Rayno nodded and forbore to mention that the Inquisition had been as firmly convinced as anyone in Dohlar that the five galleons Thirsk had assigned to escort the prisoners would be fully adequate to the task. Clyntahn himself had approved the transport plans … and that, too, was something it would be … impolitic to bring up.
“If not aboard a Dohlaran vessel, then how, Your Grace? We could move them overland, but it would almost certainly be faster—and easier on the wounded—to move them by sea.”
“Allayn must have at least one or two galleons of his own left,” Clyntahn growled.
“I can certainly look into that possibility, Your Grace,” Rayno said.
In fact, virtually all of the Navy of God’s surviving galleons had been transferred to the Royal Dohlaran Navy or Imperial Harchongese Navy once the Sword of Schueler had forced Maigwair to concentrate his full attention on raising, training, and equipping the Army of God. That was probably another of those small matters with which it would be wiser not to burden the Grand Inquisitor at the moment, however.
“And then there’s that bastard Thirsk,” Clyntahn growled. One meaty fist smacked down on his desktop. “Don’t think for a moment I don’t know who to thank for the defeatism that led those gallant heroes to surrender Mother Church’s prisoners back to the heretics! And turn over consecrated priests of God for murder, as well!” The Grand Inquisitor’s face darkened again. “I’ll bet every frigging officer in the entire Royal Dohlaran Navy knows Thirsk never wanted those heretical sons-of-bitches handed over to us in the first place! No wonder they gave up so easily!”
A casualty rate of over seventy percent didn’t exactly strike Wyllym Rayno as giving up “so easily,” but that was yet another point it would be wiser to leave unmade. And in fairness to Clyntahn’s ire, those casualties had been suffered by the escorting galleons, not the transport crews who’d actually handed the captured heretics back to their friends. Of course, exactly what else they’d been supposed to do when they found themselves outnumbered seven- or eight-to-one by heavy galleons was a bit of a puzzle. He knew what Clyntahn thought they should have done, but Rayno was realist enough to know it was far easier to exhort someone else to die in Mother Church’s name from the comfort of a Temple office than it was to face that cold, grim reality one’s self.
And whether or not they acted reasonably is really beside the point, isn’t it, Wyllym? The point is that examples must be made, especially when so many of God’s faithful are beginning to … question the inevitability of Mother Church’s victory. Which brings up another rather delicate consideration.
“Your Grace, while I agree with you entirely about the no doubt unfortunate consequences stemming from the example of Earl Thirsk’s intransigence on this question, there is one other point which must, perhaps, be considered.”
Clyntahn glared at him. He recognized that calm, reasonable tone and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever Rayno was about to say. He considered simply refusing to let the archbishop say it. Tempting as that was, however, he also knew Rayno was the only man in the entire Office of the Inquisition who was even remotely willing to risk his temper by telling him something Rayno believed he needed to hear whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“And that point would be what, precisely, Wyllym?” he asked acidly after a moment.
“The Kaudzhu Narrows, Your Grace.” Rayno bent his head in a slight bow, then straightened. “I’m afraid many of the Faithful still see that battle as Mother Church’s one clear, unambiguous victory out of this entire year,” he reminded his superior in a careful tone. “To move precipitously against the admiral they believe produced that victory might cause questions and … uncertainty on their part. I fear that hasn’t changed since the last time we discussed this matter.”
“I am so sick and tired of hearing about how ‘irreplaceable’ that miserable, motherless Dohlaran bastard is.”
Clyntahn’s almost conversational tone was far more frightening to Wyllym Rayno than his customary choleric ranting. But the Grand Inquisitor inhaled sharply and shook himself.
“On the other hand, that’s a valid point,” he acknowledged. “And not just about Thirsk, for that matter, damn it. If we drag those other bastards in and give them to the Punishment for their failure, it’s likely to raise some of those same questions, isn’t it? After all, they’re in the same frigging navy’s he’s in, so that makes all of them Shan-wei-damned heroes, too, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly, Your Grace. Perhaps not as much as it would in Thirsk’s case, but the possibility should probably be considered.”
