside the Charisian Quarter and do their very best to integrate into the Siddarmarkian community.

She loved her homeland as much as Claitahn ever had, but unlike him, she was able to admit-and too self-honest to deny-that the Church of Charis wasn’t going away. Claitahn would never see his dreamed-of, longed-for peaceful reconciliation with the Temple. If the heretical church was brought down, it would fall only to the sword, and the carnage-and retribution-would destroy the kingdom he remembered so lovingly. The ashes would poison the ground and bear bitter fruit for generations to come, and she would not see her family poisoned in turn by clinging to an identity which was doomed. Better, far better, for them to recognize reality and become the Siddarmarkians into which fate and their faith in God had transformed them. She and Claitahn would die here in Siddar City, be buried in the Republic’s alien soil, still dreaming of the past they could never hope to reclaim, and she would never even hint to him that she’d realized that hope could never have been more than a dream.

But not every Charisian living in the Republic shared that attitude. The fracture lines within the rapidly growing Charisian community here in Siddar City grew deeper-and uglier-with every passing day. Over a third of its members were here not because they’d fled Charis out of religious principle but because this was where trade and commerce had brought them long before the current warfare had erupted. The swelling influx of newcomers were as much Temple Loyalist as she and Claitahn could ever be, yet even a growing fraction of them were being attracted to the Reformist elements within the mainland Church, and nowhere were those Reformist elements stronger than here in the Republic. Many a Siddarmarkian-and even many of the Charisian emigrees who’d turned their backs in horror on the open schism of the Church of Charis-found the condemnations of clerics like Maikel Staynair resonating with their own disappointment in what the vicarate and the Church had become in the hands of men like Zahmsyn Trynair and Zhaspahr Clyntahn. Schism they would not condone; Reform they were prepared to respectfully demand.

Sahmantha Raimahn was a shrewd, clear-eyed observer, determined to protect her family, and the shadows were growing darker, even here in the Republic. Claitahn sensed it, too, and despite his own sympathy for much of the Reformist argument, he resolutely refused to embrace it. Neither would Sahmantha, for she’d seen only too clearly the horrors of which Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Inquisition was capable. She recognized the danger hovering in the Reformist label, even here in the Republic, where the Inquisition’s writ ran less deeply, and that was the true reason she longed to pry her grandson gently away from Aivah Pahrsahn. She’d begun picking up whispers that the brilliant, witty, wealthy beauty who’d taken Siddar City’s society by storm looked with favor upon the Reformist movement. As always, Madam Pahrsahn spoke gently and calmly, championing peaceful reform, condemning violence, couching her murmured arguments in terms of love and compassion. No reasonable soul could possibly have accused her of the least impropriety… but these were not the times for reasonable souls.

Be careful, Byrk, she thought after the grandson she’d raised. Oh, be careful, my love! You’re too much like your grandfather. You try to hide it, but beneath that surface you show the world, you feel too deeply and there’s too much integrity for times like these. Forget you’re a Charisian and remember to be cautious. Be Siddarmarkian, please!

Thwap!

Sailys Trahskhat stiffened as the well-rotted apple smacked him squarely between the shoulder blades and then oozed down his back in trickles of brown pulp and slime. His head whipped around, looking for the hand which had thrown it, but no guilty expression gave away the culprit. Indeed, no one seemed to be looking his way… which said a great deal.

His fists clenched at his side, but he managed-somehow-to keep the fury he felt out of his expression. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. It wouldn’t be the last, either, he thought grimly. He was just lucky it had been an apple instead of a rock.