They may not have known a thing about it, really, whatever we thought earlier. Khapahr must have known suspicion would fall on the rest of Thirsk’s most trusted subordinates if he was caught, however “innocent” they might be. And Aivah’s right about how smart he was. He might very well have been operating in just-in-case mode where they were concerned.
“It took a lot of nerve to shoot Thirsk,” Cayleb said. “He could easily’ve killed him himself!”
“It took a lot of nerve to do any of that, and especially to do it so well,” Nimue countered. “For that matter, it took a lot of nerve for Thirsk to stand still and let himself be shot, and it’s obvious that’s exactly what he did. He never even flinched when Khapahr squeezed the trigger.”
“Agreed.” Cayleb nodded. “I wonder if the surgeons will be able to save the use of his arm?”
“Speaking from personal experience, I think they’ve got a chance,” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. He sat on Destiny’s sternwalk, tipped back in his chair with both boot heels propped on the top of the railing while he watched the sun set beyond Cape Samuel. “Not a very good one, I’m afraid, but a chance.”
On balance, Merlin suspected Hektor was probably correct. The bullet had struck Thirsk in the bony part of the left shoulder, mushroomed, and partially disintegrated. The main body of the bullet had punched a ragged hole through the scapula, shattered the clavicle, and fractured the first rib on that side, while lead fragments had broken the second rib and badly damaged the coracoid process, as well. The earl was fortunate Bahrdailahn had gotten pressure on the wound quickly enough to slow the bleeding until Chihiro’s healer could arrive. He was also fortunate that despite the rote nature of their training, the supernatural explanation of physical processes, and the total absence of the sort of medical technology the Federation—or even pre-space Old Earth—had taken for granted, Pasqualate surgeons were very good.
“But the severity of the wound should make it obvious Khapahr truly was trying to kill him,” Aivah pointed out.
“As long as someone doesn’t ask why he shot the Earl through the body and that bastard Suzhymahga through the head,” Nahrmahn agreed. “If he could manage a head shot when Suzhymahga was coming at him and everyone else was in motion, why couldn’t he do the same thing with Thirsk, when everyone—including Thirsk—was still simply standing there?”
“He shot the Temple Guardsman in the leg, Nahrmahn,” Merlin observed. “I think the hits are broadly enough distributed to deflect that sort of question.”
“I hope so,” Nimue said. “And I think you’re probably right, but it wouldn’t do for anyone to figure out he deliberately didn’t kill the guardsman, either.”
“I wonder if he killed Suzhymahga because he was more worried about him going over the entire conversation later and picking out flaws or because he was just really, really pissed at him?” Kynt Clareyk murmured from his office in the comfortable winter barracks being thrown up just outside the town of Lakeside on the northeast shore of Lake Isyk.
“I wouldn’t put it past him to have done it for your first reason,” Aivah said. “He left both of the guardsmen as witnesses—witnesses the Inquisition’s going to have to take seriously—but much as I’d always loathed Suzhymahga, he was smarter than both of them put together. Khapahr led him to the conclusions he wanted him to draw and actually got him to put them into words for the guardsmen, then got rid of him before he had a chance to question his own conclusions.” She shook her head. “God, that young man was brilliant.”
“And the most loyal friend anyone could ever ask for,” Sharleyan agreed softly.
Silence hovered for several seconds. Then Cayleb shook himself.
“So the question now is what Clyntahn does next. Any ideas?”
“I’d like to say I think it will cause him to decide Thirsk is actually trustworthy from his perspective,” Merlin said after a moment. “Unfortunately, what I actually think is that that’s about as likely as the sun rising in the west tomorrow morning.”
“Probably.” Nimue sat in the lotus position on her bed in her darkened Manchyr bedchamber and nodded. “I’d say it’s likely to have diverted immediate suspicion from him—suspicion that he was actively trying to get his family out of Church custody, at least—but it’s not going to change Clyntahn’s fundamental distrust. And let’s be honest here. All the indications are that Clyntahn’s absolutely right to fear what will happen if and when he finally pushes Thirsk to the breaking point. Best possible outcome from Clyntahn’s perspective is that when the earl reaches that point he kills himself as the only escape that might leave his family unharmed. But I think it’s pretty clear Clyntahn’s figured out Thirsk won’t oblige him that way unless it’s the only escape that leaves his family unharmed.”