Clyntahn’s jaw clenched, yet once again he made himself sit silently for several seconds, thinking about it.
“All right,” he said then. “First, I want you to draft a message to Archbishop Trumahn, Bishop Executor Wylsynn, Father Ahbsahlahn, and Bishop Staiphan. Inform them that I’ve determined that it’s more important Mother Church’s justice be truly just in this case than that it be as swift as possible. Tell them I’ve further determined that, given the serious wounds suffered by so many of the convoy escort’s officers and men, it would be wisest to wait until all of them are fit to travel before sending any of them to Zion. I’m authorizing Father Ahbsahlahn and Bishop Staiphan to take statements from all of the survivors and begin compiling a comprehensive report on this debacle immediately, and I have no intention of acting until I’ve received that report.”
Despite decades of experience, Rayno felt his eyebrows rising, and Clyntahn grunted a harsh, humorless laugh.
“I’m not giving them a pass, Wyllym, whatever they may think when they hear about my instructions. They will answer for this—fully, right here in the Plaza of Martyrs—but you’re right. Given how important the Kaudzhu Narrows battle’s proving in the struggle to sustain the hearts and minds of Mother Church’s children, it would be wiser to … delay the day of accounting, shall we say? It’s clear enough Allayn and Rainbow Waters are determined to dig in where they are for the winter, so we’re unlikely to see any stirring victories before spring. The Kaudzhu Narrows may be the only thing we have to keep the Faithful’s hearts warm over the winter. There’ll be time enough to settle with these useless excuses for naval officers after we’ve taken the field next spring and kicked the heretics’ arses on land for a change. In fact, I want you to spend some of that winter quietly putting the pieces in place for Thirsk to accompany his loyal subordinates to Zion next summer. I’ve got a ledger entry or two to settle with him, too.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Rayno bowed again. “I’m sure the Office of Inquisition can develop the evidence to justify moving against him at a … more propitious time.”
“Yes, but I don’t trust that slippery little prick,” Clyntahn growled. “He’s too damned good at surviving, and he and General Ahlverez—” the Grand Inquisitor’s tone made the rank title an obscenity “—seem to be getting a little too friendly for my taste. I’m not convinced the pair of them haven’t been looking over their shoulders at Desnair and thinking about how the Desnairians are running for the exit. I think Thirsk would love to do the same thing with Dohlar, and given how badly Ahlverez fucked up by the numbers in the South March, Thirsk might well be able to convince him to go along with the idea!”
“Perhaps he might, Your Grace. But he is just an earl, and one with enemies of his own on the Royal Council.”
“We’ve just decided he’s also such a successful admiral and so frigging important we can’t simply order him to Zion,” the Grand Inquisitor pointed out icily. “If that’s true for us here in Zion, don’t you think it might also have a little bearing on how much … influence he might wield in Dohlar?”
Personally, Rayno strongly doubted Earl Thirsk was likely to succeed in convincing even his own strongest supporters, like the Duke of Fern, to form some sort of cabal opposed to Mother Church’s commands. As for the Duke of Thorast or his political allies, Thirsk would have a hard time convincing them water was wet! Still, the archbishop was
n’t prepared to completely rule out the possibility Clyntahn seemed to be suggesting.
“Is there some measure you’d like me to take to discourage any disaffection on Earl Thirsk’s part, Your Grace?”
“Yes, there is.” Clyntahn smiled thinly. “I believe it’s time we invited the Earl’s daughters to make their pilgrimage to the Temple.”
.III.
Claw Island, Sea of Harchong
Guns thudded in salute, wreathing Claw Island’s barren, sun-scorched hillsides in gunsmoke as the four galleons ghosted out of North Channel and into the waters of Hardship Bay. The protective berms of the onetime Dohlaran batteries, captured when Claw Island was retaken from the Royal Dohlaran Navy, were lined with wildly cheering Marines and Imperial Charisian Navy seamen, and seabirds and wyverns eddied about the heavens, crying out in protest of the hullabaloo rising from the island’s human occupants.
