“Aye, My Lord.”
“Draft me a dispatch to that effect. Then let me take a look at it before we send it off.”
“Aye, aye, My Lord.”
The Marine saluted and stepped into the command tent where Hanth’s clerks waited at their portable writing desks.
It was nice to have a properly equipped field headquarters, at least, the earl reflected. It would be even nicer to get the heavy artillery he truly needed, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not after the frayed boot lace upon which he’d been forced to operate the summer before.
Besides, the truth was that even without the heavy angles he was far, far happier with the way this year was shaping up. His army had advanced over four hundred and fifty miles from Thesmar following the high road—well over six hundred, up the course of the Seridahn—in less than three months and driven Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr from every position he’d tried to hold. Unfortunately, Rychtyr had figured out how to slow things up since then.
The key to his rapid advance had been HMS Delthak’s heavy guns. His mortars and thirty-pounders were effective enough in the open, but as Sympsyn had just pointed out, they weren’t powerful enough to demolish properly designed entrenchments. Delthak’s six-inchers could do that … if the thoroughgoing destruction of the Evyrtyn locks hadn’t barred the ironclad from the canal. It would have taken Commodore Parkyr and his engineers five-days, at best, to repair the canal locks, and the effort would have been pointless. The town of Fyrayth, a hundred and ninety miles west of Evyrtyn, was the highest elevation along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal. That made its locks the key to the entire eastern portion of the canal, and as long as they were in Rychtyr’s hands, he controlled the water level in the canal.
Which explained why there was precious little water in it at the moment.
Without Delthak in support, and without enough of the Army’s heavy angles to replace her firepower, pushing Rychtyr farther back promised to be an extraordinarily unpleasant task. Rychtyr couldn’t stop the Army of Thesmar from ultimately working its way around the Dohlarans’ flanks, but he could make any frontal assaults unbearably costly. It was going to be like some formal dance where everyone knew the steps; Hanth could already see that much. Unless Rychtyr was obliging enough to screw up and let the Charisians and their Siddarmarkian allies actually cut the canal behind him before he retreated, Hanth’s troops were going to wear out a lot of perfectly good boots over the coming several months.
And if the bastards keep getting more of those new rifles of theirs forward, it’s only going to get worse, he reflected grimly. I’m not looking forward to seeing proper angle-guns in their hands, either. If the seijins are right about how soon they’re going to start turning up we’re going to have to be damned careful about how aggressively we go after them.
He grimaced. The good news was that nothing he was going to face was likely to be better than his own men’s weapons; the bad news was that what he was going to face was no longer going to be inferior to his own men’s weapons.
But we’ll still be moving in the right direction, whatever the bastards come up with, he reminded himself. That’s a hell of a lot more than Rychtyr can say!
.IX.
HMS Destiny, 54, and Manchyr Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande, Empire of Charis
“It’s different this time, isn’t it, Hektor?” Baron Sarmouth’s voice was quiet as he stood beside Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk on HMS Destiny’s quarterdeck.
“Oh, in a lot of ways, Sir,” Hektor replied, never taking his eyes from the towers and windows of Manchyr Palace. “Just being able to tell what the weather looks like ahead of us is going to be a huge advantage, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Sarmouth said dryly. “And, frankly, if you want to talk about your Merlin’s magic, I’m inclined to think weather’s going to be the least of its advantages.” He shook his head and let his left hand rest lightly on the youthful duke’s right shoulder. “I’m talking about who’s going to be waiting for you when you get home this time. And who’s likely to be waiting with her, frankly,” he ended much more gently.
“I know.” Hektor glanced at him and smiled briefly, then returned his gaze to the palace falling slowly astern as Destiny and the rest of her squadron ghosted out into Manchyr Bay’s broad waters on the fitful wings of a light topgallant breeze. They were making no more than a knot or two, which Lieutenant Aplyn-Ahrmahk had just discovered only made the slow, drawn-out process of separation even worse.
