David Weber - How firm a foundation

But I did it, he told himself, his cheek pressed into the floor in the hot pool of his own blood as the blackness came for him. I did it. I killed the bitch.

And somehow, in that last bitter moment of awareness, it meant nothing at all. . IX.

Sir Koryn Gahrvai’s Townhouse and Royal Palace, City of Manchyr

“So what do you think of her now, Alyk?”

Koryn Gahrvai sat back in his comfortable chair, listening to rain drum on the roof. The lanterns illuminating the garden at the heart of the square-built townhouse were barely visible through the pounding raindrops, and thunder rumbled intermittently, still somewhere to the south but rolling steadily closer.

“I’d ask her to marry me, if she weren’t already married to an emperor,” Alyk Ahrthyr said. He reached out to the punch bowl on the table and stirred it gently with the silver ladle, then snorted. “And if she didn’t scare me to death!” he added.

“Now why should she do a thing like that?” Gahrvai’s father asked sardonically. He sat at the head of the table, in the chair which would normally have been his son’s, nursing a glass of Chisholmian whiskey. “It’s not like she’s done anything extraordinary lately, now is it?”

All five of the men sitting around that table looked at one another as a louder peal of thunder grumbled its way across the heavens. Lightning flickered, and Gahrvai raised his own glass in an acknowledging salute to his father before he looked at the Earl of Tartarian and Sir Charlz Doyal.

“Did either of you see that coming?” he asked.

“Which ‘that’ did you have in mind?” Tartarian inquired dryly. “Her performance, the assassination attempt, Seijin Merlin, or the fact that she survived?”

“How about all the above?” Gahrvai retorted.

“ I didn’t see any of it coming, at any rate,” Doyal admitted. “Just for starters, she certainly hadn’t discussed any pardons that I knew of.”

He raised his eyebrows at Earl Anvil Rock and Earl Tartarian, but both of the older men shook their heads.

“Not with us,” Anvil Rock said. “And I had a word with Archbishop Klairmant afterward, too. She hadn’t mentioned anything about it to him, either.”

“I didn’t think she had,” Doyal said. “And something I find almost as interesting is that she didn’t ask anyone for a copy of their trial transcripts, either. Despite which she seemed to know more about all of them than we did.”

“That might actually be the most easily explained part of it,” Tartarian observed. Doyal looked at him with an expression of polite incredulity, and the earl chuckled. “Don’t forget, it was Seijin Merlin’s agents here in Corisande that put us onto the plot in the first place, and we still don’t have any idea how they gathered some of the information they gave us.” He shrugged. “All we do know is that every bit of that information checked out when we investigated. I think it’s entirely possible they may have kept back some facts and suspicions they figured couldn’t be proven in a court, and I don’t imagine Merlin would have many reservations about sharing something like that with Empress Sharleyan.”

“I suppose that could explain it,” Doyal said in a tone which implied he believed nothing of the sort, and Tartarian pointed an index finger at him.

“Don’t you go shooting holes in my perfectly good theory unless you’ve got one to replace it with, young man,” he said severely. Doyal, who wasn’t that many years Tartarian’s junior, laughed, and Tartarian shook his head. But then his expression sobered. “And don’t go shooting holes in my theory until you’ve got an explanation that won’t scare the shit out of me when you come up with it, either.”

“She really is more than a little frightening, isn’t she?” Gahrvai said into the small silence Tartarian’s last sentence had produced. Lightning flashed again overhead, close enough this time that the thunderclap seemed to rattle the opened garden windows in their frames.

“I’m not sure frightening is exactly the right word,” his father objected, but Tartarian made a moderately rude noise in his throat.

“It’ll do until we can come up with a better one, Rysel,” he said.

“I think a lot of it was Archbishop Maikel’s fault,” Doyal put in. The others looked at him and he raised his right hand, palm uppermost as if he were releasing an invisible bird. “Remember how he reacted after that assassination attempt in Tellesberg Cathedral. According to the reports, he didn’t even hesitate-just went ahead and celebrated mass with the assassins’ blood and brains splashed all over his vestments. Frankly, I had my doubts about the stories at the time; now I’m starting to think it must be something in the water in Charis!”

“You may be righter about that than you think you are, Charlz,” Gahrvai said ruefully. Doyal raised an eyebrow, and Gahrvai shrugged. “Don’t forget, before he celebrated mass, he also rebuked the members of his congregation who wanted to go out and start stringing up Temple Loyalists in revenge. Does that remind you of anything?”

Doyal gazed at him for a moment, then nodded, and Gahrvai nodded back while his mind replayed the chaos and confusion of the assassination attempt.

The only thing he’d been able to think when the would-be killer shouted was that Cayleb Ahrmahk would never forgive Corisande for allowing his wife to be murdered on her very throne. There’d been no way the man could miss, not from a range of no more than fifteen feet. Gahrvai would have been one of the first to admit that it was far harder to fire a pistol accurately than most people probably believed, especially when someone was gripped by the excitement and terror of a moment like that. Still, at that range? The man could almost have reached out and touched her with the pistol’s muzzle before he pulled the trigger!

But his fears-like the assassin, apparently-had failed to reckon with Merlin Athrawes. Despite all the stories Gahrvai had heard, and despite the things he knew firsthand were true, he would never have believed any mortal man could move that quickly. The seijin clearly hadn’t seen anything coming before the assassin produced his weapon. Despite that, the first two shots had sounded as one, and his bullet had hit the man who’d been identified as Bahrynd Laybrahn (although Gahrvai sincerely doubted that had been his true name) before “Laybrahn” could fire his second shot. The smear of lead where Laybrahn’s second bullet smashed into the marble floor was barely two feet in front of where his body had fallen, and Spynsair Ahrnahld’s left shoulder had been grazed by the ricochet before it buried itself in the ceiling.

Gahrvai had been in more than his fair share of chaotic, violent situations. He knew how impressions could blur, how a man could be absolutely positive of what he’d seen… and yet absolutely wrong about what had actually happened. And Merlin had reacted so quickly, moved with such speed once he did see the weapon, that he’d seemed almost to have been teleported by a wizard’s spell out of some children’s tale. But still, granting all of that, it simply didn’t seem possible Sharleyan could have been missed.

Yet when Captain Athrawes rolled aside, coming up on one knee from where he’d covered her protectively with his own body, she’d been unhurt. Well, perhaps not totally unhurt, which certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone. Merlin had been more concerned with protecting her from assassins than gentleness, and the weight of an armored man his size coming down that hard would have been enough to knock the breath out of anyone.

From Sharleyan’s expression and the tightness of her shoulders when Merlin assisted her to her feet, Gahrvai had been certain for one heart-stopping moment that she had been hit. She’d leaned to her left, left hand pressed hard against her ribs, and her face had been pale and strained. But then she’d straightened, drawn an obviously cautious breath, and shaken her head-hard-at something Merlin must have said into her ear.