David Weber - How firm a foundation

Of course, those worried colleagues of his didn’t know everything he knew about Paityr Wylsynn.

“Come in, Father!” Mahklyn held out his right hand. “It’s an honor to welcome you.”

“And it’s a privilege to be here, Doctor.” Wylsynn took the proffered hand, and Mahklyn surveyed the younger man’s expression carefully. Wylsynn was obviously aware of his intense regard, but he only looked back, meeting the older man’s eyes levelly. “I’ve been away from my own office too long,” he continued, “but there are times when anyone needs a bit of a sabbatical. A retreat to think things through and settle oneself back down, you might say.”

“I understand entirely, Father. Please, have a seat.”

Mahklyn escorted Wylsynn to the armchairs arranged across a small table from one another near one of the large office’s windows. They sat and Bowave set a tray on the table between them. It held two tall, delicate glasses and a crystal pitcher beaded with moisture, and Wylsynn’s eyebrows rose as he beheld it.

“A sinful luxury, I know, Father,” Mahklyn said wryly. “For decades I was perfectly happy living a properly ascetic scholarly existence in the old College down by the docks. Then it burned to the ground and His Majesty insisted we relocate to the Palace. Little did I realize that would be just the first crack in my armor of austerity!”

He poured chilled lemonade into the glasses, and ice-actual ice, Wylsynn realized-tapped musically against the inside of the pitcher.

“His Majesty insists we take advantage of his hospitality,” the doctor continued, handing a glass to his guest, “which includes the royal icehouse. I tried manfully, I assure you, to resist the temptation of that sinful luxury, but my younger granddaughter Eydyth discovered its existence and I was doomed. Doomed, I tell you!”

Wylsynn laughed and accepted the glass, then sipped gracefully. Ice and icehouses had been much more easily come by in the cool northern land of his birth than in excessively sunny Charis. There was ice on the very tallest mountains even here in Charis and even in summer, but getting to it was far more difficult, and there were no conveniently frozen winter lakes from which it might be harvested, either. That made it a scandalously pricey luxury in Tellesberg.

“Will there be anything else, Doctor?” Bowave inquired, and Mahklyn shook his head.

“No, Dairak. I think the Father and I will manage just fine. If I do need anything, I’ll call, I promise.”

“Of course.” Bowave bobbed a bow in Mahklyn’s direction, then bowed rather more formally to Wylsynn. “Father Paityr,” he said, and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“This is good,” Wylsynn said, taking another swallow of lemonade. “And I do appreciate the ice, although it’s really too expensive to be wasting on me.”

“That’s what I told Eydyth when she discovered it,” Mahklyn said dryly. “Unfortunately, young Zhan was in the vicinity at the time.” He rolled his eyes. “I think Princess Mahrya’s a very good influence on him in most ways, but he’s acquiring the habit of largesse, especially when she’s looking and he can impress her with it. Mind you, she isn’t impressed by it-she’s too much her parents’ daughter for that sort of nonsense-but he doesn’t realize that yet, and he’s a teenager who’s discovered just how attractive his fiancee actually is. So when he heard me telling Eydyth I thought it would be a bad idea, he insisted we make use of it. And, to be fair, if you pack it in enough sawdust you can actually ship ice all the way from Chisholm to Tellesberg in the middle of summer and get here with as much as half of your original cargo. Which, given the price in Tellesberg, is enough to make a very healthy profit!”

“I suspect there’s going to be an even stronger market for ice-makers in Charis than there is for air-conditioning, when the time finally comes,” Paitryk said, looking across at his host.

Mahklyn sat very still for a moment, looking back at him thoughtfully. Then he gave a slow nod.

“I imagine there is, Father. And we could probably actually get away with a compressed-air plant to manufacture it without worrying about the Proscriptions. I’m sure Edwyrd could even power it with one of his waterwheels.”

“Please, Doctor.” Wylsynn closed his eyes and shuddered theatrically. “I can already hear the Temple Loyalists’ outrage! Much as I like cold drinks, I’d really prefer to avoid that battle if we can. After all,” his eyes opened again, meeting Mahklyn’s, “we’re going to have so many others to fight first.”

“True.” Mahklyn nodded again. “May I ask how you feel about that, Father?”

“About kicking over the traces where the Proscriptions are concerned?” Wylsynn gave a short, sharp crack of laughter. “That doesn’t bother me at all, trust me! Not now. But if you mean how do I feel about discovering the truth about the Church and the ‘Archangels,’ that’s a bit more complicated. There’s still a part of me that expects the Rakurai to come crashing through the window any minute now for my daring to even question, far less reject, the will of Langhorne. And there’s another part of me that wants to march straight into the Cathedral next Wednesday and proclaim the truth to the entire congregation. And there’s another part of me that’s just plain pissed off at God for letting all this happen.”

He paused, and then sat back in his chair and laughed again, far more gently, as he saw Mahklyn’s expression.

“Sorry, Doctor. I imagine that was a little more answer than you really wanted.”

“Not so much more than I wanted as more than I expected, Father. I’m relieved to hear you’re angry, though. It certainly beats some other reactions I could think of… as long as the anger’s directed at the right targets, of course.”

“It took me a while to accept that same conclusion, Doctor, and I won’t pretend I’m as comfortable as I was back in the days of my blissful ignorance. But I’ve also discovered at least a shadow of Archbishop Maikel’s serenity lurking in the depths of my own soul, although it’s going to be a while yet before I can be as… tranquil about all of this as he is. On the other hand, I realized I wouldn’t be angry at God as I am unless I still believed in Him, which was something of a relief. And along the way, I’ve also discovered my belief is even more precious, in some ways, because it no longer rests upon the incontrovertible proof of the historical record. I almost suspect that that’s the true secret of the Archbishop’s faith.”

“In what way?” Mahklyn asked with genuine interest. He’d found himself slipping into what Owl’s library records would have described as a Deist mindset, and he didn’t know whether or not to envy Maikel Staynair’s fiercer, more personal faith.

“The real secret of the strength of Archbishop Maikel’s faith is almost absurdly simple,” Wylsynn told him. “In fact, he’s explained it to us dozens of times in sermons, every time he tells us there comes a point at which any child of God has to decide what he truly believes. Decide what he believes, Doctor. Not simply accept, not simply never bother to question, based on ‘what everyone knows’ or on The Testimonies or ‘the Archangel Chihiro’s’ Holy Writ, but decide for himself.” The young man who’d been a Schuelerite shrugged. “It’s that simple and that hard, and I’m not quite there yet.”

“Neither am I,” Mahklyn confessed.

“I suspect very few people in history, whether here on Safehold or back on Old Terra, have ever matched our Archbishop’s personal faith,” Wylsynn pointed out.

“A personal faith which, thank God, doesn’t prevent him from being one of the most pragmatic men I’ve ever met,” Mahklyn said.