“I know,” he repeated. “That’s why I’d rather talk about ‘Merlin’s magic.’”
Sarmouth squeezed the shoulder under his hand and nodded. What young Hektor was feeling at the moment was another reason he himself had never married, he reflected. And yet, despite the misery the young man beside him was experiencing, the admiral envied him, too.
Irys hadn’t come out to Destiny to bid her husband farewell. Any one of the royal barges could have lifted her from the palace’s water gate out to Sarmouth’s anchored flagship, but the Regency Council’s disapproval of any such notion had been remarkably firm. Sarmouth doubted they were going to be able to keep her wrapped up in cotton silk because of her pregnancy for very long, but that wasn’t going to stop them from trying. Besides, Earl Anvil Rock and Archbishop Klairmant had played unscrupulously upon the fact that she was now Prince Daivyn’s regent, as well. As such, her responsibilities to the Crown precluded her from running avoidable risks.
Despite that, she probably would have accompanied Hektor to Destiny if Empress Sharleyan hadn’t added her own weight to the scales. Sharleyan had no fear the barge would suddenly sink amid the six-inch wavelets of Manchyr Harbor, but she’d had her own experience taking leave of sailors potentially headed in harm’s way. It would be better all around, she’d said firmly, for Irys to kiss Hektor goodbye in the privacy of their own palace suite and then let him go.
And, Sarmouth felt certain, at this very moment Sharleyan, Sarmouth, and Nimue Chwaeriau were making certain the princess had plenty of company to keep her occupied. For that matter—his lips twitched on the brink of a smile—Irys was probably fully occupied consoling Prince Daivyn! The boy’s misery when he’d discovered his brother-in-law was headed back to sea would have melted the hardest heart. No doubt many of his Corisandian subjects would have sneered at his sorrow over Hektor’s departure and seen getting Hektor out of Manchyr as a major plus. The idea that their prince could actually burst into tears at the thought of being parted from a member of the Charisian imperial family would have struck those Corisandians as a self-serving pro-Charis lie.
But those scoffers hadn’t watched that same prince and Hektor aboard this very ship following Daivyn and Irys’ rescue from Delferahk. Or on the voyage from Charis to Chisholm and then on to Corisande, for that matter.
True enough, he thought, but not really much to the point, is it? Hektor may be trying to distract himself from leaving Irys—and Daivyn, be fair—behind, but you’re trying to distract yourself from “Merlin’s magic” by focusing on that, instead, aren’t you, Dunkyn?
And he was. There were times—probably not more than two or three dozen of them a day, he thought wryly—when it all still struck him as more than he could possibly take in. He had no idea where his own beliefs would ultimately settle, and an occasional icy wind of doubt—doubt that what he’d been told could really be true—still blew through the marrow of his bones. In the end, he suspected, even more than duty, more than his own oaths to his monarchs, more than his devotion to his navy and his empire—more even than his faith that Maikel Staynair was a true man of God, whatever else he might be—what had truly carried him across the divide between rejection and belief had been the hazel eyes of a young woman who’d stolen her way into his heart.
I wonder how many other hard-bitten, practical decisions have been made on just that sort of basis? And is it really such a bad way to do it? When it all comes down to a decision point you can’t avoid—when you have to choos
e, yet the evidence before your eyes disproves all the things you’ve ever believed and all the things you’ve ever believed say the evidence must be false—isn’t it the heart that matters? And if that young woman could rise above all the reasons she had to hate the House of Ahrmahk to give her allegiance to Cayleb and Sharleyan’s true cause, how could I not give it mine, as well?
He squeezed Hektor’s shoulder again, then tucked his hands behind him and began slowly pacing up and down the weather side of his quarterdeck.
* * *
“Well, so far so good,” Cayleb observed over the com. “As long as he stays converted, of course.”
“Oh, he’ll stay converted,” Sharleyan reassured him.