“Nimue’s right,” Aivah said. “He’ll still want Thirsk’s family under his thumb in Zion as the one lever he can be certain will keep Thirsk under control. And the one downside of Commander Khapahr’s strategy—aside from the absolute tragedy of losing him that way, I mean—is that it gives Clyntahn a pretext to move quickly to get them to Zion.”
“The ‘terrorist threat,’ you mean?”
“Exactly, Merlin.” Aivah nodded. “Everyone will know it’s bogus, that Khapahr the ‘Charisian spy’ manufactured it out of whole cloth as a pretext for maneuvering Thirsk’s daughters and sons-in-law into a position which would let him and his accomplices ‘kidnap them’ for us. But it’s still there on the table, and Clyntahn and Rayno are going to pounce on it the instant they read Kharmych’s analysis of the witnesses’ testimony.”
“Then we’re just going to have to do something about that, aren’t we?” Merlin said, and smiled very, very thinly.
.VIII.
The Fern Narrows, Gulf of Dohlar
“Is Granddaddy really going to be all right?”
Lyzet Mahkzwail’s eyes were anxious in the lamplight as she and her cousin Kahrmyncetah finished their bedtime prayers and climbed into their hammocks.
“The healers think so, sweetheart,” her mother said, bending to kiss her forehead as she tucked the blanket around the nine-year-old. Four-year-old Zhosifyn had been put to bed two hours ago and slept blissfully through her cousin’s and older sister’s arrival. “And they’re very good healers, you know, and Aunt Zhoahna agrees with them.” Lady Stefyny straightened, touching the tip of Lyzet’s nose with an index finger, and smiled. “And Granddaddy, even if I shouldn’t be saying this, is very, very tough and very ornery,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s way too stubborn not to be all right.”
Lyzet crossed her eyes to stare at the fingertip on her nose and giggled, and Stefyny Mahkzwail patted her gently on the chest.
“I wish he could have come with us,” Kahrmyncetah said wistfully from her own hammock.
Like Lyzet—and Stefyny, too, for that matter—Kahrmyncetah had inherited the blond hair and gray eyes of her maternal grandmother, for whom she’d been named. She was a year older than Lyzet, and the two of them were far more like sisters than cousins. Not surprisingly. She and her brother Ahlyxzandyr had been raised by Stefyny and Sir Ahrnahld since their parents’ deaths in a house fire just over eight years ago.
“I’m sure he wishes the same thing, love.” Stefyny managed to keep her voice tranquil while she tucked in Kahrmyncetah’s blanket as she had Lyzet’s. “But, you know, Granddaddy’s a very busy man. I’m sure as soon as the healers let him out of bed he’ll be right back at work running the Navy.”
Kahrmyncetah considered that for a moment, then nodded, and Stefyny nodded back to her.
“Now go to sleep, both of you,” she said, turning down the lamp wick. “I’ll be along soon, and I want to hear those musical snores of yours when I climb into my hammock. Understood?”
“Yes, Momma,” Lyzet promised demurely, and Stefyny stroked her older daughter’s hair once, glanced at Zhosifyn, winked at Kahrmyncetah, and closed the cubbyhole of a cabin’s door behind her.
“Yo
u got them corralled?” Sir Ahrnahld Mahkzwail asked, putting an arm around her and kissing her above the left ear as she entered what had been designed as the captain’s day cabin.
“Yes.” She leaned into his embrace for a long, grateful moment, then straightened and nodded to her middle sister and brother-in-law, seated at the captain’s dining table. “What about your two?”
“Lywys is bedded down with Gyffry and Ahlyxzandyr,” Hailyn Whytmyn told her. She, too, had Kahrmyncetah Gardynyr’s gray eyes, although her hair was dark. “Mahgdylynah has Zhudyth right now, and bless Bédard she’s here!”
Stefyny nodded in heartfelt agreement as she and Ahrnahld crossed to the table. Her husband pulled out her chair and seated her, then took his own place across the table from Hailyn’s husband Greyghor.
