David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I see.”

Sahlavahn tilted his head to one side, regarding his cousin speculatively. Mahndrayn’s intensity and energy frequently fooled people into thinking he was impetuous, or at least impulsive, but Sahlavahn knew better. While he might be prone to rushing off in two or three directions at once, the commander had a remarkable ability to keep everything he was doing organized, balanced, and far more tightly scheduled than anyone else realized. The term “multi-tasking” was one of many which had been lost on Safehold, but if there’d been anyone on the planet it applied to, it would have been Urvyn Mahndrayn. That was something he had in common with Baron Seamount, which was one of the many reasons the two of them complemented one another so well.

But it was also the reason Sahlavahn rather doubted his cousin had “just decided” to drop in on him. True, Big Tirian Island did lie about midway between Helen Island and Port Ithmyn, but Mahndrayn wasn’t the sort to take time off for personal visits when he was on official business. Besides, he and Sahlavahn exchanged letters on a regular basis, so it wasn’t as if they had a lot of private family matters to catch up on.

“Are you going to be here overnight?” he asked, leading the way to the windows overlooking Eydyth Sound, the channel between Big Tirian and the mainland portion of the Duchy of Tirian.

Although Sahlavahn’s command-officially, Navy Powder Mill #3, but more generally known as the Hairatha Mill-was officially part of the port city of Hairatha, it was actually located over a mile north of the main port. For fairly obvious reasons, really, given the nature of what it produced and the quantities in which it produced it. At any given moment, there was a minimum of several hundred tons of gunpowder in the Hairatha Mill’s storage magazines, and no one wanted those magazines too close to a major city. Then there was the minor fact that Hairatha was one of the Navy’s main bases and dockyards. Losing that would have been just a trifle inconvenient, as well, he supposed.

“Probably not overnight,” Mahndrayn said, following him to the window and gazing across the twenty-six-mile-wide sound at the green blur of the mainland. “I’ve got a lot to discuss with Master Howsmyn, and Baron Seamount needs me back at King’s Harbor as quickly as I can get there.”

“I see,” Sahlavahn said again, and turned to face him. “So why do I have the feeling you didn’t come four or five hours out of your way just for a family visit with one of your favorite cousins?”

“Because I didn’t,” Mahndrayn half sighed.

“Then why did you come? Really?” Sahlavahn raised an eyebrow, and Mahndrayn shrugged.

“Because I came across a discrepancy I hope is just a clerical error,” he said.

“You hope it’s a clerical error?”

“Well, if it’s not, then I think we may have a fairly significant problem.”

“You’re beginning to make me nervous, Urvyn,” Sahlavahn said frankly, and Mahndrayn shrugged again. Then he set his briefcase on the window ledge in front of him, opened it, extracted a sheet of paper, and handed it across.

Sahlavahn accepted the sheet, tipped it slightly to catch the better light from the window, and squinted nearsightedly as he looked at it. Then he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face with a perplexed expression.

“This is what you came to see me about?” He waved it gently. “Last month’s production return and shipping summary?”

“Yes,” Mahndrayn said flatly, and Sahlavahn frowned.

“I don’t understand, Urvyn. What about it?”

“It’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Sahlavahn’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s a discrepancy, Trai,” Mahndrayn said. “A forty-five- ton discrepancy.”

“ What? ” Sahlavahn’s frown disappeared and his eyes widened abruptly.

“The amount you shipped doesn’t match the amount you delivered. Look at the numbers for the June fifteenth shipment.” Mahndrayn tapped the top of the sheet. “You loaded one thousand and seventy-five tons of powder in a total of six shipments, but when the individual quantities of each shipment are totaled, they only come to one thousand and thirty tons.” He tapped the foot of the sheet. “There’s forty-five tons missing, Trai.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Sahlavahn said.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Mahndrayn replied. “So I checked the numbers three times, and they came out the same way each time.” He shrugged and smiled crookedly. “You know how I am. I couldn’t get my brain to turn loose of it, so I pulled the detail sheets and went over the numbers in each shipment’s individual consignments one by one. And I found the problem right here, I think.” He leaned over the sheet and found the specific entry he wanted. “Right here. Somebody dropped a decimal point. I think this was supposed to be a fifty-ton consignment, but it’s listed as only five tons.”

“So somebody just made a mistake, is what you’re saying?”

“Like I said, I hope it’s just a clerical error. But this shipment was supposed to come to King’s Harbor, Trai. So I went and checked… and five tons is exactly what we received. So either you have an extra forty-five tons of gunpowder still in inventory here at Hairatha, or else we have forty-five tons of unaccounted for gunpowder floating around somewhere.”

“Langhorne!” Sahlavahn looked at his cousin, face pale. “I hope to God you’re right about its being a clerical error! Give me just a second.”

He crossed to his desk, sat, and pulled a pair of thick ledger books from one of its drawers. He picked up the reading glasses from the corner of his blotter, perched them on the tip of his nose, and consulted the sheet of paper Mahndrayn had handed him. Then he set aside the topmost ledger book, opened the bottom one, and ran his finger down one of the neatly tabulated columns.

“According to the manifest, your ‘missing’ gunpowder came out of Magazine Six,” he said, looking up over the tops of his glasses. His color was a little better, but his expression remained drawn. “Assuming it’s a clerical error and the additional forty-five tons was never loaded, that’s where it should still be. I assume Baron Seamount would like me to go see whether or not it’s still there?”

He managed a wan smile, and Mahndrayn chuckled.

“Actually, I haven’t discussed it with the Baron yet,” he said. “To be honest, I’m almost certain it really is a simple error-we’d certainly only requested five tons, not fifty! -but I figured this was the sort of thing I should make sure about. And since I was going to be headed up this way, it seemed simplest to discuss it with you personally. Assuming it is an error, you’re the one in the best position to straighten it out. And on the off chance that it isn’t an error, that somebody’s playing clever-buggers with our powder shipments, the less attention we draw to it until we’ve figured out what’s going on, the better.”

“Langhorne, Urvyn-you didn’t even mention this to Baron Seamount?” Sahlavahn took off his glasses and shook his head at his cousin. “If someone’s ‘playing clever-buggers’ with something like this, we need to get him and Baron Wave Thunder informed as quickly as possible! That’s a lot of gunpowder!”

“I know. I just wanted to make sure it really was missing before I started running around screaming,” Mahndrayn said. “I mean, clerical error’s far and away the most likely answer, and I didn’t want the Baron- either of the Barons, now that I think about it-to think I was getting hysterical over nothing.”

“Well, I suppose I can understand that.”

Sahlavahn closed the ledger and stood, resting one hand on its cover for a moment while he frowned down at it, his eyes anxious. His face remained pale and drawn, and he seemed to be thinking hard, Mahndrayn noticed, and it was hard to blame him. As he’d said, forty-five tons was a lot of gunpowder-enough for almost ten thousand full-charge shots from a long thirty-pounder-and the notion that he might have lost track of that much explosives had to be a sobering reflection. Then the captain drew a deep breath and crossed the office to take his swordbelt from the wall rack. He buckled it and settled it methodically into place, took down his hat from the same rack, and turned to his cousin.