She sat in a wicker rocking chair on one of Manchyr Palace’s balconies with Alahnah dozing in her lap. The princess had celebrated her third birthday just before Hektor left for Destiny, and she’d exhausted herself thoroughly. Thoroughly enough to dissipate the sugar buzz of far too much chocolate cake, in fact, and thank God for it! Mother and daughter were shaded by the balcony awning and Sharleyan rocked her little girl gently as she simultaneously watched the image projected on her contact lens and the tan and gray sails moving slowly away from her.
“He’s smart,” she continued, “and deep inside, where it matters, he knows we told him the truth. We all come at it a little differently, but we’ve all been in the same place, haven’t we? Whatever pain he’s feeling right now is the pain of disillusionment—of bereavement, maybe—not of doubt. I don’t know where he’s ultimately going to come down on faith in God, but I’m pretty sure I know where he’s going to come down on faith in the ‘Archangels,’ Cayleb.”
“You’re probably right. I have to admit, though, that I’m just as happy having Hektor along to ride herd on him, for a while at least. I wish it didn’t mean parting him and Irys, though.”
“Hektor’s not much of a court lapdog, love. He’d stay and do his duty, and he didn’t want to leave Irys any more than she wanted him to leave, but he’s like you. He needs to be out and doing.”
“Which I most definitely am not at the moment,” Cayleb said sourly.
“That’s because you know when you have to stay put and do your duty, instead.” Sharleyan smiled at his grimace and shook her head. “It’s only fair, in a way. I haven’t seen you in a lot longer than Irys hasn’t seen Hektor. And Mairah hasn’t seen Hauwerd, either. We’re all doing our duty where we have to be, and most of us would damned well rather be somewhere else.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I know.”
They sat in comforting silence for several moments, then Cayleb shook himself.
“Speaking about doing our duty. Have you had any more thoughts about how you’re going to be in three places at once?”
Sharleyan snorted in amusement, but he had a point. In fact, it was a very good point. It was well past time for her to return to Tellesberg as the imperial constitution required, but constitutional requirements didn’t always leave much scope for other responsibilities involved in making certain the empire established by that constitution remained intact. And, at the moment, there were more political problem children—in this instance, named “Corisande” and “Chisholm”—than either of them could have liked. Corisande remained the newest and most fragile unit of the Empire of Charis, still in the process of integration, and certain nobles in the western portion of Chisholm were gradually working their way towards what could only be construed as open treason.
“Actually, I have,” she told him. “I’m not too sure I’m not making virtues out of necessity in a couple of places, but it seems to me that I need to leave Manchyr and Cherayth to manage themselves and go home to Tellesberg. I know we can rely on Trahvys and Domynyk to keep an eye on things for us there, but there really is a Constitution, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” he agreed, and his tone was more than a little grumpy. “There are times I’m inclined to think Rayjhis was right about that ‘brilliant notion’ of mine, though.”
“It made a lot of sense when we were talking just about Charis and Chisholm, love.” Sharleyan smiled and shook her head. “If it wasn’t a ‘brilliant notion,’ that’s only because you weren’t thinking big enough. When you proposed it, though, it struck exactly the right note, and you know it. Moving the official seat of government back and forth was the surest way to reassure my Chisholmians that we weren’t going to become just a Charisian appendage.”
“Oh, I know that. At the same time, you have to admit that it could’ve turned into a colossal blunder if Merlin hadn’t ended up telling us about Owl and providing us with coms. Even with those advantages, it’s inconvenient as hell to have the two of us dashing around and continually leaving either Charis or Chisholm without a resident monarch. Or, in this case, leaving both of them without resident monarchs for months on end!”
“Admit it,” she teased. “What really ticks you off about it is that the two of us haven’t been in the same place since you left for Siddarmark and I left for Chisholm. Coms are all very well, but what you are really missing are the … less cerebral advantages of face-to-face ‘conversations’ when we’re both in the same place.”