“Is she any better?” Stefyny asked. Six-year-old Zhudyth was obviously ill-suited to follow in her seaman grandfather’s footsteps. She’d been miserably seasick from the moment NGS Saint Frydhelm made sail.
“Mahgdylynah and I have dosed her with golden berry again,” Zhoahna Gardynyr, Stefyny’s youngest sister, said with an off-center smile. Zhoahna—dark-haired and dark-eyed—wore the green, caduceus-badged habit of a Sister of Pasquale with the white band of a novice. “At least it’s made her drowsy enough she’s stopped wailing, poor baby.”
“It seems dreadfully unfair that Lywys has an iron stomach when his sister’s the exact opposite,” Hailyn said, and bared her teeth at her husband with mock ferocity. “That’s probably your fault, now that I think about it,” she told him. “She’s always been a chip off the Whytmyn block, except for her coloring, so she probably got that tender tummy from you. Not that I’m complaining about Lywys, mind you! The last thing we need would be to have both of them down—or up, as the case may be—with it! Especially since you’d probably claim the weary weight and ancient decrepitude of all your years—your many, many years—made you too feeble to sit up with them both all night.”
Stefyny smiled faintly. Greyghor Whytmyn was neither ancient nor decrepit, but he was twelve years older than his wife. And Hailyn had a point about Zhudyth’s twin brother Lywys. He was clearly his grandfather’s grandson, in more than name alone. He’d never been seasick for a single moment in his life and he thought sailing ships were the most wonderful thing God had ever created.
She sat back in her chair, looking around the cabin Father Syndail Rahdgyrz had made available to them. She hadn’t had much opportunity to form an impression of the captain, and at the moment she wasn’t especially fond of anyone with “Father” in front of his name, but Rahdgyrz seemed a competent seaman and he’d been the soul of courtesy as he showed them to the quarters he’d made available to them aboard his ship. He himself had evicted his first lieutenant from his cabin, in turn, in order to make the biggest and most comfortable space aboard ship available to his passengers.
They were still cramped—Saint Frydhelm had never been designed as a passenger vessel—but things might have been far worse. And at least with space at such a premium, there was no room for anyone else in the same quarters. That meant that except for the single sentry outside the cabins tucked under the quarterdeck, their “escort” had been forced to bunk elsewhere … and that they had as much privacy as they could possibly have hoped to find.
“At least Saint Frydhelm seems like a well found ship,” Stefyny observed, looking at her husband.
“She is.” Her husband nodded. “We built five just like her from the same plans for King Rahnyld in the first run of orders. In fact, the Riptides are basically the same design; we just scaled them up and lengthened them enough for the extra sixteen guns.”
“I thought she seemed familiar,” Stefyny said. Sir Ahrnahld Mahkzwail’s modest little shipyard had turned into a sprawling complex over the last few years. She’d been grateful for the way it had improved the family fortunes, but even more for the way it had supported Dohlar’s contribution to the Jihad. Of course, that had been then and this was now.
The conversation slid to a halt for several seconds. Then, after a moment, Hailyn raised her head.
“Gyffry’s worried,” she said, her soft voice barely audible above the background noises of a sailing vessel underway. Stefyny looked up sharply, and her sister gave her a quick headshake. “He’s not going to say anything he shouldn’t, Stefyny! And he hasn’t said anything to you because he doesn’t want you to be worried. He asked me not to mention it to you, but I didn’t promise I wouldn’t. I hope that doesn’t make me a tattletale aunt.”
“No, of course it doesn’t.” Stefyny laid a hand lightly on her sister’s forearm. “And I promise I won’t betray your faithlessness to him. Did Ahlyxzandyr say anything?”
At thirteen—he’d turn fourteen in little more than a month—Ahlyxzandyr Gardynyr was the eldest of the Earl of Thirsk’s grandchildren. He was also the earl’s heir, and he, too, had his grandmother’s eyes, although he’d clearly inherited his height from his mother’s side of the family. He was almost six feet tall, despite his youth, and bidding fair to be at least a foot taller than his grandfather before he was done growing. Despite his youth, he was an insightful and thoughtful young man, who reminded Stefyny almost painfully of her dead brother Lanfyrd.