Sir Lewk Cohlmyn, the Earl of Sharpfield, stood on the platform of one of the waterfront observation towers, gazing through his double-glass. He’d stood there for the past two hours as the tall, weather-stained pyramids of canvas resolved themselves into individual sails and the ships beneath them. Now they were close enough he could pick out individual men on their decks, see the rows of topmen spaced out along their yards. A slow, thundering salute to his own admiral’s streamer rippled from the lead galleon, HMS Vindicator, and a fresh wave of cheers roared up from the crowds of men gathered along the harbor seawall to welcome her home.
Sharpfield lowered the double-glass and blinked hard. For some reason, it was difficult to see.
After a moment, he inhaled deeply and turned to the dark-haired, dark-eyed lieutenant at his elbow.
“I never would have expected even Baron Sarmouth to pull off something like this, Mahrak,” he said. “Never in a thousand years.”
“The Baron does seem to make something of a habit out of pulling people out of tight places, doesn’t he, My Lord?” Lieutenant Tympyltyn smiled wryly. “Of course, this was a rather larger number of people, I suppose.”
“Not large enough,” Sharpfield said, then sighed heavily. “No, that’s not right. It’s an incredible accomplishment to get this many of our people back again. It’s just that we’ve lost so many no one will ever be able to get back.”
His flag lieutenant nodded somberly. Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht had sailed from Talisman Island with fifteen galleons, four schooners, and over eighty-four hundred men. Only three of those galleons and one of those schooners had survived, and according to the dispatch Sarmouth had sent ahead aboard HMS Sojourn, there were only four hundred and eighty-seven survivors aboard those incoming galleons. The other eight thousand men were dead, killed in battle or dead of wounds afterward … or of neglect and brutality, like the seventeen men who’d died in Prodigal Lass’ filthy, reeking hold.
And that number didn’t include the five hundred men who’d died with Kahrltyn Haigyl aboard HMS Dreadnought.
Sharpfield felt a familiar stab of pain as the thought of Haigyl and his magnificent ship ran through him, and he looked at the returning galleons once more. Sarmouth had remained on station at Talisman Island, but he’d sent all three of Ahbaht’s surviving galleons—including Firestorm, now that her immediate repair needs had been met—to carry his surviving men home. The fourth galleon flew the Charisian standard above the green wyvern on the red field of Dohlar. Sarmouth had retained HMS Truculent when he dispatched Prodigal Lass back to Gorath with the survivors of Captain Ohkamohto’s crews. He’d needed the extra passenger space, although he hadn’t said why he’d kept Truculent instead of Prodigal Lass. His reasoning seemed evident reading between the lines of his tersely factual dispatch, however. The prisoners aboard Truculent had been treated with something as close to humanity as any Charisian was likely to find in the hands of the Church of God Awaiting’s defenders. Those aboard Prodigal Lass had not.
Sarmouth had made a point of praising Commander Urwyn Guhstahvsyn and Commander Rubyn Mychysyn in his dispatch. More than that, he’d specifically mentioned the way in which Mychysyn had prevented Tymythy Maikyn from committing one last atrocity against the prisoners in his custody. Yet none of that could undo what Maikyn had done to those prisoners first. It wasn’t all that surprising, Sharpfield thought, that Sarmouth had released the ship which had been a floating chamber of horror for the Charisians aboard it and retained the one aboard which they’d been decently treated.
He watched the galleons’ canvas vanishing as sails were furled. They continued slowly forward under jibs and spankers alone, losing speed steadily. Then white water spouted under their bows as the waiting anchors were dropped, and he nodded.
“I believe it’s time we headed down to dockside ourselves, Mahrak,” he said.
* * *
“You did good, Dunkyn,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said quietly over the com as he watched the returning prisoners’ tumultuous welcome. “You and Hektor both did. Thank you.”
“Even with the SNARCs, we were lucky, Your Majesty,” Sarmouth said frankly. He stood on Destiny’s sternwalk with Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk, savoring a cigar as they gazed out over the galleon’s bubbling wake. “And we couldn’t have managed it if everyone hadn’t done his job exactly right.”
