David Weber - How firm a foundation

Zhasyn Cahnyr nodded, although his eyes were worried. “Madam Pahrsahn’s” investment was nowhere near so cut and dried as she chose to pretend, and she was playing a more dangerous game than she was willing to admit. He was less certain than she that the Inquisition wouldn’t get wind of a “private investment” which amounted to the purchase of several thousand rifled muskets and bayonets. More than that, he was more than a little frightened of exactly what she intended to do with them once she had them.

Perhaps it’s just as well she hasn’t enlightened you on that particular point, he told himself dryly. You’d probably worry even more if you did know what she was going to do with them!

“You have made it clear to your ‘special guests’ that there’s a degree of risk involved here, haven’t you?” he asked now, changing the subject.

“Of course I have, Zhasyn.” She smiled and touched his cheek gently. “I admire and respect you, my friend, but I’m not going to throw any lambs to the slash lizards without due consideration. I’m very careful about who I approach with your invitation, and after the initial flirtation-I’d be tempted to say ‘seduction’ if it wouldn’t seem too much like a bad jest, given my previous vocation-I’m very careful to warn them about the dangers. And that’s why I send them to you only one or two at a time. We can’t avoid letting you and me know who they are, but we can at least protect their identities from anyone else.”

“Forgive me.” He smiled back and cupped his left hand lightly over the fingers on his cheek. “I forget sometimes how long you’ve been doing this sort of thing. I should know better than to try to teach such a mistress of her art.”

“‘Mistress of her art’?” She shook her head, eyes dancing. “And here I went to such lengths to avoid any double entendres!”

“My dear, I know it amuses you to try, but you’re really not going to shock me or offend me by throwing your past into my face,” he pointed out.

“I know. But you’re right, it does amuse me. And it probably says something unfortunate about me, as well.” She shook her head, still smiling. “My initial involvement in this sort of thing was what you might call a reaction against the high clergy, you know. I can’t quite seem to forget that even though you’re not like the vast majority of your ecclesiastic brethren, you are an archbishop. I think that’s why I feel such a compulsion to keep trying.”

“As long as it amuses you,” he said, then looked across the room. “Not to change the subject-although that’s really exactly why I’m doing it-who’s that youngster with Sharghati?”

She turned to follow the direction of his glance.

“Which one? The younger of the two is Byrk Raimahn. He’s Claitahn Raimahn’s grandson, and I strongly suspect him of harboring Reformist thoughts. In fact, I’m not so sure he’d be happy stopping short of Church of Charis-style thinking if he had his druthers, although he’s far too astute and too well informed to come out and say anything of the sort. The fellow with him is Raif Ahlaixsyn. He’s about ten years older than young Raimahn and a Siddarmarkian. I’ve met his father. The family’s got money, and I think they’d really prefer to sit on the sidelines, but I’m not sure about Raif. Not yet.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I think there’s some potential there, but given his family connections, I’m being particularly cautious about exploring it.” She shrugged. “In the meantime, he’s really quite a good poet and making him a more or less permanent fixture at my parties is something of a social coup.”

“You actually enjoy this, don’t you?” he asked. She looked back at him, and he shrugged. “I mean all of it. The scheming, outwitting your enemies, laying the evil low, the dancing on the edge of the sword blade-not just all of that, but the parties and the gaiety, too. You do, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, Zhasyn!” She seemed surprised by the question. “It’s what I do. Oh,” her eyes hardened, although her smile never wavered, “don’t think for one moment that I’m not going to dance in that pig Clyntahn’s blood the day Cayleb and Sharleyan take his head. And string up the rest of the Group of Four, and the entire damned vicarate- what’s left of it-for that matter. Never underestimate that side of me, Zhasyn, or you may get hurt. But the rest?” The hardness disappeared and her eyes danced once more. “It’s the grandest game in the world, my friend! Beside this, anything else would be only half alive.”

He gazed at her for a moment, then shook his head, and she laughed.

“Take yourself off to the private salon now, Zhasyn,” she told him. “Your first meeting’s scheduled to begin in about ten minutes. And in the meantime,” she smiled brilliantly, “I have to go have a word with the Seneschal.” . II.

The Prison Hulks, and HMS Chihiro, 50, Gorath Bay, Kingdom of Dholar

“How is he this morning, Naiklos?” Sir Gwylym Manthyr asked, turning his back on the vista of Gorath Bay.

“Not as well as he pretends, Sir,” Naiklos Vahlain replied.

The slight, dapper valet joined the admiral at the forecastle rail and stroked his mustache gently as he, too, looked out across the bay. The sky was a blue bowl overhead, dotted with white cloud puffs, and a brisk breeze-cool, but without the bitter bite of the winter just past-blew across the deck. Wyverns and seabirds rode the breeze, their cries and whistles faint, and three-foot waves gave the deck underfoot a slight pitch as the ship’s anchor held her head to the wind.

Not that the roofed-over obsolete coastal galley was much of a ship, anymore, Manthyr reflected, gazing once more across the bay at the hateful sight of the city of Gorath’s tall stone walls. He’d had altogether too much opportunity to examine those walls over the last seven months. He’d spent endless hours picturing how vulnerable they would be to modern artillery… and regretting the fact that he’d never have the chance to see that vulnerability demonstrated.

He turned away from the familiar lava-flow anger of that thought, not that the contemplation of his remaining “command” was any more appealing. Lywys Gardynyr, the Earl of Thirsk, had done his best for his prisoners-better, to be honest, than Manthyr had anticipated, after the unyielding terms then-Crown Prince Cayleb had inflicted upon him after the Battle of Crag Reach-but he’d faced certain limitations. The greatest of which was that he appeared to be the only Dohlaran aristocrat with anything remotely resembling a sense of honor. The others were too busy hating all Charisians for the crushing humiliation of the Battles of Rock Point and Crag Reach. Either that, or they were Temple Loyalists too busy sucking up to the Inquisition-or both-to worry about little things like the proper treatment of honorably surrendered prisoners of war.

Manthyr knew his own sense of failure and helplessness when he contemplated the probable future of the men and officers he’d commanded only made his bitterness worse. But when he looked around the moldering old galleys which had been converted into prison hulks to house his personnel, when he considered how grudgingly their needs were met, how meager their rations were, how little concern even the Order of Pasquale had demonstrated for his wounded and sick, it was hard to feel anything except bitterness.

Especially when you know the only thing standing between your people and the Inquisition is Thirsk and-who would have believed it?-a Schuelerite auxiliary bishop, he thought.

He wasn’t the only Charisian that bitterness was poisoning, he reminded himself. He and his surviving officers did all they could to maintain morale, but it was hard. Charisian seamen by and large were far from stupid, and even the youngest surviving ship’s boy could figure out what was going on. Penned up in the drab, damp, barren sameness of their floating prisons day after day; denied the right to so much as send letters home to tell their families they were still alive (so far, at least); poorly fed; without exercise; with no warm clothing against a winter which would have been bitterly cold for anyone, far less men from their semi-tropical homeland, it was scarcely surprising when even Charisians found it difficult to pretend to one another that they couldn’t see what was coming.