“I’m afraid Ahlyxzandyr has a very clear notion of what’s happening, Stefyny,” her husband said now, before Hailyn could reply. “You noticed how little he had to say about Ahlvyn, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Stefyny sighed. “He didn’t say much, did he?”
Neither the twins nor Zhosifyn had any clear idea of the last two five-days’ tumultuous events, but the older children did. Lyzet and Kahrmyncetah had been stunned when Bishop Staiphan gently informed them that Commander Khapahr had shot and badly wounded their grandfather and then killed himself. They clearly didn’t understand the implications, only that someone their entire family had trusted had turned upon their grandfather, and Bishop Staiphan hadn’t passed along any of the details about the commander’s treason. Despite that, Stefyny had been afraid Ahlyxzandyr would be able to add two plus two and come up with four. It seemed he had, and that could be dangerous to everyone.
“Ahlyxzandyr’s a smart kid, Stefyny,” Greyghor said, keeping his own voice low enough to be barely audible. “He’s not going to say anything he shouldn’t to anyone.”
“Not in normal conversation, no,” she agreed, equally softly. “And not on his own. But what about that bastard Rudahry?”
None of Lywys Gardynyr’s daughters were anything remotely like prudes, but that particular noun was one Stefyny Mahkzwail used only very, very rarely. Especially about ordained clergy. No one seemed inclined to reprove her for her language, however. Zhoahna’s expression flickered slightly, but with regret and anger, not disagreement.
Father Aimohs Rudahry was a Schuelerite priest who’d served as one of Ahbsahlahn Kharmych’s troubleshooters in the Dohlaran Inquisition since the beginning of the Jihad. He was intelligent, he was ruthless, and he was a fervent supporter of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s policies. In fact, aside from coloration, he had a great deal in common with the late Chermyn Suzhymahga, with whom he’d worked closely. He was a man whose natural passion for ferreting out secrets had been honed and shaped to a razor’s edge by the Inquisition, and like most inquisitors, he understood that the unguarded remarks of children were often keys to what those children’s parents actually thought.
“You’re right about Ahlyxzandyr’s being smart, Greyghor,” she continued, “but so is Rudahry. What happens when he starts pumping the kids for information?”
“That could be bad,” Ahrnahld acknowledged with a wintry smile of his own. “Maybe we shouldn’t have worked as hard as we did at teaching all of them to trust the clergy.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time, sweetheart,” Stefyny said. “No one saw all this insanity coming then.”
Ahrnahld cocked his head at her, remembering certain pre-Jihad conversations with his father-in-law, but chose not to mention th
em. Zhoahna was rather less reticent.
“It did seem like a good idea, Stefyny,” she agreed, fingering the caduceus on the breast of her habit. “A lot of things seemed like a good idea then. But Rodahry’s almost enough to make me think the Reformists have been right all along.”
Her eyes were shadowed with mingled regret and anger, and Hailyn reached across to grip her forearm comfortingly. Zhoahna had completed her novitate as a Pasqualate before the Jihad was formally proclaimed. Since then, her plans to complete her vows had been put on hold, and both of her sisters knew her faith in the Church had been badly shaken. She was far too intelligent not to understand the way in which the three of them had been used as weapons against their father by Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the Inquisition. Her bitter disillusionment with the Group of Four hadn’t been enough to make her doubt her own vocation, but it had been enough to make her delay that final step of commitment. Clyntahn had enough swords to hold over Earl Thirsk’s head without a daughter whose ecclesiastic superiors could order her to Zion at any moment.
Not that it seemed to have prevented that from happening in the end, of course.
“I’ll have a talk with Ahlyx in the morning, preferably out on the sternwalk where none of the big-eared little pitchers will overhear us,” Ahrnahld said. Stefyny looked slightly alarmed, and he grimaced. “Honey, we can’t hide this from him forever. He’s three years older than Gyffry, and he’s already figured out a lot more than any of us might really want him to have put together. We can’t put the cork back into that bottle. But he is smart—scary smart, sometimes—and he’s old enough to understand what could happen if … someone decided your father had had anything to do with Ahlvyn’s actions. Which, of course,” he looked around the table with no expression at all, “we all know he didn’t.”