“Yes, they did. And when something like that happens, it’s never the result of blind chance,” Sir Domynyk Staynair commented from his predawn flagship in Tellesberg Harbor. “It happens because the men and officers involved were trained to do their jobs ‘exactly right,’ and you know it.”
“There’s something to that,” Cayleb agreed. “In fact, there’s a lot to that.”
“That letter of yours is likely to turn up the Inquisition’s wick under Thirsk, too,” Phylyp Ahzgood put in. “That was a nice touch, Sir Dunkyn.”
“I agree,” Nahrmahn Baytz said. “Rayno’s probably smart enough to realize that’s exactly what it was intended to do. Clyntahn’s certainly smart enough, but he’s too invested in hating anything to do with Charis—and in distrusting anyone on his own side with anything resembling a moral spine—to think about it. Your little note’s going to go a long way towards undermining any confidence he still has in Thirsk, and that can’t be a bad thing from our perspective.”
“All that’s probably true, but to be honest, I was less concerned with ‘turning up the wick’ for Thirsk out of any Machiavellian motivation—” Sarmouth smiled briefly as he used what had become one of the inner circle’s more popular adjectives “—than I was simply pissed off. I think you and Cayleb are probably right about what’s going on inside Thirsk’s head, Merlin, but he had that letter coming. Especially because he is a man of honor with—what did you call it, Narhmahn?—something ‘resembling a moral spine.’ He damned well knows better than to believe this kind of crap could be anything God wanted!”
“I agree, Sir Dunkyn,” Irys Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t be too surprised if what you sent to him didn’t help to … clarify some of those things going on inside his head.”
“And if it does ‘clarify’ them, what does he do about it, Irys?” Hektor asked.
“I have no idea,” his wife replied. “He’s not exactly an inept sort, though, now is he?”
“No, he certainly isn’t,” Sharleyan said. She sat gazing out of her tower window at the harbor where Rock Point’s flagship lay at anchor, anchor lights burning like tiny stars above the mirror-smooth water. “But even more to the point—and the one thing about your letter that truly concerns me, Dunkyn—Clyntahn knows he isn’t just as well as we do.”
“Exactly what I was thinking, Your Majesty,” Aivah Pahrsahn said. Her expression was troubled as she sat brushing her long, lustrous hair before her bedchamber’s mirror. Now she laid the brush down and sat back in her chair in a rustle of steel thistle silk kimono. “If Clyntahn thinks there’s a chance Baron Sarmouth’s letter’s going to goad Thirsk into some sort of action, he’ll take steps to preempt that action.”
“Yes, he will,” Maikel Staynair a
greed. “And the most likely step, given how that man’s diseased excuse for a brain works, would be to insist that Thirsk’s family be formally taken into ‘protective custody’ by the Inquisition.”
“And probably not in Gorath,” Nimue Chwaeriau said from her own Manchyr bedchamber.
“No, not in Gorath,” Merlin concurred, his voice as hard as his sapphire eyes as he sat across the fireplace from Cayleb in the emperor’s sitting room. “He’ll order them sent to Zion, where he can ‘protect’ them properly.”
“I wonder if Thirsk’s smart enough to realize that once they go to Zion he’s personally doomed,” Aivah said quietly. “The temptation to believe otherwise—to make himself believe otherwise, when there’s so little he can do about it—must be enormous. But there’s no way someone like Clyntahn’s going to let him survive indefinitely after taking a step guaranteed to turn him into a mortal enemy. Eventually, he’ll have Thirsk—and his family—permanently eliminated. He may settle for a simple, anonymous murder rather than the full Punishment, given the way Thirsk’s become one of the jihad’s few genuine heroes, but he will have them all killed.”
“I’d hate to see that happen.” Cayleb’s expression was grim, almost haunted. “Eliminating him from the opposition’s talent pool would be a huge gain, however it happened, but I’d hate to see it happen that way.”
“We all would, love,” Sharleyan told him gently.
“I wonder how he’d have them transported to Zion?” Nimue mused.
“That’s an excellent question.” Merlin leaned back in his armchair, eyes thoughtful. “Somehow, given the suspicions he’s probably nursing, I tend to doubt he’d be happy trusting an RDN galleon to deliver them. Send them overland?”