“Well, I am a sailor,” Cayleb pointed out. “And now that I think about it, Alahnah is three years old. I think it’s time we provided a backup heir, don’t you? Purely as a dynastic duty, I mean. Besides, she’s going to be outnumbered sometime around November. We need to start catching up, especially if Irys and Hektor are going to specialize in twins like his parents! Unfair advantage, that’s what it is!”
“‘Dynastic duty,’ is it?” Sharleyan snorted. “What was that quote Nimue gave me the other day? The one from Queen Vyktohriah or whoever? Something about ‘Close your eyes and think of England,’ wasn’t it?”
“She only told you about it because she was born and raised in that Great Britain place,” Cayleb retorted. “Obviously that makes it the most important nation Old Earth ever had! And the other reason she told you is because she has a wicked, low, disrespectful, salacious sense of humor which is no respecter of our imperial dignity.”
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Sharleyan agreed with a grin. “But the other reason she told me was because she knows I miss those ‘less cerebral’ conversations as much as you do.”
“I know she does. And we’re lucky to have her and Merlin—especially to have both of them—even if there are times their so-called sense of humor makes me want to wring their cybernetic necks.”
“You’re a fine one to be talking about anyone else’s sense of humor, Cayleb Ahrmahk!”
“Did I ever say I wasn’t?” Cayleb riposted with a chuckle, but then his expression turned serious once more.
“Leaving aside any question about seijins’ questionable senses of humor, I admit you have a point about the need to get back to Tellesberg. Our people are willing to cut us some slack about that particular constitutional provision because they realize we simply can’t keep a regular schedule when the entire world’s blowing up around our ears, but that doesn’t mean they like it. And it really would be nice, you know, if we could come close to hitting that legally required schedule at least once every, oh, ten or fifteen years. I’m not sure that argument really overrules the ones in favor of leaving you in Manchyr or sending you back to Cherayth, though.”
“Sooner or later, I’m going to have to leave Manchyr, unless we want people to start thinking Daivyn, Irys, and the Regency Council are simply our sock puppets,” Sharleyan retorted, and it was Cayleb’s turn to snort. Merlin had introduced the concept of sock puppets to Alahnah before she could walk, and somehow it had trickled out of the imperial nursery and wormed its way into the Charisian branch of Safehold’s venerable traditions of puppet theater.
“In some ways, Irys and Hektor’s marriage only makes that particular problem worse,” she continued. “Those who are inclined to see us as puppet masters see their marriage as one more hook to help us manipulate her and Daivyn.”
“We don?
??t really need to ‘manipulate’ anyone,” Cayleb pointed out mildly. “Daivyn’s sworn fealty, and Corisande is now officially part of the Empire, if I remember correctly. I believe that means we can simply issue instructions without any manipulative shilly-shallying around.”
“Of course he did, of course it is, and of course we could … in theory, at least. But we wouldn’t be having this conversation, love of my life, if we didn’t both realize it’s still a new, fragile sort of union. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong, and that’s where the perception of us as puppet masters comes into play. We don’t need to give any fresh Paitryk Hainrees any more ammunition to distort for propaganda purposes than we can help, now do we?”
He shook his head, and she shrugged.
“I suppose I could make a case for hovering here until the children are born, but I’m sure those naturally suspicious people we’ve just been talking about would denounce that as only another cynical excuse to let me stay here and maintain my iron grip on everything.”
“A point,” Cayleb acknowledged. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Corisande’s still awfully new to the Charisian fold, as you just also pointed out. So there’s something to be said for iron grips at the moment.”
“Yes, there is, and that’s one reason we’ve got to bring Coris into the circle,” Sharleyan said positively. “If there’s anyone in the world better equipped—and better informed—to keep an eye on things here than he is, I certainly can’t think of who it might be! And if we’re going to add him to the circle, we need to do it—and give him time to settle down with the new reality—before Maikel and I leave for Tellesberg. In fact, Maikel, Irys, Nimue, and I should probably see to that in the next day or two. Have the Brethren come around to our viewpoint?”